 Hey guys it's Liana and I'm here today to talk about my favorite author Neil Gaiman. My friends have a running joke about having to take a shot every time I mention Neil Gaiman. So I figured it's about time I did a video talking about Neil Gaiman. I kind of did this with Joe Abercrombie where I was like you know what I never talk about Joe Abercrombie because I don't for some reason but I'm just gonna do a video where I just kind of squeal about how great he is. So I'm kind of doing that today with Neil Gaiman both like a little bit more structure because unlike with Joe Abercrombie Neil Gaiman kind of writes all over the place whereas with Joe Abercrombie it's kind of like one big series. Yes he did write The Shattered Sea but it's mainly the first law so it's like loving that scene. That series is loving that author and loving that author is loving that series so that's that's not what we're here talking about today but with Neil Gaiman he notoriously does not write series. He notoriously does not write sequels so if you like something of Neil Gaiman's that's great and all but that's it. There is no series for you to chew through. They're all pretty much stay on the loans. I mean Sandman is the only series he's really written. People talk about announcing boys sometimes as being a sequel to American Gods and it kind of is but it isn't really but that's like the closest and then I believe he has spoken about writing a sequel to Neverwear but as of right now there is no sequel to Neverwear. There is a short story that's a spin-off from Neverwear called how the marquee lost his coat. I decided to do a video about where you should start with Neil Gaiman and in this video I will not tell you one specific book that everyone should start with because I don't think that's how that works so where did I start with Neil Gaiman? The first Neil Gaiman book that I ever read was American Gods however for the most part depending on the person but for the most part I don't recommend people start with American Gods for several reasons. One it's a kind of a tone. Neil Gaiman is more known for writing shorter fiction. Even his novels tend to be on the shorter side so American Gods kind of is the outlier so you're gonna start with the other maybe don't start with this like longest work that's kind of a big commitment. Two that's one. Two I just don't feel like American Gods both because of its length and because of the story itself I don't think it's necessarily a good example of what his style is like in general. I don't think if you want to see if the kind of stuff Neil Gaiman writes more generally is for you or not I don't think American Gods is a good sample. Very gymnastic elements are present in American Gods don't get me wrong but I do think it's quite different. The project of it is quite different from his other works even though arguably all of his works are entirely a unique project so but yeah so I mean I did start with American Gods and it obviously didn't hurt me at all but I don't necessarily recommend it especially if you're like on the fence about whether or not you even think you're gonna like Neil Gaiman don't start with like his tone which is notorious for being long and meandering like don't um maybe you'll love it maybe you'll hate it but don't start there or do because I did and I he's my favorite author. Neil Gaiman does write for all age groups uh he writes young children's fiction like picture books for little little kids he writes middle grade and he writes adult fiction uh some of his middle grade is like on the older in the middle grade so like I don't think he's ever written anything that's that would be shelved in YA but his middle some of his middle grade that he writes kind of spans a pretty large age range from like the very young to the bordering on YA but I've said this before in in conversation and in reviews of his books and just generally the Neil Gaiman writes for children as if they were adults and he writes for adults as if they were children and that is I think a distillation of what is magical about his writing and what I love about it so much is that he writes for the child what they knew as an adult but when he's writing for children he doesn't talk down to children he doesn't treat children as other as like as beings that can't handle what an adult can handle they just need to be told it more briefly and more simply but he put some pretty dark things in his children's literature and I think that's great Neil Gaiman I feel like has succeeded somehow in remembering what it was like to be a child and it's something that you don't know that you've forgotten until you read what he's written he writes something that just captures the mindset of a child in a way that you forgot that you forgot and he says it and you recognize it and you recognize that until that moment you had forgotten it but as soon as he says that you're back to being a child and you realize that is how I saw the world that is how I felt and that is what has changed somehow he's managed to remember and I don't know how but I'm so glad for example the ocean at the end of the lane which is my favorite thing he's ever written to date the ocean at the end of the lane is an adult fiction book it is not a children's book it is not a middle grade book however the majority of the book takes place is centered around and is sold from the perspective of a child so the framing device is that this child is grown up and he's come back this 40-year-old man has come back to the house where he grew up or at least where he spent a portion of his childhood and now now that he's back physically in this like rural location where this house is he is suddenly remembering what he had suppressed these few days in his childhood where some truly unnerving horrific and potentially supernatural things happened to him so the bulk of the book which is a very short book is what happened to him as a kid and so even though it's told from the perspective of a child it is in no way a kid's book please don't give it to your kids to read in fact Neil Gaiman visited a bookshop and he tweeted about it that's