Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman

Yeah, I know we've been through all these stories together already (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), but I want to have a nice little place where I can summarize my thoughts, so bear with me here!

First note: I've read a few short story collections in my time, but only a few, and with this read-along I think I've figured out why — short stories are meant to be read on their own, not all at once. It's just more cost-effective to lump them into a big book and call it a day. For most of the read-along I listened to one story a day, four days a week, and it worked amazingly better to have that 24-hour period to think about the story before moving on than it ever had to mainline a whole book of them. I am going to follow this slow-reading practice in the future, for sure.

Second note: I read each of these stories twice, once with my ears and once with my eyes, generally in that order. This turned out to be a pretty good practice, especially with Gaiman narrating his own stories, because some of the stories and the poems in general were much better when I could hear the cadence and the word patterns that Gaiman had written in, and others were better when I could see how he formatted them or see the sentences to parse them correctly. And of course, the second time around I could get a better appreciation for the story as a whole since I already knew how it ended. That worked out really well for writing up the stories every week, but I probably won't do that in the future unless I know I'm going to discuss the stories!

Third note: I don't usually read story collections that are comprised of such very different stories, and it was really just amazing to me how large the gap was between the stories I loved and the stories I disloved. I don't think there were any I absolutely hated, but there are a few I don't need to ever think about again, and also there are a few that I would like to have metaphorically tattooed to my body so I could read them every day. It also intrigued me to see that the kind of stories Neil Gaiman writes are not always the kind of stories I think that Neil Gaiman would know how to write. I like that Gaiman is willing to write things that are so outside of the pattern of his popular stuff and just let you like it or not.

Okay, I think that covers it! I hope you guys that did the read-along with me enjoyed the experience as much as I did, and I hope that those of you who didn't are at least moderately interested in picking up this collection, because there really are some fabulous stories. I think my Top Five list would be, in rough order, "Goliath," "Sunbird," "A Study in Emerald," "Feeders and Eaters," and "October in the Chair. I think. Care to share yours?

Recommendation: Fantastic reading, a must for Gaiman-lovers and a should for people who like their stories short and a little fantastic.

Rating: Oh, gosh. I'm going to just throw out the stories I disloved and call this a 9/10.
(RIP Challenge)

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Eighth

But I don't want the read-along to be over! I've had so much fun these last eight weeks reading and commenting and enjoying everyone's posts! Guys, let's all trade addresses and stuff so we can keep in touch when we have to go back home! Or URLs, I guess. I'm getting old. My point is, I like you guys. Thanks for hanging out with me. :)

I was sort of hoping that this book would go out on some amazing high note and that I would explode from the happiness of it all, but of course this is real life and so it didn't quite do that. But, I did add another story to my list of Awesomest Stories of the Collection, so it was certainly a good week. Let's see what else happened!

"The Day the Saucers Came"
Niiiice. I liked listening to this first, because I couldn't skip ahead and see how long it was or see how it would repeat itself, and so I was pleasantly surprised on both counts. It's a short poem-shaped story about a day when a lot of crazy stuff happened but you didn't notice. I liked that Gaiman just piles on the crazy stuff and that he makes it sound so good — I just want to say "the saucer day the zombie day / The Ragnarok and fairies day" over and over — and I like that the reason you miss out on it all is because you're hoping someone will call you. That is some serious hope, people, and I have certainly experienced it in my life! Did I miss Ragnarok? I'm gonna be so mad if I did, largely because I'm gonna have to go repopulate the world now, and that sounds like effort.

"Sunbird"
This is definitely on my top stories list. I loved listening to it and I loved reading it and I may go do both again because it just makes me so happy. I'm not quite sure why. Let's see. I like the Epicurean Club and how they're all, "But I am le tired of beetles and I've eaten everything else!" I like that no one takes Zebediah seriously until it's way too late. It tickles me pink that one should leave on a Sunday to go to Suntown to catch a Sunbird. I love the line, "I am an academic [...] and thus have no finely developed sense that would be comprehensible to anyone who has not ever needed to grade papers without actually reading the blessed things." And I would really like to try some beer-can phoenix. After I go eat some charcoal, of course.

"Inventing Aladdin"
Eh. This is definitely the weak story of the bunch. It's another poem thing, this time about Scheherazade and her thoughts on making up stories and stuff. So it's really about making up stories in general, and how you work with what you've got and hope for the best. It's not bad, but it's not especially excellent and I've not much to say about it.

