I’m here, I’m alive but I’m incredibly dopey, and I’m horribly SHORT OF KIP.

It’s my own fault, of course. I sat up late into last night reading, utterly gripped, first by George Pelecanos‘ majestic mystery novel HELL TO PAY. And then, once that reached its wonderful conclusion, like the story-addicted fool that I am I decided I’d take a ‘quick peek’ at the opening pages of LITTLE BROTHER by Cory Doctorow…

Now, in case you haven’t heard of it yet, LITTLE BROTHER is probably the ‘buzziest’ YA novel of the summer, with praise on its back cover from a whole slew of my favourite writers including Neil Gaiman, Scott Westerfeld and Brian K Vaughan. I’ve been a fan of Boing Boing, a website to which Mr Doctorow is one of the major contributors, for a long time now – but ever since since hearing him and (the also awesome) China Mieville discuss political writing in books for young people at Eastercon some weeks back, I’ve been positively RAVENING to get my hands on this book. I was hoping to pick it up while I was in New York, but the launch date wasn’t until a week after I left – and the British edition doesn’t come out for another SIX MONTHS! But I did get one shipped over ‘specially, soon as possible, and it got here just yesterday.

Was it worth the wait and the fuss? Well, let’s just say it looks VERY promising so far. In fact, the story took off at such a good clip that my ‘sneak peak’ turned into a further two-hour binge that – if a certain person in the room with me hadn’t woken up and told me in very strong terms to stop – would probably have continued right through until morning! As it was I only put my head down for about three hours before it was time to get up and work, and folks, I’m an eight-hour type of demon. I’ve had a brain like a wind-sock (like, even more than usual) ever since.

Man, I love discovering fine new books to read. HEE HEE HEE! 🙂

For more recommendations, check out my list of Five Hundred Fine Books on my LibraryThing profile.

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Comments? Suggestions? Questions? Me and THE WEBSPHINX would love to hear from you! Drop us a line at the Tim, Defender of the Earth Guestbook for current or Tim stuff, or The Black Tattoo Guestbook for Black Tat stuff. First (or demon-!) names only, please. 😉