Too Much of a Good Thing?

neverwhereYes, I do think that there can be too much of a good thing. While reading Stardust, I figured out that reading four books might be too much to ask of any author. There was no reason for me not to connect with Tristran or Yvaine that I can think of, but I didn’t. I really think that I ran into author fatigue. It makes sense, too. I’m not much of a series reader because of similar reasons. I need something new. I’ll even take that a step further. I get tired of stand-alone books within the same genre or time period as well. From what I’ve been able to gather on Twitter, I’m not alone in this.

When I first conceived of Neverwhere and Beyond month, I decided that I would read Neverwhere, American Gods, Stardust, The Graveyard Book, Coraline, and Fragile Things. To date, I’ve read all by American Gods and Fragile Things. I had been saving American Gods for last because I’ve heard it is amazing. Fragile Things get’s iffier reviews overall, so I fear that reading it might put me full-fledged into a Neil Gaiman funk. I don’t want that. Also, I don’t want overload to take away from my reading experience with American Gods. More than anything else, I want to be in full-on anticipation mode when I pick up that book.  I don’t want that to change.

So, I think I’m going to hold off reading those until later to give myself some time and space. This will also be a lesson learned for next year. I’m hoping to make October or November a spotlight month for a new-to-me author. I enjoyed my spotlight on Erika Mailman in 2008 and I have enjoyed Neil Gaiman this year. Going forward, I might spread it out over two months or just select fewer books. The key thing is to keep things interesting.

Leave a comment to this post for a chance to win one of the last two WWNR (I decided in the end that “What Would Neil Read” was better than WWND) bookmarks I’ve made. I promise to publish the pictures this weekend. If you leave a comment you can also enter to win one of the many prizes available during Neverwhere and Beyond Month. Use code: N&B-2Much.

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November 25, 2009 | Filed Under Books, Neverwhere and Beyond | 11 Comments 

Wonderful News about Makensie!

At the end of September, I posted about the missing daughter of one of my co-workers, Makensie.  I am so pleased to let you know that I just spoke to her mother.  She was found in California and mother and daughter are on their way home.  It will be a long drive, but they are happy to be back together again.

Thank you so much for all of your thoughts and prayers.  What a great day!

November 24, 2009 | Filed Under About Literate Housewife | 9 Comments 

#215 ~ Stardust

Cover of Stardust

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Tristran Thorn has an interesting background.  His father was born in Wall, behind it’s wall.  His mother was born in Faerie and has never been to Wall.  The closest she came was to the Market that resides just outside of Wall every nine years.  When Tristran was born, he was left by the wall with only his name.  His father and his new wife took Tristran in and raised him.  Tristran grows up in Wall not knowing of how he got there.  On the brink of adulthood, he falls in love with the most beautiful girl in Wall and, in an attempt to win her love, he vows to go out into the world in search of the star they saw fall from the sky.  Stardust is the story of Tristran’s journey through Faerie and back.

neverwhereStardust did not capture my imagination and heart the way that The Graveyard Book, Neverwhere, or even Coraline did.  I liked Tristran’s character and what woman wouldn’t want a man to promise to go out and bring back a fallen star to her as proof of his love and worthiness?  For whatever reason, something was missing for me with this novel.  It had such imaginative people and places.  I thought the sub-plot with the nasty sons of Lord Stormhold was interesting and I liked how that story and others were weaved into Tristran’s travels.  It even contained the tree that Neil wrote for Tori Amos.  It isn’t that I didn’t like the book.  I just never got into it the way I had hoped.  There isn’t one concrete thing I can point to that explains this.  Perhaps it’s just that I don’t typically read four books by the same author in such quick succession or that I’m tired in general.  All in all Stardust may not have been the strongest Neil Gaiman I have read this month, but it is as good if not better than much of what I have read this year.

To enter for a chance to win the prizes for this theme month, leave a comment here and then go to the Neverwhere and Beyond page and use the following code: N&B-R4.

