The Graveyard Book

Done

on Amazon

...and it was fantastic. 

See the medal on the image of the book cover? Yeah, totally belongs there.

Gaiman's storytelling is impeccable; his writing is impeccable; his characters are excellently three-dimensional.

On a (sort of) side-note, Neil Gaiman has a way of describing characters so that only the most pertinent qualities are highlighted. I was a handful of pages from the end before the descriptions of an important character clicked together in my brain to form a complete picture. I couldn't believe it had taken me so long -- but at the same time, I love that it surprised me.

The Graveyard Book is a story about a boy raised by the ghosts of a particular graveyard. There's more to the story than simply that, of course: a (horrifying) beginning, Bod's adventures,  and a perfectly conclusive conclusion, every thread tying into the story as a whole. Chapters that seemed like little more than adventures cycle back to become significant. There's a particular neatness to that kind of storytelling that I can't help but appreciate.

The book has a similar residual creepiness as Coraline had, but it also bears a similar innocence and sweetness. I recommend it -- as well as pretty much anything written by Neil Gaiman -- but with a brief reminder that it is a creepy, nightmare book. Don't say I didn't warn you.

4 1/2 out of 5 and a lot of gushing from me.

Coraline

Done

Amazon

 ... and I was dozing off by 10:15. That's unheard of in this household, so rare and shocking, it borders on crazy talk, but there it is.

Coraline is another novella, actually shorter in length than Bree Tanner, but Neil Gaiman, the author, is a master storyteller. This is my third of his that I've read, and, honestly, of the three, my least favorite. Not that it's bad, by any stretch of the imagination, just not my favorite.

The story is very simple, which it has to be to be satisfying in 162 pages, and I would like to sum it up without spoiling it for anyone in this way: it's the story of a nightmare -- only the author never resorts to the "and then she woke up" device. It's simply a creepy little story that any of us could imagine we've dreamed at some point in our lives, laid it out in story form.

I'd also like to add, partly in defense of my criticism of Bree Tanner that the characters lacked depth, that Coraline's characters were real people. As a matter of fact, I related to the mother and father a little too well, and Coraline was a perfectly normal little girl, containing both virtues and vices, as well as this pleasant little thing we call a personality. She was even a little on the obnoxious side, but she's a little girl. We were all a little on the obnoxious side as children.

All in all, I did like Coraline. I hesitate to rate it now because I feel quite strongly that I'm going to need to reread it, maybe after the New Year, just to see if some of the writing doesn't itch at me like it did upon first reading, but I'm going to pop a 4 out of 5 on it for now, and recommend it as a quick read.

...Oh, and to those who wonder *coughcoughBethandJoAnncoughcough* I did not sit on my backside all day with my nose in a book, promise.

Of course, both books I read were tiny, so there is that. ;-)