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Fragile Things

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And it only took me, well, 3 months to make my way through this collection of Neil Gaiman fantasy stories.

But I think I prefer his short story work because it seems more well-crafted and honed to a higher perfection than some of his full length novels, which feel a bit loose at times.Some of the prose poems also seem to be placed in here just because and do not have the same impact as many of his stories, however Gaiman admits in the introduction that he originally did not intend for any of the poetry to be included.

Bitter Grounds' is a traveler looking for another life, and finds one as an anthropologist who studies zombies. Esta es una de las historias lo suficientemente importantes para tener una breve alusión en la contraportada del libro. I remember life, and meeting people as people and not just as things to feed on or control, and I remember what it was to feel something, anything, happy or sad or anything. That's not to say that the author isn't a storyteller - obviously they are, often they just shouldn't do it orally. A boy can walk down the street and see a ghost in the lamplight or another can wake up and find himself in hell.

I found myself speaking to the characters (talking alone to some pages, from a sane person's point of view).

But this is a mostly almost-horror collection of short story ideas rendered in a not particularly clever way, and I often had the feeling I was reading bits and pieces of autobiography tucked into larger tales. Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can color one's entire day. Unfortunately, I picked up The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making in the middle of reading this collection, and it threw Gaiman's shortcomings and my reactions into sharp relief. Complete with the very lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper which has a Forbidden Planet "signed" sticker to the front panel. I like the first paragraph and the phrase, "In every way that counted, I was dead"--a fantastic opening line.I think that Lewis merely phrased this concept awkwardly, in a way that makes it easy to see it as a sexist dig at Susan not being able to go to Narnia because she discovered boys and lipstick. In a novella set two years after the events of American Gods, Shadow pays a visit to an ancient Scottish mansion, and finds himself trapped in a game of murder and monsters. This helps highlight Gaiman’s pervasive idea of the power stories hold while also allowing him to bring the reader into the story at a safe distance before shocking them. Perhaps it should have been merged into 'Closing Time,' another story embedded within a story as patrons at a private club share ghost stories. The Flints of Memory Lane' is a germ of an idea that would benefit from grafting into a larger tale.

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