"Monarch of the Glen"
Apparently I'm to end up reading through the American Gods universe backward, seeing as how I started with Anansi Boys and may someday get to American Gods proper. So I'm not quite sure what I'm missing in the background to this novella, is what I'm saying. But I still quite enjoyed it. You've got this fellow called Shadow and all he wants is a nice quiet holiday, but then he gets drawn into a very strange set-up perpetrated by our old friends Smith and Mr. Alice. There's a mysterious house and a mysterious party and a very mysterious tradition that I'm still not entirely clear on. But, there's also Norse mythology and Grendel and so who needs clarity? Well, no, I would have liked a bit more... I feel like I'm missing something very obvious (like when I couldn't recognize a vampire in The Graveyard Book) and if someone could just tell me what, exactly, Gaskell was lying about, that would be fantastic. The other thing that kept me from really appreciating the story isn't exactly the fault of the story, but is that after reading, what, thirty short stories in the rest of the book, I was not quite prepared for such a long story, with its description and sidebars and taking its sweet time and all. I think it'll probably be much better once I go get some American Gods in my brain and come back to this story on its own, yes?

So that's it! Thank you all for joining me in this delightful adventure; we really must do it again some time. And maybe this will be the start of a lovely short-story reading habit? I think that's a good idea!

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Seventh

We're closing in on the end of this book! It's been really nice reading this over the course of several weeks, because I feel like I'm really getting to spend time with the stories instead of just zooming through them to get to the end and move on to the next book. I will definitely have to try to try this with short story collections in the future! It's also nice because I'm finding favorite stories each week, rather than ending up with one favorite story of the whole book, as often happens, although I think this week's favorite story might be the winner of the latter crown, because, yes. Amazing. But let's get to that, shall we?

"In the End"
Ohhhhhh. I am so glad I am both listening to these stories and reading them, because when I listened to this, it was too short and I apparently missed the point entirely, which is that this is a reverse retelling of the Garden of Eden story. Reverse. Yes. Excellent. And intriguing. But also only half a page, so I'm not sure I have much else to say. Moving on!

"Goliath"
Yes. This. Fantastic. Best story. And it really reinforces my position that it shouldn't matter if you've done the homework to enjoy a story based in other stories. I managed to completely forget that this was supposed to be a story of The Matrix, even through the bits with the déjà vu, which are excellent, by the way, though I did finally remember once I got to the weird alien ship thing. But even then I was like, oh, right, and just moved on, because it's a story of The Matrix's world, not of its characters, and Gaiman's own character is fascinating in his own right. I love how he deals with the déjà vu, how he manages to get into the military, and how he deals with the harsh reality of his creators. And the last line, which is probably not too spoiler-ful: "But the last twenty minutes have been the best years of my life."

"Pages From a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky"
And... this is the opposite. I have no idea what's going on here. There's a chick, and she's travelling, and she's looking for Scarlet, and aside from being intrigued by Friday the 32nd, and being pretty sure that this chick is actually Scarlet, I've got nothing.

"How to Talk to Girls at Parties"
Well. I had the twist of this story called as soon as I saw the line "'They're just girls,' said Vic. 'They don't come from another planet.'" And I could really have done without the going on and on about alien things. But, otherwise, this was a pretty spot-on story about being a teenager and trying to talk to girls at parties. I love that Enn is just terrified of talking to the ladies, and that when he does he's so concerned about the actual talking part that he just completely forgets to listen and even when he's listening he's just like, whatever, must focus on chatting up this nice-looking girl. AND that he reads more than he talks and therefore mispronounces contradictory. I can't tell you how many times that has happened to me. I really must get out more!

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Sixth

Wait, the Sixth? There are only two more weeks after this? How did that happen?

Well, it happened happily this week, as I enjoyed every story that I read. Huzzah! We've got a sock monkey with an odd life, vampires, a creepy old lady, and a dude who can't write good, and as far as I can tell nothing that requires any homework on my part, which is probably why I found this set so enjoyable. Let me tell you more...

"My Life"
I only know that this story is meant to go with a sock monkey because the introduction tells me so, and I actually listened to it the first time without remembering that fact. So I can tell you that it is highly amusing whether you're imagining monkeys or a drunk old man. This is probably because whoever it is, his life is awesome. He's got a mum who's his dad (a dad who's his mum? However you want to put that, I guess) and who does underwater tango, and he's got a dissolved wife who was once in a coma for 70 years, but he'll tell you his life's not been very interesting and so I would like to know what else he considers normal! Even if he's making it all up, I'd buy him a drink to hear another story.

"Fifteen Painted Cards From a Vampire Tarot"
This was another one that didn't quite come across in audio because it's a set of very short stories, but it was certainly excellent in print, if hard to describe! Basically you've got a series of vignettes that get at the "truth" of vampires — talking about classic vampire mythology, writing new mythology, looking at how we regular humans react to vampires when we meet them (or "meet them"). I think my favorites are "The Magician", which is just a joke, really; "The Chariot", which imagines vampires as space colonists; and "The Wheel of Fortune", in which my favorite response to missing items — "I got hungry and ate it" — becomes a little more sinister.

