It's frelling April! I have put the snow shovel away...
It has snowed all night. It's not really that cold so the roads are icy; but it is accumulating on the sidewalks and the wind gusts are so strong it's like having a hand pushing you in the back.
None of this would be so hard to take if less than three weeks ago the temperature hadn't hit eighty degrees. My crocus have bloomed. The tulips were up. Trees had budded. None of which you can see now because they're all buried under the snow. And the weather folk tell us the worst haven't hit yet. Ten inches in all.
::sigh::
I have been consoling myself by reading Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman and Run River, by Joan Didion.
I've finished Neverwhere and am half-way through Run River. The two books make an interesting contrast. Neverwhere is Gaiman's first solo novel. After the limitations of graphic novels - even unusually heavy talky ones such as Sandman - the room allowed by an entire novel did give open season for his asides, literary allusions, and wicked puns. I had seen the miniseries the book was based on. I greatly enjoyed the show; but it had that look that only 80/90's PBS/BBC productions had. Ambitious, but bad special effects, just a sort of look of intelligent but cheap. The book is intelligent and intriguing, if a bit formulaic. Ordinary man drawn into strange world, and despite his longing to get out, becomes hero, and realizes he has always belonged there. Basic fairy tale, but Gaiman gives his characters some interesting twists and depths; and his puns and word play are second to none; but you can tell he's still new at novels. There's nothing like the dazzling turns and ideas of American Gods, but the promise of everthing to come is there.
Didion on the other hand shows nothing directly, everything is alluded to but never spoken. And for all we have an omniscient narrator, we actually learn very little directly but are shown scenes, have an emotion or more likely an absence of such mentioned, but we're given just the smallest of details and left to imagine the rest ourselves.
Two amazing writers, two absorbing books, but such different reading experiences.
None of this would be so hard to take if less than three weeks ago the temperature hadn't hit eighty degrees. My crocus have bloomed. The tulips were up. Trees had budded. None of which you can see now because they're all buried under the snow. And the weather folk tell us the worst haven't hit yet. Ten inches in all.
::sigh::
I have been consoling myself by reading Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman and Run River, by Joan Didion.
I've finished Neverwhere and am half-way through Run River. The two books make an interesting contrast. Neverwhere is Gaiman's first solo novel. After the limitations of graphic novels - even unusually heavy talky ones such as Sandman - the room allowed by an entire novel did give open season for his asides, literary allusions, and wicked puns. I had seen the miniseries the book was based on. I greatly enjoyed the show; but it had that look that only 80/90's PBS/BBC productions had. Ambitious, but bad special effects, just a sort of look of intelligent but cheap. The book is intelligent and intriguing, if a bit formulaic. Ordinary man drawn into strange world, and despite his longing to get out, becomes hero, and realizes he has always belonged there. Basic fairy tale, but Gaiman gives his characters some interesting twists and depths; and his puns and word play are second to none; but you can tell he's still new at novels. There's nothing like the dazzling turns and ideas of American Gods, but the promise of everthing to come is there.
Didion on the other hand shows nothing directly, everything is alluded to but never spoken. And for all we have an omniscient narrator, we actually learn very little directly but are shown scenes, have an emotion or more likely an absence of such mentioned, but we're given just the smallest of details and left to imagine the rest ourselves.
Two amazing writers, two absorbing books, but such different reading experiences.