I finally received my copy of the Anansi Boys audiobook last week, and so far it’s proving to everything I’d hoped for and more. I had known for a long time that Lenny Henry is a gifted comic actor, but even so, I hadn’t realized until now just how amazingly facile he is at slipping from one character voice into another, sometimes in mid-breath. He is, in a word, astounding.

Meanwhile, I picked up a copy of the short-story collection Smoke and Mirrors, which I’ve been reading slowly but with great pleasure. At the same time, I’m waiting for MirrorMask to make its bow in a theater reasonably close to me, preferably one of the Cameras.

And now, just to round things out, it turns out that Neil Gaiman granted an interview to Studio 360‘s Kurt Andersen. While I missed the Bay Area airing of that interview, being in a concert audience at the time, it turns out to be available as a podcast, from which it’s not too dificult to tease out the MP3. It definitely makes for rewarding listening. Having been a fan of his for years now, and even having seen him deliver a reading in person, I still manage to be surprised at just how much warmth and essential decency Neil Gaiman manages to convey with his voice alone.