Reviewing the Mail: Week of 6/5

This week, I was home for only just about twenty-four hours of the weekend. However, I was doubly lucky -- that time overlapped with the end of mail delivery for the week, so I can be sure that this is all that showed up in my mailbox, and it's a very short list, so I can actually squeeze out time to look at it and ramble a bit here for you.

As always, these are books that I haven't read yet -- they just arrived in the mail. But I do want to mention that they exist, and to let whoever is actually reading these posts know something about these new/upcoming books, based on whatever I already know or can tell from a quick glance.

The second book of Mark Chadbourn's "The Dark Ages" series -- itself a sequel to his "Age of Misrule" trilogy, in which old supernatural creatures returned, slaughtered me and most of mankind, and Changed Everything -- is The Queen of Sinister. In the UK, they saw this book in 2004, but we on this side of the Atlantic are so blighted and behind-the-times that we won't get it until June 8th of this year. (That's tomorrow, for those of you who have trouble with higher maths.) On the other hand, we get this deeply spiffy Pyr trade paperback, with a great creepy-cool cover painting by John Picacio, and I doubt the Brits had anything nearly so awesome back in the year four. So, once again, good things come to those who wait!

From Collins Design, a part of the vast HarperCollins empire that I thought was endangered if not actually dead -- though I'm thrilled, as always in cases like this, to find that I'm wrong -- comes a neat book called We Are Paper Toys! (Yes, the bang is part of the title. Looking at the cover, I think it's actually all supposed to be in lowercase, too: we are paper toys! Speaking of "design"....) It's edited and compiled by Louis Bou, and features exactly what the title implies: designs for paper toys from thirty-two of the finest designers in the world. (Designers of paper toys, of course -- what would a cover/fashion/architectural/whatever designer know about them, anyway?) The book includes pictures of dozens and dozens of paper toys, actual designs for a whole lot of them, and a CD with PDF templates (suitable for printing and then cutting/gluing/folding/constructing) for a bunch of those. If I had more manual dexterity -- ask my family what presents wrapped by me look like some day -- I'd be all over this like white on rice, but, as it is, I will look on in amazement and with a slight euphoria induced not entirely by the aroma of these thick white art-book pages. we are paper toys! hits your favorite bookseller (and possibly craft store) on June 15th, for your print-and-folding pleasure.
----------------
Listening to: The Mountain Goats - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton
via FoxyTunes