 So Neil Gaiman is my favorite author, genre. If you are in a reading slump, if you are in a writing slump, if you are in a life slump, pick up from the chair seat. So Neil Gaiman is my favorite author. I don't have occasion to talk about him that much on my channel just because he doesn't have like a ton of new releases so I'm not constantly reading new books from him and reviewing books from him but he is my favorite author which I may or may not have mentioned on this channel so you may or may not be aware and there are still a couple Neil Gaiman books that I have not read. One of which I put off reading because I figured it would be good but I didn't think, you know, it didn't excite me that much the idea of reading it. I was like I'll get to it one of these days. Plus the aggregate rating on Goodreads is like on the lower end and this is Neil Gaiman and he's pretty well loved so for a book not to be that highly rated I was like it'll be fine, it'll probably have some good moments and just like not be one of my favorites. I am so mad at myself for putting off reading it because The View from the Cheap Seeds by Neil Gaiman is now among my favorite Neil Gaiman books and he is my favorite author. So my my official favorite Neil Gaiman books up to this point were and are Ocean at the End of the Lane and The Graveyard Book. Not to say his other books aren't great too but those have been my favorites. Now I'll have to say I have three favorite Neil Gaiman books. Those two and The View from the Cheap Seeds. The View from the Cheap Seeds is Selected Nonfiction. Again one of the reasons I was like I'm sure it's good but like yeah yeah I'll get to it. I'll get to it. As with not all but most I would say Neil Gaiman books the audiobook is read by Neil Gaiman himself and since many of the things that are in this collection of nonfiction are speeches that he gave like commencement speeches or award speeches or things like that um not everything in here is a speech but a lot of it is um so him reading that in the audiobook kind of feels like you know what it would have been like to hear that speech being given plus it's conversational because then he also kind of talks about like so like when I gave this speech I said x, y, and z or like when I gave this speech I originally would have you know said x, y, z here but like not me not not here anymore I don't remember what I said or kind of went off script there so he's like kind of talking to you anyway in the book so having Neil Gaiman talk to you in the audiobook feels like the right way to experience this. I mean Guillermo del Toro put it better than I probably could so like I'll just read this and then you know the video will be over. Like having Neil Gaiman all to yourself for a long witty unforgettable trip an intimate erudite and illuminating conversation with one of the great minds of fantasy a dream come true. Yes that is how I feel. Now I will warn you if you have too many books on your tbr then don't read the view from the cheap seats. Not because this is adding one more book to your tbr but because reading this will make you put about 50 books on your tbr because again a lot of the things that are in this collection are introductions that he's given for anniversary editions of books or articles he's written about other authors or interviews uh things like that that he's done where he's talking about other authors and the way that he talks about his favorite authors makes you want to read them it makes you want to drop everything well not this you definitely want to keep reading this you never want to drop this but it makes you want to drop everything else that you have and read all the things that Neil Gaiman is gushing about. Some that come to mind that he talks about at great length he talks a lot about dianowyn jones he talks about steven king he talks about gene wolf because i believe he was quite close friends with gene wolf or at least professionally like uh they were quite close um maybe maybe not best best friends but like he had a good relationship with gene wolf terry pratchett obviously with whom he co-wrote good omens he talks about ray bradbury quite a bit and you know and more oh and uh he talks actually quite a bit about um the author of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy whose name currently escapes me hang on a second. Douglas Adams while i was flipping i was also reminded that he talks a lot about c.s louis so anyway um he will make you want to pick up all of those authors just because the way neil gaiman talks about them makes you want to read it and it's partly because i always want to read neil like part of what the joy of reading neil gaiman is the way that he has with words so he could convince me to read i mean i'm sure he could convince me to read books that i think are terrible because i mean if he enjoyed them uh because the way that he talks about it it just you want to feel what he's feeling you want to experience what he's talking about experiencing and the way that he writes in general i mean when he some of these uh like there's a famous commencement speech that he gave it has been published separately it's also in this collection but it was published separately and illustrated separately and it's called um make good art or art matters i think it's called make good art yeah it's called make good art and it's an amazing speech and see why it was separately published but i will tell you that like from the very beginning i was like probably like on the third you know piece of selected nonfiction when i was like on the verge of tears and they're not like it's not like it's like