Summer Reads #2 – The Sandman Saga by Neil Gaiman

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american gods, book review, books, christianity, comic books, coraline, god of dreams, greek mythology, literature, mirrormask, moirai, morpheus, mythology, Neil Gaiman, ramadan, Reading, religion, stardust, the kindly ones, The Sandman, the three fates, Vertigo Jam

According to Neil Gaiman, if the Moirai (the Three Fates) lived among us, they would be harmless old cat ladies with a penchant for yarn-bombing.

 

This year I managed to complete the Sandman Saga, which was a big one for me, because after reading a lot of Neil Gaiman, I was still undecided on how I felt about him and his writing.

He’s one of these authors who is gifted and has a prolific output of work – the man can turn his hand to anything literary and make a success of it. The Sandman comics have also long been touted as his magnum opus, but I just didn’t have the time to get through it due to work commitments.

But 2018 was the year for it, and I’m sooooo glad I got through this, because it was AMAZING! Neil Gaiman is everything they say he is – an absolute genius.

If like me, you weren’t that particularly impressed with Coraline, Mirrormask, Stardust or found American Gods to be too steep and cryptic in terms of plot and character development, then The Sandman Saga is definitely for you.

In my humble opinion, this has to be Gaiman’s biggest achievement. In it he display’s his amazing prowess and knowledge of world mythology; creates a world where all gods, of all races across all times exist in the here and now, some as faint echoes and others as living amongst us, unbeknownst to us. In a way, The Sandman is not just about the adventures of Morpheus the Dream-God (one of the Eternals); it is through his interactions with humans, his losses and gains, his victories and calamities that Gaiman puts together a meta-mythology, a place where all gods are a figment of human imagination and exist as long as we exist.

I love this idea – it’s fresh, new, and something that he goes into in great detail in American Gods where he explores how ancient gods gain new grounds through the diasporas of different peoples’ across the ages, and how genocides are enough to wipe out the existence of others. It is powerful in that it puts the existence of faith into the hands of story-telling. The gods travel and stay tethered to survival through our stories. According to Gaiman, without the tradition of oral story-telling, our gods would come to naught. Being a story-teller, I like this idea, a lot!

Thus I found Sandman to be a bibliophile’s delight, because Morpheus, the god of dreams is the ultimate storyteller. He controls the gateway to the subconscious, he is a merciful god to a certain extent, yet when the world of dreams is in flux (as it is when we are first introduced to him in Preludes and Nocturnes issue #1), it causes chaos in the human world.

The saga begins when a group of Occultists (among them, the infamous Aleister Crowley) gather to summon and entrap Death itself. Their little parlour game goes awry and instead of entrapping Death, they manage to snag Death’s twin brother, Dream. Morpheus, therefore begins his 70 year confinement at the hands of these occultists, which results in terrible consequences for people around the world. Some fall asleep never to wake up again, others die stark raving mad because of their inability to sleep, others are subjected to terrible nightmares that are endless. In short, the world is thrown into flux, but the Lord of Dreams finally finds a way to escape his fate as a ‘genie in the lamp’, and must begin a journey across space and time, and between worlds to claim back the power that was seized in his absence.

This is of course, just the beginning of the saga. So much more happens, and I can’t remember a time when I was so engrossed by mythology as I was with this series. It has made my understanding and appreciation of American Gods much more meaningful as I see now what Gaiman was trying to do.

The Sandman was him playing in the sand pit. He stated himself that the series made him grow as a writer as he became bolder with his world-building, and with those amazing connections he makes between character and the series.

My favourite issues comprise of the stand-alone Ramadan, which has a very 1001 nights flavour to it and the masterful way he put together The Kindly Ones, the penultimate volume to the saga, where he explores the potency of the female in mythology. The Kindly Ones as they are referred to, assume the avatar of the mother, the lover, the female scorned. The way he portrays the Three Fates and the alchemy of feminine ‘madness’ was especially breath-taking.

I’ve made up my mind: Neil Gaiman truly is one of a kind.

I can only hope to meet him in person one day and listen to his pearls of wisdom about writing.

NOTE: Special mention to the illustrator David McKean, whose illustrated the front covers for each volume. His style artfully illustrated the nightmare and the dreamscape of Morpheus’ world. But if you look carefully past the disturbing nature of his images, you will see a balance of symbolism, which like a dowling rod divines the very heart of each volume and issue. A wonderful collaboration.

