Tonight’s “entertainment”; Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Based on the book by Anthony Burgess. A sick flick for sure, but not without certain good points on where society might end up.

In addition to the movie above, I also picked up a copy of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. American Gods and Good Omens were great books, so I don’t see how Gaiman can go wrong with Neverwhere.

Picked up a Destillers Edition of Lagavulin, my favorite whisky. Now let me assure you, before you think I’ve become a raging alcoholic, that I am not. I have no intention of opening the limited editions unless I have good reason to. I look upon them as investments. The Lagavulin I got today looks like the one on the left, except the box and bottle say “1993″ instead of “1987″.

Loyal to his tradition of urban fantasy, Gaiman brings us a very interesting steampunkish story. On the surface, London seems to be a normal place, but people that fall through the cracks find themselves in London Below, a dangerous place of magic and marginality. When Richard helps a scared and wonded girl called Door, he could not imagine that he was going to become invisible to the people of London Above and finds himself running for his life and helping the young noble girl to figure out who killed her whole family.

Gaiman is an excellent storyteller, he relates the wonders of London Below in an easy way, engulfing the reader in the plot and adventure. The characters are interesting and dark and the plot complex.

This book would be perfect for any urban fantasy lover, and ideal for anyone that enjoys good writing.

Book Review:   Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

My first encounter with Neil Gaiman’s work was watching Coraline.  I didn’t make it to the theater, but when I finally saw the movie on DVD, I thought it was good, so when I saw a Neil Gaiman novel in my box of paperbacks, I decided to check it out.

Neverwhere is Neil Gaiman’s first solo novel, but it is obvious this book wasn’t written by a novice.  Gaiman is known by comic fans as the author of the award winning comic, The Sandman, published from 1989 until 1996.  Neverwhere, originally conceived as a British TV program, was also published in novel form in 1996 corresponding with the airing of said TV show.

Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, an average guy by any standard, whose life is interrupted when he finds a girl bleeding on a London sidewalk.  Instead of stepping over her, as his fiancée does, Richard feels compelled to help her.  Little does he know, his simple act of kindness will lead him down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, or in this case London Below. 

“This is your last chance.  After this, there is no turning back.  You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.  You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”   (Morpheus from The Matrix.)

Of course, Richard stays in Wonderland, finding London Below a very extraordinary, but dangerous place, especially for someone from London Above.  As we follow Richard and Door, the girl he saved, through London Below, Gaiman creates a rich mythology containing elements of feudal as well as ancient Greek societies.

Although this was an imaginative work and well written, the characters never really brought excitement, and my concern for them was limited.  It’s hard to levy any direct criticism, so I think it best to say I just didn’t love this book.  There were some good characters in the story, but the main characters were uninteresting. 

Rating: 8 out of 10

A few years ago I was browsing the sci-fi/fantasy section at Barnes and Noble and stumbled across a book called Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.  I was instantly attracted to the cover art and when I flipped it over to read the summary, I was doubly intrigued.  The Stephen King blurb was the final selling point and I decided to give it a shot.  The book was fantastic and I adored Gaiman’s writing style. 

Since then I went on to read American Gods (my favorite), Stardust, Anansi Boys and Good Omens, co-written by Terry Pratchett.  Gaiman’s unique characters and stories transport you into whatever world he’s created in the pages.

By the time I read Neverwhere I had been in love with the music of Tori Amos for almost ten years.  I’m absolutely enthralled by her voice and songwriting ability and after a while I noticed a name that kept popping up in her lyrics from album to album. 

I always thought to myself, who is this Neil person anyway and why does he keep getting mentioned in all these songs over the years?

Well, I finally found out, on accident, when I was looking up more info online about Neil Gaiman.  Lo and behold, Tori’s Neil was my Neil whose writing I had just discovered! 

That just struck me as one of those funny little coincidences that make you smile.  It turns out that their work has been rather intertwined for many years (he made her a talking tree character in Stardust, she wrote a song for his anthology, and they’ve both written for each other’s projects including tour books, album theme stories and book introductions).  I recently saw Tori perform at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles and I noticed that every time she sang a lyric that included Neil’s name, a group in the front row cheered loudly so I thought he must have been in the audience.

Here are some of the Neil-afied lyrics from Tori’s songs…

“If you need me, me and Neil’ll be hanging out with the dream king.  Neil said hi by the way.”  (Tear in Your Hand)

“Seems I keep getting this story twisted so where’s Neil when you need him?”  (Space Dog)

“And if there is a way to find you I will find you.  But will you find me if Neil makes me a tree?”  (Horses)

“Get me Neil on the phone, no I can’t hold.”  (Carbon)

“Neil is thrilled he can claim he’s mammalian, ‘but the bad news,’ he said, ‘girl you’re a dandelion’” (Not Dying Today)

Have you ever discovered any similar connections?

“A graveyard is not normally a democracy, and yet death is the great democracy, and each of the dead had a voice, and an opinion as to whether the living child should be allowed to stay, and they were each determined to be heard, that night.”

