Awesome volume! To be honest, I have liked the loosely connected stories more than the arcs (my favorite issue in the last volume was "Men of Good ForAwesome volume! To be honest, I have liked the loosely connected stories more than the arcs (my favorite issue in the last volume was "Men of Good Fortune," a medieval/Renaissance story). But through these stories, we see more of how Gaiman's fictional universe works, for example, such as Dream's changing appearance based on who he is interacting with.
"Calliope": This story brings Greek mythology into the Sandman universe. In this chapter, we see writers using musing to attain artificial success.
"A Dream of a Thousand Cats": This is a story from the perspective of cats. It's kind of like a mix of Animal Farm and The Never-Ending Story, so pretty cool but also sad.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream": Great little story set in the late 1500s that connects with "Men of Good Fortune" from the previous volume. He uses the Long Man of Wilmington in an interesting way.
"Façade": Apparently this features a DC character, but I didn't realize it or feel that I was missing anything while reading. Basically, the story starts with a woman working for the CIA comes into contact with the god Ra while on a mission in Egypt. She is disfigured and feels like an outcast....more
This is very different from what I had expected. I feel like the existence of a children's animated version misled me, but it's still different than wThis is very different from what I had expected. I feel like the existence of a children's animated version misled me, but it's still different than what I would have expected even without that.
Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls.”
This is not your fantasy adventure or hero's story. It's the unicorn's story, and that's an existential fever dream. Trying to write about it now, a month after I read it, it feels as ephemeral and of the moment as the sighting of a unicorn itself. As if the most important things can only be held for a short time.
It must be that great power cannot give me whatever it is that I really want. A master magician has not made me happy. I will see what an incompetent one can do.
The unicorn embarks to find the rest of her kind, who live in an endless summer in far-flung woods, after overhearing a human who says there are no more unicorns. Along the way, she pairs up with a few people, notably Schmendrick (yes, Schmendrick), an immortal magician who can't do magic.
Many characters have a different existential problem, and that affects the way they react to the unicorn. There is a lot in there that I doubt I've managed to unpack on my own. I just literally googled "cat in the last unicorn." After viewing the images of an old cat dressed as a pirate, I feel no closer to the truth....more
The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do.
I expected to dislike
The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do.
I expected to dislike this. "Franny," the short story that proceeds the novella "Zooey" mostly reinforced that expectation and made me think I would be in for a long, slogging reading for such a short book. But it turned out to be a pretty interesting and non-traditional story about a family, and needless to say, there is a lot of flair in Salinger's prose.
First off, Zooey is a guy. I went into the story thinking it would be about two female friends, two sisters, etc. But Franny and Zooey are actually brother and sister, the youngest of the Glass kids (a family Salinger apparently wrote about in some of his other works). They were all famous as kids for regularly appearing on a quiz show. They were basically over-educated to the exclusion of other things. The story in "Franny" is picked up by the "Zooey" part. While "Franny" provides important backstory, it's not until reading "Zooey" that you see it fitting into a wider story.
While this is one of the books this year that I think I'll be most glad I read, there are definitely a couple of points that give me pause:
1. There is so much mansplaining in this book. First Lane, then Buddy kinda, then Zooey. In fact, they even define the book's different parts.
2. A 25-year-old man talking down to his mother, calling her fatty, living in her house. Maybe it's time to get a damn job, huh, buddy?
3. A lot of ego for people who call the ego of others "lousy."
All in all though, I was pretty amused by this family and the consequences they are dealing with due to their quiz-show background. I would definitely seek out Salinger's other stories about them....more
He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty.
I wasn't excited to start this one; I'd let my boyfriend pick our next audiob
He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty.
I wasn't excited to start this one; I'd let my boyfriend pick our next audiobook (I read along), and he chose this because Bryan Cranston is the narrator. It's a mix of essays and short stories based on the Vietnam War experience of the author and the other men he served with. I wasn't interested in the subject (would rather read about hoplites and testudo formation than guns and bombs). What sold me was good writing, pure and simple.
Specifically, O'Brien repeats traumatic scenes in a way that may represent PTSD, or at least certainly, as he describes it, the way the bad things never stop, just repeat in their own dimension. The repetition also seems to serve as a memorial--we'll remember the shit field, the lemon tree, and the dainty young man (at one point, O'Brien describes death as like being in a book no one is reading). We'll remember the exact words used (bubbles where his head should have been), and the images will start swimming in our own heads.
You won't learn about the Vietnam War reading this book ostensibly about the Vietnam War. This underlines the detachment between participants of war and war itself. Maybe these men, most of them probably drafted, preferred to talk, think, and care about anything besides the war they didn't want to be involved in. There is a big contrast between the stories in this book and stories of wars its participants at least believed in....more
After the first volume, I wasn't sure how much I would like the series. But in this one, Gaiman (afaik) stops using others' comic characters/worlds anAfter the first volume, I wasn't sure how much I would like the series. But in this one, Gaiman (afaik) stops using others' comic characters/worlds and sets the story firmly in his own creation.
The issues of this volume cover such a wide variety of places, times, and stories that it would be hard to finish it without finding something appealing. I knew it was going to be good when it opened in Africa, with a man telling his grandson an ancient story. Right there, it was clear how expansive Gaiman's intents are. Other highlights are a story that takes place across several centuries in a London pub (loved the costume changes!) and a--ah-hem--cereal convention.
Though there were some pretty disparate stories in this volume the overall story was tied to a girl named Rose Walker, the granddaughter of someone we met in the first volume. She's determined to track down her younger brother, who seems to have been misplaced among family members for reasons that are either unclear or I forgot as his mother is still alive and has custody of Rose....more
"He thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife.” “Were you?” “No.” “Then what did you come for?” “To find out why he
"He thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife.” “Were you?” “No.” “Then what did you come for?” “To find out why he thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife.”
This is a book of one liners from about a century ago. Imagine a smartass detective in 1930s Hollywood. Every cliché is here (or started here? or done best here?). The detective also says things sometimes that just come from nowhere that cracked me up. For instance, "Did you know that worms are of both sexes and that any worm can love any other worm?" It's pretty amusing but is just as often sexist or condoning domestic abuse. The women in this book are some of the worst I've read in any book.
While the first half or so went over smoothly, I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed the second half as much. To be honest, I read this about 10 years ago and couldn't remember the plot at all. After rereading, I'm not so surprised. It started out well enough, but the second half becomes a series of characters only there due to deeper and deeper levels of convolution....more
As someone pretty new to comics/graphics novels, I read this mainly with the hope/expectation that this first volume is a starting point that doesn't As someone pretty new to comics/graphics novels, I read this mainly with the hope/expectation that this first volume is a starting point that doesn't represent the whole series (based on what I've read about it and the author's own words). Most issues in this volume are related to a simple quest story. Dream/Morpheus needs to get his magic "tools" back to restore his power.
Several issues seem episodic, as if they are there to get some other comic character a cameo. Some of those were more enjoyable than others. I actually really liked the issue that follows John Constantine despite not being familiar with him.
This volume starts strong with a sometimes generic-seeming middle. The main arc is finished by the final issue of this volume. Dream wonders what to do next, and I can imagine that Gaiman may have been thinking the same things at that point....more