I’ve finally finished my first book, Dear Readers! And just to throw you all off the trail, it’s not one from my stack. I’ve done a LOT of bookshopping in the last week or so, and I managed to find a Neil Gaiman anthology and an anthology featuring John Green that I hadn’t read, so Bookstravaganza feels right once again.
I adore everything Neil Gaiman does. He’s an incredibly versatile writer, able to write everything: kids books, YA lit, lengthy novels, short stories, poems, graphic novels, TV episodes, blog posts… I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Gaiman that I didn’t love. He keeps you guessing, too. While he is an incredibly prolific writer, his work is never stale.
Smoke and Mirrors is a great example. It contains mutlitudes: prose poems, rondels, sestinas, stories written about statues, stories in the style of other writers, a story from the perspective of an eleven-and-a-quarter-year-old girl, stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional town of Innsmouth or the writings of Michael Moorcock, re-tellings of fairy tales, and so much more.
The one thig all these tales have in common is that they are CREEPY. They sit with you. I don’t think I’ll ever forget Gaiman’s angelic detective story Murder Mysteries, or the murerous hunt for the best bargain in We Can Get Them For You Wholesale. Snow, Glass, Apple has forever coloured my perception of the Snow White story. But I think my favourite is the 100-word Christmas card story, Nicholas Was… You’ll never look at Santa the same way again.
XO
Books read: 1
Bookstravaganza YEG 
How “creepy” are we talking? Just curious, because this sounds interesting.
I want to borrow (read: steal) this from you.
Creepy as in almost every single story/poem that I finished, I had to stop for a minute and just think, “Holy shit.” Like, goosebumps-all-night, read-with-the-lights-on creepy. But in a really fun way? I don’t know if that makes sense.
Stepanic, you can def borrow it, but you are NOT stealing it. I will fight you over this book.