The Neil Gaiman post

To celebrate the release of Anansi Boys this week, here are a few Neil Gaiman memories.

First of all, I came to the party late. I have an obsessive personality. I never like things just a little bit; they pretty much consume me, at least for a while. So I have a tendency to avoid things I think I might like too much, fighting the pull of the tide as it were. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I purposely didn' watch the show becaused I knew I would obsess on it (and Aidan was a newborn when the show came out, and I didn't have much time for TV anyway). I gave in at season 4, simultaneously watching new eps once a week and reruns on one of the cable networks to catch up.

But I was talking about Neil Gaiman here. My husband listens to MPR at work, and he was always telling me about this comic book guy that they were interviewing whom I'd really like if I would just listen. Well, I can't listen to public radio and homeschool at the same time, so I was always missing these things. But he kept insisting I would really, really like this guy, he was just my sort of thing, and I should pick up some of his books.

Now I knew what Sandman was, of course, but being a loyal Marvel fan I'd never read it. Someone had shown me the Ramadan issue once but it was at a party when I couldn't just sit down and read it. But I knew this was something that would suck me in once I started it.

Then on one of the homeschool e-loops I subscribe to one of the mothers made some disparaging remarks about comic books and two of us posted pro-comic arguments pretty much simultaneously. The other mom was a huge Gaiman fan; she said I simply had to read him.

Then I was dusting bookshelves one day and the name "Gaiman" caught my eye. I had a Neil Gaiman book already and didn't even know it (he wrote a biography on Douglas Adams, which was what I had). I actually believe that Douglas Adams bio was the second Gaiman book I read; he also wrote a book about Duran Duran which I believe I read (I had a friend with more than 20 books on Duran Duran and at one point or another I read all of them).

So. I have this rule about threes. Something that comes at me from three different places is trying to get my attention. So I pooled together all of the book store gift cards I had gotten for my birthday and Christmas and bought all of the Sandman collections, plus all of his novels (American Gods had just come out in paperback). Yep, that was over $200 spent all at once. Good thing I liked it, eh?

My other memory was the first time I read The Wolves in the Walls to Aidan and Oliver. Aidan was 6, Oliver was 3. I read stories to them while they eat their lunch, usually longer books like Harry Potter, but I made an exception for this one since it had just come in the mail and I was anxious to read it. I was so engrossed in the story I was halfway through the book before I realized that no one was eating. Oliver had a fork hovering in front of his mouth. Both of them were wide-eyed, way freaked out. I couldn't stop reading now; they would never know how things came out all right in the end. I finished it, but for days after Aidan told everyone about this really scary book that his mother had read to him that she must never, ever read again.

You know, they still haven't come around on that one. But this will be the book from their childhood that they will remember for the rest of their lives.