The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I had planned on continuing with the comedic trilogy of Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint and Cat's Cradle but since the library had The Graveyard Book available, I pounced on that instead. I remember Gaiman first mentioning it on his blog years ago and continued to read about it on his blog since then. I've been wanting to read it since it was published in September but never did for one reason or another. Like Interworld, it's geared at "Young Adults" so it's fairly short and quick to read. Unlike Interworld, it was actually intended to be a book, and Gaiman has another 10 years and several novels (including the very good American Gods and excellent Anansi Boys) under his belt. Even 50 pages in I can tell The Graveyard Book is pretty special.

Finished Catch-22

Loved it. I haven't read too many humorous books in my life, so saying Catch-22 is one of the funniest books I've ever read doesn't really mean much, but...Catch-22 is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I found myself laughing out loud repeatedly throughout. The entire thing is just absurdity run rampant, which is about as fitting a description of war as there is.

More than a few times while reading the book I wanted to see what I was reading played out, so I was excited to see that it had been adapted for the screen back in 1970, with quite an impressive cast. It was even the screen debut of Art Garfunkel for god's sake.

The book's chronology is all over the place, with scenes being repeated from different perspectives, and no kind of timeline is followed, so it'll be interesting to see how they adapted that for the film.

I was also intrigued to see that Heller wrote a sequel, entitled Closing Time, over 30 years after Catch-22 was originally published. Another one to add to my never shrinking reading list.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Like Interworld, this book has been on my to-read list for quite awhile. I had almost decided to read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (which has been on my list even longer) but while perusing the intro to the book I saw Catch-22 as well as Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint cited as likely influences on it. Since I wanted to read all three of those books as well, I figured it'd make more sense to read them first to inform my reading of Dunces. So it shall be.

Two chapters into Catch-22 and it's already a bit strange. But strange is good.

Interworld Finished

Wrapped up Interworld last night and came away underwhelmed. It had some cool ideas, but the characters were pretty forgettable (particularly the villains). It might've made for a cool cartoon show, as it was originally conceived (and the novel certainly reads like a pilot episode) but the end didn't leave me wanting more. I'm a Neil Gaiman fan so I had to read it, but if for whatever reason Gaiman and Reaves ever wrote another one, I'd skip it.

Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves

Kicking off the New Year (and this blog) is my first book of 2009. Kind of worked out nice that I finished my last book (Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles) on New Year's Eve. Interworld has been on my list of books to read since I started keeping an actual list a couple years ago. Many books have been added to that list and subsequently read, but Interworld kept getting passed over.

As a regular reader of Neil Gaiman's blog I always thought it was odd that he never really spoke about it, whereas he had been talking about his recently released The Graveyard Book for years. Researching it just now it's apparently because the book was actually written about ten years ago, long before Gaiman started his blog, and was originally conceived as an animated film/series.

I'm already sixty or seventy pages into it, and it seems like a pretty quick read, so I can't imagine it'll take more than a couple days. It is targeted toward the YA market after all.