Fragile Things

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Every morning, in the pale light before dawn, a hundred men would wade and swim out to the island and would carefully repair and reconstruct any feature of the landscape which had been damaged by the weather or by wild birds, or taken by the lake; and they would remove and remodel any of the imperial lands that had been damaged in actuality by floods or earthquakes or landslides, to better reflect the world as it was. October in the Chair" (5 stars)-This was a great story involving the months as we know them coming to life and telling stories.

I'm counting this in for Award Winning Challenge as a couple of the stories in this collection are award winners or mentions.Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot" (1 star)- No. I just read that thing twice and just rolled my eyes. I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It’s as close to a credo as I have or will, I suspect, ever get. THE PROBLEM OF SUSAN

Gaiman says in the introduction that the original title for the collection was These People Ought to Know Who We Are and Tell That We Were Here, after a word balloon in a Little Nemo in Slumberland strip. This exact line also appears in the text for the included short story "Bitter Grounds". Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" – gothic story published in the anthology Gothic! Closing Time" (4.5 stars)- This story was a little weird, but in the end I liked it well enough. I think that the problem was the reveal just happens and I sat there scratching my head. So I don't know what the man in the story met as a young boy.Al principio, no sabía cómo reseñar este libro. Al final, lo que decidí fue mencionar cada uno de los relatos, aunque excluyendo los poemas (porque no sé interpretar poesía, no la entiendo y honestamente, tampoco me gusta). Lo que sí debo decir es que es la primera vez que leo a Gaiman, y aunque varios relatos me gustaron bastante, la verdad es que no creo que llegue a atreverme con otro de sus libros, al menos en el corto plazo. Sunbird" – written as a birthday present for Neil Gaiman's daughter, a story in the style of R. A. Lafferty In the spirit of mild self-immolation, I plowed my way through in bits and pieces over perhaps two weeks--okay, now it's more like four--never able to take more than a story or two at a time. Here's what I think: Gaiman is successful because he is popular and slightly pushes boundaries in a currently fashionable, ie. noir way. Occasionally he does lovely things with words and had fabulous ideas, and I hear he's a very nice guy. However, for me, his writing is very uneven, and feels like it would benefit from longer incubation, and perhaps closer affinity with whatever genre he prefers. I'm not a horror fan, but so many of his short stories seem to delight in twists, and I'm not just referring to the surprise ending.

I want to thank all the editors of the various volumes in which these stories and poems first appeared, and particularly to thank Jennifer Brehl and Jane Morpeth, my editors in the U.S. and U.K., for their help and assistance and, particularly, their patience, and my literary agent, the redoubtable Merrilee Heifetz, and her gang around the world. A story that began with, and exists because of, my love of the remoter parts of Scotland, where the bones of the Earth show through, and the sky is a pale white, and it’s all astoundingly beautiful, and it feels about as remote as any place can possibly be. It was good to catch up with Shadow, two years after the events in my novel American Gods.October in the Chair. Creo que este relato es uno de mis favoritos. Nos cuenta una historia dentro de una historia, sin dar mucho contexto ni explicación, y con un final abierto que sólo te hace suponer lo peor, que algo horrible ocurrió, pero no lo sabes. Comentario al margen: tengo la teoría que la historia que cuenta October es su historia, él es el niño pequeño que escapa de su casa.

I think there are more stories about the unpleasant Mr. Smith to be told, particularly the one in which he and Mr. Alice come to a parting of the ways. THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE DEPARTURE OF MISS FINCH So, nettled, I took an empty notebook and a pen and I went down to the gazebo at the bottom of the garden and during the course of the afternoon I wrote this story. I got to read it aloud for the first time a few weeks later at a benefit at the legendary CBGBs. It was the best possible location to read a story about punk and 1977, and it made me feel very happy. THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME

Diseasemaker's Croup. Relato cortito acerca de una enfermedad muy extraña. No me llamó mucho la atención, la verdad. For me, by far the most enjoyable was 'Monarch of the Glen,' in which the American Gods's character, Shadow, is visiting Scotland. Two characters from an earlier short make an appearance here, and it is Mr. Alice and Mr. Smith. I enjoyed the way local mythology got weaved in on a number of different levels. Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There’s the magic of it.