Fragile Things

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The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch - 3/5 - quirky little story to accompany a Frazetta painting I don't know why it is, but I just have this image in my mind of Neil Gaiman as a proper author. I don't mean 'proper' to mean that he is officially an author (though he is), or that he does it correctly (though he does), but 'proper' in terms of vocabulary and ideas being more on the... non-vulgar side of things. I have this picture in my head, despite reading his books and stories and blog posts and comics, and having seen him live with his wife Amanda Palmer, who seems to revel in vulgarity at times... and none of these things support this idea I have of him. But still it persists. What a delightful collection of Gaiman's short stories! I was very impressed, liking this even better than I expected. It very nearly got a full 5-stars, but I honestly have a hard time giving that rating to a collection of short stories. They have to really 'wow' me for that. Most of the time the stories, being short, don't really capture the full suspension of belief that's required to become fully absorbed and lost. The more lost I get, the more big stars it'll get.

The Problem of Susan - 3/5 - whatever happened to Susan from the Narnia books (WARNING: explicit, not for children) The emperor was contented by this, for the better part of a year, and then he noticed within himself a growing dissatisfaction with his island, and he began, in the time before he slept, to plan another map, fully one one-hundredth the size of his dominions. Every hut and house and hall, every tree and hill and beast would be reproduced at one one-hundredth of its height. The Hidden Chamber" (3 stars)- I think I just dislike poems. I recall from Stephen King's latest he had some in there and I just hard cringed at them. The Problem of Susan– this story was written in response to the character Susan in Narnia and also how children's fiction came to be. I like how human professor Hastings is when she talks about tragedy and how is clashes with Brenda's insistence in believing that the author has moral authority in the world he created. I loved how Mary Poppins was introduced into the story. (4 stars) I don’t remember where I was or when on the day I came up with this little Mobius story. I remember jotting down the idea and the first line, and then wondering if it was original—was I half remembering a story I’d read as a boy, something by Fredric Brown or Henry Kuttner? It felt like someone else’s story, too elegant and edgy and complete an idea, and I was suspicious of it.One scholarly book I read explained that any fairy story in which a character falls asleep obviously began life as a dream that was recounted on waking by a primitive type unable to tell dreams from reality, and this was the starting point for our fairy stories—a theory which seemed filled with holes from the get-go, because stories, the kind that survive and are retold, have narrative logic, not dream logic.

I read the Narnia books to myself hundreds of times as a boy, and then aloud as an adult, twice, to my children. There is so much in the books that I love, but each time I found the disposal of Susan to be intensely problematic and deeply irritating. I suppose I wanted to write a story that would be equally problematic, and just as much of an irritant, if from a different direction, and to talk about the remarkable power of children’s literature. INSTRUCTIONS Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire - 3/5 - one of Gaiman's earliest tales, reworked for an anthologyFifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot" (1 star)- No. I just read that thing twice and just rolled my eyes. Inventing Aladdin" (3 stars)- Another poem taking a look at Scheherazade. This was one of the few poems in the collection that I enjoyed. One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. And then he paused. Far away in the gardens they could hear the sound of a nightingale. But this map land, confided the emperor, is still only the beginning. For even as it is being constructed, I shall already be pining for and planning my masterpiece.

It seemed like a fine title for a book of short stories. There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.” Charming, at times creepy, and good fun . . .[W]ell-worth adding to any collection; highly recommended." —LibraryJournal Good Boys Deserve Favors" – inspired by a statue by Lisa Snellings-Clark of a man holding a double bass The stories aren't surprisingly good, because I expect everything Neil writes to be good, but they are surprising AND good. So many of these stories gave me an interesting perspective on something, and made me a part of the story for a little while. Really excellent short fiction pulls you into the story and doesn't want to let you go. You want to think about it, and examine it, and expand on it... and that's what this collection achieved.How to talk to Girls at Parties. Me esperaba más de uno de los cuentos que menciona el libro en la contratapa. No me pareció inquietante ni particularmente interesante. Reality, however, is not story-shaped, and the eruptions of the odd into our lives are not story-shaped either. They do not end in entirely satisfactory ways. Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can color one's entire day. I admire a person who can say so many things, that can share complex thoughts and mixed emotions with simple words: I think at some point I would like to read this physically, since I retain them better when I'm reading visually than when I'm listening, but I will always listen to Neil reading, always. :) The Fairy Reel" (4.5 stars)- I liked the poem and it did have me imagining a young man out in the woods calling to a fairy.