— The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

Keeping up with the season, I recently finished reading Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, my third attempt at enjoying something by the author (after previously putting down both Neverwhere and Anansi Boys about 150 pages into them) that didn’t follow with his trend of letting the writing dissolve into fantasy cliché after an otherwise excellent introduction.

The Graveyard Book is the best work I’ve read from Gaiman’s library, most likely because it presents its theme from the very first pages and remains consistent with it throughout. Its fantastic elements emerge immediately — the novel follows the childhood adventures of Nobody Owens, a boy raised from childhood by a community of ghosts in an historical English graveyard. Gaiman crafts a fully realized mythos surrounding the graveyard and throughout the story he takes readers on a guided tour of its various details, detouring through a “Ghoul’s Gate” (something like a cross between the Nevada desert and Dante’s Inferno), the local school system and the crypts and mausoleums that make up the graveyard. The cast of characters are believable (given the situation) and colourful, reacting to otherwordly events and situations in a manner that refuses to let them fall into the one dimensional trappings of some fables.

The novel has the kind of light-hearted spook  that has been so wonderfully expressed in movies like Coraline or The Nightmare Before Christmas and is truly enjoyable to read. Gaiman writes the entire work with the kind of childlike wonder that passes easily onto readers, naturally transporting them to an extraordinary world lying just below what we see everyday. It simultaneously pays homage to the aforementioned films while establishing its very own, unique universe — a great and absorbing one at that.

The Graveyard Book is definitely aimed at children and young adults but it’s extremely well-written and entertaining enough for any age (as corny as that may sound). The work posesses the kind of longevity that this type of book needs to have in order to remain timeless, hosting a great story, a suitable array of moral parables and a mixture of creepiness and humour that sustains its (relatively brief) length right through until the finale.

There are only a few days left before Hallowe’en and Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is the perfect pick for getting into the spirit of the season. It’s a quick read and a whole lot of fun.

Check it out.

— Reid

Eu ia fazer um post grande sobre como comecei a jogar RPG, mas vi esse link e resolvi postar

RPG oficial do Neverwhere do Neil Gaiman de graça no DriveThruRPG

http://bit.ly/2UwSDP

Para quem não sabe o que o Neverwhere, aqui vai uma sinopse do livro do Neil Gaiman em português:

Where does the line between reality and fantasy lie? The answer is firmly in the hands of a master dark fantasy writer like Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere follows protagonist Richard Mayhew three years after making one of the biggest decisions of his life as he moves from a small town to the great city of London. He’s managed to land a decent job with a securities firm, somehow convinced an ambitious young lady that his shaggy head was worth waking up to in the morning and then a door opened up, dumping a bleeding Underworld heiress on the sidewalk.

The whole world turns upside down from that moment on in the novel as Richard follows this very special girl through London Below, a place where people speak to rats and baronies have been formed by the people who slip between the cracks. Gaiman is the type of master world-builder that has been rare since the days of Tolkien. The reader can’t help but get carried away on this wild ride; smelling the aromas, seeing the grime and the beauty and most importantly coming to like beyond a doubt all of the characters for their quirks and eccentricities. Even the most fleeting roles in this grand play catch your eye and a piece of your heart. The cruel and amusing duo of Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, assassins for hire who are disappointed by how little blood they are allowed to shed. The Marquis de Carabas, a thief, a cheat and a trixter, whose allegiance is questionable though his charm in undeniable. Hunter, an amazon of the beautiful persuasion with a quiet strength and a feline agility. Then there is Door, a girl who has lost her entire family to murder and betrayal who brings Richard to London Below in her search for answers.

It’s hard not to get completely swept up in the mystery and intrigue of this tale. I’ve never been to London myself, never had a real interest to, except after reading Neverwhere there is a part of me that is curious to visit and find out if there are birdmen on the rooftops, sewer people in the sewers, an earl of Earl’s Court or shepherds at Shepherd’s Bush. It seems like a dangerous place. The words draw you and I doubt anyone can deny that a small portion of your rational mind is pushed aside in the hopes that Gaiman’s London Below exists somewhere along the tube stations. He weaves so much of the real London in with his creation that you come to realize you’re actually learning about the place. I don’t know about other readers – I enjoy a little education with my fun and if a writer can teach me something new I respect him/her all the more.

What it all comes down to at the end of Neverwhere is an experience to be remembered and revisited every once and a while to remind you that there is magic left in the world.