"Feeders and Eaters"
Oh. Em. Gee. This is definitely my favorite story of the week, and is at least edging in on "A Study in Emerald" and "October in the Chair". It imagines a man meeting an old acquaintance in a bar, and that acquaintance going on about how he's been these past ten years, doing some work in the area, boarding with a nice family, meeting his fellow boarder and rescuing her from her sick bed with some raw meat that she ate right out of the container, blood dripping on the sheets... you know, the usual story. And then it gets a lot grosser, really, so if you're not of a strong stomach I recommend against this one! I think what's really interesting is that at one point The Acquaintance talks about having done something that anyone would do, and then later all but asks Our Narrator to do that same thing and Our Narrator has no idea what he's on about. And I can't decide whether Our Narrator is meant to be a big old jerk, or if I can rest assured that this is not something that anyone would do, because I probably couldn't do it.

"Diseasemaker's Croup"
This was a tough one — I haven't yet listened to it, but it's darn confusing in print so I may not even try. Basically, it's a story about a disease, as written by a person with said disease, and one of the symptoms is a complete lack of making sense in writing. Which, oh dear. I spent too much time confused by the first bad sentence before I got to the explain-y part, and then I was still baffled by most of the rest of the story, but by the time I got to the end I realized that the sentences weren't so much bad as out of order and I was having fun trying to figure out how the story would otherwise go. I still haven't got it fully pieced together, but I'm much more appreciative of it now than when I started!

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Fifth

Man. I think what I'm discovering more than anything while reading through this collection is that I know very little about fantasy. I've mentioned before and I'll mention again this week that I'm sure I would like more than a few of these stories better if I just had any idea what Gaiman was talking about. And that's good, on the one hand, because it inspires me to go learn new things, but bad, on the other, because that doesn't help me understand or appreciate the stories now! Alas.

"Locks"
I get this one! I totally know what's going on here! This is a cute little poem-y story about stories, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" specifically, and the telling of them. Gaiman writes as himself, talking to his daughter about reading "Goldilocks" to her and how she would take part in the telling of the story and sometimes re-write the story, and that's all cute and adorable. But then Gaiman also takes into account how it feels to be a parent reading the stories, and how there are always parts that read differently for adults (see: my reaction to Peter Pan earlier this year) and how it's a bit sad to know that the adorable child will grow into a cynical adult who locks his doors to keep out strangers who might eat his porridge. This is definitely my favorite story of the week.

"The Problem of Susan"
And here is where I admit that my knowledge of the Narnia books comes mostly from the 2005 movie, which I didn't pay terribly much attention to, and various references to the series in other things I've read. Which is to say that I don't have any attachment toward Susan and so this story is entirely lost on me. What I gather is that Susan, who didn't die in some train crash, has grown up to be a professor of literature, since retired. And she's being interviewed about children's literature by some young thing and Narnia comes up and that's when I learned all that stuff about Susan, and then Susan gets sad or something and goes and has a nap forever. And the young thing has a dream about Aslan and the White Witch having the sexytimes and, um, okay. Ew. I'm not sure I want this one explained to me.

"Instructions"
Props to the awesome poetry this week. I liked "Instructions" a lot because while I may not know a lot about fantasy stories past and present, I am certainly well-versed in fantasy conventions, and that's what this poem is about. It is, as the title suggests, a set of instructions for what to do if you find yourself stuck in a fairy tale. Basically, don't do anything stupid and be nice to everyone, which are not bad instructions in general. Also, there's a cameo from my friends the months of the year, which is delightful.

"How Do You Think It Feels"
Um, yes. Least favorite story. Gargoyles. LOTS of sexytimes, including sort of with a plasticine gargoyle. Extra-marital affair(s?). Not my cup of tea. Things I did like: the reference to the narrator being "by far the older man" at 27 to his lady's 20. The narrator getting totally shut down by his lady when he offers to actually finally leave his family for her. The lady getting eaten by the gargoyle. Can't go wrong with people getting eaten, I say.

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Fourth

What an odd week of stories. We've got two ostensibly true stories, one story broken up into several even smaller stories, and another one of those stories that seems to require a little bit of homework to understand. Also, the return of the sodium yellow light, which really needs to be retired. On the plus side, I'm pretty sure I liked all of the stories this week, though I have yet to match my love for the first week's. A girl can dream...

"Good Boys Deserve Favors"
I can totally get behind this story, about Gaiman as a double-bass-playing tiny person who didn't like to practice. I never liked to practice my instrument as a kid, either, although I never had the opportunity to sneak a book into my "practice sessions" and I feel a little gypped. (I probably shouldn't say that.) The climax of this story is interesting — the young Gaiman finds himself chosen to play his double bass in front of a potential school donor, and he just makes something up and manages to please most of the listeners, though it's not clear just how good this made-up piece is. The fact that his headmaster described it as "modern, yet classical," leads me to believe that it was probably very very weird, and that possibly the story is really about how Potential School Donors are not terribly discerning in their music.

