Neil Gaiman’s short stories

This review should start with the bald fact that Neil Gaiman may just be the most naturally creative person on the planet. He writes good stories. They’re totally unique, even when he’s retelling something, and they’re all frustratingly inventive.

But, even though his apparently bottomless well of creativity is plenty impressive, that isn’t actually my favorite part of reading Gaiman’s short story collections. Instead, I really enjoyed that oft-skipped part of books: the author’s preface. Because, however interesting the stories themselves are, it’s marvelous to be given the inside story of where they came from, what their original context was, and, in some cases, how pleased the author is (or isn’t) with the outcome. And unsurprisingly, Gaiman is just as good at explanatory notes as he is at stories.

Rereadings: ‘Stardust’ by Neil Gaiman

I first read Stardust by Neil Gaiman when I was eighteen. I was a first year at college and, what with adjusting to everything from the new rigors of college academics to living in a tiny room in an old house with a gaggle of other equally stressed, but fiercely competent and intelligent young women, I was perhaps more keen than usual for fantastical escape.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I know Corey has already written on this book, but I had to tell you about my experience with it. It changed my life, changed my reading and made me rethink my career.

This book is as rich and complex as the circus it depicts. I want to teach this book, if only so I can spend more time analyzing the symbolism, the rich themes that underpin the plot and characters and make the entire novel run as magically as one of Herr Theissen’s clocks. I don’t know if Erin Morgenstern knows she has created a masterpiece, but I hope she does – the entire work is genius.

An examination of the function of Tarot in the novel is where I would start. Isobel, the card-reader, is a minor character, but an important one – the cards she turns over, when read with a tarot reader’s eye, constantly tell the reader what will happen, even if the hints, like the tarot itself, can be vague and interpreted to mean multiple events and people.

But like most books that stand the test of time, this novel also follows the general model of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey—except Morgenstern does him one better and allows at least three of her characters to follow that journey. Bailey, Le Chevalier des Epees, or Knight of Swords, enacts the Hero’s Journey on the most basic level, while the events surrounding Celia and Marco is far more lush, complex and multi-faceted.

A.S. Byatt’s ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye’

As many of you know (and I feel like I say this more than is probably warranted), I have something of an apathetic relationship with A.S. Byatt. This apathy is despite my very best, very genuine efforts to like her. I struggled through Possession; I ultimately loved it, but still feelt grumpy about how I had to force myself through the first half to get to the luminous second half. And I plodded through The Biographer’s Tale, mentally willing it to be something better and different from what it was. Again, I ultimately appreciated the book, this time mostly for her commentary on academia, but I remained A.S. Byatt’s sulky acolyte.

Enter The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.

‘The Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern

It’s Halloween-week, which means it’s time for some magic, some spooky, and some tangentially-Halloweeny reads!

I’ve been trying to think of how best to write about Erin Morgenstern’s excellent debut novel, The Night Circus, for a few days now. It’s one of those books that can be categorized, enjoyed, and, upon finishing it, loved, but not one that can be accurately described.

Most of the publicity material for the book has mentioned the dread words “Harry Potter for adults.” Increasingly, I seems to be just stuck on any book that somehow involves magic and isn’t targeted at tweens. Really, neither The Night Circus itself nor Ms. Morgenstern’s writing style evokes anything of the world of Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling. While there is magic in both, that is about where the similarity ends.

The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

In the continuing adventures of my search for something to read in a post-Harry Potter state of depression, I turned this week to Ali Shaw’s The Girl with Glass Feet. The novel has been billed as a modern fairy tale, which is fairly accurate if you make certain to associate ‘fairy tale’ with the Brothers Grimm rather than any sort of more Disneyified chick lit concoction.

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dahlquist

I found myself in Zurich recently and bookless. There being only one English-language bookstore in said city, I soon betook myself to Orell Füssli and began to ponder their (impressive) stock. For such a book-lover as me, it is actually a rare occurrence when I just let myself go into a bookstore to browse and buy whatever strikes my fancy. Because that sort of thing can get out of hand, I’m much more likely to make targeted bookstore stops, focusing specifically on the one book I need (or “need,” more accurately), getting it, and quickly leaving before twelve other shiny volumes catch my eye.

But, on this particular day, I was on holiday and determined to allow myself the pleasure of book-browsing. My choice eventually boiled down to a broader internal struggled between the reader I want to be (the one who reads Margaret Atwood and Booker Prize-winning books) and the true nature of my bookish soul (the one who reads Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne). Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, but you will no doubt agree that it is a rare volume which combines the two. So in Orell Füssli I had a decision to make and, with a slight pain in my heart at abandoning the row of lovely Atwoods, on that particular vacation day, I let my true nature win.

Thus G.W. Dahlquist’s The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters came down off the shelf and into my arms. I knew absolutely nothing about Dahlquist or his book at the time. But some of the best reads I’ve experienced in the past came with the same total lack of information about the book, so I was more than willing to give it a go.

The result was a rather interesting mix of Jules Verne’s steampunk adventure, S. Rider Haggard’s supernatural weirdness (and adventure, bien sur), Neil Gaiman’s imagination combined with Terry Gilliam’s visual aesthetic, probably some Alan Mooreishness, and topped with a dollop of Mina Harker for good measure. Would it be too crazy to say it had everything? Well, it didn’t have Atwood, but it had at least a hint of almost everything else.

Weekly Geeks: Books and Movies

For Weekly Geeks this week, we have been asked to turn out minds towards books and their film versions. I think this is such a broad and hot-button issue for me (and one that we’ve touched on here at LT in the past), that I’m going to save my more general gripes and praise in favor of focusing more particularly on Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

I have a long history with Neverwhere despite the fact that, until last week, I had never read it. Not only was it one of those books that everyone and their mother said I should read and that I would love, the miniseries version of it was one of my college roommate’s favorite things. She alone championed that production and, as much as everyone else urged me to read the book, she highly recommended the miniseries version. Be that as it may, I acted neither on her recommendation nor anyone else’s. The book remained unread and the miniseries unwatched.

Fantasy Friday: Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis

This post is in large part a post of sheer giggly dorkery, but I finally got my hands on a copy of Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis, aka: the Latin translation of the first Harry Potter book. And can I just note how amazing it is?

Giving up

This was going to be a singularly insightful post on Kraken, China Mieville’s new novel. There was a lot of hype surrounding this book, and normally I’m a fan of Mieville’s work. Perdido Street Station and The Scar were the best steampunk I’ve ever read, and Kraken promised to be just as exciting. I even paid the quarter our library charges to “rent” out new books, that’s how excited I was.

After three days of pushing through the first half of the novel, I put it down to realize I had no idea what was going on. Literally no clue. There was something about a missing squid, I gathered, and about a Tattoo that had a life and mind of its own. But apart from that, I wasn’t sure. What was this bit about a talking statue? And what in God’s (or Kraken’s, I suppose) name was a Teuthex?