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The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

big wind-up, no finish 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Perhaps the rave reviews here are because this book actually makes sense as part of some larger series by this author. If you aren't familiar with the complete Gaiman, tho', you might find this book hugely disappointing. It starts really well, with a small boy escaping his family's murder and being taken in by ghosts in a graveyard, but you'll never get any real answers. Why were his parents killed? (It has to do with an unexplained prophecy, and you never find out why this kid, or who made the prophecy, or why it matters.) He's run afoul of a secret society, but who they really are, or why we should care, or what they do when they're not threatening this kid, is never explained either. Most of the action at the end is unexplained, off-screen deus ex machina involving some group called the Honour Guard (nope, you guessed it-- you won't find out who they are or why they care either). Is it supposed to be a prequel? Is it supposed to make sense? Or is it a colossal rip-off and a total waste of time? The ghost scenes were good, but for a book with ghosts that actually makes sense and has an ending, you might try Alive in Necropolis... this is just the author making $$ for nothing, I thought.

Editorial Review:

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . .

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.

The Living Dead

Stephen King, Joe Hill, George R. R. Martin, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Laurell K. Hamilton, Joe R. Lansdale, Poppy Z. Brite, Harlan Ellison

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

An Amazing Compendium 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

There are a bunch of good compendiums of short stories that have to do with horror topics, and even a few dedicated to zombies (the editor of The Living Dead even goes out of his way to list a few). But The Living Dead is probably one of the best rounded 'theme' anthologies I've ever come across. Each of the stories are solid and contribute to a rich tapestry of diverse zombie stories. No two are really alike and each one is well-chosen to really get to the reading audience. No matter what your taste, you will find something in this book that you'll like, I think, even if you're not a zombie fan. The author also takes the time to recognize that zombie stories are a wonderful way to address issues of a particularly sensitive nature and chose stories that have solid messages without being preachy, and are well-written in the process. There is no way to describe how much I enjoyed this book and I recommended it to many of my friends. Check it out, even if you're not much of a short story writer, each separate story is another chance to find something you might enjoy.

Editorial Review:

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!" From White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil to World War Z, zombies have invaded popular culture, becoming the monsters that best express the fears and anxieties of the modern west. Gathering together the best zombie literature of the last three decades from many of today's most renowned authors of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror, including Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, George R. R. Martin, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Joe R. Lansdale, The Living Dead covers the broad spectrum of zombie fiction.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, George R. R. Martin, Octavia E. Butler, Jonathan Lethem, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, Jack McDevitt, Tobias S. Buckell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A few really good...and a lot of so-so 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This was a collection of short stories all somehow themed around an apocalpyse - something has gone horribly wrong with the world. I picked it up after enjoying "Earth Abides" by George Stewart so much.

Overall some of the stories were good, some not so good, but on the whole I definitely like longer books as opposed to short stories. I'd rather really get to know characters and see a story unfold than the short stereotypes that are given in this type of collection with the "catchy" endings. I'd certainly prefer to read a good 5-book series as opposed to a collection like this. However it should give me some good ideas for future reading.

Here are my thoughts on each individual story:

Stephen King - The End of the Whole Mess - I liked it, good story, well done, etc... But I've always liked Stephen King so this was sort of a gimme.

Orson Scott Card - Salvage - This story did nothing for me. It's funny, Orson Scott Card is so highly regarded, yet I read "Ender's Game" and didn't love it like so many people do. This story did nothing at all for me.

Paolo Bacigalupi - The People of Sand and Slag - Good one. Deep apocalpyse stuff, and really thought provoking about some of our assumptions about the world. One of the best in the book I'd say.

M. Rickert - Bread and Bombs - This story was "Ok", not the best nor the worst. Interesting twist ending.

Jonathan Letham - How We Got In Town and Out Again - Very entertaining - not the deepest story but a good tale that really kept moving. I liked it.

George R. R. Martin - Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels - My favorite story in the collection. Thought provoking, tense, interesting. Brutal ending. Just really well done and I'll definitely check out something else by him based on this.

Tobias S. Buckell - Waiting for the Zephyr - Good one, not great. Short story (even within the collection) and more hopeful than many.

Jack McDevitt - Never Despair - So-so. Interesting use of a real historical figure, but I felt like the story gave me more questions than answers.

Cory Doctorow - When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - You know, being a programmer you'd think I'd have liked this more, but I didn't. I found it rather boring. Not one of my favorites. But I may check out some of his other stuff simply because of his knowledge on the topic of technology.

James Van Pelt - The Last of the O-Forms - Wow I don't even remember this one, after flipping through it. Clearly didn't make much of an impact on me.

Richard Kadrey - Still Life with Apocalypse - Short, but interesting. But only 3 pages.

