More Reccomendations from the Man in the Know
I know I was all doom and gloom about the longer quote collections the last time I reall had much to say, but lo and behold! I discovered this collection of Neil's reccomendations that I hd collected together and forgotten about. Check some of this stuff out! I'm still trying to in some cases, and have been very rarely disappointed in the stuff I've managed to see/hear/read so far.
-- Really Rather Not Nice
“Am getting fonder and fonder of the Adverts CD "Cast of Thousands". When it came out, I remember thinking it a feeble followup to their debut album, "Crossing the Red Sea With the Adverts", and I thought the Adverts were a sort of second rate punk band (I saw them play Crawley Leisure Centre when I was 16, and loved the gig, and wished they were the Clash or the Pistols). They've aged better then almost all of their contemporaries, though. These days I find myself looking at "Cast of Thousands" as the place that TV Smith's blend of heartfelt-outrage-and-dreams-and-content songwriting really started to come together. Which I mention because I notice that TV Smith has released his first new CD in a few years, the first since "Generation Y" (if you don't count "USELESS" which was a sort of greatest hits CD, with all the songs rerecorded with a German punk band). The new album is called ‘Not A Bad Day’”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/03
“Last time I put something musical up here it was Fredo Viola's beautiful "Sad Song". This time, for balance, you probably need to hear William Shatner, aided and abetted by Ben Folds, singing Pulp's "Common People". You may not think you need to hear it, but I'm afraid you do.”
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/04
“(Now playing as I finish playing this: "Psycho" by Jack Kittel.)”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/04
“Well, for coin tricks you want J. B. Bobo's Modern Coin Magic . http://store.doverpublications.com/0486242587.html for details.”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/25/02
“I got Lambchop's Is A Woman yesterday. Overall the album's a bit samey, but the second song, "New Cobweb Summer", does that strange and transcendant thing that Lou Reed's song "Coney Island Baby" does, or does to me, anyway, where it moves from being quiet and restrained to tearing its heart out and making me gasp, and the volume never increases, and it remains every bit as laid back and restrained all the way through as when it began (which is practically lying down in a straightjacket), and when it's over I still don't know how it did it. Absolute magic.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/07/02
“Just wrote a paragraph for the Langley Schools Project website. (Some of you need this CD. Some of you need it very badly. Some of you definitely do not. It's... well, unique. And sometimes it's really good, as well. And sometimes it's better than good, even when it's, er, bad. Go over to http://keyofz.com/keyofz/langley/ and listen to some of the clips, and you'll see what I mean. Or possibly not.)”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/05/02
“One of my favorite books is Count Jan Potocki's Manuscript Found In Saragossa. I review it in the December 2001 journal (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal_archives/2001_12_01_archive.asp).
Some years ago, knowing my fondness for the book, author Ian McDowell (not to be confused with any other Ian Mcauthors) found for me a copy of the film. It was on two VHS tapes, and had been copied so many times that, despite having started out in black and white, it was now picking up colour. I watched it for weeks, over and over -- two and a half hours worth of quirky, brilliant, intricate, funny, scary, sexy, and strange film, and then put it away and later gave it to a friend: things like this, I thought, should keep moving. Set in Spain, acted and directed by Poles in 1965, it was special. Once I'd given it away I started to doubt that I'd ever seen it all. I'd run across mentions of it from time to time (Angela Carter, saying that the way she and Neil Jordan constructed COMPANY OF WOLVES was inspired by the film of Saragossa.)
And I put it into American Gods.
Last August, a message came in on the FAQ line, from someone at a DVD company, letting me know it would be out on DVD around now, and would I like a copy?
I said yes. (You had to ask? This is why I love being an author.)
