I'm taking HBP with my next week - figure it would be good airplane reading.

The new book comes out on CJ's birthday. He is quite excited - though he has already declared the reading order within the family.

OK, so what I said about Vellum before still stands, but it's moving way up in my estimation. It's the most referential and yet original thing I've read in a while. In addition to the nods Sox and I already mentioned, there are heavy Lovecraft refs, light William Gibson refs, John Constantine is name-checked, and I think Burroughs' Mars series also, but subtly.

Then you've got real-world stuff like Guy Fawkes (and not a little V for Vendetta) and Iraq, and underlying everything are the great myth-cycles, from Inanna and Metatron to Odin and Narcissus.

The author gives you all these snapshots and seemingly expects you to connect them to create a cohesive story...and yet, his characters discuss schizophrenia and apophenia and the fallacy of seeing connections where there are none. Yet there are.

It's like the literary equivalent of modern fusion cuisine.

I just started rereading OotP, to prepare for the movie, and will reread HBP before Deathly Hallows comes out. All Harry all the time!

They stared at each other, lone-wolf amber mating briefly with angelic blue innocence.

Classic romance badness! I love it.

Salon has a fun article on a Harry Potter convention.

I'm browsing through the Guardian Unlimited reader's guide to independent bookshops. So many cool sounding stores! Like....

Barter Books, Alnwick
Alnwick Station, Alnwick, Northumberland, NE66 2NP
01665604888

According to the bumf, Barter Books is one of Europe's biggest secondhand bookshops - but it's so much more. It's a library, a haven, a temple, a place of open fires, coffee, and creaking leather chairs - somewhere you can take your love of books and bask in its sunny glow for hours on end. It's also a disused railway station in Alnwick, Northumberland, and it's got 14 years of book-swapping history behind it. You can sell them volumes you've finished with, and you're almost guaranteed to leave with more. They won't always have the latest celebrity tell-all, but you stand a good chance of digging out unexpected treasures if you do the decent thing and give yourself a good couple of hours there. Original serialisations of Dickens, decrepit (but lovely) tomes on being a good 1890s wife, beginners' guides to undertaking, they're all there. - Georgina Turner

Weird moment this morning that I just thought to post about. The Weather Channel had a report on a dangerous caterpillar invasion in Bree, Belgium.

I'm sure the minds of all good LOTR fans are now in the same place my mind immediately went to.

I've spent all day reading Top 10 lists on Guardian Unlimited.

I think I need to get this book:

8. The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell
A confused Morrissey fan writes letters to his hero and recalls a dismal childhood. I loved the moment when he picks up his guitar to entertain a coach load of shopkeepers. Shoplifters of the World Unite turns out to be the wrong choice.

David, have you read The City, Not Long After ? I read it this weekend and it seemed like something you'd like.

David, have you read The City, Not Long After ? I read it this weekend and it seemed like something you'd like.

Good call! It's a book I never have on my shelves because I'm always giving it away as a San Francisco memento to visiting friends.

This started back when my friend Ann was doing her residency in Minnepolis and I sent her War of the Oaks (which is set there). She returned the favor with The City Not Long After.

It's not always in print, so I tend to scan for it on the used shelves.

I think it's back in print--I saw a number of copies in the dealer's room at Wiscon last weekend.

I really need to read Pat Murphy's other stuff.