Catherine Wells - Artie's Angels - Again, so-so. Painted a good picture and good imagry, but the story didn't really compel me. Still I liked the writing.

Jerry Oltion - Judgment Passed - Very, very good. Of course I like the questioning of the Rapture that's implied here, it meets with my own personal religious beliefs. So I really enjoyed this one.

Gene Wolfe - Mute - Didn't like it at all. Just didn't do anything for me.

Nancy Kress - Inertia - This one was pretty good, interesting. Definitely made you think a bit. She even tried to do some characterization in addition to just moving the story along.

Elizabeth Bear - And the Deep Blue Sea - I think this was a good story, but it was a bit hard for me to understand eactly what was going on all the same. I'd check out more by her though, it was that compelling at least.

Octavia E. Butler - Speech Sounds - Very good one, really made you think, and a good, hopeful ending. Also an author I'd check out more from.

Carol Emshwiller - Killers - Did nothing for me. Sort of interesting start but then got really flat.

Neal Barrett, Jr. - Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus - This was a good story, interesting and compelling, though it felt a bit like a deux ex machina ending.

Dale Bailey - The End of the World As We Know It - Another very good one - it really in its own way made fun of the apocalypse genre, which was entertaining near the end of this book. I liked the tone and style.

David Grigg - A Song Before Sunset - Another good one - thought provoking and deep while still a bit soft on the surface. Well done.

John Langan - Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers - By the time I started this story I was bored with the collection, and this story reads sort of like one long run-on paragraph, and it just didn't do anything for me. I stopped reading it, though it maybe would have been more interesting to me had it been earlier in the book, I don't know. I probably judged this one a bit unfairly.

And that's it. I'll take some notes on future reading based on authors I liked and some of the "for further reading" listed in the book.

Editorial Review:

Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

Love in the Time of Cholera (Vintage International)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 458 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Love conquers all . . . including pedophilia? 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I'm rather shocked by the fanfare for this novel. The sexual escapades were nauseating, and I vomited in my mouth a little when I read about the pedophilia, which Marquez excuses with a shrug of the shoulders and a wave of the hand. And while the idea of unrequited love can be noble, and the thought of seniors feeling giddy again is sweet, there was nothing of nobility, and little sweetness in this book. Love conquers all? Hardly. Fermina Daza was correct the majority of her life; stay away from Florentino Ariza. Don't waste your precious time and degrade your sense of morality in the process.

Editorial Review:

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gregory Rabassa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent, but not typical of Marquez. 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I'm one of those who found One Hundred Years of Solitude fascinating and enjoyable. The style definitely made it for me; Marquez's prose is misty and mythic in a beautifully descriptive way. I never lost interest in the story. It's told in an unusual manner, more like an oral history or legend than a written work. After reading it, I could see why Marquez is called the "South American Faulkner"; the style in One Hundred Years of Solitude can only be compared to a book like The Sound and the Fury. I have called it misty, but it's deeper than that. The haze over Macondo is analogous to the haze of memory itself. I was thoroughly satisfied and amazed by the book. For me to attempt further description of its marvelous intricacies would be to rob you of the full joy of reading it.

I was disappointed, though, when I sampled some of Marquez's other works. In Evil Hour failed to hold my attention at all, and the only novel that has even come close was Love in the Time of Cholera. Marquez was a good author and journalist, but he didn't have the consistency to maintain the style he achieved in One Hundred Years of Solitude. I would wholeheartedly recommend OHYoS to anyone interested in this book or this author, but I would simultaneously warn him or her not to expect to find another book like it. Perhaps it's best that way.

Editorial Review:

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

Lord of the Flies (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

William Golding

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1275 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition. --Jennifer Hubert

The Prophet

Kahlil Gibran

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 263 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

hideous piffle for dimwits 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This book is a sort of Hallmark Greeting card compilation of the type of vacuous garbage-thought that made the 1970s a cultural disaster. Are you a sentimental pacifist who thinks Gandhi was swell, but never heard of the Moriori? Do you think of love as some sort of emotional flatulence that comes and goes the way weather does? Do you think evil is only a result of people being insufficiently nice to one another? Are your views on child rearing that you should let the kids do what they want because they're individuals? Do you think business is evil and soul destroying, and hurts the world more than it helps? Do you think religion is bad, but spiiiiirituality is good? Do you think criminals shouldn't be punished, because it's not really their fault? Do you think a mindless pursuit of pleasure is necessary for a healthy life? Well, if you believe any of these things, and enjoy saccharine sweet sing-songey prose, this book is for you. It comes in an attractive hard cover, making it appear to be a very serious book, on the same level as Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but with more naked lady pictures inside. It will provide you with many prim moments of doltish piety in your cloud cuckoo land. You may even be able to use this tome to pick up on people who are as morally defective as you are.