a robin hop book i'm not saying it's like ultimate tragedy but there's a poignancy today at neil gaiman's writing that like it this book brought me to tears multiple times um and i wasn't you know like horrible waterworks but like you know choking up misty eyed because he's talking about something in a way that just hits and the way neil gaiman writes i said this in my discord to my patrons and i said it to a couple other people and i've said similar things about him all the time is just that he's so so humble and so that sounds really like you know saintly like he's not saintly but like he's quite self-deprecating and quite down to earth when you see it that's why it's such a joy to see him in interviews and speeches because he doesn't act like he is the legend that he is i mean if anyone could get away with acting like a legend it's neil gaiman because he is a legend but he doesn't which is what makes him so charming so he kind of he is very nonchalant about what he does and he's saying things constantly like you know people pay me to make up stories like i don't know why but like i'm really glad that they do because i love making up stories um he doesn't act like you know i am a gift to literature you are welcome like he's like i like to write stuff and luckily i have found the opportunity to get paid for that so he's quite down to earth and makes fun of himself a lot but at the same time weirdly he talks about literature and writing and fantasy fiction as like this great and noble thing that should be respected and should be preserved and should be paid attention to so he talks about his own work like it's kind of a joke but he talks about the type of work that he does like it's the most important thing in the world and you can't help especially as a sci-fi fantasy reader which you probably are if you're reading a selection of nonfiction from neil gayman you too feel this way about sff and you also have experienced the world kind of deriding sff and the way that he talks about genre the way he talks about his own conceptualization of genre what is genre i feel the need to talk like alan for a second genre but the way he talks is sort of like because he gets asked questions like this all the time what is it that makes the great sff great and he'll be like what is it that makes sff what does that even mean what are the lines what are the rules are there rules is it when you have no rules that becomes sff like he's like constantly the kind of like working through those questions because he hasn't really he doesn't put things in boxes his publishers do and that too about like i've often said that he writes for children as if they are adults and he writes for adults as if they are children which is another amazing thing about his books which is why middle grade to adult i'll read anything that he writes for that reason so when he again like gets asked questions like you know so how do you set up like when you decide to write something how do you decide that this is going to be middle grader this is going to be adult and he's like i don't i just write a story and then other people are like this is middle grade or like this is adult i mean some i'm sure he never envisioned thought of american gods as you know being for kids but he just kind of writes stories and then they kind of just like make their way towards whatever age group they're most appropriate for um which is an amazing way to think of things and like like many authors will say you know write what you want to read but he applies that to children as well he writes what he would have wanted to read as a child and as a child he wasn't really reading kids books because you know it's more of a modern phenomenon that you have such like age segmented um book publishing that you have you know clear delineations of like this is a children's book this is like a middle grade book this is a young adult book this is an adult book like now we have new adult like there weren't so many divisions so he was just reading whatever was in the library and he has a funny story that he tells in a couple different speeches in this collection where i think his daughter was like reading goose bumps and he was like oh if you like goose bumps you'll love this and he gave her carry by steven king and it utterly traumatized her he was like so i don't i don't recommend doing that but that's kind of his thought process when he's writing for kids and clearly when he's giving his kids books to read like he doesn't really like have like oh this is a kids book this is an adult book he's just like this is just a book this is just a story and if you like one creepy story you'll like another creepy story and he has a story about coreline where um he didn't think it was too dark but um i think it was his editor or his publisher or somebody like that who told him this is great but this is way too scary you can't publish this for kids and he was like i'll make you a deal read it to your kid to your daughter i think it was uh i think it was a girl read it to your kid and if she doesn't like it or she thinks it's too scary then you know then i'll i'll concede and then you know she reads it to the kid and the kid loves it so of course it gets published as um it was a middle grade um book and then years later he talked to the the kid who was now an adult and she was like oh i was super scared but like i couldn't admit that because then i knew that i wouldn't be allowed to finish it or to read it so like that she like pretended not to be scared because she wanted to read it which is again kind of what neil gayman gets about kids like no i'm not saying every kid