The Graveyard Book (Gaiman)

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection, and it was one of my choices. I was asked to pick three books that I wanted to read. I selected the first of the Murderbot series, and "The Three-Body Problem", both of which I've had in my kindle for quite a while. I considered a few other books but all were well over 400 pages. I didn't want to obligate myself to something that I'd have to slog through. For this reason, I didn't select the first book in The Expanse series (which I've since read on my own). I perused Good Reads for suggestions. Neil Gaiman had quite a few books listed, so I decided to go with one I hadn't heard of, and hoped that the others hadn't either. Less of a chance that they'd already read it.

The Graveyard Book was the clear winner, with Three-Body getting no votes at all.

In the book, a man named Jack (who is referred to in that manner repeatedly) kills a family, but he misses the baby, who had climbed from his crib and toddled up the road to the cemetery. There he is protected by some of the spirits which live there, and one who has taken residence there. The ghost of the baby's mother frantically arrives and implores the spirits to protect her child. She cannot stay because she won't be laid to rest there. But Mr. and Mrs. Owens take charge of the baby and call him Nobody Owens (aka "Bod"). He is given Freedom of the Graveyard like his protector and teacher, Silas, has been given. Silas clouds the mind of the killer to leave when he approaches.

Years pass and Bod gets restless. He wants to go to school and meet people. He outgrows his playmates in the cemetery.

He gets into misadventures and finds but he is protected, and becomes the subject of an ancient prophecy. Meanwhile, the man called Jack returns looking to finish the job he started. We learn more about Bod's family and the fact that Bod's disappearance was covered up.

I enjoyed the book. I expected the ending, and yet I was a little disappointed in it. Bod would eventually have to leave the graveyard and face the world, and he would have to do it alone. However, he seems to be a little young to be doing that at this point. Granted, had I read this as a teen, I might not have thought that was a problem. But as a teen, I didn't have a good grasp at how life worked either.

It was a good read, and I really need to read more of Gaiman's works. I have so many as ebooks from a Humble Bumble years ago. (That's how I found out that I'd actually purchased his first book as a gift -- it was a quickie book about Duran Duran.

Guilty Pleasures (Hamilton)

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #1), by Laurell K. Hamilton, 1993

Before Buffy was slaying vampires on television, Anita Blake was executing them in a series of novels.

Anita is an Animator, she has the ability to raise the dead, creating zombies who can, briefly, retain their memories and personalities. She also kills vampires, but there's a catch. Vampires have are people, too, you know. They have rights, and they can only be put down by court order. Otherwise, they stay and operate in their own districts of the city. Guilty Pleasures is just your typical vampire nightclub. It isn't hiding anything nefarious. Of course, it's not.

As the story opens, Anita is being hired by a vampire whom she recently knew as a person. They want her to look into a series of unsanctioned vampire killings. She's not a private detective, but they think that she knows her stuff. Who better than someone who kills vampires to deal with another vampire killer.

Oddly enough, even though she isn't a private detective, that didn't stop me from reading the book if, in fact, she were. Actually, in my mind, the narrator had the same voice as the woman who reads the Sue Grafton, "Kinsey Millhone" audiobooks. It made for an interesting but unintended mash-up. I enjoyed the book, although I wasn't riveted. I took my time, mostly reading it on the trains, and occasionally before sleeping. I would recommend it if you like your vampires straight-up evil, manipulative and oozing with power. They may have the rights of humans, but they aren't trying to be human.

I found the first five books in the series on a shelf at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. Unfortunately, I only picked out the first book because I didn't want to spent that much money upfront on a series that I knew nothing about, hadn't heard of before. For all I knew, I was buying "chick lit". You may like that sort of thing, but it's not high on my summer reading list (even if I did buy it in the springtime). It's probably better this way because buying the first book forced me to read it sooner so I could decide to go back for the others before it was too late. A good plan, but I didn't move quickly enough -- someone picked up the rest of them before me.

By the way, had I bought all of them, they could still be sitting there on my shelf. I have bought quartets of books only to return them a year or two later, unread.

Two notes about the series:

First, they seem to have been popular, despite my not having heard of them. I asked online if anyone nearby had copies of the books. I got quite a few responses. Two guys I might've expected had had them, but they're too far away to borrow the books (the tolls just to Jersey are over $20, and let's not forget the gas!). And two women who I wouldn't have suspected both told me that they had read them when they came out, but neither had them any more.

Second, be warned that the series changes after the fifth or sixth books. Fans debate whether or not the change was for the better. What was the change? I don't know, but I could guess. And if I couldn't, my sister's response of "LOL! Oh, yeah, they changed!" tells me that it's probably not in a direction I'm wanting to follow.

That said, if I can find these books, I might have 4 or 5 more good reads this summer.