A picture in honor of a forthcoming book of his, I know nothing about called The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977-2005 due out February 1.

Author Tom Moon has assembled a book called 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List.  I first heard about this project on NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast.

The title pretty much explains the book, but the idea behind it and the title itself seem both hugely ambitious and a bit self-important.  I mean “A Listener’s Life List“?  Doesn’t that somehow imply this list of music ought to be one’s personal soundtrack and one should spend a great deal of time pursuing these recordings?  Maybe, maybe not, but coming up with the number 1,000 is an impressive feat.

The entire list, a blog and all sorts of info surrounding the 1,000 recordings may be found at 1000recordings.com.

Neil Gaiman Reads Chapter One of The Graveyard Book from The Graveyard Book Tour on Vimeo.

Watch Neil Gaiman Read Chapter Two of The Graveyard Book from The Graveyard Book Tour on Vimeo.

Neil Gaiman — according to Boing Boing and his blog — is currently on a book tour and reading a chapter per stop from his new book, “The Graveyard Book”.  The readings are filmed and uploaded to Vimeo.  Embedded above are the first two chapters.

The following is a “product description” from Amazon:

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod’s family. . . .

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.