Less Like Quotes and More Like Recommendations from the Man Himself
Well, this is certainly not a complete collection of the music and literature that Neil has mentioned on his blog in the past (I'll collect some more in the future, I'm sure), but have some fun and track down some of these songs and books to see just how good they are. I haven't been disappointed with Mr. Gaiman's tastes yet. -- RRNN (P.S. You can all thank Librarian Pirate for getting me up off my lazy butt and posting these this week, since various family illnesses, my job, and a sudden burst of creative energy that's got me writing again were tempting me away from my blogging duties. I apologize, and will try to behave better in the future.)
“I've been listening to an awful lot of Alan Bennett over the last month, because the BBC are bringing out his backlist on CD, and I listen whenever I'm driving. I didn't think it had had any effect on me until I sat down to start reading WITCH WEEK and noticed it seemed to be coming out of my mouth in a faintly querulous Leeds accent.”
–-Neil Gaiman 01/31/02
“When I was a kid, as anyone who has read my Heliogabolus story knows, I loved Gilbert and Sullivan. Like anyone else who has ever loved Gilbert and Sullivan I suspect, once in a while the urge to write a Gilbertian Patter Song wells up unbidden in the auctorial breast, and some years ago, I succumbed.”
–-Neil Gaiman 10/15/05
“Playing in the background, at least when I started typing this, Richard Goldman’s Girls N’ Cows, a present from Terry Pratchett a few years back, which comes as a relief (well, a break) from The Gourds hillbilly version of “Gin ‘n Juice” which I kept playing because it made me smile.”
–Neil Gaiman 01/23/02
“One Ring Zero are doing a CD of songs with lyrics by writers of books and such. Up on their website for the as yet untitled CD at http://home.infi.net/~urbngeek/authorproject.htm you can hear a little of some of the songs they've done so far -- including one by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket).”
--Neil Gaiman 02/27/03
”Right. Tea break over. Back on my head. With a lot of Penelope Houston who I only just discovered (yes, rather late, I know) playing in the background.”
--Neil Gaiman 02/13/06
“Now playing on an iTunes party shuffle of recently-added CDs: "Harry Rag" from the Kinks BBC Sessions CD. No, that stopped. Now it's the Dresden Dolls' "Coin Operated Boy."
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/04
“I keep running into the problem of not knowing whether to say nice things about books here or not. Mostly I still do, because it's fun to recommend books to people. But if I put something up here on the journal I tend to qualify statements, and write something like"If he'd paid more attention to details this would have been a perfect book. As it is, it's only unmissable if you have nothing else to read. Still, the description of the Assassins Anonymous meeting is absolutely gripping and if the rest of the book were this good it would have been magnificent," which publishers then leave out the qualifying bits of, and I find myself saying "a perfect book... unmissable... absolutely gripping and... magnificent!" on the back of someone's book. Whereas something that's meant to be a blurb normally stays a blurb.”
-– Neil Gaiman 10/14/03
"The next book to be read will be Martin Millar's just finished novel Lonely Werewolf Girl, which my assistant Lorraine has already read, and tells me is quite possibly the best book that anyone's ever written. This is high praise, and even if it doesn't manage to clear that particular hurdle I'm still really looking forward to it."
-–Neil Gaiman 08/23/03
"I love Poe. I got to write an appreciation of and essay about him for the 2004 oversized hardback Barnes and Noble SELECTED TALES AND STORIES, which was one of those things that simply made me happy to do, and happy to be given the opportunity to read some of Poe out loud again, which I firmly believe is how he should be read (or listened to)."
-–Neil Gaiman 01/20/06
“Just read my favourite book of 2001, Poppy Z. Brite's not-yet-published LIQUOR. It's the story of two young cooks in New Orleans who open their own restaurant. The characters are utterly likeable, and the food, and the backstage restaurant world, are wonderfully drawn. Poppy's nervous, as there's no horror in it, and precious little angst. I don't think she has anything to worry about -- it's a fabulous, funny, foodie New Orleans roller-coaster ride, as gripping as a great Iron Chef episode or Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential that's going to make a whole lot of fans who don't know Poppy as a writer of darker stuff.”
--Neil Gaiman 12/29/01
“Am currently reading Maddy, my small daughter, Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm stories.”
-- Neil Gaiman 12/29/01
“My bedside reading of the last few days has been Jim Steinmeyer's Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear, the story of the Golden Age of stage magic, and the amazing personalities -- Maskelyne, Devant, Houdini, Thurston, Kellar and the rest -- who made it happen, who built the grand illusions, who decided that it might be a good idea to saw a lady in half, and so on. It was a gripping and delightful book which a) anyone with any interest in stage magic and illusion should read, and b) is quite excellent, informative and necessary and c) disappointed me. I think it only disappointed me because I'd read "Art and Artifice", a privately printed, low printrun book, in which Steinmeyer's inner magic-geek runs free, with occasional diagrams. He was writing for magicians in "Art and Artifice", and the sense of discovery and joy as he figures out how you recreate Morritt's disappearing donkey, or David Devant's Moon Moth Illusion was almost tangible, whereas in Hiding the Elephant it feels as if he's keeping his geek-self in check, and giving a much more sober view of the history of magic to the wide world of readers.”