Gosto muito da  cultura/música/literatura/filmes da terra da  rainha. Um dos meus autores favoritos de lá é o senhor Gaiman, que, diferente da grande maioria e totalidade de seus fãs,  nunca lí Sandman. Conhecí Gaiman já na maior idade,  ao ver o filme Stardust, o qual é inspirado em um romance seu, e sobre o qual qualquer dia falarei em outro post. Hoje quero discursar sobre Lugar Nenhum, o primeiro romance de Neil Gaiman e que, na minha experiencia com o autor (Stardust, Deuses Americanos, Coisas Frágeis e Lugar Nenhum) é o melhor de seus romances. O livro conta a aventura de Richard, um escocês que se muda p/ Londres pra pra trabalhar e começa a namorar uma riquinha insuportável que enche o saco dele por qualquer coisa. Uma noite quando eles estão indo jantar, do nada, aparece uma mulher ferida que saiu da parede e Richard resolve socorrê-la enquanto sua namorada mimada e insuportável chinga ele aos berros porque desistiu de ir jantar com o chefe dela pra salvar a vida de uma pessoa desconhecido (que coisa mais mais malvada, vixe!). Depois disse Richard conhece e começa a entrar cada vez mais na Londres de Baixo, um mundo que existe mas ninguém percebe e é diferente de tudo do mundo real, mas tudo que tem nele vem do mundo real, a Londres de cima. A aventura é de uma criatividade que só poderia ter saído da cabeça de um louco que caiu de cabeça quando criança um gênio da literatura fantástica como Gaiman. Durante a viagem de Richard pela Londres de Baixo ele conhece várias pessoas intrigantes como o Marquês de Carabas e o Rei do Metrô. O livro livro brinca com trocadilhos usando os lugares de Londres, bom para quem conhece, eu usei o google earth porque gosto de me ambientar. Você viaja o livro inteiro, não consegue parar de ler e no fim reflete sobre a vida como ela é. Muito bom mesmo o livro, não costumo puxar o saco de autores, nenhum até hoje me agradou em todas as suas obras, por isso se digo que vale a pena é porque vale. Divirtam-se.

How many people have cursed their luck on making a dash to the Tube station after a night out, only to discover that they’ve missed the last train? And how many people have seen New York’s 24-hour subway service and thought, “Why can’t we have one of those over here?”

The reason, simply, is that the Tube needs to be shut down every night for maintenance purposes. The reason New York can run 24-hours is because their tunnels have regular crossovers, meaning that trains can be diverted from one line to another while routine maintenance is carried out. Above ground, crossovers aren’t a major expense (so it’s possible to get the train from St Pancras to St Albans more-or-less 24/7). Under the ground, however, it’s a different matter. Tube lines were expensive enough without building a whole load of extra tunnel. So, the result is a remarkably inflexible railway. No night trains, no overtaking and when a train fails you’re screwed.

Stockwell

Which is why the gaudily-painted building on the left is of interest. It’s located in Stockwell, just a short distance  from the Tube station. Gay paintwork aside, it could be more-or-less anything – an electricity substation, a public toilet or something even less interesting. Another of

Just south of Stockwell

those random buildings you get. However, if you look around the metropolis, you’ll notice that it’s not alone. There are several similar structures. The majority are in South London, a few are in Central and a couple more are North.

This one, hidden behind wooden fence panels, is in Clapham North.

Some of them are disguised, as per the one on Clapham High Street seen left. Some are painted, as per Stockwell. Others just stand there, being weird and mysterious.

Well, the story of these buildings is rather interesting. They were originally built during the Second World War.

Clapham Common

It’s a commonly known fact that the Tubes were used for shelter during the Second World War (and also the First, but people tend not to talk about that). So it was that the Ministry of Home Security had their great idea – if the London Underground could be used as a deep shelter, why not vice versa?

On Clapham Common, a hop, skip and a jump from Clapham South.

So they approached London Transport with a proposal. London Transport could build a series of deep-level shelters, some for public use and some for the Government. In return, the Government would grant them permission, after the cessation of hostilities, to build tunnels linking them.

Between Clapham and Balham

They would form an express Tube line running along the approximate route of the Northern Line, increasing speed and capacity along its busiest stretches. The idea had been proposed in the late 1930s, but nixed until now. London Transport leapt at the chance to finally carry their scheme out.

Tottenham Court Road

Unfortunately, the scheme didn’t proceed quite as planned. For a start, the war had left the country with a labour shortage. Then, as with any major construction project, there was the NIMBY factor to be taken into consideration.

Goodge Street

Probably the one person you really don’t want to annoy during a major construction programme in the middle of the biggest war the world has ever known is God. The authorities at St Paul’s Cathedral are the next best thing in London, and they had a few objections to the concept.

Camden Town, just behind the Market, off the High Street.

They hadn’t been big fans of the Central Line, and they weren’t going to stand for anyone else digging in the vicinity of their Cathedral either. Their concerns were not entirely baseless – the ground beneath St Paul’s is somewhat shifty at the best of times, so much so that Christopher Wren incorporated an early example of an expansion gap into its design. Anyway, that was that shelter scuppered.

The Goodge Street shelter – seen in the somewhat abortive attempt at night time photography above – was opened in 1942 as General Eisenhower’s London HQ, and is known to this day as the Eisenhower Centre (although it’s been a long time since it’s had a use half as interesting). The others were used for similar administrative purposes until 1944, when a new menace came to town – the fearsome V2 rockets. Stockwell, Clapham North, Clapham South, Belsize Park and Camden Town were all opened to the public.

