The Anime Alley

I feel compelled to bow at the awesomeness of Neil Gaiman's talent in telling stories.. I have just finished American Gods and it blew me away. It was unbelievable in the sense that it is nothing special and yet there is so much more than meets the eyes. Gaiman's talent as a story teller (for me) is unbelievable. His writing flows naturally, his characters are really believable and for me shadow will be one of the few main characters with which I have empathise more than all others.

I have read most of Gaiman's work but this novel will always be special to me.

Have to say I have not read many of his books. Though many people I know love him and his stories. Think I might have to check some more books of his out at the library in the coming weeks.

I'm now partway through the first "An Orison of Somni 451" segment of Cloud Atlas. The book is pretty good. It does keep my interest. But I'm finding it to be bit of a light read. Not sure why. I suppose I'm in a bit of hurry to get through it. Part of that is anticipation I suppose. I read an article about the movie so I think that is a contributing factor as to why I'm going through the book so quickly. I might slow down a bit when I go through the bits which I think the movie didn't dwell on too much (or so I'm expecting). We'll see...

I do like reading, I really, do, I just usually have to remind myself. Because public schools in America suck all the fun out of reading, demanding that you see symbolism in everything or you're a retard. You never get to read anything fun. I think it's been a while since I've last read some stuff, like college when I signed up for that Women's Studies course in my last semester without actually reading the course description (which was young adult fantasy/scifi written by women, which, I can't say I would've shied away from completely, but I might've had second thoughts. Also, I didn't even read all of the books for that class, one of them sucked such a tremendous amount of ass that I just quit halfway through, the other suggestions were good though).

So yeah, I looked up the trope "Groundhog Day Loop", because that is a trope I really like, and I got a few books out of it. First, I read Heir Apparent, which is young adult, about a girl who gets trapped in a virtual reality video game that will restart itself upon failed attempts. Part of the book was clearly pointing at those jerkwads who seem to want to protect our children from fiction and fantasy, in which the game only becomes dangerous (it might overload and fry the main's brain) because they staged a hasty protest and trashed the safety mechanism on the machine. Anyway, I enjoyed it, and enjoyed seeing possible outcomes, much easier to avoid in future attempts. This was a three-days thing, so it was more like Majora's Mask, except she kept getting murdered, lol! I kinda liked how, at the end, it was revealed [spoiler]that if the player cries, the game will help you out, she only cries at the end when its about to overload and kill her, so the game tells her how to win. Then, it's revealed what was probably the far easier course that most players took through the game (though I must say the main's decisions made perfect logical sense)[/spoiler]

Also in the entry was Replay by Ken Grimwood, where a guy suffers a heart attack at 43, and wakes up to find he's 18 in his college dorm again. He keeps dying at 43 and wakes up a little further along in his timeline (with default choices having been filled in by the original timeline). The internets helped me out and said he's [spoiler]202[/spoiler] by the time the novel ends. The first time, he does what we'd all do and bet big on sporting events he knows will happen and companies he knows will make it big. Obviously, this will get erased. I was starting to get a tad bored until [spoiler]Pamela, who is also a replayer[/spoiler] shows up and then things get way more awesome. I think the scifi was lighter here, kinda surprised this wasn't just in with the normal fiction for that. And [spoiler]it's never explained why this keeps happening or what started it all[/spoiler], which I don't mind.

Next up will be John Dies at the End. Yes, I am a Cracked reader, why do you ask? But it also did show up for this trope.

I started reading "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" this morning. I've managed to make why way through 180 pages or so of it. Tis a bit of a captivating read I must say...

^ Polished off the last half of the above mentioned book last night. I had left it for some time and needed to do something different for a change.

As for the book itself, I can see how some people felt that pieces of the puzzle showed up in a somewhat overly deliberate and just so convenient fashion. Putting that aside, I felt that the early and middle parts of the book were relatively strong. The climax was just that but I can think of others which shocked me more.

Anyways, I shall take a short break before tackling the next entry in the trilogy.

In the process of finish up reading Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Both are actually older books but very good reads indeed. I wanted to take a break from fantasy/urban fantasy and read some good science fiction. I've read some other stuff from Banks but never his "Culture" series. It's hailed as one of the best world building-epic-space opera science fiction series. I can see why. The book is rife with terrific settings, characters, races, etc. It's so interesting to me some of the thins that the human race has achieved in the books comparing when it was written in 1987 to today. It is bittersweet though as Banks passed away early this year. His passing prompted me to finally read the series.

Snow Crash is a great science fiction cyber punk novel. Again, great characters, an engaging plot, and a terrific setting. Where as Phelbas has that world building space opera vibe Snow Crash is cyber punk science fiction at it's best to me. Shame I never got to these 2 novels until now. Better late than never I suppose.

Finished reading "The Book of Negroes" by Lawrence Hill yesterday. I believe the title of the book is "Someone Knows My Name" in the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia. I started reading it on the flight back to Narita from Vancouver. So it was a relatively quick read by my standards. All in all I found the story compelling and generally couldn't put the book down. It's a novel that follows the life story of a girl who was kidnapped in Western Africa and sold into slavery. The title of the book comes from the name of a registry of African-Americans who were shipped out of New York by the British after the end of the American War of Independence.