Book Review: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

I saw the movie when it came out, expecting a nice children's film. I was wrong: while aimed at youths, this is by far one of the creepiest stories ever told. Thinking of the Other Mother still makes my spine cold. I loved that film, so I read the book.

PLOT. - When Coraline Jones and her parents move into a boring old house, Coraline is desperate to find something to do, so she goes exploring. She finds nothing at first, and then she finds an old door sealed shut by layers of paint. Her mother cuts open the layers and opens it, and they find...a brick wall. Disappointed, Coraline leaves, but late that night she follows a mouse to the door, which now leads to a tunnel. She walks into a parallel world and finds that it is mostly the same, except much better. The food is good, everything is colorful, and the people are nice. They also have jet-black buttons for eyes. Just as Coraline is beginning to get comfortable here, they offer to let her stay forever, with one "teeny little thing she has to do": let the Other Mother sew buttons into her eyes. Coraline has to find a way out of this nightmarish world and then back once the Other Mother steals her original parents. Thoroughly mortifying, this.

I enjoyed the story, but I thought the writing, while not bad, was a bit sparse. Needed more "meat on the bones," as my grade-school teachers would say. Also, I thought it odd that the Other Father tried to help Coraline when he was created and controlled by the Other Mother. You'd think he'd be like a puppet in her bony, knobby hand. With giant nails. Ugh. That part was awesome, but I digress. I actually liked the movie better, just because it filled in the bone-spaces. Both were quite dark, however, and are sure to induce nightmares in all ages. But I liked it. Very good.

Final grade: C

Books, Books, Books!

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I recently discovered the website Goodreads via my former Creative Writing teacher's blog. I already have a Shelfari, but I went ahead and created an account anyway. I like this site because I can sort things onto multiple "shelves". I don't prefer it to Shelfari, nor vice versa, but it's a good site. I found someone from my book club there and discovered we are both huge Neil Gaiman fans. One of the many things I'm currently reading (semi-reading in this case) is the second Sandman graphic novel by Gaiman, titled The Doll's House. I loved the first one because it was of the mind-bending variety and featured the Lord of Dreams. Very interesting.

I am currently nearing the end of Dracula and really liking it. Vampires - when they don't sparkle - are something I love reading about. Until recently my favorite book was Stephen King's second novel, 'Salem's Lot (it is now The Two Princesses of Bamarre, by Gail Carson Levine). If anyone shares this affinity, he or she ought to check out The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler. It contains over a thousand pages of centuries of vampire fiction, including M.E. Braddon, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, Anne Rice, Bram Stoker, and countless others.

I must read Wither by Lauren DeStefano soon for Printz, so that I know what everyone is talking about. I just wanted to have a post about books, and I can guarantee more of these. But for now I must leave.

Au revoir,

Lewis

Doctor Who: Legends of a Time Lord, Christmas Special 2010 - "Blackbird"

I'm subscribed to this great DW podcast, which I've actually been listening to longer than I've been watching the show, and this is, to my knowledge, the most recent episode. It was really interesting, what with the witchcraft and the ravens (crows? I cannot remember) that killed people. The problem was that at the end, there was no "to be continued" despite a cliffhanger, and the episode was not called "Part One". What happened? What happens next? What I do recall is an ad for a Star Trek podcast. It sounded good: I never watched any ST show, but I saw the 2009 movie and it was awesome. Speaking of J.J. Abrams, I ought to post a review for Super 8 soon. I need to watch it again - my mom hasn't seen it yet - and then I should be posting my critique. I'll say this: I really liked it. Really beautiful movie.

On random side notes, I'm listening to Elvis Costello for the first "official" time now. I like the music. I've been going back to my childhood by watching Avatar: The Last Airbender here. I never watched all of them in order, but I've seen many bits and sort of know the story. It's a good show. Finished watching the six-hour epic adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand - also quite good, though not as much as the book, as is usually the case. A couple of exceptions I can think of are Twilight (not a huge fan of the movies, but I can at least bear them more than the books), Iron Man comics (good stories but really cheesy dialog), and two books by Neil Gaiman - Stardust and Coraline (I loved both the book and movie for both Gaimans, but the movies were slightly better in my opinion).

This is the longest post I've done in a while!

Christmas 2010: A Summary

I got up pretty early yesterday--sixish, I'd say. Apparently my sisters were also awake, so we woke our mother up and waited for our dad to arrive. He brought Launa (the big dog) over, and she and Coco (my Chihuahua) played around on the floor for ages. As it got lighter out, we began to open gifts. The most notable of mine, I think, was an Amazon Kindle (which I think I wrote my thoughts about a while back, in the post "Conversion"). I  tend to buy more books than I have time to read, and this was no exception. Just today I finished Cecelia Holland's short story "Dragon's Deep" in The Dragon Book, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. I really liked it, and it even inspired a future project of mine. I love dragons - I always have - and they were among the first things I wrote about.

