My last five books: Gaiman and King (II)

1. Pet Sematary, by Stephen King. First time I read this was probably 12-13 years ago and back then I thought it was amazing and went on a quest to find more King books; back then translated to Swedish. Then I got sick of old-fashioned 80's translations and stopped reading King. What stayed with me throughout these years from the first time I read the book was the ending, how his wife came back and said 'Hello, darling'. And that was basically all I remembered. Pet Sematary was just as amazing to a 26-year-old as it was to a 13/14-year-old, and it's thus far the best King book in my on-going marathon. I still felt a little annoyed twitch at the end, when I realised that from Ellie's POV absolutely nothing was resolved. Her baby brother was still dead, her cat was still (technically) dead, and now her mother is dead and most likely going to kill her father. She's better off just staying with her grandparents. King is still the master of leaving loose threads.

2. Outrageous Tales from the Old Testament. This is a comic book from Neil Gaiman's 2015 Humble
Bundle. It's a collaboration between a whole bunch of comic book writers and Gaiman isn't in all of the comics. Now, I'm a firm atheist, but I went to religious daycare and so I knew all of these stories from before. But you don't really consider exactly how outrageous they are until you see them in pictures. The Old Testament is completely outrgeous through and through. I particularly liked the one where Moses went up on the mountain to get the ten commandments from God and his people were listening below and following them precisely, which ended in Moses having no people at all left when he came down because everyone had been worthy of being killed for something according to the ten commandments xD I hope the Old Testament made sense when it was written, otherwise I have no idea how a whole religion sprung from it.

3. Rare Bit Friends #2-3, by Neil Gaiman. A very short comic included in Gaiman's 2015 Humble Bundle. It's his contributions to a short-lived magazine called Rare Bit Friends. All of these short comics are based on Gaiman's actual dreams, which was neat to read. All of them delightfully weird. I particularly liked the ones with the organic spaceship and the one with the rockstar (Alice Cooper cameo!)

4. Sculpture Stories, by Neil Gaiman. A short-story collection from Gaiman's 2016 Humble Bundle. Some of these I had read before. The stories included in this collection are:
• "Don't Ask Jack"; about a broken jack-in-the-box that the children won't touch because of an inert feeling that the box is evil and/or haunted.
• "Good Boys Deserve Favours"; about a boy who plays the double-bass. He's being told that if he cares for the instrument, then the intstrument will care for him. And it does.
• "The Sea Change"; a song or long poem about a sailor and his longing for the sea even after the sea almost drowned him.
• "Sweeper of Dreams"; a story that explains why people go crazy if they don't dream or sleep...
• "The Stuff Dreans are Made of..."; an interview with Neil Gaiman.
• "The Daughter of Owls"; a story about a girl who was raised in the woods by the animals, and protected by them when the men came.
I really enjoyed Don't Ask Jack, The Sweeper of Dreams and Daughter of Owls. They were all that sort of creepy stories that I enjoyed. Creepy without being scary.

5. A Fall of Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. A story-collection from Gaiman's 2016 Humble Bundle. This book collects a bunch of poems and a short story from the Stardust universe. Not really being a fan of poems in general, my favourite from this book was the short-story. I kind of like the fact that it was a sort of growing up story for girls. Not really coming-of-age, but still about a girl growing up ahead of her older brothers they way we sometimes do. But mostly, this book reminded me that it's been way too long since I read Stardust and that should be remedied.