Personally, I prefer my wisdom to be, you know, at least vaguely wise. If I want florid saccharine language, I'll go read some Browning or other Victorian poetry. You can pick up antique volumes of such stuff for cheap, since books which required effort to write or read are unfashionable these days. They also look nicer on your bookshelf. As a bonus, it might actually be good for you to read Browning, whereas reading Gibran is sort of like giving yourself a mental venereal disease.

Please, humanity, restore my faith in basic human decency: stop reading this book. This book destroys souls and stunts aesthetics. If you must give copies of the book to people, give it to people you don't like. Give this book in the same spirit the British sold Opium to the Chinese. The end result will be much the same if they take the precepts of this silly book seriously.

Editorial Review:

In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions. On the most basic topics--marriage, children, friendship, work, pleasure--his words have a power and lucidity that in another era would surely have provoked the description "divinely inspired." Free of dogma, free of power structures and metaphysics, consider these poetic, moving aphorisms a 20th-century supplement to all sacred traditions--as millions of other readers already have. --Brian Bruya

The New Annotated Dracula

Bram Stoker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Cause for international celebration—the most important and complete edition of Dracula in decades.

In his first work since his best-selling The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger returns with this spectacular, lavishly illustrated homage to Bram Stoker's Dracula. With a daring conceit, Klinger accepts Stoker's contention that the Dracula tale is based on historical fact. Traveling through two hundred years of popular culture and myth as well as graveyards and the wilds of Transylvania, Klinger's notes illuminate every aspect of this haunting narrative (including a detailed examination of the original typescript of Dracula, with its shockingly different ending, previously unavailable to scholars). Klinger investigates the many subtexts of the original narrative—from masochistic, necrophilic, homoerotic, "dentophilic," and even heterosexual implications of the story to its political, economic, feminist, psychological, and historical threads. Employing the superb literary detective skills for which he has become famous, Klinger mines this 1897 classic for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans and introduce the vampire-prince to a new generation of readers.

Coraline Graphic Novel

Neil Gaiman

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Total reviews: 351 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Coraline lives with her preoccupied parents in part of a huge old house--a house so huge that other people live in it, too... round, old former actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible and their aging Highland terriers ("We trod the boards, luvvy") and the mustachioed old man under the roof ("'The reason you cannot see the mouse circus,' said the man upstairs, 'is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed.'") Coraline contents herself for weeks with exploring the vast garden and grounds. But with a little rain she becomes bored--so bored that she begins to count everything blue (153), the windows (21), and the doors (14). And it is the 14th door that--sometimes blocked with a wall of bricks--opens up for Coraline into an entirely alternate universe. Now, if you're thinking fondly of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you're on the wrong track. Neil Gaiman's Coraline is far darker, far stranger, playing on our deepest fears. And, like Roald Dahl's work, it is delicious.

What's on the other side of the door? A distorted-mirror world, containing presumably everything Coraline has ever dreamed of... people who pronounce her name correctly (not "Caroline"), delicious meals (not like her father's overblown "recipes"), an unusually pink and green bedroom (not like her dull one), and plenty of horrible (very un-boring) marvels, like a man made out of live rats. The creepiest part, however, is her mirrored parents, her "other mother" and her "other father"--people who look just like her own parents, but with big, shiny, black button eyes, paper-white skin... and a keen desire to keep her on their side of the door. To make creepy creepier, Coraline has been illustrated masterfully in scritchy, terrifying ink drawings by British mixed-media artist and Sandman cover illustrator Dave McKean. This delightful, funny, haunting, scary as heck, fairy-tale novel is about as fine as they come. Highly recommended. (Ages 11 and older) --Karin Snelson

The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 2

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A MUST 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you like sandman, just a little, so you MUST have this absolute, its needless to say that it is unworldly beautyful, the kind of item that any sandman fan have (they don't have the option: "not to have", if (s)he don't have, (s)he isn't a real fan). It's full with Extras more than 100 pages of mindblowing Sandman's extras.
Really a Top "Must Have" I already have garanteed tne other 2.

Editorial Review:

THE SANDMAN, written by New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman, was the most acclaimed comic book title of the 1990s. A rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly interwoven, THE SANDMAN is also

widely considered one of the most original and artistically ambitious series of the modern age. By the time it concluded in 1996, it had made significant contributions to the artistic maturity of comic books and had become a pop culture phenomenon in its own right.

Now, DC Comics is proud to present this comics classic in an all-new Absolute Edition format. The second of four beautifully designed slipcased volumes, THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL. 2 collects twenty tales of THE SANDMAN and features completely new coloring, approved by the author, as well as never-before-seen extra material.