First there's Maps and Legends, the brand new collection of essays from Michael Chabon. I just blogged about his rejected Spider-man 2 script yesterday and had no idea this was out, no idea I wanted it until I stumbled across it in the store today. Mcsweeney's always produces beautiful works, but this is a masterpiece. The jacket is built in three peel away layers and is covered in charming line work (the flat JPEG does it zero justice - go buy this book). The endpapers and acknowledgements are creatively approached, lovingly drawn up to look like maps. Chabon is in fine form here - I stood in the bookstore, rapt, and read the first essay in its entirety. Great stuff! Best of all, proceeds to go the 826 organization, a more than worthy cause.
Description lifted from the Mcsweeney's page:
"Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in sixteen parts — a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of an wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; procrastination and doubt reveal the way toward Wonder Boys; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into The Yiddish Policeman's Union."
Next up is Butcher Bird, by Richard Kadrey. I saw this book in a B&N a couple of months ago and was impressed by the urban/dark fantasy cover copy, the William Gibson blurb and the glorious cover by Dan Dos Santos. Then I saw this article at IO9 about Kadrey's freaky fetish photography yesterday, so I figured the time was right to go and seek out the book. A Butcher Bird synopsis, excerpted from Publishers Weekly:
"The relatively normal life of San Francisco tattoo artist Spyder Lee goes thoroughly crazy when he's rescued from a mugger by Shrike, a mysterious blind woman who reveals that Lee's assailant was actually a demon. The wounds he suffered in the assault give him the ability to see the Dominions, other spheres of existence that regular mortals are unaware of. Soon Spyder finds himself hip-deep in demonic trouble, protecting his friend Lulu by offering his body to the organ-collecting Black and then dragging her off to join Shrike on a madcap journey to Hell, where they encounter monsters, Lucifer and even an alternate-time version of Lee himself ."