michael lambe

I’m feeling a bit flush these days… well flusher than I have been in a long while so I decided to spoil myself by ordering some books I’ve been aching for, for absolute eons. And hat’s off to amazon.co.jp for getting my books to me within 24 hours! That’s pretty remarkable service really. Pity they don’t take cash payments anymore though…

Anyway, I’ve already read one of them. Neil Gaiman’s Dream Hunters.

This is a very nice volume, subtley blending an old Japanese fable with the world of the Sandman comics, although this itself is not a comic but an illustrated short story. Gaiman himself writes that when he first discovered this story he was “struck by the similarities - some of them almost disquieting - between the Japanese tale and my own Sandman series”. He retells this tale of a fox’s love for a monk very nicely indeed…

But why am I buying books when there is so much stuff on the web for free? I recently discovered the audio stories on Well Told Tales. You can download them or simply listen to them online, good to listen to while cooking or cleaning or doing other domestic things. I really liked the Hand Of God story about using time travel to undo one of the most infamous injustices of sporting history.

And there’s a whole bunch of links to the stories nominated for this years Hugo Awards up here: Hugo Nominees. Again, Neil Gaiman’s How To Talk To Girls At Parties is a classic. “Just talk to them… it’s not like they are from another planet!” Brilliant conceit!

God I love free stuff. Good night.