A bit of news and some wonderful links

For those of you who, a couple of posts ago, said "Huh? Who's Neil Gaiman?", I have this piece of news: Mr. G is now the only author to be awarded both the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the Newbery Medal for the same book. The medals are awarded in the UK and the US respectively, for the best children's book of the year. This year's winner for both was The Graveyard Book. You can read more here.

The picture shown here is one of my favourite illustrations from the book.

FYI, he has been the recipient of numerous awards in the past, including the World Fantasy Award (the first author to receive it for a comic) and the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Also, I thought it about time that I shared a wonderful ebook link I've found: make sure you check out Inkmesh. It's a search engine for ebooks. It's invaluable for finding those ebooks which are difficult to track down- last night I finally found L.M. Montgomery's Emily trilogy in an electronic format. It also lists prices and available formats alongside each site which supplies the ebook, cutting down on time-consuming online searches.

It's so useful, in fact, that I've added it to my page of (Actually) Useful book links.

Highlights '09

I'm subscribed to quite a few book blogs and book news feeds. At this time of year, a lot of 'best of ' and 'highlights' lists start coming through, pointing readers to the best books of the year. But the problem with book news is that it's all about new realeases. I started reading books towards the end of the 20th Century- I have the whole history of print to catch up on!

So these are (some of) the highlights of my '09 reading:

January - four weeks off in Toowoomba and Brisbane
   -The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell (1946)
     A fascinating look at a fascinating topic
  -The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett (2001)
     A magically intelligent cat and clan of rats figure there's always money to be made in faking rat plagues.

March-April - Semester 1
   -Beginning Logic, E. J. Lemmon (1965)
     An excellent guide to formal logic. I read it for uni, and it rocked my socks!

March 31- I meet Shaun Tan and a friend leaves the country
   -The Arrival, Shaun Tan (2006)
     A gorgeous graphic novel about the strangeness and beauty of immigration. I cried.

June - cruising on the Nile in Egypt
   -I was reading, but I don't quite remember what. The view was distracting me. =P

June/July - London & Oxford, England; and Wicklow, Ireland
   -The Inkworld trilogy, Cornelia Funke (2003, 2005, 2007)
     Because you have to read fantasy in Oxford.

July - a very long flight home
   -The Ghost, Robert Harris (2007)
     A surprisingly engaging modern thriller from a historical novelist.

August-October - Semester 2
   -The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (2008)
     Brilliant. =)
   -The Magicians, Lev Grossman (2009)
     Equally brilliant. =)

mid-September - an awful sickness strikes
   -Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen (1811)
     Thus completing my aim to read all of Austen's novels.

November-December - mixing up my reading habits
   -Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman (1988/1989)
     The first installment of the classic Sandman comics. An excellent read.
   -Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (1990)
     Read it.

(As always, I've posted links to authors' sites where possible. It's not my fault if their sites aren't helpful. Where these weren't available, I've posted links to the best information I can find about the book. Sometimes this means Amazon.)

Magicians and Graveyards

I mentioned Lev Grossman's brilliant The Magicians some time ago. Well, here is an interview of Grossman in which he discusses his book, among other things (e.g.; the disappointment of the Harry Potter epilogue).

The book gives a lot of insight into the nature of fantasy novels and fantasy worlds. So does the interview. =)

Grossman also has an Time Magazine essay (written in 2005) entitled 'The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth', about the increasing coolness of geek culture. Neil Gaiman gets quoted, which always wins points with me. You can find the essay here.

Speaking of Neil, I just finished reading The Graveyard Book. What can I say? Neil is genius!