why I know they decided because he writes a lot of children's lit they had put all Neil Gaiman's books in the children's section and Neil Gaiman tweeted please don't put ocean at the end of the lane in the children's section no good can come from this so I love that that story for one it places you the adult in the mindset of a child in a way that you forgot but you remember the instant that he tells you it's almost like being that adult in the beginning of the framing device who's come back to this place and is suddenly remembering what happened to him as a kid obviously you're not remembering anything that happened to you but you are suddenly remembering what it is to be a kid in a way that this man is we're like how did I forget but you're right that's totally how it was to be a kid and it's kind of unnerving that you have forgotten it and that you can recognize it so quickly and then of course the thing that happened to the child in the story quite dark and harrowing so it's not a light read but I do also love that there's that room for interpretation about whether or not what this man is remembering is having happened to him as a kid if it has been if it was real or if it was a kid explaining horrific events as supernatural because it's easier for a kid to deal with or that's the way a kid would understand it so there's that room for interpretation but so I feel like if anything oceanally in the lane does illustrate what is the magical about Neil Gaiman's writing it is this childlike wonder that he's able to capture both in children's fiction and in adult fiction but also it is very dark most of what Neil Gaiman writes not all but most of what he writes is quite dark and unnerving conversely you have things like fortunately the milk which is totally a kid's book and is not dark at all unlike chloraline which is a kid's book that still creeps me out to this day as an adult fortunately the milk is a whimsical fun romp of a comedy about kids needing milk for their cereal in the morning but they run out of milk so dad goes out to get some milk and he's he takes a bit longer to come back from the shops than they'd expect and when dad gets home they're like well where were you for so long he's like well you won't believe what happened to me and the whole book is the insane adventures that dad was on while trying to get the milk and the milk plays an instrumental part in getting in and out of these scrapes that supposedly he was in and out of between the shop and home because each little piece of the story brings it back to but fortunately the milk somehow helped and there's like a dinosaur and pirates and it's like this whole adventure which is not dark at all like it's not it doesn't there's no scary dark twist there's nothing horrific about it it's just a lot of fun and the illustrated version the the one from the UK which is illustrated by Chris Riddell um he drew the dad to look like Neil which I think is fun so Neil writes things for children that are also completely childlike and fun but they've got this like quirky bizarreness which is quintessentially game and then you've got also tomes like American gods which the project of American gods is something kind of staggering where he's telling a story about the death of old beliefs and how beliefs have all come to America on the backs of the people that brought them and how they had to coexist and they had to compromise parts of who and what they once were to the people who brought them in order to survive the melting pot of gods and that in and of itself he could have told it as just sort of an anthology which is kind of how American gods comes across because that's why it's so meandering because it keeps pausing to tell you the stories of these various gods and how they got to America but there is also a plot there is also the overarching plot that has to do with our main character Shadow Moon who is on this road trip so it's a meandering road trip book two and it's got kind of an apocalypse plot going on also so there's kind of a lot going on with American gods and that's why it's so long and that's also why I think a lot of people struggle with it because it's kind of all over the place in what it's doing because it's doing a lot I personally think it's kind of genius not just kind of it's freaking genius but I appreciate that it's not a tightly told story like most Neil Gaiman stories 10 ocean at the end of the lane is like 200 pages of fact American gods is a tome and it's it's not tight it's not told efficiently it keeps I mean it's a journey book and an anthology of short stories about gods while also like a novel with this overarching apocalypse plot so I think it's a kind of a glorious genius mess and I wouldn't change anything about it like I don't think it's a criticism that it is the way it is it's a feature not a bug but it's also a feature that is a very definite flavor that you may or may not like and just because you don't like American gods if you don't like American gods it does not mean that Neil Gaiman is not for you which is why again I wouldn't recommend starting there or do if that sounds great conversely a noncy boys which is the quote-unquote sequel to American gods is totally different um it still has the anthropomorphized gods situation but it's not a road trip book it's not an anthology book it's it's a plot a story that follows the sons of mr. Nancy who's a noncy the spider and it's more comedic it's faster paced it's got again a tighter more snapping plot it's completely different from American gods other than the fact that you've got this anthropomorphized god character as a feature so maybe read it a noncy boys instead of american gods if that type of storytelling appeals to you but a meandering road trip book does not now if you're a lover of short fiction in terms of like actual short stories Neil Gaiman has a plethora of short stories I tend not to read short stories that's not a style of storytelling that tends to appeal to me because usually it's if it's good that I want it to be longer and if it's not good then I feel like I'm wasting my time I just I tend to get more