Belsize Park

Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as planned after the war. One way or another, it was discovered that, with a handful of exceptions, the shelters were no longer suitable to be converted into Tube stations. They served other purposes – first they were used to house demobbed soldiers, then the large influx of immigrants from the West Indies. Finally, they were turned into document storage facilities. In the 1990s, London Transport bought the shelters for their own use once more, with the aim of improving facilities at already-existing stations. By the look of things, at least one is now available to let.

They’ve had, to my knowledge, two appearances in fiction – in his classic work of London-based fantasy, Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman has a character making his home in one. The building on Clapham Common appears in Michael de Larrabeiti’s children’s fantasy, The Borribles Across the Dark Metropolis, in which it’s used as a secret police HQ.

Sadly, though, this seems to be about as much as the deep-level workings can hope for. They’re unlikely to ever be used for their intended purpose now. For all Ken and Boris’ exciting plans for transport in this city, so far none have included reviving this scheme.

Which is a pity, because, to return to the point with which I began this rambling entry, it would be nice if the Northern Line had an extra tunnel or two. You know, for night trains, overtaking and when a train fails…

Neil Gaiman’ı çoğu insan Sandman çizgi roman serisi ile tanır. Geçenlerde Mezarlık Kitabı ile Hugo Ödülü kazanan Neil Gaiman uzun zamandır kütüphanemde önemli bir yer ediniyor. Kitapları Türkçe’ye yakın zamanda çevrildiği için Yıldız Tozu dışındaki tüm eserlerini orijinal dilinde İngilizce olarak okudum. Kanaatimce Yıldız Tozu diğer kitaplarına nazaran en naif ve basit olanı, daha çok bir çocuk kitabı olarak yazılmış.

Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, Good Omens (Terry Prattchat ile birlikte), Fragile Things, Mirrormask, Smoke & Mirrors, Star Dust,  Coraline,The Graveyard Book… Bir çok fantastik esere imza atmış Neil Gaiman, ayrıca çizgi romanlar ve film senaryoları da cabası (Sandman, Beowulf, Mirrormask, Neverwhere…)

Sözün kısası sizlere 2001 yılında yayınlanmış ve pek çok ödüle layık görülerek Neil Gaiman’ı uluslar arası üne kavuşturmuş “American Gods” kitabını öneriyorum. Bu kitap, yazarın Sandman ile kurduğu düş-tanrı dünyasının farklı bir perspektifle yansımasını sunmanın yanı sıra Kuzey Avrupa mitolojisini de günümüze taşıyarak modernleştirmeyi başarıyor, modern bir mit yaratıyor. Aramızda yürüyen, varlıkları için mücadele eden, dünyanın kontrolünü ele geçirmeye çalışan Tanrılar panteonu oluşturuyor. Hikayesinin kahramanı olarak da hapisten yeni çıkmış, pek sevgili karısına kavuşacakken onun öldüğünü, hem de en yakın arkadaşı ile kahramanımızı aldatırken öldüğünü öğrenen “Shadow” karakterini tercih ediyor. Gerçeklerin sert uçlarından fantezinin daha da acı veren hayallerine yelken açarken dünyanın metası ile fantezinin tanrıları arasında sıkışmış eski bir hükümlünün gözünden Amerika’yı eğdikçe eğiyor. Üstüne bir de medya, para, şöhret gibi “modern tanrıları” sos olarak ekliyor.

“American Gods” modern mitoloji olarak adlandırılabilecek bir fantastik kurgu, bana Stephen King’in Tılsım kitaplarını ve Kule serilerini hatırlattı. Burada paralel bir dünya söz konusu değil ancak aramızda yaşayan ve dünyayı kendi perspektifiyle gören eski ve yeni tanrıların mücadelesinde kayıp bir karakter üzerine kurulmuş gerçeklik sorgulamaları, öncüllerinden iyi beslendiğinin ipuçlarını barındırıyor.

Ben kitabın orijinal, genişletilmiş (yazarın ödül aldıktan sonra eklediği ek hikayelerle zenginleştirilmiş) versiyonunu edinip okudum. Çoğu okur için dağınık ve detaylı gelebilecek bu basımı özellikle türü sevenler, böylesine bir dünyanın içinde kaybolup gitmek isteyenler için önerebilirim. Ancak şu dipnotu eklemeden de geçemeyeceğim; akıcı kurgu ve aksiyon okumalarını sevenler kitabı zaman zaman çok çizgiden çıkmış ve gereksiz detaylarla yüklenmiş bulabilirler fakat biraz mitoloji ilginiz ve bilginiz varsa bu detayların eski inançlara gönderme dolu kurgular olduğunu fark edeceksiniz. Kültürümüze uzak olduğu için zaman zaman isim ve anlatılara yabancı kaldığınızı hissedebilirsiniz de… Yine de türün meraklıları mutlaka göz atmalı ancak sakın ha Mezarlık Kitabı, Yıldız Tozu ya da Coraline gibi nispeten masum bir çocuk öyküsü beklemeyin çünkü American Gods çok karanlık ve zaman zaman da korkutucu…

Ayrıca;

Eski bir tanrının birbiriyle çekişen ama bir yandan da dünyayı kurtarmaya çalışan çocuklarını konu alan Anansi Boys ya da Londra’nın yer altı tünellerinde bambaşka bir dünya ile karşılaşan Richard’ın fantastik maceraları için Neverwhere; Neil Gaiman külliyatının bence önde gelen eserleri arasında.

