Since my last post, where I mentioned I was reading Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space (which I enjoyed), I finished two books: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (a short story collection I was actually reading at the same time as RS) and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.
I strongly recommend The Invention of Hugo Cabret to everyone. It's a children's book, and illustrated, but what makes it so cool is that the pictures actually serve to tell the story rather than simply illustrate it. Whole pages are devoted to them and at times it feels like a movie between two covers--appropriate, since the story involves the films of Georges Méliès. In a word, it feels magical without having any actual fantasy elements in it.
After that, I started reading a book called The Court of The Air by Stephen Hunt. I was looking forward to it, and tried to like it, but it just felt off. The setting might be described as steampunk, but I was expecting more of an "authentic" Victorian atmosphere (though somewhat fantastic, of course). But it feels like it was written for teenagers, and that I was definitely not expecting. It's a shame, because I was looking forward to the other two books in the series as well, which have titles and covers that fire my imagination...but the reality seems to be a bit of a letdown.
So it's on to Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier And Clay.