– Neil Gaiman 02/08/04
“I've been listening to an awful lot of Alan Bennett over the last month, because the BBC are bringing out his backlist on CD, and I listen whenever I'm driving. I didn't think it had had any effect on me until I sat down to start reading WITCH WEEK and noticed it seemed to be coming out of my mouth in a faintly querulous Leeds accent.”
–-Neil Gaiman 01/31/02
“When I was a kid, as anyone who has read my Heliogabolus story knows, I loved Gilbert and Sullivan. Like anyone else who has ever loved Gilbert and Sullivan I suspect, once in a while the urge to write a Gilbertian Patter Song wells up unbidden in the auctorial breast, and some years ago, I succumbed.”
–-Neil Gaiman 10/15/05
“Playing in the background, at least when I started typing this, Richard Goldman’s Girls N’ Cows, a present from Terry Pratchett a few years back, which comes as a relief (well, a break) from The Gourds hillbilly version of “Gin ‘n Juice” which I kept playing because it made me smile.”
–Neil Gaiman 01/23/02
“One Ring Zero are doing a CD of songs with lyrics by writers of books and such. Up on their website for the as yet untitled CD at http://home.infi.net/~urbngeek/authorproject.htm you can hear a little of some of the songs they've done so far -- including one by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket).”
--Neil Gaiman 02/27/03
”Right. Tea break over. Back on my head. With a lot of Penelope Houston who I only just discovered (yes, rather late, I know) playing in the background.”
--Neil Gaiman 02/13/06
“Now playing on an iTunes party shuffle of recently-added CDs: "Harry Rag" from the Kinks BBC Sessions CD. No, that stopped. Now it's the Dresden Dolls' "Coin Operated Boy."
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/04
“I keep running into the problem of not knowing whether to say nice things about books here or not. Mostly I still do, because it's fun to recommend books to people. But if I put something up here on the journal I tend to qualify statements, and write something like"If he'd paid more attention to details this would have been a perfect book. As it is, it's only unmissable if you have nothing else to read. Still, the description of the Assassins Anonymous meeting is absolutely gripping and if the rest of the book were this good it would have been magnificent," which publishers then leave out the qualifying bits of, and I find myself saying "a perfect book... unmissable... absolutely gripping and... magnificent!" on the back of someone's book. Whereas something that's meant to be a blurb normally stays a blurb.”
-– Neil Gaiman 10/14/03
"The next book to be read will be Martin Millar's just finished novel Lonely Werewolf Girl, which my assistant Lorraine has already read, and tells me is quite possibly the best book that anyone's ever written. This is high praise, and even if it doesn't manage to clear that particular hurdle I'm still really looking forward to it."
-–Neil Gaiman 08/23/03
"I love Poe. I got to write an appreciation of and essay about him for the 2004 oversized hardback Barnes and Noble SELECTED TALES AND STORIES, which was one of those things that simply made me happy to do, and happy to be given the opportunity to read some of Poe out loud again, which I firmly believe is how he should be read (or listened to)."
-–Neil Gaiman 01/20/06
“Just read my favourite book of 2001, Poppy Z. Brite's not-yet-published LIQUOR. It's the story of two young cooks in New Orleans who open their own restaurant. The characters are utterly likeable, and the food, and the backstage restaurant world, are wonderfully drawn. Poppy's nervous, as there's no horror in it, and precious little angst. I don't think she has anything to worry about -- it's a fabulous, funny, foodie New Orleans roller-coaster ride, as gripping as a great Iron Chef episode or Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential that's going to make a whole lot of fans who don't know Poppy as a writer of darker stuff.”
--Neil Gaiman 12/29/01
“Am currently reading Maddy, my small daughter, Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm stories.”
-- Neil Gaiman 12/29/01
“My bedside reading of the last few days has been Jim Steinmeyer's Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear, the story of the Golden Age of stage magic, and the amazing personalities -- Maskelyne, Devant, Houdini, Thurston, Kellar and the rest -- who made it happen, who built the grand illusions, who decided that it might be a good idea to saw a lady in half, and so on. It was a gripping and delightful book which a) anyone with any interest in stage magic and illusion should read, and b) is quite excellent, informative and necessary and c) disappointed me. I think it only disappointed me because I'd read "Art and Artifice", a privately printed, low printrun book, in which Steinmeyer's inner magic-geek runs free, with occasional diagrams. He was writing for magicians in "Art and Artifice", and the sense of discovery and joy as he figures out how you recreate Morritt's disappearing donkey, or David Devant's Moon Moth Illusion was almost tangible, whereas in Hiding the Elephant it feels as if he's keeping his geek-self in check, and giving a much more sober view of the history of magic to the wide world of readers.”
– Neil Gaiman 02/08/04
posted by Really_Rather_Not_Nice at 12:37 PM
1 Comments:
YAY! Happy to be an inspiration. Hope you're doing better. It always amazes me how much cooler Neil Gaiman is than I am. I have rarely heard of so much of the stuff he is in too!
Post a Comment
<< Home