The Graveyard Book

I finally got to spend a bit of time on some reading suitable to be reviewed at this blog, and I sure hit on a good one! I finished Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book in 2 days. I finished it that quickly because I just couldn't put it down. It was a very entertaining read.

The story was a typical well-paced Gaiman tale, with his usual dash of wry, clever humor. I found the character Bod particularly endearing. I really liked the trouble he kept stumbling into, and loved the resolution of his story, and how it formed him at last into a man instead of a boy. The heartbreaks he suffered along the way and lessons that he learned in the process all make for good read. It's a story I think is very good for sharing with older kids (preteens and teens), and is also an excellent read for adults.

I'm glad I finally got to this one. In between some reads I "need" to do, it was a real pleasure to get to squeeze out some time for something I wanted to do.


 Subscribe in a reader

What do you get if you mix a little of On the Road with The Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols?  I think American Gods does a pretty good job of exploring that possibility.

It took me a while to get into the reading of American Gods, but that might have had more to do with me than with Gaiman's writing.  Gaiman always tells a good tale, and he is always funny and entertaining.  American Gods is certainly no exception.

The story is fairly convoluted, and you never seem to be able to be 100% sure that you know quite what's going on.  In that way, the book allows you to sympathize with the protagonist, Shadow, because he's forever being led to places and into situations that he can't be quite sure he gets.  He just does what he has to do anyway, and things sort of fall into place in his mind as he goes along.  That's something of a metaphor for the reading experience with this book.  Do things seem a little confusing?  Well, just keep on reading and it will fall into place.

I really enjoyed Gaiman's telling of travels across the US.  The way the travels were woven into the narrative, and the sense of place was built up, was a fun way to make the story work.

The version of the book that I read is Gaiman's preferred version of the text, as per an author's note at the beginning of the book.  I don't know how it compares to other versions out there, but I think you can see signs in the one I read of a sort of careful — maybe even obsessive — attention to the little things that bring the land and the characters to life.  I don't know if I would've been quite as aware of it without that note at the beginning, but the effect of that careful plotting out of all the little things is a good one.

As with any Gaiman novel, this one is worth getting your hands on.





 Subscribe in a reader

The Anansi Boys

I received Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys for Christmas and finished reading it. (Not this past Christmas, though. HEE HEE. It's actually been a few years.) I posted a review and a bit of the book's background over at HubPages.


As with all of Gaiman's work, The Anansi Boys is a really fun read. I hope you enjoy the review, and the novel too.

 Subscribe in a reader

Mostly Harmless

I just finished reading Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams. It has been some time since I read any of the other books in the Hitchhiker's series, so it was fun to revisit... and of course a little confusing right at first, since I'd forgotten some details.

I first read Adams long before I came across Jasper Fforde, who I've also been revisiting lately. I was reminded, in reading Mostly Harmless how much of a debt is owed to Adams. He really opened up a niche market for writers like Gaiman, Pratchett, and Fforde, and helped paved the way for a big market for this sort of writer. As a member of this "market," I am glad that he did. The existence of the market means more such books will continue to be produced, doesn't it? And, what I like about it all is that this is a fairly discriminating market -- one that demands a pretty high quality of work to allow it into the canon of the wacky, twisted style of writing needed to gain praise from this group of readers.

It's hard to maintain a sufficiently cynical view of the world, balancing it with the perfect touch of wry (and sometimes downright silly) humor to allow us to laugh at this existence that drives us to such cynicism. Great that Adams has brought us a way of looking at our world that is, after all, mostly harmless.

 Subscribe in a reader