 

 

 

Travels with a bookworm – Weird encounters at the airport…

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Bookhaul, books, Donna Tartt, female authors, Gatwick, Humor, Italy, Laura Purcell, literature, Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively, Shopping, Summer Reads, The Secret History, The Silent Companions

The summer holidays have come around, and like most teachers I have aimed to get out of the country as soon as humanly possible. It’s been a grueling 10 months of secondary education – stressing over grades, dealing with poor behaviour, becoming a marking machine for the last two terms (firstly with an endless stream of year 11 PPEs followed by end of term Year 10 PPEs and assessments for other groups).

It’s fair to say 2017-18 academic year has been more hellish than normal – but that’s OK, as I’ve put 2’235 miles between me and London and am now happily sweltering in the dry, Mediterranean heat! As always, I aim to over-achieve my pledge of 52 books a year, but must admit that I’m only ahead because I’ve cheated with only reading comic books for the first half of the year! I’m a bit disappointed with myself really…

I can’t read as much as I could or would like to during term time, so the summer holidays for me is perfect for full-on literature immersion. Mind, body and soul I make a commitment to getting through as many titles as possible, making up for the rest of the year when my brain is so tired it can’t even deal with children’s fiction.

We arrived at Gatwick Airport respectably early, did our ‘liquids shop’ as it’s bloody impossible to take any shower gels or shampoos with you (unless you pay an exorbitant amount of money to Easyjet for hold luggage!) Once this was done, I called it ‘my time’. I dumped my stuff with whoever I was travelling with and half-ran, half-skipped to WHSmith’s (or even better) Waterstones.  Here, I allow myself one minute to just wonder-gaze at the spines of  books before I  tally up how many I’m getting – this is 5 weeks after all, a looooong time.

Then comes the choosing of the bloody things, and this time round I really struggled. I bloody hate fresh fiction – and I’m not good with snap decisions either. I usually wait for a siren call, a beckoning from the shelf, but Gate 111 awaits and my group have already started making their way over. I agonise over a plethora of things: ‘Is this intellectual? Will this stretch-and-challenge me? Do these books reflect the reading journey that I am on? Does the subject matter serve a purpose? Is this book too ‘simple’? Is it too ‘new’ and thus the praise for it from the New York Times too misleading? From me to you, never trust the New York Times!

I don’t know whether half of what I buy is spurred on by a sense of self-worth, genuine discernment of literature or pure vanity of ‘looky here at what I’m reading, aren’t I a clever cow!’ – however I walked away with three titles, all of which are female authors. To my horror, I discovered my reading diet had thus far consisted of white male authors, which I seek to rectify this year. I have a colleague to thank for that as he has also embarked on a similar journey.  But eventually I was able to make all three of my personalities happy, by opting for The Secret History by Donna Tartt, recommended to me by a dear colleague, The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell which is fairly new yet has a gothic twist (if the blurb is to be trusted), and the Booker Prize winning Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, which sates the intellectual in me that craves for ‘literature of meaning’.

 

Time was ticking, and I was stuck behind three Italian ladies and a child trying to pay for some silly quitter strips with red buses on them and a couple of metallic pens with gold and silver crowns (c’mon! c’mon!) It didn’t help that the Jamaican lady behind the counter was also serving them begrudgingly – one of her idiosyncrasies of serving being the question: ‘Where are you flying today?’

Now normally there would be a speedy answer, money would change hands and off the customer would go. But there I am behind the Italian ladies who don’t know 5 words of English between them and do not understand what is being demanded of them. The Jamaican lady’s question, which at first appears to be a social filler, actually turned out to be a legitimate question. She genuinely wanted to know where each passenger was going. Absolutely insisted. How bizarre! At first the Italians looked at one another baffled, she demanded a second time to know where they were going, then a third, tone of voice hardening to a point akin to a Home Office interrogation. At this point the child sensed the tension in the air and began squirming. It was jarring – the ladies managed to stammer a response of ‘Italia’, hoping that would save them. However this didn’t quell her thirst for knowledge. The woman went full on MI5. ‘Are you travelling with this child? Is this child your child?’

The women were flustered like chickens who have had their hen-house disturbed. This isn’t customs – why can’t they just pay and walk away with their books? Why was the poor little bambino being pulled into all of this? Did they look like kidnappers?

