"The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman

This is a really delightful book, would recommend for any age.

Gaiman always strikes me as a bit of a balance: always clever, inventive, sometimes a bit cute, sometimes a bit gothy (for lack of a better way to put that), always a bit meta-interested in story, and I sometimes feel like he's about 2 degrees of tilt from going too far in any of those directions.

This is one is perfect.

Charming, but not cloying. Surprising, without feeling like it was manipulated to be so. Gaiman's core story and characters here are deft and natural-feeling, enough so that he can quietly insert some jokes (like the classic mummy/vampire/werewolf mashup, or the Jacks) without abrading the reader. The detail-work here is delightful, setting up a whole atmosphere of calm, shot through with vivid little snippets and a kind of horrific-comic tone, or comic-horrific, that might be Gaiman's signature move: in anyone else's hands it would collapse into Burton-esque vaudeville, but here the innocence of the protagonist, and the general plain goodness that surrounds him, allows us to run into murderers and monsters, ghouls and night-gaunts, in a way that keeps the horror, delighting fantasy, and quiet humor running simultaneously.

Podcast #2- American Gods w/ While Reading and Walking's Leah von Essen

Happy to announce that our second podcast is live! We're joined by Leah von Essen from While Reading and Walking to talk about Neil Gaiman's American Gods, the television adaptation of which is premiering soon.

Download Directly (mp3) | RSS Feed | iTunes | Google Play

• 0- Introductions
• 2:42- Upcoming Events
• 4:42- Main Discussion
• 18:13- Thoughts on other Gaiman works & adaptations
• 25:14- "Hard Question" about belief & religion
• 32:25- Questions about Sandman & other gods appearing in American Gods
• 35:44- What else have you been reading?
• 38:08- Credits

Be sure to check out Leah's site, While Reading and Walking. You can also catch her on Book Riot, and I highly recommend following her on Twitter: @reading_while. Leah also mentions some reading projects like Read Diverse Books.

Besides American Gods, we reference many other works by Gaiman. Non-Gaiman references include:

• Fiction by Jorge Luis Borges
• Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Binti and other works by Nnedi Okorafor
• The collection The Djinn Falls in Love, which includes stories by Gaiman, Okorafor, and many more.

Our events-reader this episode is Mary Auber from the Weird & Wonderful club, which meets at City Lit Books. You can find lots of meeting notes from Weird & Wonderful on Positron.

Our music is provided by Pelafina. Check them out on Facebook and Bandcamp!

Hope you like the show! Questions, comments? Sound off in the comments, or drop us a line at positronchicago@gmail.com.

Blackstone FSF: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Good, quick meeting on Neil Gaiman's "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" with the Blackstone Library's Fantasy & Science Fiction club on Monday. Some new (to me faces) at group, including occasional group-attender and author Shane Holbach, who actually is sharing a table of contents with Gaiman (and a slew of other fantastic authors) in a YA Speculative Fiction Anthology from Twelfth Planet.

For a surprising number of folks at the table, this was their first time with Gaiman, which is kind of interesting. "Ocean" is really good, lyrical, but it's an unusual starting place: not the tour de force of "American Gods" (2001), not a "Now A Feature Film!" like "Coraline" (2002) or "Stardust" (1999); at least in the circles I run in, the "Sandman" comics (1989-1996) are almost universally the entry-point.

I really, really like Gaiman's work at shorter lengths--"Smoke & Mirrors" (1998) and "Fragile Things" (2006) are highly recommended, and his latest collection, "Trigger Warning", just hit shelves. Additionally, his children's/YA-ish lit game is very strong, whether that's dark fairy-tales like "Coraline" (illustrated by Dave McKean) or playful illustrated works like "Fortunately, The Milk" (2013, ill. Skottie Young). "The Ocean at the End of the Lane", while not necessarily for younger readers, is told primarily from a child's perspective, has a sort of childish straight-forward prose style, and is quite short--close to the novella range, really--thus combining some of Gaiman's strengths. Indeed, despite the child's perspective, I think this is one of the most mature and measured I've seen Gaiman--there is a big dose of autobiographical material here, and the fantastic, alternating terrifying/comforting world of the child's story resonates very nicely with the larger framing narrative, the grown man remembering with some amount of melancholy.

The group had lots of praise for the style of the book, calling it a "prose poem" and noting how it's both "utter simplicity, but tremendously atmospheric".

Windycon Clubs!

 Phandemonium & Chi-SF, Ancillary Justice & Good Omens

Trekked out to Lombard, IL to visit Windy Con 41 for the day yesterday, mostly for a chance to sit down with the Phandemonium & Chicago Speculative Fiction Community reading groups.