"It was then that Delirium noticed that she had absentmindedly transformed herself into a hundred and eleven perfect, tiny, multicolored fish. Each fish sang a different song. And as she put herself back together again, unable for the moment to remember whether the silver flecks went in the blue eye or the green one, she decided that a dog would be a nice thing to have. And then it occurred to her that there had been a dog around at some point, hadn't there? A nice doggie. And she went off to look for it, trailing occasional fish..." - Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Kindly Ones

Wednesday various

November 11, 2009 at 8:45 pm

  • Anybody need a cool jewelery box? I actually own these books. (Though a little part of me cringes at thought of any such book mutilation.)

  • Speaking of books, word on the “new” Vladimir Nabokov “novel,” The Original of Laura, isn’t exactly good [via], suggesting that it’s at best a curio for Nabokov scholars. But at least we have these neat re-imagined covers for all (well, mostly all) of his other books. [via]

    Man, it’s been way too long since I’ve read any Nabokov.

  • So yeah, Dollhouse was canceled, and I don’t think anybody is exactly surprised. I still think the show was some of Joss Whedon’s best and worst work, capable of some truly brilliant and startling moments, but also never really comfortable in its own skin or sure of exactly what kind of show it wanted to be. There’s a lot I love about it, but I won’t mourn it the same way I did Firefly (and to a lesser extent Angel), and I’ve long been resigned to its many flaws and limited chances for survival.

    • Speaking of Dollhouse, here’s an interesting look at the role of neuroscience in the Whedonverse that somehow manages to mention all his shows except for the one where people’s brains are erased and rewired on a regular basis. [via

  • And finally, Neil Gaiman on A.A. Milne and Kenneth Grahame:

    I once read an essay by A.A. Milne telling people that, of course they knew Kenneth Grahame’s work, he wrote The Golden Age and Dream Days, everybody had read them, but he also did this amazing book called The Wind in the Willows that nobody had ever heard of. And then Milne wrote a play called Toad of Toad Hall, which was a big hit and made The Wind in The Willows famous and read, and, eventually, one of the good classics (being a book that people continue to read and remember with pleasure), while The Golden Age and Dream Days, Grahame’s beautiful, gentle tales of Victorian childhood, are long forgotten.

    If there is a moral, or a lesson to be learned from all this, I do not know what it is.

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