At this point, I began to get irate as I’m in danger of not making it to the gate if it carries on in this vein – but eventually again the women manage to say the right thing and walk away quickly, glad to be released from the interrogation.

Relief turned to anxiety as now I realised it would be my turn. I hand over the books, quickly whip out the card ready to pay and leave as quickly as possible. But no… she wants to know where I am going too. Shit. I read her face – there is a ‘the shutters are down’ look to it and I realise maybe this idiosyncrasy has deeper roots. She certainly couldn’t read the body language and emotions of the Italian ladies, yet she insisted that her questions be answered, as if they were part of a cycle that helped her to get through one customer after another. A mechanical routine that helped her negotiate unexpected requests. Asperger’s maybe? Play along with it came the voice inside me. Indulge her.

So I went the opposite way – answered all her questions, made light conversation, watched her from behind the counter, and then realised with sadness the look in her eyes as I walked away with my book load. All she probably wants is to go away somewhere too – maybe asking where people are going to is a way of coping with a summer stuck serving customers at Gatwick. At that moment I tried putting myself in her shoes – all those people, jetting off to fabulous places, while you are stuck in an inbetween space, watching the world go by. Working in airports must be hell…

After a fleeting twinge of regret I exited WHSmith with a stoopid grin on my face, again half-skipping, half-running to my other fellow travelers, only to find that the gate closes in 10 minutes.

Shit! I’ve never been this late before – and I vowed I’d never do it again. Getting to Gate 111, as further insult to injury, turned out to be the mother of all journeys. Up and down a flight of stairs, escalators, you name it. I hate you Gatwick! Why can’t you be like Stansted?

Long story short I almost missed my bloody flight for the love of books, a strange Jamaican lady and some flustered Italian tourists. And all I wanted was some reads to tide me over for a couple of weeks till my next book haul…

HoL Book Club | Part 1 (Front matter, back cover, dedication, flap copy)

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book challenge, book club, books, gothic fiction, HoL, house of leaves, literature, mark z danielewski

After a lengthy hiatus, I have decided to make a return to blogging. What pulls me out of my prolonged absence is a cocktail of slightly unpleasant things that life has thrown at me this week. Thursday especially was a pretty nasty bastard, I’ll have you know.

Here are the ingredients, in case you should want to emulate my Poe-esque misery:

• Add two parts arctic ‘Beast of the East’, by standing out in the freezing cold for 50 minutes. You are not allowed a coat, and should stay there in the whipping rain until your marrow aches with pain, you can’t feel your ears and your nose is dripping like a broken tap.
• This, along with one parts of fatigue, will ferment to produce influenza-like symptoms quite nicely, with a pinch of voice loss to kick-start the whole thing. Fever, in the form of so many Shelobs will insert their pincer-like legs into your shoulders and neck, and if you are lucky, the small of your spine will also host a little succubus intent of riding the hell out of you indefinitely.
• By day 3, your voice has completely gone, or it alternates between a foghorn and the squeak of a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood. It is important that you are bedridden and mentally ‘crawling up the walls’ (a la The Yellow Wallpaper). This means you will do ANYTHING to combat the boredom within and without.
• Day 4 gifts the afflicted with an unbearable itch that pulsates like gamma rays from the INSIDE of ones forehead, just behind the eyes. I call this the ‘Clockwork Orange’ effect. It is okay to want to claw your eyes out, but to no avail. As a bonus, within the ears there is further movement that can only be described as something out of The Wasp Factory. Yes, wasps. Angry ones. In your head. Buzzing. Itching. And no way to itch it…
• Day 5 and you have to do something or you are going to go fairly insane… you are ill, you are missing World Book Day at school (the only time of year that is worth being a teacher at a school), everything you eat tastes like sawdust (oranges mostly). And if that is not enough, there is the grim approach of your 35th birthday, along with the thought of ‘what am I doing with my life?’ What is a girl to do?

So it is with all moments of productiveness, that are spurred on by desperation I find, that something comes to the rescue: The House of Leaves Book Club!

I thought to myself ‘why not?’ After all, it’s been 11 years since I entered that formidable htnirybal House on Ash Tree Lane, 11 years since I experienced quite literally the most powerful piece of fiction I have ever come across. I liked the fact that MZD planned this so close to his birthday, which is close to mine. I liked that it was a gargantuan project (once you fall into the house, there is no coming back out). In short, it felt like fate.