And it arrived, a crisp and clean black and white print, a full half hour longer than the version I'd seen. It may be the oddest and coolest film ever made, for those who like stories.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/05/02
“I actually signed (and saw) my first copy of the book for kids with the very long title last night, and discovered something very important that you should know if you like Children's Fiction. (It was actually something I suggested to them, and which I had forgotten about, but it happened and it has made me happy.) Which is: in addition to containing short fiction by me and Nick Hornby and Mr Snicket and the like, it also contains, in, I hope, its entirety, GRIMBLE by Clement Freud. This is a story I have loved since I was seven and which has been out of print for a very long time indeed. And now it's back in print, in noisy outlaws etc and you can read it. (I'm not the only Grimble fan in the world. In an Amazon.com interview J. K. Rowling described it as "one of funniest books I've ever read" -- which you would think would have been an incentive for a publisher to bring it back into print before now.)”
-- Neil Gaiman –9/27/05
“I've only ever optioned one book or story by someone else. It was a book called WASP, by Eric Frank Russell. I was convinced it would make a perfect movie, and once it was optioned I started to write it. And then September the Eleventh 2001 happened.
I stopped writing the film and simply let the option expire. WASP wasn't fiction any longer. It had become rather too relevant, and I couldn't imagine a universe in which anyone would pay for it to be made in the foreseeable future.
If you read http://www.boston.com/
ae/books/articles/2005/09/11/echoes_from_sci_fis_golden_age/
you'll find out why. Or read the book.”
-- Neil Gaiman 09/11/25
(Apologies for the split link, but it was playing havoc with my sidebar.--RRNN)
“The last time I was in Australia, on my day off at the end, Eddie Campell showed me his book The Fate of the Artist, and I loved it. And now, just in time for me to zoom back to Australia for the Sydney writer's festival, it's finally coming out -- http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/fate.html
for details...”
-- 05/12/06 Neil Gaiman
And One anti-recommendation, which Neil rarely doles out(he almost never poo-poos on others, except when it is really warranted):“The script for BLACK HOLE is starting to feel like a real movie script, I think. Roger and I bought a bunch of CDs with names like "CHARTBUSTERS From 1974!" and have them playing in the background a lot of the time. Oddly enough, the intervening 32 years hadn't erased how much I didn't ever want to hear "Billy Don't Be A Hero" again. One verse in and it all came crashing back...”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/29/06
-- Really Rather Not Nice
“Am getting fonder and fonder of the Adverts CD "Cast of Thousands". When it came out, I remember thinking it a feeble followup to their debut album, "Crossing the Red Sea With the Adverts", and I thought the Adverts were a sort of second rate punk band (I saw them play Crawley Leisure Centre when I was 16, and loved the gig, and wished they were the Clash or the Pistols). They've aged better then almost all of their contemporaries, though. These days I find myself looking at "Cast of Thousands" as the place that TV Smith's blend of heartfelt-outrage-and-dreams-and-content songwriting really started to come together. Which I mention because I notice that TV Smith has released his first new CD in a few years, the first since "Generation Y" (if you don't count "USELESS" which was a sort of greatest hits CD, with all the songs rerecorded with a German punk band). The new album is called ‘Not A Bad Day’”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/03
“Last time I put something musical up here it was Fredo Viola's beautiful "Sad Song". This time, for balance, you probably need to hear William Shatner, aided and abetted by Ben Folds, singing Pulp's "Common People". You may not think you need to hear it, but I'm afraid you do.”
-- Neil Gaiman 06/26/04
“(Now playing as I finish playing this: "Psycho" by Jack Kittel.)”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/04
“Well, for coin tricks you want J. B. Bobo's Modern Coin Magic . http://store.doverpublications.com/0486242587.html for details.”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/25/02
“I got Lambchop's Is A Woman yesterday. Overall the album's a bit samey, but the second song, "New Cobweb Summer", does that strange and transcendant thing that Lou Reed's song "Coney Island Baby" does, or does to me, anyway, where it moves from being quiet and restrained to tearing its heart out and making me gasp, and the volume never increases, and it remains every bit as laid back and restrained all the way through as when it began (which is practically lying down in a straightjacket), and when it's over I still don't know how it did it. Absolute magic.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/07/02
“Just wrote a paragraph for the Langley Schools Project website. (Some of you need this CD. Some of you need it very badly. Some of you definitely do not. It's... well, unique. And sometimes it's really good, as well. And sometimes it's better than good, even when it's, er, bad. Go over to http://keyofz.com/keyofz/langley/ and listen to some of the clips, and you'll see what I mean. Or possibly not.)”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/05/02
“One of my favorite books is Count Jan Potocki's Manuscript Found In Saragossa. I review it in the December 2001 journal (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal_archives/2001_12_01_archive.asp).