Other Voices:

The Bluestocking Society
Becky’s Book Reviews

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November 23, 2009 | Filed Under book review, fantasy, fiction, male author | 13 Comments 

A Song for Saturday

We have a new radio station in Roanoke – 101.5 The Music Place.  When Danny sent me a link to their homepage to take a look at their playlist archives, I think he was in shock.  A radio station like this?  In Roanoke?  It seems impossible, but it’s true.  It makes me think that radio isn’t dead after all.  The very first time I listened to the station, on my way to meet Jaime from Confessions of a Bibliophile (had a great time once again!), I heard my new favorite song: “I and Love and You” by The Avett Brothers, a band out of North Carolina (so there’s hopes of seeing them live).  Yeah, I’m hooked.  I just might get up to speed on some modern music now.  I thought I would share this gem with you today.  Enjoy!


Not too hard on the eyes, either…

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November 21, 2009 | Filed Under About Literate Housewife | 2 Comments 

#214 ~ Coraline

Cover of Coraline

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Coraline, a vivacious and curious only child, has moved with her parents into a large old house that has been subdivided into four units.  She has odd neighbors whom she occasionally visits, but she feels alone for the most part.  Her parents, although home, seem always to be working, and there are no other children around.  It is while following her father’s suggestion of counting windows and doors throughout the house that she discovers a little locked door in the one room in the house that is rarely used.  Her mother finds the key, but it opens only to a brick wall separating sections of the house – or so Coraline thought at first.  What Coraline later finds in the dark and without her parent’s knowledge is that this door leads to her other world.  Coraline’s other world is ruled by her Other Mother.  At first, she is charmed by her Other Mother and Father even though their eyes are simply black buttons.  They take great interest in her and make true home-cooked meals.   While she might enjoy the attention, she soon discovers how sinister Other Mother is and she is forced to save herself and her true parents from the world through that little door.

Coraline was a much different reading experience for me than The Graveyard Book or Neverwhere.  While Other Mother is a creepy, evil character, she isn’t developed in the same way as Gaiman’s other villains.  Her edge comes from her physical presence, while the ghouls or Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemaar make themselves apparent through their dialog.  I found more delight in the Vandemaars and Bishops of Bath and Wells, but writing the Other Mother this way did bring spunky Coraline firmly front and center.   What wasn’t there for me in the way of banter, Coraline made up with her bravery and ingenuity.  She is not afraid to get up and chase a shadow through a strange house and, when push comes to shove, she puts others before herself.  She takes responsibility for her own problems and throws a thrilling tea party, too.  In those ways, she was very real to me.

neverwhereWho can remember daydreaming about having the perfect parents?  I most certainly can.  The parents in this fantasy fluctuated from kings and queens to Luke and Laura (yeah, I’m dating myself here).  While I never had a problem with my mother’s cooking like Coraline did, there were many things that my Other Mother would have done better and with more finesse.  What Coraline points out so beautifully is that often the characteristics and actions we prescribe to our “perfect parents” would in fact prove detrimental to us, at least to some extent.  One of the things I remember longing for in my parental dream team was the permission to stay up as late as I desired.  Had my parents allowed me to do that, they wouldn’t have been parenting at all.  There’s no possibility that I could have performed at my best at school if I was exhausted all of the time.  Regardless, getting whatever you want eventually loses its luster precisely because it’s not what you really need.  You need parents who love you, take care of you, and provide you with the discipline you need to lead your most healthy, productive life.

Coraline reaffirmed my preference for reading a novel before seeing the film.  We rented and watched “Coraline” a couple of months ago.  I enjoyed the movie a great deal and loved what Tim Burton did with the animation.  However, there was a character in the movie that played a prominent role that did not exist in the book.  I spent a third of the novel waiting for him to arrive on the scene only to realize that he would never come.  It was a distraction and I wished that I had come to this novel with a clean slate.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed this novel a great deal and read it in less than 24 hours.  I look forward to the day when I can read this with my daughters – and not just to put the fear of the Other Mother in their hearts (hey, they probably think they’ve already got one… LOL!)

To enter for a chance to win the prizes for this theme month, leave a comment here and then go to the Neverwhere and Beyond page and use the following code: N&B-R3.

***

I won my copy of this novel from a contest hosted by Bermudaonion’s Weblog.  Thanks, Kathy!

