National Library Week

Maybe you know, maybe you don't but this is National Library Week.  Read a book, people!

I am always interested to see who the ALA is featuring during this most sacred of weeks.  I still have my  Rebecca Lobo Reads The Giving Tree poster somewhere.  & of course, who could forget LLCoolJ posing with The Children's Health Food Book.  Trust me, now that you do know there is such a poster, you will not forget for a good long while.

But these were two of many spokes people for the Celebrity Read poster series.  & I want to talk about this years National Library Week honorary chair, Neil Gaiman.  He has actually come up in this blog before but never by name (so don't bother to search).  In part because he wrote the book The Graveyard Book that I keep suggesting to my bookclub & they keep just not going for.

He also wrote Coraline, which was made into a movie, which I tried to watch in 3-D, despite V** telling me I shouldn't do that because 3-D movies make me queasy, which they do.  Can you imagine forgetting such a thing?  Well I did.  Forget, that is.  So I did not much enjoy Coraline, but your experience  will not be mine.  & of course he wrote the book Stardust, which I loved, the movie of which is on one of my all-time favorite Netflix lists:  movies not about cross-dressers but having them nonetheless.  All of this is the tip of the iceberg, really, as far as what Neil Gaiman has written.  He has written so much, it is surprising he ever gets out, but gets out he does.

Earlier this year he was caught in a red carpet panorama at the Oscars.  He's the one staring at footprints on the train of the gown before him.  I think he says he is almost sure they are not his footprints.  But my favorite Neil Gaiman moment is definitely this one.  Yes, it is another fashionista photo op, in which he looks amused & if not lost, certainly not vested in the majesty of the moment.

So thank you, Neil Gaiman for a quick tour of where a writer can go & still manage not to be recognized by photographers until they are going through their pictures for the second/third time.  & thank you, librarians because without you I would never have heard of this guy.  In honor of your week I am going to check out some books, & maybe a few movies every few days for, lets say the rest of my life.