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Neil Gaiman

beer good said:
Coraline, Neil Gaiman.
This is in a way a good old-fashioned ghost story, but with a few twists and turns, and while it's difficult to know how a child would react to reading this it feels like it really addresses that age group without dumbing it down very much; . . .

Pretty darned brilliant. :star4:
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beergood, I agree. Gaiman tells a spooky tale that is engaging for both adult and young readers. He hasn't dumbed it down and isn't overly preachy. While I was reading it, I kept thinking it was something I would have loved reading when I was ten or eleven.

As to the discussion at Bookbabble about the glut of celebrity authors jumping on the children's book bandwagon: I think Coraline is the exact opposite of what the celebrity books are about (pretty pictures and a heavy-handed message) and why I think it works so well.
 
Neil Gaiman Picks 10 New Classic Monsters

From Neil's journal (isn't he dreamy? :blush:):
My New Classics Top 10: Neil Gaiman | Beowulf | EW 1000 | Movies | The EW 1000 | Entertainment Weekly

My Top 10: Neil Gaiman
The writer gives us his list of the new classic literary monsters from Hannibal Lecter to Stephen King's ''It''


NEIL GAIMAN PICKS 10 NEW CLASSIC MONSTERS

1. Swamp Thing. The 1984-87 Alan Moore/Steve Bissette/John Totleben revival. The best muck-encrusted monster in the best comics.

2. Willem Dafoe's unpleasantly tragic Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire (2000).

3. The Weeping Angels in Steven Moffat's terrifying 2007 Doctor Who episode "Blink."

4. Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris' novels Red Dragon (1981) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988), back when he wasn't quite human and was all the scarier for it.

5. Grendel. The first and the best. Crispin Glover played him in Bob Zemeckis' version of Beowulf (2007).

6. Eugene Tooms, the immortal, liver-eating mutant from the X-Files episodes "Squeeze" and "Tooms."

7. The Nightbreed from Clive Barker's 1990 film of the same name.

8. Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's It (1986). Because clowns are scary.

9. The Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth (2006).

10. Craddock McDermott, the vengeful ghost that came with the suit in Joe Hill's 2007 novel Heart-Shaped Box.
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That list is almost good. I'd take out the character from Heart-Shaped Box and put in something else. Nothing about that book was scary or interesting.

On another note I finished Neverwhere yesterday. For a while I was hesitant to read it but finally decided to give the book a try. Glad I did; I laughed, I was kept in suspense, and I was entertained. Maybe I'll give more of his books a try.
 
Yes, Neverwhere is definitely worth it!

And Yays for Grendel "The first and the best" in the list just above.
 
gaiman

I have read 2 Gaiman books, American Gods, and Neverwhere. I loved them both for different reasons. Neverwhere seemed more of a fairy tale and lighter, although full of Gaiman's dark humor and nefarious characters, who come alive for the reader. Also, Neverwhere would be ripe for a sequel.

American Gods is wild and dark, edgy, full of universal themes - also about a world that exists beyond the imagination of the norm. Those two books have made Gaiman one of my favorite authors, but i haven't ready any more of his books. Started Anansi Boys in the book store and somehow didn't get pulled in.
 
Anansi Boys starts slow but I really enjoyed it. If you liked Neverwhere then be sure to check out Stardust. Fragile Things is sitting at home waiting for me on my TBR pile.
 
gaiman

i probably ruined Stardust for reading, since i saw the movie - which i liked a lot. In my experience, movies never are as captivating as the actual books, but anyway, i probably won't read stardust now. however, i have not heard of Fragile Things, so i will put it on my list.

Also, i will try anansi boys again - will sign up at the library. am going on a 7 day vacation in a couple of weeks, and plan to take lots of books - lazy days on a lake!
 
The movie and book are different enough that just because you saw the movie doesn't mean the book is ruined. In fact, major plot points had to be moved around. I say check it out anyway - it's a pretty fast read.

Fragile Things is a collection of short stories.
 
Yes, this was an awesome book and seeing the movie does not ruin it at all. I also saw the movie first and was still impessed, believe it or not.
 
Libra6Poe said:
Does anyone keep up with his journal? I basically skim through it randomly. Mostly I check out his tags at the end before deciding to read a post.
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Not as much as I should. If I were motivated, I'd grab the RSS feeds from the different author and band blogs and read them. But I'm not.
 
I have his journal in my feed and I read it every couple of days. I love reading it, too, because it's both entertaining and magical. He also gives it a personal feel so you really do feel like you're reading his journal. Very cool.
 
And the false dichotomy of story-vs-writing gets dragged out for another go:

Gaiman's choice: shouldn't good writing tell a story too? | Books | guardian.co.uk

The ongoing, endless war between "literary" fiction and "genre" fiction has well-defined lines in the sand. Genre's foot soldiers think that literary fiction is a collection of meaningless but prettily drawn pictures of the human condition. The literary guard consider genre fiction to be crass, commercial, whizz-bang potboilers. Or so it goes.
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Neil Gaiman, the very only writer that could make me love the Fantasy genre. Wait a minute, couldn't I be swayed by over the top writers like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis? Yes I could, but I didn't get swayed by them.

I got into Neil Gaiman's work when I was recommended by a friend to read his Sandman series. And so I bought the book, and I reached Vol 4 of the fantastic run. 'Season of Mists' is the most wonderful story arc that combines many mythological Gods and even Christian beliefs into it. I also love the cast in the Sandman, especially The Endless and the characters in The Dreaming. Neil Gaiman created a world filled with brilliant ideas; ideas concerning dreams. He created his own mythology where our whole world is under control by personifications of many forces of our world. These creatures are like Gods, but they live forever. They siblings, and each one of them is unique.

What defines Neil Gaiman is being a master story teller in comics, and is one of the best writers to be seen in the medium. I actually loved his comics work more than his novels because he crafted the unimaginable; he crafted the undisputed masterpiece: The Sandman.

I also loved his novels. This man has brain that contains knowledge of many topics of fantasy: history, mythology and religion. His novels is of no difference to his comics; they are just as good as them. The only problem is that his novels aren't a lot since he writes many other stuff at the same time.
 
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