Neil Gaiman | Where to Begin

hey guys as promised today we are talking about Neil Gaiman and where to begin with his [Music] writing so Neil giman can be a tricky one to get started with because he is hugely prolific especially considering that he's not really that old and is probably well hopefully only about halfway through his career I think there are lots of different ways to get going with Neil giman depending on your tastes and your interests I'm just going to be talking about my specific taste today so if you're familiar with my channel um you'll know what that is and if you think that you have similar taste this will probably be more helpful than not but I'll give whatever information I have along the way as we go uh in regards to his other work so Neil giman is mainly a fantasy writer Some lot more on the literary end of that scale if that makes sense he writes books for both adults and children he does novels short stories he also has a large selection of graphic novels of which he does the story uh not the art he works with different artists and there is sort of a specific style of Neil gaiman's writing that I am more drawn to so when I mentioned that he does children's books he does what would be considered middle-grade fiction as well as uh sort of more picture books and things like that as well the only much younger children's book I own from him is fortunately the milk and it is adorable really fantastic I own both the US and the UK Edition because they have different illustrators and I just that is super super cute but of course I only recommend those type of things if you are buying them for a child or if you yourself are very interested in picture books so in general I would recommend his adult fiction but his middle grade books like the graveyard book and caraline are 100% fantastic as well but I would recommend starting with his adult fiction I personally started with Stardust and I thoroughly enjoyed it I really really love Stardust but I know uh some people that have started with Stardust and it hasn't quite worked for them so even though Stardust was a nice place for me to start the book that I would definitely recommend starting with above all others is the ocean at the end of the lane it is only a short novel pretty much a Nolla so it's not going to take you long to read and it is beautiful and so so enjoyable the ocean at the end of the lane came out in 2013 and it is about a middle-aged man who returns to his childhood home uh for a funeral and visits a house that he used to visit when he was younger and these deeply buried long forgotten memories come flooding back to him and the majority of the story is set back when he was a child so it is an adult book but essentially most of the story is told from a child's perspective and through a child's eyes there is Fantastical elements to this book um but it's very relatable on a human level the writing is beautiful as always from Neil Gaiman he just crafts beautiful sentences very very simple and easy to understand but still completely gorgeous and I just think this is a beautiful introduction to the kind of World building you can expect in Neil gan's books and really my three favorite Neil Gan books are the ocean at the end of the lane Stardust that I mentioned earlier which is very alternate fairy tale esque and the graveyard book which is actually one of his middle-grade fiction books and this is stunning I've talked about it a bunch of my channel it is about a young boy called nobody Owens growing up in a graveyard so that is wonderful and uh these three are actually linked they're not sequels they don't have the same characters but all three of them actually include a witch character with the last name of hempstock and they are all uh linked and from the same line of witches which I realized while reading the ocean at the end of the lane and it just made me happy so there is that little piece of trivia for you there's nothing in them that's connected you don't need to read one to understand another but there is that little character link there which I think is fantastic so these are more the type of Neil ging books that I really really love um I love the world building I love the characters I love the Fantastical elements and I'm not someone that always wants to read fantasy and magic and things of that ilk but I think these are very approachable and they're always rooted in the real world it always feels relatable I think now there is the slightly darker end of Neil gan's writing with things like American Gods and I think if you are already a fantasy reader and you're used to that very elaborate World building uh lots of details lots of facts lots of characters I think that uh American Gods is a fantastic place to start I lent this to a friend a few years ago who had never read any Neil giman but based on the other kinds of books that she had read recently and liked uh I thought she might like this and she flew through it and it is 600 plus pages but she just loved it and read it and it was exactly the kind of book that she really enjoyed so I do think if you already read books like this then American Gods is a fantastic place to start but if you're coming from a place of more uh general fiction or literary fiction um or even Classics I think that these type of Neil gaming books are a better bet to get used to his writing and his style now obviously his graphic novels are a huge deal I have read none of them because I'm actually very very bad at concentrating on graphic novels I I can't get I can never sort of get the flow right I'm either looking at the pictures or reading the text and I'm hardly ever doing both and I need to get better but the Sandman series is his big graphic series that a lot of people love so if you're huge into graphic novels that might be a good place to go with Neil ging and I can also vouch for his short Story collection so if you are a fan of slightly Twisted odd short stories then his short stories are great and the last thing I want to mention is actually uh audio books Neil Gaiman uh all of his books are available as audio books with him narrating them and I don't always love audio books where it's actually the author narrating because a lot of the time um they might not be the best readers I mean they will know the exact inflection and tone that they're going for since it is their work that they're reading but they don't always have the best voice for it but Neil Gaiman is a master narrator I've actually I've been lucky enough to actually see him uh talk twice and he his talks are more like performances he's very interesting man and character himself and he knows he knows how to work an audience very well and he always does readings at these types of things the first time I saw him was actually just before the ocean at the end of the lane was released and he read the first few chapters and and it was amazing so if you enjoy audio books then I do recommend checking out his audio books I think you'll be hard pressed to find a better author read audio book than Neil gan's so that's about it for now I hope that helped a little if you are a Neil gaming fan I would love to know where you started with him and what worked for you and maybe that can help some other people out uh in the comments as well if you have slightly different taste to me but that's it for now I hope you guys enjoyed this and I will see you soon soon

Channel: Lesley Rickman

Views: 39,436

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Id: DLBMuw2uGmI

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Tue May 10 2016