Read it in books

After the film yesterday we had a hot chocolate at Charmers, an oasis of faded but authentic glamour amongst the posing of the Manuka "scene", followed by a good look around in Paperchain bookshop. At long long last William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" is out in paperback, which I reckon is something worth getting excited about. Also out in that form is Martin Amis's "Yellow Dog". Notwithstanding the barrage of bad reviews and my own mixed feelings about Amis aired here recently, I've got a bit of a good feeling about this novel. The length looks about right for an Amis novel (which is plainly a ridiculous thing to say). At this stage the new David Mitchell is only out in one of those big-format paperbacks where the spine collapses on the first read and you pay well upwards of 30 dollars for the privilege, so we'll cool our heels for a while on that score (we are also waiting for someone to return "Number9Dream" to Woden library so we can get stuck into that first; best to read a writer's books in sequence if you can).

You would also do well to give thanks to Michael Heyward's Text Publishing for putting out in book form the stunning Alessandro Baricco short story "Without Blood" which ran in the New Yorker 18 months ago. If you didn't read it there you really should get this book. Short stories in book form are inevitably expensive but only the really special ones ever get this treatment (someone did it to an Annie Proulx short story which ran in the Atlantic Monthly seven or eight years ago about a couple of randy cowboys, which was equally worthy of becoming a book) so you are paying for quality rather than quantity. Like, so what if Contrane's "My Favourite Things" barely clocks in beyond half an hour; would you really be happier with 80 minutes of Kenny G? Feel the width, feel the width ...