Bahadır İçel

Encore quelques jours et les Beatles rataient l’époque du CD. J’aime bien les Beatles et naïvement, je me suis toujours dit qu’une intégrale finirait bien par sortir un jour, donc que j’allais attendre qu’elle paraisse pour les ajouter à ma discothèque. Je n’aurais pas pensé que ça prendrait aussi longtemps. Le prix est un peu fort — je veux bien croire que la remastérisation est un art délicat et minutieux, qui a exigé des sommes fabuleuses, mais je m’étonne toujours de voir certains articles sortir des deux côtés de l’Atlantique avec le même chiffre sur l’étiquette, alors que le dollar et l’euro sont loin d’être à parité, ces temps-ci.

C’est la traversée de l’océan qui coûte extrêmement cher, je présume.

Ou de la Manche.

Ou les réductions de prix qui sont arrêtées à la frontière française, comme un vulgaire nuage de Tchernobyl.

Ces temps-ci, quand je ne maugrée pas sur le prix des choses que j’achète sans qu’on m’y force, je termine la révision de la version préférée par l’auteur du Neverwhere de Neil Gaiman  — qui a pris nettement plus de temps que prévu. D’abord pour des problèmes de reins (ça va mieux, merci, après quelques séances où un dévoué kinésithérapeute m’a replié selon des angles lovecraftiens et a vérifié que mes os craquaient harmonieusement quand on les écrasait avec fermeté — j’exagère un brin, mais le résultat est probant), ensuite pour des problèmes de Cthulhu, et enfin pour des problèmes de révision — le texte n’est pas fondamentalement différent, mais entre les quelques paragraphes ajoutés par Gaiman, les quelques autres retirés, les modifications de détail qu’il a apportées ici ou là, et la refonte de moult détails et tournures de mon côté, l’ensemble a exigé pas mal de temps de lecture et de relecture, et me paraît désormais sortir d’un bain de Jouvence. Ça reste vraiment un de mes romans préférés de Gaiman. Un mélange savoureux de cocasse et de noirceur, des personnages qui semblent tirés à la fois de recueils poussiéreux de légendes et de dessins animés de Tex Avery, et un emploi inoubliable de la géographie et du légendaire londoniens.

Et de ma main qui reste libre, je me suis mis à l’harmonisation (et traduction de la conclusion) de la trilogie du Soldat des Brumes de Gene Wolfe. Le lecteur y gagne au change, littéralement: dès les premières pages, la valeur de la drachme tombe de cent oboles à seulement six!

Et puis au moins, je ne peux plus me plaindre de ne jamais changer d’ambiance!

Una favola semplice,  lineare come deve essere, una favola per adulti che aiuta a gettarsi in un mondo fatto di magia e dove la realtà è una dimensione sconosciuta e invisibile. Tristan, garzone del villaggio, decide di recuperare una stella per conquistare il cuore della sua amata, questa la semplice trama che ci permette di passare le ore in un mondo dove finalmente possiamo staccare la spina e volare in alto con la fantasia. Questo libro è stato anche oggetto di elogio da parte del grande Stephen King.

Autore: Neil Gaiman

Il Consiglio: leggetevi anche “Nessun dove” (1996) (Neverwhere)

Il Voto: 7

N.B. Lo trovate a Rileggo al 50% del prezzo di copertina

ahora que terminé la lista de las películas, mi vida se siente vacía… no, no es cierto. pero sí me debato un poco sobre hacer o no hacer la de los discos. la de los discos sería más personal que la de las películas, más subjetiva y con hartos lugares comunes. por el otro lado también está la de las canciones. hoy en la noche echaré un volado para ver cuál hago. la de las series queda pospuesta hasta que vea un par de pendientes por ahí. lamentablemente, en la de las series, no está contemplada true blood (que, como dice mi mujer, es twilight rated r). así que nos la pelamos. fue la decepción de la temporada.

Questions for Fantasy Lovers out there:

Answer these as fast as you can. You’re only allowed to scan your bookshelves to gain inspiration but the purpose is to see which is most memorable to you at this point in your reading!

What are your….

…most memorable heroes?

This one’s easy. I just finished reading, Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora. Locke’s the antihero of the story, and he’s always got tricks up his sleeve.

