My last 5 books: Gaiman and King (IIII)

1. A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff, by Neil Gaiman. This is a compilation with mostly short-stories, but also some speeches and an interesting essay about the Brothers Grimm and their storytelling. I only skimmed through the speeches tbh, but the short-stories were as good as usual. I had read Jerusalem, Feminine Endings and Orange before. Feminine Endings was just as creepy as the last time I read it, and Orange is a really cool sci-fi story. Jerusalem still doesn't make sense to me, half the time I don't know where we are in that story or what is happening, but the underlying tone of the story is really interesting, which makes me like the story despite my confusion. The essay about the Brothers Grmm was probably the highlight of this compilation imo. It dealt with the problems that oral storytelling are facing when written down, given the fact that there are so many versions of it. The essay comments on the first published version by the Brothers Grimm from the 19th Century and how this version differs from the stories we know today. Love it.

2. Love, Fishie, by Maddy & Neil Gaiman. This one was extremely cute. It's mostly written by Gaiman's then 8-year-old daughter Maddy. The poems in it were simple and obviously written by a child, but I couldn't help smiling because the whole thing was so cute. Gaiman's own poems in this Collection were only replies to his daughter's poems, that they sent each other as emails when Gaiman was out of town for conventions or signings. So cute :3

 

 

 

 

 

3. Skeleton Crew, by Stephen King. This is a short-story collection by Stephen King. Out of all of the stories inside I had only heard of The Mist before. I had seen the movie, but ofc as with The Shining the movie is nothing like the short-story. Most of the stories in this collection were really good, and some of them were actually scary (gj!). The stories I liked the most and which stayed with me after I had finished them were: The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft, Beachworld, Survivor Type, Gramma, and The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet. Gramma was genuinely scary to me, and Survivor Type completely grossed me out. But they were so good. Almost missed my station on the train while reading them.

 

 

 

4. Feeders & Eaters and Other Stories, by Neil Gaiman. This was a very short comic, but Feeders & Eaters was creepy, really creepy, and despite the shortness of it I really liked it. The other two went by too quickly to leave any impressions. Comics do that to me sometimes. I read so fast that they sort of just pass me by. But my general measure of how good something is, is how long the story stay with me, and if they don't stay at all then I can't have liked them very much. The titular story was really good, though.

 

 

 

 

5. Free Speeches. This is a compilation of speeches made by comic book writers talking about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. If I was more passionate about comics I may have read all the speeches from start to finish, but as it is I just casually like the occasional comic, so instead I skimmed through this book. I read the introduction to get a sense of the whole thing, and I really support the whole idea of CBLDF (which is why I bought the first Bundle).