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November 20, 2009 | Filed Under Young Adult, book review, fiction, male author | 14 Comments 

#213 ~ Crossed Wires

Cover of Crossed Wires

Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton

Peter has an accident along the road near his house after avoiding running over a cat.  He calls into his insurance company and happens to speak with Mina.  When he is involved in a second accident just a short while later, he calls his insurance back requesting her specifically.  Through the course of helping him out after a second accident in just a short while, Mina learns that he is a widower with young twin daughters approximately the same age as her daughter.  She herself is a single mother living in her mother’s flat.  When her mother moved in with her boyfriend, she left the flat to Mina’s care.  There she is not only raising her daughter  Sal, but her unruly teenage sister as well.  When Mina calls Peter at home to let him know that his second accident would not count against him, a quiet over-the-phone friendship begins.  They share each other’s sorrows despite the distance between Peter’s higher education lifestyle and Mina’s working class one.  Can they also find love?

I picked this novel up several times since it first arrived.  I think the cover is adorable and I quite liked the coincidence that brought Peter and Mina together in the first place.  It was the differences between American English and British English that kept me from reading past the first chapter.  It isn’t that I couldn’t understand what was written (there was some pop culture references and slang that went over my head), but it was the pacing of the language and the colloquialisms that kept tripping me up.  For example, when I read something such as “going to hospital” instead of “going to the hospital,” it makes me stumble.  It took me several chapters to get into the flow of things.  Once I did, I enjoyed picking up new words and expressions.

Crossed Wires is character-based book.  It spends a great deal of time developing its characters and telling their story.  Despite some fast paced scenes, much of the book focuses specifically on Mina and Peter’s internal life and the joys and challenges that surround single parenting.  In that, I felt it mirrored life as it actually is.  It was more a view of a slice of their lives than it was about any one event or plot line.  It never seemed to go anywhere.  I was convinced that when Peter took the trip to help Mina out during a crisis that things would start to happen, but I was mistaken.  This did frustrate me while reading the novel, but it is precisely the lack of split second drama and over-the-top happenings that make me look back on this novel as fondly as I do.  Traveling through the lives of ordinary people at their speed in a book is an interesting way to experience a culture different from your own.  I enjoyed Peter’s and Mina’s story and I can imagine them happily spending the rest of their lives getting to know each other better.

*****

I want to thank the author for sending me a review copy of this novel.

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November 17, 2009 | Filed Under book review, female author, fiction | 8 Comments 

#212 ~ Neverwhere

Cover of Neverwhere

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere is the story of Richard, a good man who seems to be meandering through his life without much of his own purpose or direction.  He is engaged to Jessica, an almost domineering woman who is happy to treat him as if he isn’t good enough for her.  Richard seems readily oblivious to her personality until he finds a bloody, beaten young woman lying on a London street on the way to a dinner with Jessica’s boss.  When he takes the decision to pick this unknown girl up and take her to his apartment where she can be safe, Jessica is furious and ends their engagement.  He had no idea at the time that there would be such dangerous and complicated implications resulting from his decision to be a Good Samaritan.  Whether Richard took his fiance’s threat seriously, bringing Door back to his apartment alters his life forever.  Door was from the London Below and as a result of his involvement with her and the two bounty hunters from Below, Richard is no longer a part of the London Above.  Nor is he fully a part of Door’s world.  He needs to shake himself out of his sluggish approach to life in order to survive.

I am the type of person who loves to delight in the mayhem caused by the bad guys.  It’s nearly a love to hate type of situation.  Not every dark character makes me feel this way, though.  The miscreant must be  crafty, intelligent, and have just a tad bit of an advantage over the hero or heroine.  These are the malfeasants that force the hero or heroine to reach deep within themselves to rise to the occasion.  As with The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman proves in Neverwhere that he is a master at bringing to live some of the most wonderful villains.  Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemaar, London Below’s most talented assassins tasked with the the apprehension and murder of Door, were nothing short of a delight for me.  They kept Richard, Door, and Hunter on their toes and always kept a step ahead of them.  Their cocky impatience brought a smile to my face and their dialog was in many ways the highlight of this novel for me.

The more I think ab0ut Neverwhere, the more I compare it to the basic storyline of the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”

  • After taking action to help or protect someone else, both Richard and Dorothy find themselves in an unfamiliar world whose rules are foreign and oftentimes frightening.
  • Both novels include a small band of the most unlikely characters with their own motivations on the same dangerous quest at the request of a magical entity.
  • All Richard and Dorothy want is to go back home.