Speaking of thieves, I’ve got to say Eugenides from Megan Whalen Turner’s King of Attolia. I especially liked him in that one because he really irritates the heck out of everyone at the castle, and in the end, surprises them all!

…most memorable heroines?

Don’t make me decide! I have so many… (and they’re each memorable to me!)

Fainne from Child of the Prophecy by Juliet Marillier. She’s unreadable, remote and awkward to those around her, but, we the readers know better. She’s so in need of someone she can truly trust and be herself with (enter Darragh).

Lirael from Lirael by Garth Nix. She’s intelligent and clever and brave, and kind of a loner (being awkward with other people), but she’s got guts and the necromancer’s instinct. She’s not afraid to try things on her own and creep about in the darkest, creepiest, sketchiest corners of the Clayr fortress for curiosity’s sake.

Claidi from Claidi Collection by Tanith Lee. I can never forget Claidi for her spunkyness and her awkwardness (and sometimes, complete cluelessness). She’s quick to remark and wonder at the insanity of her world and poke fun at it.

…most memorable villains?

Right now, I can think of a few:

Lord Voldemort. The history of his childhood is amazing. Also, how J.K. Rowling paralleled it with Harry’s own story. They both went through similar circumstances and struggles as children, and they’re both so similar in talent, yet their lives turned out so differently.

Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. I keep thinking they’ll appear behind me with some witty verbage and finish me off before I can question them about it.

…memorable romantic interests (from a fantasy novel)?

Selendrile from Dragon’s Bait by Vivian Vande Velde. I always picture his smoky velvet eyes, his amused smiles, and his lack of propriety (he’s a dragon too, after all, why should he care?).

Prince Char from Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. Uh, what can I say? He’s just so charming! He isn’t ashamed of doing the silliest things for a good laugh (ie. sliding down bannisters with Ella) and he’s got a good heart! What more can you ask for?

…most memorable magic-crafters (being very loose with this term)?

Howl form Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I thought of him immediately. I just remember him howling with rage from having his hair gone a slight tinge of pink or red because Sophie moved the hair-dye bottles around. It was hilarious and appalling. He’s a particular one he is.

…most memorable lands and cultures?

The Old Kingdom from Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy. I know, the place is rampant with Mordicant, Dead Hands and Stilken creatures. But, that library…oh that library is wonderful! And all those secret, hidden nooks and crannies, tunnels and catacombs in the Clayr’s fortress and the Abhorsen’s castle. It’s worth battling the undead everyday for.

Also, I LOVE Shannon Hale’s Eight Realms, mentioned in Book of a Thousand Days. I like Dashti’s singing magic and the culture surrounding that. I think it’s time for a re-read…

…most memorable magical creatures?

The Blammor from The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip. Watch out for that surprise ending/epiphany that Sybel has! That’s part of the reason why I’m intrigued by the Blammor (I won’t reveal anymore for those of you planning to read it).

…most memorable pets/animal side-kicks?

Mogget and the Disreputable Dog both from Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy. I love Mogget because he’s the wild card of the story, you can’t ever figure out who’s side he’s on. In the end, I don’t think he really cares, as long as he’s fed and comfortable with no one to boss him around. And I love the Disreputable Dog because she’s just the perfect intelligent, speaking, shapeshifting magical pet one would want to watch one’s butt while one’s battling the undead.

…most memorable magical objects?

The Cloak of Invisibility from Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. That’s just a pretty convenient thing to have stuffed in one’s pocket. So many private conversations to eavesdrop and snitch on.

…favorite kind of magic/magical quotes?

Hmm… I normally don’t look out for those.  Lots of great stuff in Neil Gaiman’s works though.

…favorite race of peoples?

Tuatha Dé Danann from Child of the Prophecy by Juliet Marillier. I also like the Old ones, who are more ancient than the Tuatha Dé Danann (they’re the mossy rocks, the creaking trees, the gurgling streams).

…favorite cover art?

The cover of Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier. I love love Kinuko Y. Craft’s work.

these are tough to answer…i almost couldn’t even find responses to some my own questions! When I was coming up with these questions, I was envisioning that I would have lots to say, but turns out, it’s harder than I thought. If you read lots of fantasy, answer these questions too (or post them on your own fantastic blogs)! I’m going to post similar questions and answers every so often, I love compiling  ‘lists’ like this, and I’m really curious to know of your favorites or your most memorable reads in this genre so far in terms of certain categories!

***

And going off topic, got two new bookcases!! Yay! One that has six shelves, and one that has four shelves (nothing elaborate, just some functional shelves). Let’s see, I can fit thirty regular sized paperbacks per shelf so….that makes room for around *gulp* 300 books. I think I already have about 300 books in my other room. Though, I guess I’ll have to take into account shelf room for my hulkin’ textbooks.