My sister Laura received a marshmallow shooter...do I really have to describe what went down after that? We pretty much stayed at my mom's house the whole time, although at the end my father took us children over to his house. I woke up this afternoon (I had chatted with Hannah until two in the morning) and saw that it had indeed finally snowed. I ran around in it with Launa for a while, and then walked to Laura's friend's house to see their new kitten. I must say, this snow was worth the wait: Even at the end of the day, after people have been running and driving in it, the white blanket is still a beautiful sight. It actually looks kind of like the background image at the time of this post, what with ice and snow clinging to the skeletal branches.

I've probably mentioned something before about expanding my media (reading/watching/listening to more genres), and I'm now reading a graphic novel, namely, Preludes and Nocturnes, the first of twelve volumes in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. I love Neil Gaiman; he's a very clever man who has done a variety of things in his time. My aunt met him a while back, and I plan to someday do the same. Hannah has been acting as my guide in helping me choose comics/graphic novels to read. Maybe I'll even try Manga sometime. I hope I don't lose reading focus; I am still reading Philosophy for Dummies, along with Olivia's NaNo book from last year. Perhaps I'll remove The Vampire Archives 1: Blood Suckers from my plate. It's not bad, but the others I've been planning to read for a while.

Another thing I have been planning on indulging in is also by Mr. Gaiman: The Graveyard Book. I bought it on the Kindle section of Amazon, and should get around to it sooner or later. We saw Tron: Legacy on Christmas Eve, and I loved it, even though I've not seen the first one. I plan to watch it soon. Coco and Launa both seemed intent on the Christmas ham, especially after we caved and gave them a few pieces. (Note: LAUNA is my sister LAURA's dog. It was her clever idea to give the animal such a clever name.) I talked to my mom on the phone today, and she said Coco wanted to go outside, however, when she opened the door, he felt the wind and ran the other way. Last night, at my dad's house, we watched David Cross (whom I was new to)--he is hilarious, but curses quite a bit. Wow, this was a long post. Seeing as I read faster when off of school, I shall go an do that now.

To all a good night,
LMW

Oh, and here is a link to the video in which I discuss winter holidays.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4SzkwngskU

American Gods

I believe this is my first Blogger book review. The title of the novel is in the title of the post: American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It is by far the best novel I've read so far by Mr. Gaiman, the other two being Stardust and Coraline. He is a great writer, says I, and this would make a great film. It begins with Shadow Moon (funny name, eh?) being released from prison after a three-year sentence. On the day of his release, he learns that his wife, Laura, has been killed in a car crash. On the plane ride home, he meets a man man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. Wednesday offers Shadow a job: to protect Wednesday and act as a bodyguard, and not to ask questions. A storm rocks the plane, but Wednesday says that a far bigger storm is coming. And one does, toward the end, both literally and metaphorically.

Actually, I won't tell the entire plot here for two reasons: I don't want to spoil it, and I don't remember every little detail. The only flaw I could think of was that it had a few coincidences for plot convenience, but no book is perfect. I will say that many gods from many cultures are featured in the book (but not Greek!), and that it is what I call an R-rated book: a lot of cursing, sex, violence, etc.

If you want to know how it ends, read it. But I'll say this: It had more elaboration than Coraline and more "plants and payoffs" than Stardust. All in all, a very good book. It took me a short while once I really began to read intensely, which gave me an idea: I should have a weekly "reading night" in which I try to finish or at least get really far into a book. For some reason, I automatically thought of Tuesday as a night for this.

I suppose I should grade the book. Final grade: B+/A-

Reading Assignment

So on Monday, I found out that my English class is doing this thing. Yes, a thing. We have to choose a book outside of school (or from our media center) that is over 150 pages long and read it in four or five weeks. There's probably some kind of report involved at the end, but I haven't actually heard about that. I thought about reading Cornelia Funke's newest novel Reckless, but it was 300-some-odd pages, and I thought I might challenge myself/show off a bit more. I thought about doing something by Peter Straub. War and Peace seemed a bit too long to read in that space of time. I eventually settled on a 588-pager by Neil Gaiman, known as American Gods. I've read a couple of his books (Stardust and Coraline), his story "Orange", and I own both of the aforementioned books as well as Year's Best SF 14, which contains "Orange". I also possess a collection known as Smoke and Mirrors. He's a great writer and storyteller, and this one is proving amazing so far. I can say this: There is more cursing (like a Stephen King novel), and it is quite dark. It involved one of the most explicit and directly stated sex scenes I have read, which ended up with the man being trapped inside the woman. There is a character who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. This should be a breeze and a delight to read, although I put down Dracula to read it (I had already put down The Stand to read Dracula for Halloween). I sometimes read a bit more slowly during times of schooling, but this should not be affected, seeing as it is, strictly speaking, for school. In class we are also reading Elie Wiesel's Night. I rather suspect this project might be due to the fact that (wipes tear) a lot of people don't read these days. A friend of mine showed me a minimally short book and opened it, showing me how big the print was. I suppose he thought he would somehow benefit from going easy on himself like that. He is a nice bloke, but not a reader. I'm just glad that I am.

Irrelevant notes: I am not doing NaNoWriMo this year. ~ My job is over for this year, but I can pretty much assure you I'll be returning. ~ Did I mention that I am most likely a descendant of Percy Bysshe Shelley? ~ I'm SO FREAKING EXCITED about Deathly Hallows!!! ~ Irrelevant notes...good idea! I should make this a regular thing.