"The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch"
Okay, this is another ostensibly true story, though in this one I think that "ostensibly" is the key word here. Ostensibly. Because what we have is the story of Ostensible Neil Gaiman getting dragged to the circus with some Ostensible Friends and an Ostensibly Crazy Person called Miss Finch, and then ending up (beginning up? Gaiman starts the story with the ending) without Miss Finch but with some delicious sushi. The circus is no regular circus, and no Night Circus either, but some odd conglomeration of things like knife-throwers and trick motorcyclists and fake hand-losers who take their guillotined fake hands and chase people around with them to the Benny Hill theme, apparently. But the real story part of the story is that geobiologist Miss Finch, who has all night been bitching about the circus and also the dangers of sushi, gets picked to have her wishes come true and suddenly saber-toothed tigers exist and the circus disappears. And even in the story, it's not clear exactly why this happens... did Miss Finch really get her wishes? Was she a well-done audience plant? Was the whole circus some sort of elaborate joke on the Ostensibles? At first listen, I was a bit annoyed with the story for not giving me any useful exposition, but after reading it again I'm content to come up with elaborate exposition of my own and call it canon.

"Strange Little Girls"
This story did not come across at all in audio, so I just skipped it and read through it later. The reason it fails in audio is that all of the pieces in it are just paragraphs, and you don't get the print formatting that tells you, hey, these are all separate little stories and not actually about the same person. So it's a bunch of little stories about different people, and actually they're less "stories" than "snapshots" or whatever the print equivalent is. So, difficult to describe. I'll just stick with saying that my favorites are "Love" (in which a woman totally gets a man in trouble with his wife) and "Heart of Gold" (whose structure just amuses me).

"Harlequin Valentine"
I liked this story a lot, even though I know nothing about harlequins outside of Harley Quinn and it is obvious that I am missing a lot of the subtler points. But with my second small-but-literal spit take of the book, at the point when I realized that was no paper heart pinned to Missy's door, I couldn't say no to the rest of the story. I really liked the Harlequin character, who is completely ridiculous and well-rendered by Gaiman on audio, and who gives his heart to a human called Missy for funsies, apparently, and then follows her around to see what she'll do with it. Well, once Harlequin makes the mistake of telling her whose heart it is, Missy becomes my favorite character as she takes the heart and eats it with ketchup and hash browns so that she can become Harlequin herself, and leaves the erstwhile Harlequin to the human life. Ketchup and hash browns, people. I love it. And now I must go look up this commedia dell'arte stuff, because it is apparently delightful.

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Third

Well, I am pleased to report that we do not have a repeat last week's intense befuddlement and annoyance. These stories are certainly not any more cut and dried, because that would be no fun, but at least I feel more internal sense-making and also some intrigue. I like to be intrigued.

Here's where we stand:

"Going Wodwo"
I liked this the least of this week's stories, probably because it's one of those poem things and I'm still working on being a poetry person. It may happen, someday, but it hasn't happened yet. But anyway, this twenty-line poem describes a person, well, "going wodwo," or becoming, as the intro says, "a wild man of the woods." I don't quite follow the path of the story of the poem, nor does it have the delightful cadence of "The Fairy Reel", but I will give the poem props for imagery. The first stanza reeled me in — "Shedding my shirt, my book, my coat, my life / Leaving them, empty husks and fallen leaves / Going in search of food and for a spring / Of sweet water" — and even though I don't really get it, I really like the phrase "My skin will be / my face now." Well, if by "like" I mean "am sort of really creeped out by." Which I do.

"Bitter Grounds"
There is a lot going on in this story. The main plot, I suppose, is that there's a fellow who up and runs away from his life, stops running temporarily to help out a random guy who subsequently completely disappears, then sort of decides to be this guy for a while. As you do. But there's so much interesting stuff to think about as this plot moves along — the disappeared guy leaves behind an abandoned, totalled car that our narrator minutes previously had seen as intact if broken down. Disappeared Guy was an academic writing about zombies. Our narrator, while pretending to be DG, makes a new friend who also disappears, and some other new friends who may or may not exist. Like last week's "Closing Time", this story has an ending that I don't quite understand, but this time I felt like the confusing ending at least fit with the story, instead of being completely jarring. Or possibly I am more forgiving when there are potential zombies involved.

"Other People"
As soon as I heard Gaiman say, in his fantastic voice, "'Other People,'" I said to myself, "Hell is?" And I was SO RIGHT. I love it when that happens. There are no "other people" in this story, but there is Hell, and it is very hellish. There's a guy, and he wanders into Hell, and he meets a demon who proceeds to beat the crap out of him with 211 different instruments of OW. And then, for good measure, the demon forces the guy to admit to himself every bad thing he's ever done or said or thought or probably thought about thinking, over and over and over again. And from what I can tell, that is a LOT of bad things. Interestingly, I missed the important point of the story while ears-reading because I apparently had the attention span of a goldfish that day, but as soon as I started eyes-reading it yesterday I decided that this story was fantastic. This week's favorite!