I’m never on time for book clubs, but this one started yesterday. Those taking part should be reading between the dates of 26th February and 3rd March the following:

• Front matter, back cover
• The dedication
• Flap copy

Now, since most people will have different editions (some coloured, some not) you will have to adjust what you read. Since I’ve gone through this monstrosity before and lived to tell the tale, for me it’ll be like entering the Overlook Hotel after Johnny went mental and the place was abandoned for years.

For those who have never read HoL but heard about it, the experience is a completely unique. There isn’t a novel like it, and I liken it to the mad genius of Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, where the novel has a life, will and consciousness (rather a ‘lack of’ of its own).

Those of you who have ever watched Stranger Things, will appreciate how Danielewski takes and uses the many tropes of horror fiction and makes it a thing entirely its own. Where there is the ‘underverse’ in Stranger Things, there is the also the monstrous labyrinth in the house.

FIRST-TIMERS WARNING: This is no spoiler, but if you decide to do the read-along, then you will inevitably run into the CODES – these are secret messages embedded in the text/ footnotes/ margins etc. I shall be periodically posting my thoughts about these as I come across them. If you do not know what I mean by this, check out the official FB website, where the madness has already begun with people cross-referencing like mad between the pages: House of Leaves Book Club.

There is also the real madness of the ‘coding’ forums, which can still be found here: Mark Danielewski Forums (caution upon entry is advised… it can get rather too much in there with the info. Spoiler alert…)

So, I’m off to read the bits assigned and will come back to address the all important question that MZD will be posing, which is:

“How does “This is not for you” apply to the book, the reader, and Johnny Truant?”

Is anyone game to read along with me and throw some theories out there?

Top Ten Tuesday | Most Intimidating Books

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Ayn Rand, books, Dark Tower, don quixote by miguel de cervantes, james joyce, JD Salinger, literature, Miguel de Cervantes, roberto bolano, salman rushdie, satanic verses by salman rushdie, stephen king, Thomas Pynchon, Top Ten Tuesday, ulysses by james joyce, virginia woolf

This meme is brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Today’s topic is the top ten most intimidating books that we all dread to read for one reason or another. Here is my list of titles:

1. Ulysses by James Joyce – I will feel like a complete failure/idiot if I cannot get through this book in one sitting. Especially since it is THE most important book in modern literature. EVER. *shudders*
2. The Waves by Virginia Woolf – Sometimes Woolf can be completely incomprehensible to me. Her writing is like a strange melody with a hidden beat. I have to hunt for the damn thing in all the dense foliage of her prose. ‘The Waves’ completely baffled me and I wound up running to the nearest exit to this weird labyrinth of fiction.
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes – The sheer size of it puts me off. It lives on the shelf next to Milton’s Paradise Lost.
4. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – I really don’t know why people call this a great novel. Never really saw it myself. Intimidating when you can’t see what millions of others can.
5.  Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon – He is so awesome. ‘The Crying of Lot 49‘ changed my taste in books drastically. It was also one of the hardest damn books I’d ever read. What if I don’t get this one?
6. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand – The books scares me (sheer size), Ayn Rand scares me (have you seen her?) OMIGOD.
7. 2666 by Roberto Bolano – I have a love/hate relationship with Bolano. I keep expecting the same kind of pleasure I get when I read Borges but get confused when I don’t. Confused and angry. Not quite the same as intimidated, but…
8. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie – So much controversy around this novel. What if I end up hating it? Will it cost me a well-respected author?
9. House of Leaves by M.Z. Danielewski – I read this once before. I don’t think I’ll read it again anytime soon. I have never been so scared of words and the things they can unravel both within and without. Danielewski is king. I grovel at his feet.
10. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King – A mammoth seven book series that I have only briefly dipped into. I don’t know if I can last the distance…

That’s my list of intimidating books guys. How about yours? Are there any above that scare the bejesus out of you? Would you add to the list?

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Gollum Vs. Smeagol Rap Battle

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books, Gollum, humour, Lord of the Rings, music, Smeagol

A new spin on Smeagol’s split-personality syndrome – and he wins hands down because he ‘drops the bass’. LMAO!