frustrated with short stories uh and the frustration outweighs my enjoyment most of the time that said I do really like Neil Gaiman short fiction because it's written by Neil Gaiman and his a lot of his art is in his brevity I don't think anybody can tell things as concisely and as effectively as Neil Gaiman though the amount of description the amount of storytelling he can cram into a short sentence is completely mind-boggling in short fiction is that I've read in a single sentence he has illustrated for you the entire being of a character you can picture them you know who they are you know what they're about and he's done it by zeroing in on one particular quirk of theirs or even mannerism of theirs that entirely illustrates that character for you in a way that you're like oh my god how did you just do that that's magic you said in one sentence and I know who this person is now which is I think why Neil Gaiman short stories work for me in a way that most of their authors don't because he can cram so much story into a single sentence that by the end of a five page short story you feel like you've read an awful I do also love Neil Gaiman's interest and obsession with mythology which he which does appear in a lot of his fiction obviously American gods most notably features a lot of anthropomorphized figures from mythology but his children's fiction such as the picture book odd and frostions has a lot of the Norse mythology that he has always loved he wrote a book called Norse mythology which is his retelling of the North Smiths which is an absolute treat especially the audiobook he reads the audiobook himself and he reads a lot of his own audiobooks and they're usually fantastic because he's really good at reading his own fiction not every author is I feel like I lumped together with mythology also just like folklore and legend and fairy tales his retellings of fairy tales such as the sleeper in the spindle which is snow white makes a sleeping beauty is so macabre and so so Gaiman it's also illustrated by chris ridell and it is I am his kid's book I guess but it's very very dark just like core line it's for kids but it's very very dark because again Neil doesn't really pull his punches for kids he absolutely does not which is why when he says don't let your kid read Ocean in the Lane you better take his word for it because he's not one to pull his punches when it comes to kids he's not one so kids can't handle it he tends to think kids can handle a lot graveyard book which is the retelling of the jungle book which is for kids is quite chilling and I'm an adult but again I appreciate that because when you're a kid it's more the adults telling you that you can't handle things kids love hearing ghost stories kids love finding out secrets kids don't often have an appreciation for how dangerous something is so they'll totally be into something dangerous because they're not yet grasping how dangerous so I think Neil writes for the kid that he remembers himself to have been the kind of dark stories that he was craving and wasn't getting because they people think kids can handle it and that I think that wonder with the world that he remembers from childhood that he is trying to help you remember that is present in all of his fiction his children's fiction his middle grade fiction his adult fiction it's that wonder and that constant amazement and desire to know what is unknown the way that a kid can come up with a million different ideas for what could be behind a locked door a locked door is a source for days and days of daydreaming and games that's how Neil Gaiman writes everything has the possibility to be something more than it seems so he makes the everyday things extraordinary and he makes extraordinary things seem mundane and he writes for children like they were adults and for adults like they were children and this just mishmash this it just the world of Gaiman is always making you feel like everything is more than it seems you're you feel like a kid again which I think is incredible and his prose again is very efficient which is just impressive to tell so much story and so it's such a short amount of words the craft of that is so goddamn impressive just from a craft standpoint even if stories and themes are not for you the man's ability to craft artful and efficient prose is bar not I would say where to start with Gaiman I would say figure out what you're into if you like children's fiction check out a children's fiction if you're into long meandering tomes read american gods if you're into short stories read some of his short stories he's written quite a lot of things so whatever your thing is he's dabbled in it so start there is what I would say I read a lot of long fiction because I read a lot of high fantasy so I was not even a little bit intimidated by american gods so I loved it but if you're not into reading long books pick up a short fiction if you like picture books if you like graphic novels read sandman or read the sleeper in the spindle or odd in the frost giants one of my all-time favorites is uh truth is a cave in the black mountains which is a gloriously illustrated picture book whatever your flavor he's got a little something for you to check out so check it out anyway let me know in the comments down below if you've read anything by Neil Gaiman what your favorite Neil Gaiman is if you agree with me or disagree with me about my assessment of what makes Gaiman Gaiman or if you completely disagree with me you get something else out of his books I'm happy to hear different opinions that's what I get out of them so to each their own everyone's experience may be different you may adore Gaiman it feels totally differently about him that's fair that's how I feel about his books and that's what makes me love his writing and that is the reason that he is my favorite author again your experience might be different and I do love to hear what your experience with Gaiman is so let me know all the Gaiman related things down below I post videos on Saturdays other random times as well but definitely Saturdays so like and subscribe and I'll see you when I see you