Esito di un lavoro lungo dieci anni, Coraline è un romanzo per bambini di Neil Gaiman, illustrato da tavole in bianco e nero del talentuoso  Dave McKean. Coraline è un romanzo sul doppio. La porta nascosta conduce su una rappresentazione irreale della realtà , confondendo l’insieme dei significati usuali e obbligando la bambina a ridefinire il suo concetto di bene e male. Il doppio si manifesta in un incessante gioco di specchi in cui le diverse identità  dei personaggi mutano a seconda del piano di realtà  in cui essi esistono.

Coraline è un ottimo romanzo diventato un film d’animazione sotto la direzione di Henry Selick, lo straordinario autore insieme a Tim Burton di “The Nightmare before Christmas“. Inutile dire che per gli amanti del grande Burton, il film sarà un capolavoro.

A una prima chiave di lettura sia il romanzo, sia il film possono apparire piuttosto perturbanti, ma come sostenuto da Gaiman per il suo libro, “i bambini lo leggono come un’avventura. Gli adulti come un incubo“. Certamente, per entrambi esso può essere fonte di grande intrattenimento e riflessione.

Voto 8 ad entrambi.

Per chi vuole scoprire Neil Gaiman non perdere: “Neverwhere“

Per chi vuole scoprire Tim Burton: non saprei davvero scegliere il suo must, ma non perdetevi “Big Fish“

I’ve been meaning to post a little something about this for a while. Has anyone seen this production? I thought it was fantastic! I’ve been on a huge Neil Gaiman binge lately. I keep running into his work everywhere. It started with “Neverwhere” the T.V. series (on BBC, I think).  Then I bought the book, along with Coraline, which I’ve been meaning to buy for a while. I then went ahead and watched ‘Stardust’ for the second time. I went to the library, and saw “Mirrormask” and I’ve just finished watching that one too (it was strange but intriguing and very different).

“Neverwhere” is a strange, fast-paced story about a world found under the city of london, populated by people who  above-londoners would normally not give a glance at (such as the homeless on the streets). I love it! It has the magic-in-the-midst-of-a-modern-day-city storyline that I’m finding more and more fun and intriguing to read about. What is more fun then thinking up your own world paralleling this, sometimes, boring one? My favorite character was Hunter. There’s no way around it – she’s just great.  And the Marquis, what a suave slimy charming man. Totally unpredictable. A real survivor. And I love the odd bits of humor thrown in. The whole thing was a riot to watch.

What I love about all the Neil Gaiman works translated onto the screen are how lively and distinct each character is. How odd and sometimes just frustratingly enigmatic (whew!) they can be! I so totally enjoyed “Stardust”. It is The Story. It has all the elements of the traditional tale. Entertainment, that’s what it is. Without the gore and brutality that they blast at you on the screen now-a-days. It’s got the good and evil, the high adventure, the love, the twists and turns, the surprises, and the tied up loose ends leaving a few strands flying loose for the satisfying ending.

Anyway, I think I’ve blogged my fill. Have to get away from the computer screen or else I’ll start writing nonsense….

Yet another one of Neil Gaiman’s …

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: neverwhere.

(From the author’s blurb)

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Neverwhere

Books Read in July '09

The Selected Works of T.S Spivet by Reif Larsen:

Review here.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman:

A very imaginative fantasy novel, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as some of Gaiman’s other books like Coraline, Good Omens and The Graveyard Book.

North and South by Elizabeth Glaskell:

Review here.

Still in the midst of finishing The Lies of Locke Lamora. I’m incredibly slow right now… it’s the heat! I always end up falling asleep, no matter how exciting the story is.

For the moment, my first bookish meme!

Q: What’s the funniest book you’ve read recently?

Well, its got to be Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. That book made me laugh embarassingly loud. It’s strange, it’s crazy, it  throws its imaginative inventions at you (at a whim, really); just like Coraline, its creepy characters seem to walk right off the pages and taunt you while you’re not reading. It’s definitely a book full of surprises and full of fun scenes.

At the moment, The Lies of Locke Lamora has its moments of hilarity, too.

book review!

Neil Gaiman – Neverwhere

it was pretty good. My enjoyment went like this… erm, no it didn’t, I’m not drawing an ASCII graph. It started off good, then it dropped a lot, then somewhere towards the middle it picked up again and it was good from there on.

today I added to my project… artificial constraints and slightly more collision detection related stuff. I have little collision response yet though. Also I have written 1862 words for my thesis. There’s a word limit of about 15k. 15k doesn’t sound that many but I’ve also written 4796 lines of code so far and have NO INTENTIONS OF STOPPING NOW.

*musical interlude*

Collision detection is a major performance issue. it’s HUGE. I have been using the map type because I like having nodename->node lookup but it’s now the slowest part of my program now.

% cumulative self self total
time seconds seconds calls us/call us/call name
39.59 0.19 0.19 2022886 0.09 0.09 GetNode(char const*)

All that function does is return something from the map and it’s taking up 39% of the execution time. That’s a pretty significant concern!

Anyway it turns out that maps aren’t hashtables after all, they’re a self balancing binary search tree with lookup time O(log n). Which is respectable, but it’s not as good as O(1) which is what I thought I was getting. That’ll teach me not to read the documentation carefully.

