Neil Gaiman's Readings

OK, first, I just have to say, Neil Gaiman replied to one of my tweets. Yay!

Now, to the matter at hand, I figured I would round up any and all of the pieces he read Thursday night that I could find online, both for those that did not get to go or those that wish to read them.

"Feminine Endings"
Video can be found here (scroll down to the video box, click on Neil Gaiman).
Text is here.

"My Last Landlady" is unpublished.

"Orange: (Third Subjects Response's to Investigator's Written Questionnaire). EYES ONLY"
Text here. Starts with intro on page 63.

"Inventing Aladdin"
Use look inside on this Amazon Page. Search for Inventing Aladdin, click on the link to page 281, and then read using the right page button.

"Locks"
Text here.
Bad quality video here.

There really was nothing like seeing him in person though. He is a wonderfully dramatic reader, and of course the accent does not hurt!

P.S. If anyone can find any more links, be sure to post them!

Too narrow?

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to write about for my paper. I couldn't help but like the question "Were Mr. and Mrs. Hetman in 'The Moonlit Road' both merely imagining a non-existent intruder, or did that intruder actually exist? If so, who might it have been?" from the list because I talked about that in class. But, I didn't know if that would be too narrow.

I also liked the idea of comparing the vampire from "For the Blood is the Life" with the being from "Genius Loci" and how they draw their prey in and how their reasons are similar/different. I think this topic might be more open than the first, since their are two pieces to pull from.

What do you think?

Paper Topics

I've been thinking about what I want to write my paper on, and I thought I would try and get some feedback. Probably the one I'm interested in the most is comparing and contrasting Gaiman's The Graveyard Book to Kipling's The Jungle Book . I realize that this topic in itself is probably too broad, so I was hoping to get some feedback on how I could narrow it. Another topic that I've thought about writing on is the subgenre of microscope stories and how it reflects thinking of the time. This topic might be too broad, too. If it is, I'm not too heartbroken because it's probably the one I'm least interested in. My backup is a topic from the list that Andy sent us about "The Golden Baby" and the Bermuda Triangle. One thing I was wondering about is how we go about using and citing sources. For example, I think I would need a secondary source for information on the Bermuda Triangle. I was wondering if we could use sources other than the texts we've read, and if so, how do we cite them?

The Last Gaiman Post From Me

I swear, I'll shut up after this.

I just found this blog post Gaiman did yesterday sometime about his visit to Tuscaloosa. He says lovely things about us and Tuscaloosa and makes a very valid point in it, namely, do we not get big name authors simply because we assume we cannot? I would love to see more names of Gaiman's caliber coming and doing readings and signings here. Publishers don't send people here on signing tours because they assume there is no audience, but as the packed Bama showed, that's simply not true. So, what can we do?

Shutter Island

It's time for another movie recommendation. I cannot recommend Shutter Island highly enough. It was an amazing psychological thriller. I actually felt like I was going crazy throughout the movie. You can't tell what is real and what isn't so it's impossible to know how it's going to end. I thought the ending was perfect. Also, the acting and photography were exceptional.

The Man in Black

I just got back from the Gaiman reading, and I was very impressed. I honestly didn't know what to expect since I had never been to one of these before. Gaiman was really funny. He has an awesome voice, and I really enjoyed listening to his stories. It was pretty cool seeing 1,078 people going crazy over an author. I'm definitely a Gaiman fan now!

Dystopi(c)a For A Paper

I've been attempting to come up with a paper topic, and at the moment this is the best I have. I've always found the concept of a dystopia to be extremely interesting and as far as a degree of darkness it's quite difficult to get much darker than an entire society gone completely wrong in some horrible way. So, what I was thinking was for a paper to possibly compare different dystopia societies from a couple of different works. I don't really have any specific ones at the moment, and I would be more than happy to take suggestions.