Friday 30 December 2016

My last 5 books: Gaiman and King

1. Angels and Visitations: A Miscellany, by Neil Gaiman. This is basically a short story collection. There are a few other things in there as well, but mostly a short story collection. I've read most of them before in other collections, and just as before I love the general Neil Gaiman weirdness of it all. My favourites in this collection are the short stories We Can Get Them For You Wholesale, and Babycakes. But his drunken experiment was also fun to read. Wholesale is about a man who wants to hire and assassin to kill his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, but he's pulled in by the bargains the assassin offers and ends up ordering something much larger than a petty murder. Babycakes is almost a poem and it's very short. It tells of how one day all the animals were gone, and instead of using animals for everything that we do, people started using babies, until suddenly, one day all the babies were gone... It's totally morbid, but it gives me chills and I love it.

2. An Honest Answer and Other Stories, by Neil Gaiman. This is three comics. The first one is called
An Honest Answer and is actually quite funny. Gaiman gives an honest answer to the question writers get asked the most: Where do you get all your ideas? And it's hilarious because I can relate. The second one is called Villanelle and it's so short that I honestly can't remember what it's about, but it looks so cool. The third one is called From Homogenous to Honey, and it's scary. Not scary as in horror, but scary as in how true it is. An Honest Answer made me laugh, Homogenous to Honey gave me the creeps. All in all this was a good read.

3. Sweeney Todd and Other Stories, by Neil Gaiman. This is an unfinished graphic novel, which was included in Gaiman's 2015 Humble Bundle. I love the Sweeney Todd legend almost as much as the Jack the Ripper legend. This could've been something very interesting and really good if it had been finished, but in it's current state it's very bland and it has an extremely sudden end. This combination gives it a very low score to me. There is potential, but reading it was kind of boring.





4. Being and Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolous, by Neil Gaiman. This
comic also came from Gaiman's 2015 Humble Bundle. It was entertaining, but at the same time I got the feeling that it was very amateur-ish. It tells the tale of a Roman emperor that no one really hears of anymore, and all the shit he got up to. Entertaining but bland.



5. It, by Stephen King. This is the best King I've read this far in my King marathon. I haven't read It before. I put it off because I'm scared of clowns and because it's so frickin huge. But I decided now that it was time. And it was good. It's slow going, but instead of being boring this slow going just builds tension and I just need to know what happens next. The book doesn't leave my mind and the characters stay with me. And strangely enough, since both books take place in Derry, I kept thinking that Ralph and Lois from Insomnia was somewhere there when all these things happened in It. I didn't even like Insomnia. I was a little bit disappointed by the final form of Pennywise though. I felt like, really? you couldn't think of something better than that? I was surprised that not more of the kids died. I thought it would just be Beverly and Ben left in the end. Richie annoyed me to no end, and I wanted to shoot Eddie's mother. Otherwise I don't really have any complaints :P

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