Turns out what I want is a hash_map which aren’t actually standard, but are implemented by gcc and MSVC. NOW as far as I’m concerned if something’s implemented in gcc then it’s as standard as I care about but as I am writing a supposedly useful library whose main use is going to be on Windows I have to be more careful. SO. Tomorrow… I am going to write a wrapper. Yes, a wrapper. What you do is you create an interface which looks like a hashtable so I can call that from the rest of my code okay. But what happens inside will use a hash_map if we’re on GCC or MSVC, or a map if we’re not. It’ll be messy on the inside and nice on the outside. Like me.

So I finally got my hands on to the first of Simon R. Green’s Nightside series. A short but enjoyable read, Something From the Nightside is a great multi-genre story. Think of it as a cross between Jim Butcher’s Dresden, Neil Gaiman’s world of Neverwhere, and Caitlin R. Kiernan’s taste in horror.

In other words, meet John Taylor a private detective straight out of a black and white noir film who doesn’t really belong in the London that we know and love. Instead he’s from the Nightside- a London where reality is redefined and the sun never shines. It’s a place of nightmares and dark dreams, where time is fluid, and, well, people are never what they appear…if they’re even people. So trust nothing and no one, except for the fact that you can trust nothing and no one.

Green is a good writer and while he’s not the best I’ve ever read I really enjoy the world he’s created in Nightside. I’ll be honest, I’m going to be reading the rest of this series because, damn it, Taylor has a mysterious heritage and I want to find out what it is! While Green does have a great sense of character, their voices could use some work to distinguish from each other. He also has a tendency towards monologes. Mind you they’re pretty snarky and occasionally darkly humorous.

On the whole it was a great little mystery, an awesome introduction to a new world, and had some twists that I did not see coming. Which I guess is the point of a well written twist. So yes, for anyone who likes a dark, paranormal mystery go read this.

In fact, I read even MORE on vacation than I normally do, which puts me way the hell behind on my updates. I’m just going to write little blurbs as if I try to write actual entries, I’ll procrastinate from THE PRESSURE and then I’ll never update again and you will never, ever know what I’ve been reading. Think of how sad you’ll be then. (The correct answer is: VERY.)

It Sucked and Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong: I liked this more than Kat did, but I think that might be because I wasn’t expecting much more than your typical dooce-fare in book form. Also: I started reading dooce late (read: like, two years ago) and so I went back from the very beginning and read the entries chronologically, so since I wasn’t waiting in between “episodes,” it felt kind of book-like. It’s funny and sometimes insightful and was just the thing to keep me busy but not having to exert more than five brain cells while finishing my job and moving.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje: Since this is Kat’s favorite book, I HAD to read it. I don’t know what took me so long, really. And holy effin’ hell, it’s amazing. It’s the sort of book where I was very upset that there was an ending to the story because I just wanted Ondaatje to keep writing forever, damnit. I guess this means maybe I should read some of his other books. I’m also going to watch the movie, which I have from NetFlix, perhaps tonight. Maybe. I’m way worse about watching my NetFlix than I am about reading. Way, way worse.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson: Ah, Swedes. My people. I read this book while I was in Portugal and didn’t have the wherewithal to read Infinite Jest (yes, I’m doing that Infinite Summer thing) while jetlagged. It was comforting to read a book with my people while being in a place that bore no resemblance whatsoever either physically or culturally to Scandihoovia. Did you know that the Portuguese don’t speak in subtext? Yeah. What’s with that? I can tell you that this book is about eight pages of subtext for each paragraph of dialog, because that’s the Swedish way. It’s very well written and the plot is intense and pretty much perfectly done. And man, the ending. I laughed my ass off at the last two pages for just how PERFECTLY SCANDINAVIAN it was. If you want to know anything about Swedes, read those two pages. That’ll do ya.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman: This book reminded me of what a Terry Pratchett book would be like if ratcheted up about 50 IQ points. “Sci-Fi” in that “alternate universe” sense and not the dragons and wizards sense, very very smart, and hilarious as hell. I honestly LOLed. In public. Amazing, amazing book.

Pattern Recognition by William Goldman: I read this book on the plane, and not only was it the perfect book for such a thing being as it deals extensively with travel and jetlag features prominently into the character of the protagonist, but it was so compelling that I found out that I can read an entire book in six hours. I’ve always been a fast reader and since I read for at least two hours a day at this point in my life, my reading speed is about Mach III. This isn’t skimming either, this is “notes in the margins” reading. With a break for lunch. Six hours. The downside of this is that I only brought one book on the plane and it was an EIGHT HOUR flight. TWO HOURS sans book. I nearly broke out in hives and immediately bought a book in South Station for the train ride home. And proceeded to read 100+ pages in an hour. Again, notes in the margins and everything. I win in Olympic speed-reading. So, yes, this is an excellent book and if you’re not me, you can probably make it stretch through an entire trans-Atlantic flight.