Fragile Things

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman is a collection of short stories and a few poems. Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors. He's one of my favourites because of the way he crafts his stories. I just really like the way he has with words that can paint, not just a picture, but the mood of a piece.

The thing liked most about this collection of stories was that they really felt like someone was just sitting around telling the story. Most of the collection wouldn't sound out of place if read aloud. I really couldn't even pick a favourite, each one became my favourite as I finished reading it and moved on to the next.

From the idea of the months of the year sitting around telling stories, to the list of instructions if one happened to find oneself in a fairy tale. The life of someone who lives the headlines of The World Weekly News or Sherlock Holmes in the world of H.P. Lovecraft. The weakest story in the bunch was "Diseasemaker's Croup" and I think it suffered because Gaiman wasn't as sure of some of the terms he was using as he thought he might be.

Of course, most of the stories have been printed before but I don't tend to collect anthologies so they were all new to me. I had considered picking up the Legends collection that included "Monarch of the Glen" but now have the story in Fragile Things. I may download "A Study in Emerald" from Gaiman's blog because I do like to hear him reading his own work. I give this one a 5 out of 5. I could read it again and again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Volume 2

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Volume 2 wasn't as good as the first one but was still a good read. It's still pre-Season 1 at the beginning and ends somewhere in Season 3. There are two stand out stories in this collection but none of them are terrible. Some of the art is much better in some than in others but for the most part you can still tell who's who.

"Angels We Have Seen on High" by Scott Lobdell, Fabisn Nicieza and Jeff Matsuda (art). If you've ever wanted to see Buffy with a manga-like flair this would be it. The story is too cute for words, short and even though it's a Dawn meets Angel before they get to Sunnydale, it's still a worthy story.

"A Stake to the Heart" by Fabian Nicieza, Cliff Richards (pencils) and Will Conrad (inks) with painted pages by Brian Horton. This was an awesome story. The art was beautiful and the story was moving and real and very Buffy. It's the breakup of the Summers' marriage and everything that goes along with a family falling apart. Magnified in Buffy fashion with the addition of demons. This was probably my favourite story in the bunch.

"MacGuffins" by Jen Van Meter, Luke Ross (pencils) and Rick Ketcham (inks). Meh. It was a little cartoony but did sort of capture the feeling of Season 1. Of course Season 1 was still sort of searching for the right feel to the show.

"Queen of Hearts" by Christopher Golden and Ryan Sook (art). Another Spike and Dru story. Better than the last one but not by much. It's hard to image these two doing anything that wasn't for their own advantage and the concept just didn't quite work for me.

"Ring of Fire" by Doug Petrie and Ryan Sook (art). This is the other stand out story in the collection. It's pure Buffy. And it should be with Doug Petrie supplying the script. It's in Season 2 with Angel being Angelus and just after the death of Jenny Calender. It really captures some of the emotions that were going on between the gang during that time. With a plot that works really well in the Buffy universe and for where it fits in the continuity.

"Paint the Town Red" by James Marsters, Christopher Golden and Ryan Sook (art). Yet another Spike and Dru story. This is the best so far though with the motivations being a little more true to character and the dialogue a little less stilted. Still, I think they could have just left the Spike and Dru stuff out of the Omnibus and focused on Buffy and crew.

"The Dust Waltz" by Dan Brereton, Hector Gomez (pencils) and Sandu Florea (inks). I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I kind of enjoyed it but didn't like the introduction of Giles' niece. The art was nice but the characters didn't have much expression. It felt a bit rushed at the end but there wasn't quite enough material to cover two issues. It's not the weakest story in the collection, I'd say middle of the pack.

Overall the second Omnibus is an interesting read. It's interesting to see what other authors want to slip into the spaces between episodes and between seasons of the show. I'm going to give it a 3 out of 5.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Volume 1

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Volume 1 is a collection of Dark Horse comics' Buffy series. The interesting thing is that the collection is in chronological order rather than publication order. It's like it's Season 0 of the television series. The book opens with a Spike and Drusilla story and moves into the original screenplay for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. The book ends with Buffy ready to take on the mantle of the Slayer after leaving a mental institution.

I'm just going to do a quick run down of the stories in the book:

"All's Fair" by Christopher Golden, Eric Powell (pencils), Drew Geraci and Keith Barnett (inks). This is the Spike and Dru story, and probably the weakest of the bunch. This is where the chronological nature of the book does a little harm because it's not the best story to draw people in. Even the big Spike fans. It takes place at the World's Fair in 1933 so it gets first place.

"Buffy: The Origin" by Dan Brereton, Christopher Golden, Joe Bennet (pencils) and Rick Ketcham (inks). Based on the original screenplay by Joss Whedon for Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie this does more than take the lead character and draw her like Sara Michelle Geller. It removes so much of the campiness and makes it such a better story. Buffy becomes more like the character that I remember from the series.

"Viva Las Buffy!" by Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Cliff Richards (pencils) and Will Conrad (inks). Buffy! In Vegas! This was kind of an amusing story. What does a brand new Slayer do without a Watcher? Run from her responsibilities it seems. This one has an appearance of Angel watching over her as she becomes used to the being the Slayer and answers the question of Pike.

"Dawn and Hoopy the Bear" by Paul Lee. OK, I admit it. I liked this story better than I thought I would. It was cute, it was funny, it was Buffy. It's tough because it's all about Dawn, who really didn't exist, only remembered as if she had, so I'm not sure how she'd have a whole incident to herself but the story is enough to give it a pass.

