Regular readers here know that one of my favorite authors is Neil Gaiman (http://www.neilgaiman.com).  Lorraine (my wife to those who aren't familiar with things here) has been reading The Graveyard Book of late (we picked up the edition with the cover on the lower left in the image accompanying this post).

Okay, this is just koolness and a half.  I hadn't seen this until I noticed a twitter from Neil Gaiman discussing getting the video feeds fixed to work again (I hadn't known they were broken).  Now that I'm aware of it, this is most awesome.

Neil Gaiman has a series of videos up of himself reading chapters from THE GRAVEYARD BOOK (http://www.thegraveyardbook.com) in various cities.

See http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx for the videos and enjoy.

In the area of synchronicity, I was just asked to serve on the examining committee for a dissertation on Gaiman's Neverwhere, one of my favorite Gaiman novels, unbeknownst to the graduate student sitting in the prospective hot seat.

A few years ago, I was in correspondence with Gaiman as I was the chief organizer of an academic literature conference here and we were inviting him to attend.  He was keen for it as he'd never been to this part of Asia but unfortunately he got called into writing duties for Beowulf and had to pull out (well, not unfortunately in the sense that the film was awesome but in that we didn't get to have him at that time).  At the time, there was some resistance from some faculty on the committee who didn't have a clue who Gaiman is (not being a century-dead white guy, he's not quite in the canon that folks in literary circles kowtow to) but since then we've had a number of students propose thesis or dissertation on his work and it's no longer impossible to find copies of his novels in local bookstores (difficult, but not impossible) so things do eventually change for the better.  The fact that he's now had a number of films out based upon his work of late has certainly not been unhelpful.

If you're unfamiliar with Neil Gaiman's work, you're in for a treat when you pick up one of his numerous works in the very near future.  Perhaps you'd like to start off with one of the short story collections to get your feet wet . . . those with a literary or cultural comparative bent might go ahead and jump into American Gods and play the "guess the god" game at the get-go (played in similar fashion to the "hunt the allusion" game that Silverlock fans have enjoyed for years).