46. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

I finally finished the last book that Cassie gave me for Christmas last year. It's a book of short stories so I just read it at my leisure. Actually it became my bathroom book.

"Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas--abstracts, invisible, gone once they've been spoken--and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created." Author's Introduction

I've said this before but, I think Neil Gaiman may have one of the most gifted but twisted minds in the world. He writes absolutely beautifully. I've never really liked short stories until I read these. It's amazing to me how quickly you can be drawn into a story, go through a wide gamut of feelings and then reach a satisfying conclusion. Gaiman also includes some poetry that I skipped. That's right, I don't read much poetry. I loved the introduction in which Gaiman talks about each story. Sometimes he tells why he wrote it (one was a birthday present for his daughter) or his feelings about it, etc. I was always going back to the introduction when I started or finished a story. Of the thirty-one selections in these book, my favorites were: "October in the Chair", a story about the twelve months holding their annual meeting at which October is this year's chairperson; "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire", a humorous story of a writer who hates what he is writing; and "Monarch of the Glen", the longest story in the book about a traveler who visits northern Scotland and becomes caught up in a really odd ritual. There were a few stories I really didn't like. They were either too gory, macabre, or just plain creepy. But even in those stories, Gaiman sets the tone and draws you in. He really is a fascinating personality. Rating: 4.5