Some years ago, knowing my fondness for the book, author Ian McDowell (not to be confused with any other Ian Mcauthors) found for me a copy of the film. It was on two VHS tapes, and had been copied so many times that, despite having started out in black and white, it was now picking up colour. I watched it for weeks, over and over -- two and a half hours worth of quirky, brilliant, intricate, funny, scary, sexy, and strange film, and then put it away and later gave it to a friend: things like this, I thought, should keep moving. Set in Spain, acted and directed by Poles in 1965, it was special. Once I'd given it away I started to doubt that I'd ever seen it all. I'd run across mentions of it from time to time (Angela Carter, saying that the way she and Neil Jordan constructed COMPANY OF WOLVES was inspired by the film of Saragossa.)
And I put it into American Gods.
Last August, a message came in on the FAQ line, from someone at a DVD company, letting me know it would be out on DVD around now, and would I like a copy?
I said yes. (You had to ask? This is why I love being an author.)
And it arrived, a crisp and clean black and white print, a full half hour longer than the version I'd seen. It may be the oddest and coolest film ever made, for those who like stories.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/05/02
“I actually signed (and saw) my first copy of the book for kids with the very long title last night, and discovered something very important that you should know if you like Children's Fiction. (It was actually something I suggested to them, and which I had forgotten about, but it happened and it has made me happy.) Which is: in addition to containing short fiction by me and Nick Hornby and Mr Snicket and the like, it also contains, in, I hope, its entirety, GRIMBLE by Clement Freud. This is a story I have loved since I was seven and which has been out of print for a very long time indeed. And now it's back in print, in noisy outlaws etc and you can read it. (I'm not the only Grimble fan in the world. In an Amazon.com interview J. K. Rowling described it as "one of funniest books I've ever read" -- which you would think would have been an incentive for a publisher to bring it back into print before now.)”
-- Neil Gaiman –9/27/05
“I've only ever optioned one book or story by someone else. It was a book called WASP, by Eric Frank Russell. I was convinced it would make a perfect movie, and once it was optioned I started to write it. And then September the Eleventh 2001 happened.
I stopped writing the film and simply let the option expire. WASP wasn't fiction any longer. It had become rather too relevant, and I couldn't imagine a universe in which anyone would pay for it to be made in the foreseeable future.
If you read http://www.boston.com/
ae/books/articles/2005/09/11/echoes_from_sci_fis_golden_age/
you'll find out why. Or read the book.”
-- Neil Gaiman 09/11/25
(Apologies for the split link, but it was playing havoc with my sidebar.--RRNN)
“The last time I was in Australia, on my day off at the end, Eddie Campell showed me his book The Fate of the Artist, and I loved it. And now, just in time for me to zoom back to Australia for the Sydney writer's festival, it's finally coming out -- http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/fate.html
for details...”
-- 05/12/06 Neil Gaiman
And One anti-recommendation, which Neil rarely doles out(he almost never poo-poos on others, except when it is really warranted):“The script for BLACK HOLE is starting to feel like a real movie script, I think. Roger and I bought a bunch of CDs with names like "CHARTBUSTERS From 1974!" and have them playing in the background a lot of the time. Oddly enough, the intervening 32 years hadn't erased how much I didn't ever want to hear "Billy Don't Be A Hero" again. One verse in and it all came crashing back...”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/29/06
posted by Really_Rather_Not_Nice at 2:15 PM
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