Two yummy new books landed on my doorstep today: Sebastian Faulks's latest offering, Human Traces, and a young adult fantasy by M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation.

Human Traces was an impulse buy after a viewing of the marvelous performances of Cate Blanchette, Billy Crudup and Michael Gambon in Charlotte Gray, the movie based on Faulks's novel of the same name. I'm like that: a lovely work in one medium can set me running for a related work in another medium, or a book by one author can set me hungering for another to whom he or she is often compared. I've not read any Faulks yet, but the tale the flap copy promises in Human Traces, a story of the origins of psychiatry, is one of perpetual fascination to me.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation looks even more fascinating, if in a completely different way. It's hard to resist this book based on the title alone, but the cover, depicting a boy whose face is in a contraption that reminds one of both Tycho Brahe's nose and Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask, makes the book well nigh irresistible. When one learns that the book is not only about this boy, but also his mother, a princess in exile, and a house full of scholars -- well, this book has moved right to the top of my to-be-read pile. It doesn't hurt that the book itself, published by Candlewick Press, is lovely, with ragged edged pages, a very readable font, and a slightly larger than usual width. I'll let you know how it is.