like scary stories not all of them do not every book that he writes for kids is scary like fortunately the milk is not scary and again unfortunately the milk he was asked you know like you were like told or you're like it was brought to his attention that like it isn't a good idea to write a middle grade book where the protagonist is the father as opposed to one of the kids and he's just like whatever he just writes what he writes and that's the thing like this idea that you kind of have to like there are rules to like what this has to be in order to fit a certain slot you know it's it's not that clear cut like you know kids what did you want to read when you were a kid it probably wasn't something super clean and tidy and polished and nice and simple like you wanted to like read interesting juicy adventurous possibly scary things and that's how neil gayman writes he writes because he still wants those things as an adult so he still writes those things for adults but he also writes them for kids because that's what he wanted when he was a kid and he still does but yeah the way that he talks about his favorite authors the way that he talks about authors that were friends of his about kind of the behind the scenes look of what they are like and they all seem like amazing people when he talks about them you gotta get this glimpse into what they're like as as people as well and they all kind of seem at least to the lens of neil gayman that like also really chill nice interesting pretty down-to-earth individuals it makes sense that they know that's why he would be friends with them because you know you gravitate towards people that are like you so i feel like neil gayman wouldn't be likely to be super tight friends with somebody that was the opposite of him in that sense that was like super egotistical i don't see him gelling with a personality like that so it was lovely hearing him talk about uh douglas adams and what he's like as a person steven king what he's like as a person gene wolf what he's like as a person and just like different philosophies of the approach to writing um and i feel like you know the idea of hearing about writing craft from you know the legends that is neil gayman would be intimidating the idea that like i could never write that good i could never write anything that was amazing as that but there's no one that's ever made me feel more confident and more hopeful and more comfortable the idea of writing than neil gayman because he's very you know low-key about it himself and the advice he gives is amazing advice because it's not like it's not some like lofty crazy advice he's like look you're gonna want to imitate the people that you love and that's fine like that's how you learn you're gonna want to imitate their styles i've done it too but only you can write like you so in terms of what is unique about what you're offering to the world is the fact that only you have your voice only you have your story idea so that's what will set you apart that's what makes you are writing you uh that's what makes you different so don't worry about it don't worry about being unique because only you can write what you can write you're you're already there which is i mean it's true and it's it's fantastic and then part two is that you know if you worry about writing something that you think other people will want if you worry about writing something that you think will be popular then if it doesn't end up being popular it doesn't end up being well received or picked up then it's just a waste of your time and a disappointment or at least you'll feel that it was a waste of your time and you'll just be disappointed and there's no upside to that but if you just write what you would want to read if you write a story that you love that you love writing it and you love reading it then you know in a perfect world that does get picked up and it gets you know loved and it gets read and that's great but if it doesn't you still have that story that you love that you loved writing and that you would still love to read so write what you would love and you will come out a winner either way which is again great advice that people lose sight of so yeah basically i'm saying if you are in a reading slump pick up view from the cheap seats if you are in a writing slump pick up view from the cheap seats if you are in a life slump pick up view from the cheap seats because this book is just the absolute best pick me up that you could ask for and um i cannot recommend it highly enough let me know in the comments down below your thoughts and feelings about if this book if you've read it or about Neil Gaiman in general i will i'm always happy to talk about Neil Gaiman as i said he is my favorite author and the part of the reason that i picked this up is because i am getting to see him again because he's touring again um he hasn't you know he did it before i think the last i'm when i saw him the first and last time was like five years ago now um when he was touring so now that the pandemic is calmed down he's touring again so i'm very very excited to be seeing him again and i thought ah well you know i have a couple gaming books that i haven't read yet ever so now is a good time i'm so glad that i did i put me in the exact like excited mood that i needed to be in to be hyped i'm not that i wasn't already hyped but to be hyped to see Neil Gaiman so anyway let me know your thoughts and feelings about Gaiman the man the legend whatever you let me know i post videos on saturdays other random talks will be up on saturday so like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you when i see you bye