Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Wednesday, 3 July 2002

# 10:45 PM

groceries...

Just got back from buying a whole bunch of groceries. There will be food tomorrow.

Never seen Berkeley Bowl as crowded as today. I'm guessing lots of people are stocking up for parties tomorrow.

Overheard by the bike racks: "It was a nice vacation in the meat world."

# 6 PM

Over at Nerve, there is a hilarious deconstruction of the Abercrombie & Fish catalog. Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg would be proud.

Then again, Abercrombie do a pretty good job of deconstructing themselves with their splash page.

[Caveat lector: All of Nerve contains nudity and/or discussion of sex.]

# 3:50 AM

book reviews

Two great books in a row this week: Patricia McKillip's Winter Rose, and Neil Gaiman's Coraline. I read the first, and had the second read to me and ~800 other people by the man himself. Yes, the entire book. It took more than three hours, from 7-11 last night, with a break for refreshments in the middle.

It's interesting to compare these two. They are quite different books, told in different styles and with different heroines, but you could make a strong case that they have the same antagonist. I wish I could expound further, but it would be too spoilerful.

A couple of observations on style, though. McKillip is wonderful at atmosphere, and it shows in Winter Rose: it is bitterly, bitterly cold inside that book. Just as it should be, given the plot. Gaiman, now, he's better at painting characters. There's a talking cat in Coraline and it's a cat, not a human wearing a cat's body.