TexanAvenger

I picked up American Gods at a library book sale probably my freshman year in high school and ever since I've been hooked on this guy. While that still remains my favorite of his works, his others are pretty good too. I especially loved his Sandman chronicles and Neverwhere was pretty good too. I'm just wondering if any other TFPers have gotten to read up on his stuff and what y'all thought of him. Maybe we can even get some discussions about his works going, who knows?

Locke

He's gotta be one of my favorite authors. I started with his Sandman stuff and presently own Good Omens, American Gods, Neverwhere, and Stardust. I started reading American Gods again, then school got too busy.

__________________
CUBS WIN, CUBS WIN!!!! - Pat Hughes
"Don't surround yourself with yourself." Yes

docbungle

I liked Good Omens, however I think the rest of his stuff (other than comics) , especialy American Gods, is extremely overrated. He seems to me to be a low-level Clive Barker imitation, circa The Thief of Always / The Great and Secret Show. Reading his fiction feels like he is making it up as he goes along, struggling to make it mesh together at the end.

__________________
Bad Luck City

dtheriault

I don't know about "extremely overrated." I don't know anyone who thinks he's anything beyond a "good" writer which is unusual in the comic world. I have everything of his except for Stardust. I started reading him with Sandman #1.

In many ways I liked Grant Morrison better, especially what he did with Animal Man and Doom Patrol. Wierd Shit. On a side note has anyone ever read the comic book series "Stray Toasters." That was the craziest comic series and it came out in the late 80s when Superman was still a square.

__________________
"Remember, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen." -Homer

Unless you are the freakin Highlander, what is the point in learning how to fight with a sword?

Irishsean

Neverwhere is one of my favorite books, very well written imo. A lot of people don't like his style of writing as its more dry than they are used to.

__________________
There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
Leon Trotsky

FngKestrel

I've got all the graphic novels of the Sandman series, Smoke and Mirrors, Endless Nights, American Gods, and the Dream Hunters. Love the mythologies that he creates.

Incidentally, I think Clive Barker has a foreword in one of the Gaiman's graphic novels.

unregistered092

neil gaiman rocks. neverwhere is my favorite, while the others dont fall very short of it.
still need to get my hands on some sandman stuff though.

Jimellow

Yes!

This is the best writer I have read by choice. By that, I mean discovered on my own.

I picked up Neverwhere years ago and loved it. Then I read more.. Stardust, American Gods, Smoke and Mirrors (parts)..

I started to read Good Omens, but wasn't sure if I would "get it" since I am not religious.

Neverwhere was tops though; just thinking back and how good it was makes me want to read it again right now.

RolandGilead

I once read two sandman paperback but I can`t remember the names.
I was really impressed, some of the best Comics I ever read!

Coppertop

Yes. Good Omens was excellent. I had trouble telling Gaiman's influence in that book however. It seems to me that it was mostly Pratchett. Neverwhere was excellent, as was Sandman. I've read parts of Smoke and Mirrors and liked those as well. Anyone here read Coraline?

Jimellow

I started to read Coraline at the end of summer, and then the semester started and I stopped.

It's easy reading, and was in the children's section of the bookstore.

It seemed good, but I didn't read too much before stopping. I will read again though when I get some time to read what I want.

__________________
Desperation is no excuse for lowering one's standards.

Pellaz

Having also read Barker long before I first read Gaiman, I'm of the exact opposite opinion. Gaiman is to me the evolution of Barker. Having just finished Abarat, I feel this way even moreso. Barkers tales of fantasy satisfied the child in me, and reading them now, are sorely lacking for the adult. Gaiman manages to encaptivate the adult in me without disregarding the child that still exists.

I also agree with Gaiman only being a "good" writer. His strength is not in the words he writes, but the worlds he creates. That said, only being "good" is leaps and bounds above most of the authors that get published.

----

While I found American Gods to be one of the top books written over the last several years, a great deal of Gaimans prose work I do find lacking. Neverwhere was enjoyable but unspectacular, Stardust was a fun fairytale, Smoke and Mirrors had it's hits and misses. Several arcs in Sandman blew me away, while others left me feeling quite meh. All in all, he seems to be learning as he moves forward, which bodes well for his future.

__________________
" ' Big Mouth.
Remember it took three of you to kill me.
A god, a boy, and, last and least, a hero.' "

TexanAvenger

While I liked Good Omens a lot, I had the exact same problem. I knew he had influence in there, but it was hard to pull out where.

And I agree totally with Pellaz about the way that Gaiman writes. It's good, I'll give him that. And he has moments of great writing that are strangely bright and wonderful (I'm thinking the 'I Believe' monologue). But really he shines when it comes to creating a completely different world and making it, after the initial shock of learning its rules, seem the norm. I think American Gods was probably the best at doing this, which is probably why that is my favorite.

By the way, for those who haven't read, or don't remember, the monologue I'm refering to, here it is:

“I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”