I love maps!

llustration intended for use in The Selected Work of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. www.tsspivet.com

I really dislike going to a city without having a map to study, even while reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy I was constantly flipping back to the maps to see where the heck I was in Middle Earth. Certainly Tolkien and his son Christopher, who did almost all the map illustrations, loved their maps too. Who doesn't love google maps, and if you check out my post from Dec. 2008 you'll see how great the terrestrial globe in Florence is. On the topic of loving maps there is a new book out called The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, and it looks like something I would really enjoy. Following the life of a 12 year old genius cartographer who tries to map out everything in his life. There is an article on amazon written by the author discussing the illustrations used, and removed from the book. In this quote the author describes his use of illustrations:

"I found that I had to be very selective about what I wanted to show. What is not shown is as important as what is shown. In addition, many of the images in this book are not direct illustrations like might you see in other books—as in, 'let me tell you about x and now here is a picture of x.' Instead of a direct one-to-one correspondence, there's a satellite-like relationship between the text and the image, a kind of graphical parallelism."

Hmmm I actually like a lot of the drawings that were taken out, but I guess I better read the book so I can have a more informed opinion.