While there isn’t always a direct connection between Dorothy and Richard, they both are forced to face their greatest fears from both the outside world and within themselves in order to survive these foreign worlds and keep any hope of ever returning home, a place they never fully appreciated in the first place.  Without forcibly being removed from their comfort zones, they never would have  lived up to their full potential.  Dorothy would have spent her life on the farm dreaming of those better places over the rainbow while Richard would have continued to go through the motions of his life.  Richard and Dorothy needed their journeys.  It was their salvation.

neverwhereThis novel is the first book I’ve ever owned by Neil Gaiman. It was gifted to my by the lovely Jena from Muse Book Reviews. She sent it to me along with a copy of American Gods in hopes that I could get his autograph. Unfortunately, that never happened, but I treasured the book nonetheless. Now, I can also say that I treasure the story as well.  I have found this month that I’m not too old for the fantastical.

To enter for a chance to win the prizes for this theme month, leave a comment here and then go to the Neverwhere and Beyond page and use the following code: N&B-R2.

Other Reviews

Just A Reading Fool

If you’ve reviewed this novel, please let me now and I’ll add a link to your review, too!

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November 16, 2009 | Filed Under Neverwhere and Beyond, book review, fiction, male author | 18 Comments 

Birthday Bash Winners (finally…)

Over a month ago I celebrated my birthday by giving away 8 books: 6 of my own and 2 from Danielle at Sourcebooks (thanks again, Danielle!). I meant to draw the winners the week of the girls’ birthdays, but that was a hellish week and I’m just now feeling like I’m fully recovering. I may not be prompt on when drawing prizes, but hopefully these prizes were worth the wait for the lucky winners:

Goody Bag #1: The Tudor Rose by Margaret Campbell Brown (compliments of Sourcebooks) goes to…

Alessandra from Out of the Blue

Goody Bag #2: A Match for Mary Bennet by Eucharista Ward, O.S.F. (compliments of  Sourcebooks) goes to…

Stephanie

Goody Bag #3: The Trials of Honorable F. Darcy by Sara Angelini goes to…

Teresa W.

Goody Bag #4: Foreign Tongue by Vanina Marsot goes to…

Melody from Melody’s Reading Corner

Goody Bag #5: Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story by Kim Powers goes to…

Jaime from Confessions of a Bibliophile

Goody Bag #6: The Devil’s Company by David Liss goes to…

Marg from Reading Adventures

Goody Bag #7: Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross goes to…

Lahni from Nose in a Book

Goody Bag #8 Sorrow Wood by Raymond L. Atkins goes to…

Serena from Savvy Verse & Wit

Congratulations to all of my winners! I’ll be sending you an email, but if you see this post first, please send me your mailing address.  I hope you enjoy your goody bags!

November 12, 2009 | Filed Under book giveaway | 10 Comments 

WWND Bookmark Winners

neverwhereThanks to everyone who wished Neil Gaiman a happy birthday on the 10th.  I’ve drawn the winners of the as-of-yet-still-in-the-dream-phase WWND bookmarks and ALA Coraline bookmarks:

Zia from My Life in Not So Many Words

Amy from Ramblings of a Librarian Assitant

Congratulations, Ladies!  I hope to have those bookmarks designed and posted online for my Sunday Salon post.  I’ll get them sent to you in the mail as soon as I can.  Please email me with your mailing address and we’re good to go!

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November 12, 2009 | Filed Under Neverwhere and Beyond | 4 Comments 

They Say It’s Your Birthday, Neil!

birthdaycakeToday is “The Neil’s” birthday!

Here at The Literate Housewife Review, we wish Neil Gaiman the happiest of days.  I have only read two of his books as of today (The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere – review coming Friday).  I’m looking forward to even more in the month ahead.

In celebration of this momentous day, two lucky people who leave a comment within the next 24 hours wishing our man of the month a happy birthday will win a Coraline bookmark (see prizes post) as well as a hand made “WWND” (What Would Neil Do) bookmark that I’m making.  I don’t have the prototypes completed, but I think they’ll be appropriate for the author and subject matter. LOL!

All those who leave comments on this post can also enter for the big drawing (again, see prizes post) at the end of the month.  The code is N&B-HB.

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November 10, 2009 | Filed Under Neverwhere and Beyond | 17 Comments 

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