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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, 27 Jun 2006
This is a lovely book full of assorted writing by Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods, The Sandman and more besides.
Most of the book is a transcript of his onling journal during much of 2001 - in the run up to the publication of American Gods and slightly beyond. As such it's actually available for free at Neil's blog, which, although it was set up to follow American Gods, has continued up until the present. However, reading almost eight months of entries on screen would probably be a chore, especially as there are several a week. Reading it through on paper, or just dipping in randomly, is a pleasure. We get an insight into how a book was published, Mr Gaiman shares his opinons with us on a variety of eclectic subjects and the writing is friendly, funny and entertaining.
That's not all that's in the book though. My own favourite is the first section, which mainly features introductions to other books. And although I hadn't read many of them, by the end of almost every introduction I wanted to go and read that book. Which I think makes them pretty good. They're full of anecdotes, name dropping, tangents and a real sense of enthusiasm, nearly always for the book that's being introduced.
We also have sections of poetry and fiction, with five pieces each, and six songs written for the band `Flash Girls'. Like many of Gaiman's short pieces, I found that some worked for me and some didn't, but they're all worth having a look at.
This is the kind of book you can open at almost any page and start reading. It's stopping you might have trouble with.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A characteristically generous tour of the workshop, 10 May 2008
Apart from being a brilliant storyteller and an enchanting fabulist, Neil Gaiman has always maintained an engaging, punkish belief in the importance of opening up the creative process to other people. Perhaps it comes from his early career as a journalist, but he is not the kind of writer who likes to conceal what he's borrowed, or to pretend that he's some sort of solitary genius who owes nothing to anyone (á la the late L. Ron Hubbard). Gaiman has always been generous about citing his own influences, because he is as much of a fan of the stuff he likes as anyone else is.
This book is a useful and highly entertaining ragbag of book introductions, odd bits of prose and verse, and - especially interesting for novice writers - his weblog from the period between the completion of his most acclaimed novel 'American Gods' and its ultimate critical reception. Gaiman is not scared to demystify the rather boring nature of galley-proofing and book-touring. But for this reader, the most interesting stuff was the collection of introductions Gaiman has written to other people's stuff - a veritable Must Read list for those ignorant of modern fantasy and SF. (I went out and bought Hope Mirrlees' 'Lud-in-the-Mist' and Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination' purely on Gaiman's recommendation. Why? Because if a writer whose work I love recommends another writer I have never read, isn't it stupid to ignore the word of someone better-read in the subject than oneself? If Wittgenstein praised the work of Frege, I wouldn't refuse to read the work of Frege on the grounds that it's 'slavish' to do so purely because Wittgenstein recommended it. Instead, I should assume that Wittgenstein knew what he was talking about.)
This is a fine book, but don't buy it as an introduction to Neil Gaiman. If you want that, get the first couple of volumes of 'Sandman'. Or if for some odd reason you can't face reading a comic, get 'Coraline' - the eeriest and most alarming children's story I have read for years. I have a one-year-old daughter and I am sorry that it will be some years before I dare to read her 'Coraline' as a bedtime story.
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by Michael Zulli
by Neil Gaiman
![Neverwhere - The Complete BBC Series [1996] [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51aa1Lex-fL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Gary Bakewell
by Neil Gaiman
by Andrew Smith