"Keepsakes and Treasures"
Oh, goodness, I am turning into one of those Parents Television Council people, aren't I? I was all for the story when I thought it was going to be violence and sloppy eating, but then it took a turn toward the sex intercourse and I was like, "Oh, that's gross." I mean, I still read the story, but I really wanted more gruesome killing. Please don't tell me what that means about me. Ahem. Anyway. Here's an example of a story where I don't know any of the background (Gaiman notes in the intro that this story is based on characters from a comic that I've never heard of), but the story was just fine anyway. To spoil everything, there's an unnamed dude who works for this guy called Mr. Alice, and Unnamed Dude spends a lot of time and effort and Alice's money to procure for Alice the most beautiful boy in the world for the sex intercourse and then after not very long the beautiful boy gets the flu and dies. And so this is really just a very rated-R way of telling a very universal truth, and even though I was like, "ew, cooties," the way that Gaiman wrote the heck out of this story really sold it to me. There's the setup of our unnamed narrator being a bit of a serial killer (sidenote: I did a small but very literal spit take at the dissonance between these consecutive sentences: "She was a looker, my mum. I didn't know which one of the four was my dad, so I killed all of them." FANTASTIC), and so also really completely disaffected by all the bad and/or weird stuff Alice has him hired to do, and there's one scene that Gaiman wrote where I read it and I was like, "That's weird, a little bit," and then a couple pages later Gaiman writes this other little scene where I'm like, "Ew," and then I remember that first scene and I'm like, "Okay, now I need to go take a shower, euucchh." In a good way? I don't know.

I'm not quite hooked on Fragile Things again, but I am feeling much much better about its chances for being awesome. How about you guys?

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Second

Whaaaaaaaaat is going on here? After a stunning round of stories last week, I am feeling utterly lost this week. I mean, I listened to all of these stories at least twice and read them once, and I still don't get 75 percent of them. That's not good!

On the plus side, they're still read by Neil Gaiman and he can still read me the phone book if he wants.

"The Hidden Chamber"
According to the introduction, this is supposed to be a Bluebeard story. And Bluebeard is a... pirate? Let me go check Wikipedia. That is not a pirate. I am totally thinking of Blackbeard, aren't I? Things are starting to make so much more sense. Let me read this entry a bit more. ... Okay, I'm back, and this is actually pretty okay. Let me change my previous statement to 50 percent. Soooooo this is a sort of poem thing (which doesn't quite come across in the audio because it's free verse) about this fella Bluebeard who, as I just learned, is traditionally a guy what likes to kill his wives. But in Gaiman's version, he's all, no, no, don't worry about the ghosts, and I totally don't have one room in my house you're not allowed into I don't know what you're talking about, and also I'm so misunderstood. He's reformed, you see, but not in the way you might think, and the poem takes a turn toward the creeptastic at the end. I may need to take out a preemptive restraining order on anyone with a blue beard.

"Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire"
Well, okay, maybe 25 percent, because I think I get this story, I just don't like it. It opens with the a "chapter" that goes, "Somewhere in the night, someone was writing." Excellent start! Then it moves over to what is being written, which also doesn't quite come across in the audio and it took me a second listen to figure out exactly how that worked. And what is being written is a sort of send-up of every horror/ghost/creepy story ever written, with an allusion to The Turn of the Screw and probably many other things that I can't quite pin down. And it's predictably bad, and then we go back to the writer, and the writer is all "I am failing at writing this slice-of-life Great American Novel where "American" equals "weird alternate universe where life is creepy all the time and those nice young men etc." And so at first I am like, "Oh I see how this is a satire of creepy stories," but then I am like, "Oh I see what you did there and I am not quite in." Because the author is complaining about how his writing is just a send-up of the "classics" and not a view into daily tedium or whatever, except that Gaiman also writes the Auteur's actual life as a send-up of the "classics" and so I think he's doing a great job. And then, when the Auteur (spoiler!) decides to write "fantasy" instead, he's just sending up a different genre so I don't think he has improved anything. Okay, maybe 37.5 percent?

"The Flints of Memory Lane"
I get this one! And I kind of like it! But I can't write as much about it because it's so short! Anyway, this is just a quick telling of an anecdote from Gaiman's life where he may or may not have seen a real live ghost faffing about in front of his family's house. This of course doesn't do justice to Gaiman's writing, which conveys the creepiness of seeing a strange woman hanging around under a sodium lamplight, all oddly colored and also silent and also capable of disappearing while your back is turned. I've never had quite such a vivid experience, but I'm sure it would scare the pants off of me.

