3.5 Stars. I don't read a lot of poetry and don't really feel that I have the tools to review it. All I can say is that I know what I like when I read it. I'm not someone who is going to devote a lot of time to dissecting a poem and wrenching every ounce of meaning from it. I had enough of that in school. I can't even remember [...]
Reviewed September 7, 2009 Busy week + training + overtime=forgettable review. Sorry, guys. These stories/poetry were pretty dark. But then it's been a while since I read any Gaiman, so maybe I've just forgotten how dark he can be. I would really put this on a dark fantasy/horror lite shelf, but that's fine by me. As in all short story collections, some of these were winners and some were okay. Some that stood out were "A Study in Emerald"--A fun take on the classic Sherlock Holmes format. "October in the Chair"--Memorable more for the framework than the actual story, although that was pretty good too. "Bitter Grounds"--Pretty creepy "Other People"--I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares after reading this one. But that really has more to do with my own buttons than the story. "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch"--Just might be my favorite. He stops in just the perfect place and tells just enough. Loved it. "The Problem of Susan"--Should have come with a warning a la Stephen King and The Dark Tower. He has a point, but I will never look at Aslan the same way again. "Feeders and Eaters"--I hate to pick on The King again, but I really think this one would have done him proud. Super creepy. "Goliath"--Absolutely perfect for what it was written for "The Monarch of the Glen"--I can't honestly say that I remember all that much about American Gods, except that I liked it. Still, it was fun to check in on Shadow. One last thing. There are a few poems scattered throughout the book. I did not care for the earlier ones, but as I continued reading, they improved, and I genuinely enjoyed "The Day the Saucers Came" and a few others. Highly recommended for Gaiman fans.…
When I was offered a copy of Neil Gaiman's newest short story collection, Trigger Warning, for review, my first thought was to jump on it. I adore Neil Gaiman's work. He is one of only about three authors who get their own shelf name on my GoodReads account. And then I remembered that I wasn't particularly happy with The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I know I'm in the minority and I've never even written a review for it, but all I can say is that it was too weird, even for me. I hate feeling honor-bound to review a book that I didn't love so I wavered. Then I decided to go for it. I'm so glad I did! Overall impression: It started off with a couple of stories that I didn't particularly care for so I was getting worried. I'd read the third story earlier (In George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois's Songs of Love and Death) and enjoyed it, but still, it was a re-read. The fourth story started to catch my attention and by the fifth, I was hooked. There were probably one or two others I didn't care for in the remaining nineteen stories, but the collection overall is fantastic. And because I find it impossible not to mention what I think of every single story in a collection, here's where I get long-winded. "Making a Chair"--A poem about--you guessed it--making a chair. I assume Gaiman was pushing through some writer's block with this one. Haven't we all been there? You have a million real things to do but something unimportant proves to be a welcome distraction? "A Lunar Labyrinth"--Normally short horror stories scare me to death. So much is left unsaid. I can generally read Stephen King novels and sleep like…
To summarize for those who don't know, this is an epic poem, part of a greater poem called The Divine Comedy. Dante the Poet travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise at the behest of his dead true love, Beatrice. His guide for his tour of Hell is the great Roman poet, Virgil. This was tough. I rip through books quickly, but this took me a good six weeks to read. I could only read one or two cantos (about four pages) at a time. I would start to fall asleep. I'm not one of those people who reads to fall asleep. I read for enjoyment. I watch tv to fall asleep. I also read a couple of other books at the same time, so that slowed me down too. Part of what slowed me down is the translation. It was translated by Longfellow. So, here I was, reading a 14th-century Italian poet translated by a 19th-century American poet. You see the trouble? It felt like a very word-for-word translation. I know that poets are allowed to play around with English syntax, and that's fine. But everything felt sort of backwards. I don't know anything about Italian, but when I've waded through French in school and now trying to learn Spanish, a lot of their syntax is backwards to me. I assume Italian is the same way since it's also a Romantic language. So I would read a line and then mentally turn it around to a form that made sense to a modern English speaker. Wow. That really bogged me down. Another thing that really slowed me down is that in the B&N version, there were at least as many pages of endnotes as there were of actual poem. Don't get me wrong--the endnotes were mostly a huge help. Dante…
This is Neil Gaiman's poem, "Instructions" bound as a picture book and illustrated by Charles Vess. I love this. I have to admit that when I first came across Gaiman's poem in Fragile Things, I read it, thought it was pretty cool, and moved on, both in the book and in my head. It wasn't until I met Charles Vess at a book signing for Drawing Down the Moon and he told us about this project that I really got excited about the whole thing. He had prints of his artwork for us to look at. As I flipped through them, I knew this was going to be something special. And it is. Basically instructions for surviving a fairy tale, Gaiman weaves many themes into this short-ish poem. Help who you can. Don't trust those who seem untrustworthy. Trust yourself. Come home at the end. And suddenly you realize that he could be (is?) talking about how to live your life well. And you are reminded again what a master Gaiman is. As for the illustrations--perfection. I love Vess's artwork. It has such a perfect fairy tale feel to it. And when you sit down to really look at just one of these illustrations, you are blown away by the amount of subtle detail worked in. I highly, highly recommend this. Children will love it, and so will readers of any age who understand that the truest advice can be found in "children's books." Find author Neil Gaiman on his website for young readers, his blog, Twitter, and Facebook. Buy Instructions at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore, and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on…