The Incredible Book Eating Boy

Every now and again, you come across an artist so fresh and exciting, you can’t help but evangelise others about them. One such discovery is Oliver Jeffers, a surpremely talented illustrator who uses realia as the basis for much of his work. Leigh had picked up his book The Incredible Book Eating Boy, and we looked on in awe.

Take a look at these spreads, where you can see how the pages started off as books folded out flat, and then painted on top of:

As a nice touch the back half of the book has the bottom left corner pre-bitten:

Be sure to have butchers at his portfolio and sketchbooks, and the book his highly recommended, whether you have children or not!

Tags: art, books, illustrators

Blinded by the Northern Lights

In general, I don’t ‘do’ books. Over the last few years, my reading has dwindled to an embarrassing one-per-year, apart from a holiday in Rhodes in which I managed to get through a grand total of three.

The type that I have managed to read, tend to be “humourous travel writing” – Round Ireland with a Fridge, McCarthy’s Bar, Are you Dave Gorman?, Join Me, that sort of thing.

I’ve just finished reading the wife’s copy of The Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman (in just 2 weeks – a personal record!), and I’m absolutely blown away. I’ve not felt so excited about fiction in a long, long time, and I’ve certainly not had that ‘can’t put this down’ feeling before (I also have this unexplainable thing about airships in stories, which was why I read Michael Moorcock’s ‘Oswald Bastable’ Trilogy -but that’s another story). That insatiable need to find somewhere quiet to read just another few pages has never been so stong.

What makes these books really ‘live’ for me is that Lyra’s story is based in Oxford (just down the road from me), at an imaginary Jordan College. The description of the city makes me feel right at home, and I can see the places Pullman describes, and suspend my disbelief that alternative universes actually exist.

Now I just hope that others share my enthusiasm, and that haven’t just made an arse of myself.

Tags: books

currently reading

Andy Budd’s Blogography is definitely worth a visit. A real pleasure to read, combined with clean, slick design and some beautiful photographs. He was recently linked to by Zeldman but it was through a link on Jeremy Keith’s Journal that I found him. (BTW: Since that Zeldman link, I’ve been getting so many offers from Nigerian businessmen, willing to just give me huge sums of cash in dollars. Fantastic! Looks like I’m not the only one)

Another regular has been Dan Benjamin’s Hivelogic Narrative. I’m about to use Dan’s ‘Image Rotator’ php script on my navbar background, now that I realised it works in CSS (background-image property) as well as normal HTML code. Hurrah!

Book-wise I’m about to start ‘Join Me‘ by Danny Wallace.

Anyway, I’m off now on a much needed 2 week holiday. In the meantime, here’s a little light music…

Tags: books

that bloke with the beard and wooly hat

..talks my kinda talk. My copy of ‘designing with web standards’ finally arrived today – and I am one happy boy.

Tags: books