The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can.
~ Neil Gaiman
Tag: neil gaiman
Quote of the Week
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
~Neil Gaiman
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is a great author. I’ve read and enjoyed a few of his other books and Norse Mythology is the latest addition. I didn’t read the synopsis before reading Norse Mythology because I know any Neil Gaiman read is a good read, if not great, because he is a master in storytelling.
Norse Mythology is a retelling of an ancient myth. It is a collection of stories of a dysfunctional family of powerful gods including Odin, Thor and Loki. The book begins with the introduction of Asgard and ends with the destruction of it. The different stories have different characters but with either Odin, Thor or Loki in it. Some stories were short, some were long. Some of my favorites include A Mead of Poets, The Treasures of Gods, and Freya’s Unusual Wedding.
The characters were such a mood. Thor has such a passion for eating. But he was an idiot, too. In a charming way, I must say. 🙂 I liked how Freya is often fed up with Thor and Loki. Loki is my favorite character, what a savage. For most parts, he was the central character. It seems to me that Neil Gaiman loves Loki the most among these gods. Ha! Many of the characters were the same throughout the story but I loved what he did with Loki’s character and what it did to me as a reader who liked Loki a lot. Loki didn’t actually change much but my opinion of him has changed. I think the same thing happened for many of the readers — it has made the reader feel different. I’m sure many readers liked Loki so much in the beginning, it was really easy to like him. Then in the end, it was also very easy to hate him thus, he becomes the reader’s least favorite character. Well, it’s easy to think and write of a character change but I think, only a skilled writer can make you change your opinion without having to tell you to. And that is what Gaiman just did so well.
Norse Mythology is a quick, magical and easy read. It is a well-written book and one you can easily enjoy. It is a good feeling to be immersed in the world of Asgard.
Quotable Quotes:
“That was the thing about Loki. You resented him even when you were at your most grateful, and you were grateful to him even when you hated him the most.”
“Rebirth always follows death.”
“Each insult is woven with just enough truth to make it wound.”
Rating: 5/5 stars
Quote of the Week
Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
~Neil Gaiman
Quote of the Week
Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.
~Neil Gaiman
Three Days, Three Quotes Challenge #4 – Day 3
It’s the third and last day of my fourth Three Days, Three Quotes Challenged from Richa!
The Rules:
- Thank the person who nominated you.
- Post a quote for three consecutive days.
- Nominate three bloggers each day.
The Nominees:
Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.
-Neil Gaiman
Thanks once again, Richa! I really enjoyed this challenge. Looking forward to the next! 🙂
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Book #14. Another Neil Gaiman.
Stardust is about Tristran Thorn who promised Victoria Forester that he will retrieve a fallen star on the other side of the Wall. On this other side of the Wall, fallen stars are beautiful girls whose hearts are taken by witches. The book chronicles Tristran’s adventures from talking trees, unicorns, witches and a lot more.
The book wasn’t too fast-paced but not too slow as well. It makes you wonder just like his other books. It’s nice and entertaining to read. The last forty pages or so were the best parts for me. I also liked the characters the way I liked the characters in his other books. The bantering between Tristran and Yvaine were fun. I just enjoy bantering between characters in books. 🙂
I don’t know if other readers will agree but I think the ending was perfect. It’s bittersweet but I think it’s the best way to end the book. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
All in all, it’s another good read!
Quotable Quotes :
“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.”
“He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does.”
“He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man had been called.”
“It’s not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it’s yours, and then be willing to let it go.”
“Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?”
Rating : 4/5 stars
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Kiss a lover,
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure.
Face your life,
Its pain,
Its pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.
Book #11. My second Neil Gaiman read.
This is the story of Nobody Owens, a boy raised by an entertaining cast of ghosts in a graveyard because his family was murdered when he was still a toddler. Mr. & Mrs. Owens who died centuries ago became his adoptive parents while Silas became his guardian.
I enjoyed most of the characters and I love everything about Silas and Miss Lupescu. I also like how the author gave life to Bod growing up with the dead. I didn’t like Scarlett that much but that’s fine. If there’s one complain I have for this book though, it’s that I wish we knew more of the stories of Silas, Miss Lupescu and Liza Hempstock.
It’s a very engaging read all throughout the chapters and is fast-paced. Several themes were dealt with like change, taking risks, childhood, growing up, things we lose, things we gain, bravery, courage, etc. It’s full of those little details that will make you think back about life one way or the other.
There’s definitely a lot to learn from this wonderful, quick read. And now I’m looking forward to my next Neil Gaiman book.
Quotable Quotes :
“It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”
“You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write.”
“And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.”
“If I come back, it will be a place, but it won’t be a home any longer.”
Rating : 5/5 stars
Book #38 – 2015 Reading Challenge – The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
This is my first Neil Gaiman book so I didn’t know what to expect. I loved it nonetheless! 
The story began when the unnamed narrator revisited his childhood home for a funeral and was drawn back to a farm where he met his one true friend and experienced a magical and haunting event when he was seven years old.
Not every child probably did this but when I was young, I like to imagine things differently from what they really are. I like thinking about them in a weird way that sometimes my memory get mixed up from what’s real and what’s not. The book somewhat depicts that. That sometimes, things are different from what we remember them to be.
Although this isn’t typically the kind of book I usually seek out to read, this made me smile. But it made me sad, too. It gave me something to think about. It even made my heart ache. So I think that’s enough reason to recommend this book and read more of Neil Gaiman’s works.
Favorite quotes : “I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”
“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”
“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.”
“I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”
Rating : 5/5 stars
HappymessHappiness 