Sunday, October 12, 2008

Neil Gaiman Reads to You

Good news for everyone who didn't make it to a reading The Graveyard Book: British author Neil Gaiman reads the entire novel to you, a chapter at time, on the The Graveyard Book Video Tour, available (free) here.

The video readings are not particularly interesting visually but are definitely a treat to hear. Listening to an author express out loud the phrasing and pacing of the internal voice heard while writing is a learning experience.



What's the book about?

"Gaiman’s latest novel, The Graveyard Book, is an affectionate homage to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book channeled through Webster’s morbid aesthetic. Aimed at both younger and adult readers alike, the story opens on a dark night, following a shadowy assassin as he calmly and dispassionately slaughters a sleeping family one by one," says Bridget McGovern of Tor.

My favorite Gaiman work is American Gods. Neverwhere is a close second and I just recently learned that book is a companion to a BBC TV series. Perhaps the Seattle public library has the BBC series on DVD.

1 comment:

Logothete said...

I watched all of the Gaiman readings (and was at the Seattle one.) Great idea for a book, and a great way to make audiobooks.

I have the neverwhere dvds, they're pretty great but suffer from the BBC low-rent costume era they were made in, which makes it sometimes come up more like a bunch of LARPers than the general show. I highly recommend it, though, if you enjoy Gaiman's works. The stories are just different enough to contain a bunch of good surprises, not as different between book and movie as Stardust, for example.

--Corprew

--Corprew