"Closing Time"
I absolutely do not get this story and I need someone to explain it to me. Please. From what I have gathered, this is a story wherein Our Narrator is swapping ghost stories with a group of friends. Check. Then he tells one wherein he meets a group of boys and the boys dare Our Narrator to knock on a playhouse door and then Our Narrator dares them to go into the playhouse, whose door opens and closes by itself, and the boys are never seen again and that's creepy. And then after the story is told, it turns out that one of the listeners is one of the story's boys and he's all, "our dad was kind of a weirdo and my one brother killed himself and I just got out of the loony bin." And I just... I don't get it. I don't understand how this latter bit goes with the narrator's story, and I don't understand how all these tangents the narrator goes on have anything to do with anything and... yeah. I got nothing. Help?

I am so not excited for reading the next four stories, because I fear they will be as baffling as most of these, but I have a feeling that as soon as I start the next one I'll be hooked again. What do you guys think?

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the First

Dudes. I have discovered an awesome secret. Neil Gaiman is not only a fantastic author, but a fantastic narrator as well! And I have proved this scientifically by using BOTH my ears and my eyes to read this book. That's right. I'm doing the homework twice! I'm Hermione Granger! Anyway, this started off as an accident, of the "Oh crap I'm not going to have time to read four stories by Sunday because it's already Thursday but hey my library right here has the audiobook I can yoink after work and listen to during work tomorrow [a day passes] hey these are pretty fantastic stories but I think I need to read that 'Fairy Reel' one because it went by kind of quickly oh hey while I'm here I think I'll read the others again too" variety.... That's never happened to you? Right. Anyway. I think I'm going to keep on with the dual reading because these stories are quite short and I can.

So. Yes. Here are the four splendid things I read in the last couple days:

Introduction
It's a good thing I went back and eyes-read the introduction, because it did not translate well to audio. Gaiman goes through the book and tells the story, long or short, behind each of the stories in the collection. Some are just like, "I was commissioned to write this for another project that you can go buy if you want because it has awesome authors in it," others are like, "I wrote this and no one liked it and then I wrote it again and it was better," and one includes a short story of its own that seemed to come out of nowhere on the audio and makes much more sense in print. It has served to make me very excited about some of the stories I'll be reading in the weeks to come.

"A Study in Emerald"
It's been about four years since I read A Study in Scarlet, and about that many months since I watched "A Study in Pink" (sidenote: omg I cannot wait for series two!), so I can't tell you exactly how these three stories diverge, but I can tell you that they are similar enough, and particularly "Emerald" and Scarlet are similar enough, to fool you a little bit. Which Gaiman does, with, I imagine, an evil laugh. "Emerald" is the same story you know, with the meeting of our two protagonists, and Lestrade needing a bit of help with his German, but then, as is mentioned in the introduction, it takes a bit of a Lovecraftian turn. And while I'm sure I'm missing a lot of nuances, not knowing The Lovecraft, I still found myself very intrigued with this sort of alternate universe Holmes story.

"The Fairy Reel"
The introduction's description of this: "Not much of a poem, really, but enormous fun to read aloud." Gaiman is being a little modest, here, as I found this a fantastic poem when I eyes-read it about three times in a row, but he is also telling the truth that it is so much prettier when you just ignore the words and let the rhythm and the sound of Gaiman's voice wash over you. After just listening to it, I was like, "Husband! Sit still and listen to this poem!" It is much meant for sharing.

"October in the Chair"
So, first, October is my favorite month of the year for many reasons, probably firstly because it's my birthday month! So I can tell you that Gaiman got it wrong — October is a lady, not a gent. But I will forgive this mistake, because the story that October tells is creepy and wonderful. It's the predecessor to The Graveyard Book, which I need to re-read, and you can see the bits and pieces Gaiman takes from it, but it is also a perfectly strong story on its own of a boy who runs away and decides that anything is better than going back home. Which, on the one hand, I'm like, "That's terrible! Go home!" and on the other I'm like, "Dooooo it." So, conflicted. Also, Gaiman's voices for the other months, especially June, are hilarious and not quite inflected in the print. Another point for ears-reading!

I am so excited for reading the rest of these stories, especially now that I have them on audio. I may have to ration myself to a story a day, though, lest I get so excited I finish it all in one go!

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris

I got to this book in a somewhat roundabout way... my Mary recommended it to me as a Read-a-thon possibility, but then my library didn't have it and I had a whole host of other books to read anyway and I figured I'd get to this one eventually. Then I went up to Pittsburgh for a weekend to visit Scott's family and one of the first things I hear from Sister-in-law the Elder is, "Do you like David Sedaris? Have you read his new book? No? I will lend it to you!" Amazing how these things work.

I busted it out on the plane ride back to Jacksonville, which was both awesome and terrible because dude, the pictures in this book are not all safe for work. I was moderately concerned that my seat neighbor would turn out to be some sort of PETA member who would throw red paint on me after seeing a picture of a dying lab rat or a lamb with its eyes plucked out.

