please turn on your magic beam....

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Blog of the Week #16 - Neil Gaiman's Journal

Mark has actually linked to this for as long I can remember, but although I've popped over there sporadically, it's only recently that I've started to read it a little more closely. I suppose it's the natural follow-up to my recent discovery of Gaiman's incomparable Sandman comics.

I've actually been a reader of Gaiman's books for some time. I'm new to Sandman (having intended to read the damn thing for years), but I first discovered his writing through "Good Omens", which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett in 1988. I read it mostly because of his co-author really (I remain a big fan), but it's a really funny book that tells the story of an angel and a devil who try to thwart the apocalypse which is about to be inadvertantly started by the antichrist, who has accidentally ended up as a small boy growing up in the English countryside. OK, so I was 14 at the time, and I'm not sure that I've done the plot much justice there, but I actually read it again recently and it was still funny. Several years later I picked up "American Gods", intrigued by the promise on the dust-jacket that if I wasn't entirely happy with what I read, I could get my money back. There was no need. It's excellent. Really, really excellent: delving deeply into contemporary American culture and into Norse Mythology. From there it was all I could do to get my hands on another of his books: "Neverwhere". This one is aimed at a younger audience, but deals with how an ordinary businessman gets sucked into an extraordinary world existing underneath London... a place where there really is an Angel in Islington.

Superb.

Anyway. His journal is slightly different to other celebrity blogs featured here in that it is updated pretty regularly, is thoughtfully written, interactive and is above all INTERESTING.

If you are familiar with NG and his work, then I suggest you go over and have a look for yourselves. If you aren't.... what are you waiting for? If you like comics.... go for Sandman. If you like books.... go for "American Gods".

As if that wasn't enough, he also appears to be a fan of the Pixies, and you can't argue with that.

Blog of the Week.

[Previous blogs of the week: Delrico Bandito, I have ordinary addictions, Girl With A One-Track Mind, Ditch Monkey, Skinny Legs and All, Wandering Scribe, Sarah, MC Hammer, Lisa Whiteman, Paul Daniels, 2012 Olympic Special, Some Guy On A Journey, The Art of Noise, The American Mystery Deepens, The Thoughts of Chairman Tao]