Archive for October, 2003

The Fox Woman

Wednesday, October 29th, 2003

by Kij Johnson
ISBN: 0312875592
Johnson based her story on a Japanese fairy tale from the ninth century. In that place and time, foxes were thought to have magical powers, and humans needed to be wary of them.
Yoshifuji, a noble still in the beginnings of his career at court in the capital, isn’t as wary as he [...]

Posted in fiction | 1 Comment »

The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish

Sunday, October 19th, 2003

by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
ISBN: 1565041992
Sawney and Beaney are the two fish that get traded for a newspaper-reading Dad.
The Dad isn’t very exciting — all he does is read the paper — so he gets traded again, for an electric guitar, a gorilla mask, and a large rabbit named Galveston. Yeah, this book [...]

Posted in young adult/children | No Comments »

Don’t

Wednesday, October 8th, 2003

by Jenny Diski
ISBN: 1862072507
This is a collection of essays, most of which were written for the London Review of Books, and so masquerade as meandering book reviews. Diski sets up the reader to believe in meandering with her preface, saying that one “of the great pleasures for me of writing is starting out in the [...]

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Coraline

Wednesday, October 1st, 2003

by Neil Gaiman
illustrations by Dave McKean
ISBN: 0380807343
I did not consider black button eyes to be creepy or malevolent. Then I read this book, and marvelled at Gaiman’s ability to invest the everyday and ordinary with dark possibilities.
Coraline is a smart girl; she’s just moved into a new flat, the school year has yet to [...]

Posted in young adult/children | 3 Comments »