Ugh, right? The stories in this book are, I think, meant to be like human mythologies as told by animals. Some of the stories are a little banal, like the title story which tells of a budding relationship between a squirrel and a chipmunk that goes poorly when jazz is mentioned. Some are tales of really stupid animals, like "The Mouse and the Snake," in which a mouse thinks that a snake will make a very good companion for her, or "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," in which being incredibly mean to someone is fun until racism gets involved. And some, including "The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat" and "The Crow and the Lamb" are kind of disgusting.

It's a short collection, just about 150 pages of large-type stories and cool illustrations, and while I'm not over the moon about all of the stories I think that they work well taken together, and of course you don't spend too much time on the ones that flop. And it's probably perfect for that plane ride where you really don't want to talk to your neighbors.

Recommendation: Good for the not-squeamish and those who have some schadenfreude. Also good for those who like Sedaris.

Rating: 8/10

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle (? — 30 December)

I'm finished! Woohoo! I started reading this book shortly after I bought it in 2007, and then left off for two years, and then finally picked it up again... sometime earlier this year, and then ignored it again... goodness. But I have been making my way through the bulk of it over the last two weeks, and I can now say that I sort of know what this Sherlock Holmes fellow is about. Sweet.

I had read A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four in my mysteries course senior year, and The Hound of the Baskervilles a few months back, and found them delightful, but I wasn't really prepared for these short stories. In both the novels and the stories, Holmes gets called on a case, checks out the scene, makes some deductions, and solves the matter in a rather quick fashion, but in the stories, that's it. There's not a narrative to go along with the detecting; Holmes just does his thing and Watson reports it.

That's not to say I didn't like the stories. I just had to get used to them. :) And... I don't have much else to say about them! If you want a quick little reminder of how incredibly stupid you are, I recommend finding a Holmes story or two online and enjoying.

Rating: 7/10
(Baker Street Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Minority Report, by Philip K. Dick (18 June)

I put this book on hold at the library a while ago when I realized I'd never actually read anything by Philip K. Dick. I figured a book of short stories would be a good start, but I managed to misread the record. (An aside: I would never do that now! My first library science class has taught me more than you ever wanted to know about every field in a catalog record, and I've only had eight hours of class so far.) I'm kind of glad I did — this may be just one story, but it's presented as a top-bound notebook like those I used for reporting. I felt really cool sitting around flipping pages super-quickly for an hour, and you will, too!

Hanyway. I've not seen all of the movie version of this (just the beginning and the creepy part with the eyeball), but Scott says this book is nothing like it. John Anderton is the commissioner of the pre-crime unit, which, like other government departments, uses psychic "idiots" to see the future. People who are seen committing crimes — from felony to murder — are brought in and contained before they can do the deed. On the day when Anderton's new assistant, whom Anderton is training to take over the department eventually, arrives, Anderton's own name shows up on a punch card as the murderer of a guy he doesn't even know. Anderton, thinking new guy is framing him, decides to undermine the system by running away and hiding for a week, but before he can he is kidnapped by the guy he's meant to kill and has a reader-headache-inducing couple of days before figuring out the plot and making things right.

That's right, headache-inducing. Dick doesn't dick around (hah! I'm so witty) with much exposition past the idea of pre-crime; after spending a few pages on that suddenly Anderton is figuring out things left and right and is like, "This is the truth! No, this is, for some reason I may or may not tell you later!" and you're like, "Buh?" and Dick's like, "Hahahahaha." Srsly. But in the end you sort of get it and then you write your congressperson a long letter against the use of mentally retarded people (no, really) as psychic crime-stoppers because it would confuse you. Or something.

Rating: 7/10

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris (30 April — 7 May)

I had this collection of Sedaris essays as my car audiobook for those long drives to and from my music ensembles, and I thought it worked pretty well. Stopping in the middle of a story left me confused, but when I could listen to a whole story at once I was highly entertained.

Most of the stories in this collection are ruminations on Sedaris's life, both now and as a kid growing up in North Carolina. I felt a little awkward hearing Sedaris talk about playing strip poker and being beaten up by bullies and his brother training the dog to eat poo, but I thoroughly enjoyed his more humorous stories. In particular, I listened to his essay on Christmas in the Netherlands by myself and then immediately replayed it for Scott to hear. It was good.

That story and another were taped as Sedaris read them in front of an audience, but most of them were just Sedaris talking into a microphone, and you could really hear the difference. The man has a stage presence, but he seems to forget to use it without an audience! I wonder if the stories read differently without Sedaris talking.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death, by Laurie Notaro (2 May — 4 May)

I saw this book in a library display along with several other collected essay books. It was really the title (and its subtitle, Reflections on Revenge, Germophobia, and Laser Hair Removal) that sold me. Flaming tantrums of death? I'm in!

