Michael the Girl

Tricked By My Favorite Living Author

I bought a book the other day (at Virgin Megastore, which should have been the first sign something was wrong). Anyway, I've no interest in being snarky and naming names, so I won't tell you what book it is, but I'm not really enjoying it (and I'm almost done, and doesn't seem like it's getting better). Now this is something that happens a few times a year and isn't a big deal, except Neil Gaiman is involved.

Okay, he's not directly involved, but it is his fault I bought the book. You see, Neil Gaiman is my favorite living author, from the intra-Atlantic accent to the sushi consumption to the beekeeping. Not to mention he tells a damn good story every now and again. He's also got remarkably good taste. I like his taste in art and films and books and authors. And only a few weeks ago he recomended my new favorite book, In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente.

I checked Night Garden out of the Brooklyn Library and read it twice and kept it a day late. It was excellent, brilliant and I'm dying to get my hands on the sequel in the fall. (I would write a review of it, but it's a fantastically complicated book, and I don't think I could wrap my head around it. Perhaps when the second half is available.)

But the book from the Virgin Megastore is terrible and it had a Neil Gaiman blurb on the front cover, and I, brainwashed as a starving man watching commercials for Big Macs, bought the dumb book. And of course, when I carefully read the blurb (after reading the first hundred pages), Neil had merely endorsed the author and not that particular book.

Ah well, another case for AdBusters.

posted by Mike @ 7:30 PM