"Slayer, Interrupted" by Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Cliff Richards (pencils) and Will Conrad (inks). My favourite in the collection. Taken from one of my favourite episodes in the whole series. Buffy goes to the mental institution. In the show it was mentioned that she'd been in one before getting to Sunnydale and this is the story of what happened to her while she was there. It tells how the girl that was dropped into the role of the Slayer really took it on and became what she was meant to be. A subplot of how Giles became her Watcher is also included and presents some interesting ideas on what it really meant to him.

The whole book I'm giving a 4 out of 5. I really liked this one with just a couple of exceptions.

The Red Tent

I just finished The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. It's a fictionalised account of Dinah, daughter of Leah from the book of Genesis. My mother asked me to read this book, it's not one I would have picked up of my own accord, and I can't deny it's well written but it still wasn't my cup of tea.

I got the feeling reading it that it was A Very Important Book. One of those books that supposed to empower women with its great insight into what it's like to be a woman. The book was even organised into three sections that basically embodied the narrator (Dinah, who has no voice in the Bible) as child, maiden and mother. There's an extended Prologue that details the personalities of her "mothers" (Leah and her father's other wives: Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah) and that was really one of the best parts of the book for me. I enjoyed reading Diamant's take on the Bible story. To look at what the women might have been feeling about the events taking place but then it fell to a classic problem of feminist literature.

The men were human and the women weren't. The men in The Red Tent are flawed beings. Most of what they do they do out of greed, or jealousy, or fear, or lust, or some other negative emotion. The women's actions always seemed reasoned when compared to that of the men. It's not that I'd say it was a male bashing book, it was just that the men were portrayed with a negative light that didn't fall on the women. The women had some special insight or power simply because they were women that the men didn't, and couldn't, possess. I don't agree with that. I think men and women have different talents but that doesn't make one gender better than the other or more insightful, it just makes them different.

I also have to admit that I'm a classicist - I don't like when an author changes the original story to suit his or her own needs. In the Bible Dinah is raped by an Egyptian prince. The man does fall in love with her and does offer a bride-price, which I felt Diamant accurately portrayed, but she was not a willing participant. I understand why she changed it to have Dinah love the prince and reciprocate his affections. She wanted the child-maiden-mother structure and that would be difficult to do if Dinah did not bear a child of love. So I can forgive that. What I didn't like is that as a result of her brothers killing all the men of the city in revenge for her rape, or out of greed in Diamant's telling, that Dinah then cursed the name of Jacob. That the author decided to change the renaming of Jacob to Israel from an honour from God to a hiding of the name of his family in shame. That fell a little too far from the original story for my taste. There were other instances but that one in particular coupled the two problems I had with the book: the motivations of the male characters and the divergence from a text that has survived for thousands of years.

So, for mistreating men's motivations, diverging from a classic story and for puffing up its own importance I can only give The Red Tent a 2 out of 5.

The Mammoth Book of Arthurian Legends

The first book of the year for me was The Mammoth Book of Arthurian Legends edited by Mike Ashley. It's organised into three sections. The first deals with how Arthur became King of the Britons, the second is tales of knights of the Round Table and the third is the fall of Arthur.

The second section was definitely my favourite. It was what I expected most from the book when I first started it. The stories were an easy, enjoyable read and detailed the legends surrounding Arthur. I really enjoyed "Sir Marrock the Wolf" by Allen French. It's not a story I'd really heard about before, barely mentions Arthur or the Round Table but still captures the feel of an Arthurian story.

The feel of Arthurian stories is what was missing in the third section. Aside from the almost required story of "The Passing of Arthur" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, I found that the authors that Ashley chose to represent the final days of Camelot were odd choices. They were mostly from more modern authors who were using the legend as a framework for a story that was part of the Arthurian cycle but weren't really Arther legends themselves. "The Dog's Story" by Eleanor Arnason was a good story. I enjoyed seeing the court of Arthur from the perspective of a man turned into a dog by Merlin but I didn't think it really fit in a book that calls itself a Mammoth Book of Legends because it really didn't read like a legend.

The stories in the final section were either trying to speak of Arthur as history (which he may have been) or as myth (which he may have been, though that seems less likely) but lost the feel of legend by often suggesting that either Arthur and Merlin were lovers or that Arthur loved Lancelot more than he loved Guinevere. That's an interesting take on the story but I was hoping for something a bit more scholarly.

The first section suffered a little from being too scholarly. The stories were a little too close to the source and came off a bit dry. I enjoy reading those types of stories, like The Iliad but it does take a little time to get through the so-and-so, son of so-and-so.

Anyway, an OK read. I'll give it a 3 out of 5. The thing I came away from it was the the members of Monty Python probably did have at least a passing familiarity with the legendary Quest for the Holy Grail because Galahad had no helmet and a white shield with a red cross. He also had a small adventure at the Castle of the Maidens.

Introduction

So one of my New Year's Resolutions was to keep track of how many books I actually do read in a year. My husband pokes fun at me because I have a pile of books that I plan to read and it never seems to get any smaller. Well, it does get smaller I just keep adding to it. Of course he adds to it as well; that always gets overlooked in the "making fun of" bit.

My reading habits are pretty varied. There's a bit of fantasy on my pile, often a little science fiction, some "chick lit", short stories, humour, non-fiction and some rule books. I plan to cover everything I read, from comic books to magazines and from the journal of Kevin Smith to the collected legends of King Arthur.

Actually, that's the first book on my list: The Mammoth Book of Arthurian Legends edited by Mike Ashley. I feel it's almost a cheat because I started it before January but I'm only about a third of the way through so I'm counting it.