On the whole, I thought the collection was pretty good. There are some super-funny stories, like the one in which Notaro gets flipped off by hippies and decides to turn around and tailgate them in her Prius. There are some super-affecting stories, like the one in which her beloved dog suddenly falls ill. Most are entertaining; a couple of them fell flat for me.

But seriously, Laurie Notaro, you need to get yourself a better editor. I get that the stories are meant to be conversational in tone, but the beauty of writing is that you can take those tongue-tied, baffling moments and fix them to be understandable. There were so many misplaced modifiers and commas in weird places and just generally unintelligible sentences that I lost all sense of the story more than a few times.

I also felt a bit put off by Notaro's attitudes in general, but that's probably more about me than about her. She's the kind of person who would bother to get laser hair removal; I am not. She's a huge germophobe; I follow the 90-second rule. I couldn't really get a few of the stories because of this, but I'm sure there are others out there who would totally understand her.

Rating: 6/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

Audiobook Round-up

I got back last night from a week-long camping trip in Alabama, which was awesome. Less awesome is all the internet catching-up I have to do!

Because of the twelve-hour drive, I decided to collect a bunch of audiobooks from the library's fancy-pants online trove of such things. Scott loves them, but I'd never given them a real try. Now I have, and... well. I was right — I can't focus on an audiobook to save my life. So. No ratings (or even decent reviews) for these until I read them proper, but here's the list of things I listened to in the car last week.

Dave Barry's Greatest Hits, by Dave Barry (22 March)
This is a 1988 collection of Barry's columns, which shows in all his talk about Reagan as president! I like Barry, so I enjoyed listening to this hour-long book while I tried to stay awake (we left home at 6am!). Bonus points for having John Ritter as a narrator.

More of Dave Barry's Greatest Hits, by Dave Barry (22 March)
I can't seem to find this listed anywhere but fancy-pants online troves of audiobooks, so this is possibly audiobook-only. Unsure. Anyway, this is the 1996 collection of awesome columns. Still entertaining. Still narrated by John Ritter. Still capable of keeping me awake, if not listening properly.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (28 March — 29 March)
I knew the general idea going in, of course — Dorian Gray has a painting that ages while he stays young. That turns out to be a gross over-simplification of this novel, which deals with heavy themes of morality and ethics and deception. Grey likes his painting at the beginning, but as it ages and the bad things he's done show up in it he comes to loathe it. And his loathing of it has him doing even more bad things that show up in it. And all the while he has an angel-friend telling him how good he is, and a devil-friend spouting off ridiculous (even to him) notions of how the world works. I definitely enjoyed this book, but I will have to go back and read it to pick up on the hour or two I missed of it!

(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

We'll Always Have Paris, by Ray Bradbury (15 March)

Maybe I'm just not cut out for short stories. I don't know. But of the 22 stories in this collection, I only really liked five of them. It seemed like the others I either just did not get or did get, really, no really, no please stop explaining it I GET IT. So yeah.

But the ones I did like were good! Those touched on themes of relationships: friends with benefits, friends without any benefits, how friends change over the years or even the days. All of them I thought got right to the heart of the matter and ended with just the right touch... I wish the others had done so well.

There's not much to say in specific as these stories are, on average, 10 pages long. If you don't read all of the stories, do read "Apple-Core Baltimore," as that is my hands-down favorite.

Rating: 5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2009, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (17 January — 20 January)

I'm not the world's biggest fan of short stories, but I do like Stephen King and I really like the cover of this book (sunset-y and out of focus), so I picked it up.

As I figured, some of the stories were cool and some were lame (mostly the ones that King describes in his endnotes as more dictation than fiction). They cover topics including what happens after we die, what you should do if someone wants to murder you, why you should (or shouldn't, I suppose...) pick up hitchhikers, and why you should never become a psychiatrist. One of these stories also contains feces.

All in all a good set of short stories.

Rating: 7/10 (for 8/13 stories enjoyed and the lame ones being short)
(Countdown Challenge: 2008, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

Dictation, by Cynthia Ozick (7 August − 13 August)

This is a book of four short stories (less than 50 pages each) that weren't really connected in any way, as I thought they were going to be when I picked up the book.

The first is about the amanuenses (typists, basically) of Henry James and Joseph Conrad. James's girl has a plot to hatch, and by golly she's going to seduce every girl she needs to to get it done. No, really.

The second is about a bit actor who gets a leading role but has to change himself to do it, and oh, also he's being sort of stalked by the father of the woman who wrote the play he's in. Hmm.

The third is about an American writer type who goes off to a conference in Italy and gets himself married to the chambermaid four days later. This one I understood the least.

The final story is the one I enjoyed the most; it's about a girl who, through her mother and her mother's crazy universal-language-loving cousin, learns a lot about lies and deception.

My problem with the set was really that the stories were a bit too literary -- they reminded me of trying to decipher Hemingway and I just wasn't in the mood.

Rating: 5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2008)