intertext

There's a new Patricia McKillip winging its way to my door courtesy of Amazon.ca, and I've signed up for the "have the new Harry Potter delivered on the day it's released." I did that last time, and it was way cool having a postie bringing it on a _Saturday_, saying "here's your Harry Potter" because they'd been specially signed up JUST FOR THAT. My goodness, the power J.K. Rowling has these days...

Meanwhile I'm reading _Inkheart_ and have to say I'm underwhelmed. Whether it's because of it being in translation, I don't know, but it seems kind of flat. The basic idea is good, but she doesn't exploit it as well as she could have IMHO.

The best thing I've read for a good while is _Cloud Atlas_. I'm intrigued, though. Has anyone else noticed, I wonder, that the new Michael Cunningham sounds very very similar - even to the idea of having nested narratives involving characters from different times who are reincarnated versions of eachother (does that make sense? You get the idea...) There's of course a lot of ballyhoo about the Cunningham - he being the author of _The Hours_ and all - but the parallels do seem a bit strange. Good thing _Cloud Atlas_ has been out for a while or no doubt someone would be accusing the author (and a brain fart prevents me from remembering his name) of copying Cunningham.