A Dream of a Thousand Cats

My cat is an asshole.

I was supposed to go and see Neil Gaiman tonight, but my cat decided that I would be spending time at home with a tweaked back.

The little #&$@!! tripped me at lunch time in the kitchen today. I managed to catch myself but the effort twinged something painfully in my back. Then, one of the day home kids pulled a stupid and I had to haul him up from where he’d wedged himself in between the wall and the bed, further exacerbating the issue to the point where I’m hobbling and immobile.

You have no idea how much I hate and disappointment I have flowing through my veins right now. If Palpatine ran out of hate lightning, I could easily refill his supply about 1000 times over and still have some to spare.

This was something I was really looking forward to. Beyond anything else this year and it all comes crashing down because of a stupid cat.

Somewhere, Bast is laughing.

7 Day Book Challenge – Day 1

So my friend Jon challenged me to one of those stupid “post your  x favourite ____ and then tag bunch of your friends” chain letter spam things on Facebook recently. Normally I ignore them passionately because I personally hate the gullible sheep mentality they breed and I simply hate spam. This time however, I was intrigued. The challenge is thus:

Day 1: I have accepted a challenge to post the covers of 7 books I love — no explanation, no reviews, just the covers. Each time I’ll ask a friend to take up the challenge. Let’s promote literacy together. Today I challenge: ____

Pretty innocuous right? I mean it’s books! This was a challenge I was born to participate in. So I started thinking about it… then I thought about it some more and then today  I caved and took up the challenge.

I started rummaging around in my head for the books that I love. Books that have shaped my identity and my world views over the years and realized that I had way more than 7. The number might be closer to 700 truth be told. This might be harder to narrow down than I had originally thought.

On top if this, just posting without any explanation makes me twitch out. I’m the kind of person that needs to know why. I need to understand the reasons. The story behind the story if you will. I’m sure there’s more than a few of you out there that feel the same.

Now, so as to stick to the spirit of the rules, if not the letter, I’ve decided to post the original over on Facebook and then link each day to a new post here with the juicy details about why these seven books are so important to me.

Let’s begin.

Continue reading “7 Day Book Challenge – Day 1”

The Neil is coming!

I’m excited. I managed to get tickets to a speaking event with my all time favourite author. The one, the only, the infinitely estimable Neil Gaiman. It’s my birthday present to myself. I can’t wait!

I’m way more excited for this than knowing  that both David Tennant and Matt Smith will be at the comic con this weekend. I’m a huge Doctor Who fan but even that pales in comparison to The Neil.

I’ve never drank deeply from the kool-aid offered by the cult of celebrity. I understand that they’re just people and while I respect their work and it’s contribution to my imagination, I just feels off to me to idolize them.

All that being said, I am definitely doing just that with Neil and I  have with other authors. I remember meeting Guy Gavriel Kay just after he released Ysobel and was practically dumbstruck trying to articulate the profound effect his works had on me. I dont really have an explanation. I guess I’ll always be a bigger book nerd than tv nerd.

I’m okay with this.

Storied Dreams Come to Life

Multimedia adaptations of books have long been a thing. Some are successful. Some are not. Either because they only have a 2 hour window to visually depict a world that’s been described in detail in thousands of words or they deviate from the author’s vision or the fan’s expectations too much.

My favourite author, Neil Gaiman, has had a spate of recent adaptations of his works with a fair amount of success. Stardust was awesome. American Gods is a wildly fantastic show. Lucifer is decent. Neverwhere was great and even How to Talk to girls at parties was quirky and off-beat but cool just the same.

While rumours swirl constantly about Gaiman’s opus, a movie of Sandman, I can’t see it happening any time soon. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see it visualized, but I can’t see it being done with the right tone or with enough justice to the source material for it to be truly successful.

Another one of Gaiman’s works that I always thought would be difficult to adapt to the screen, was his collaboration with the late, great, Terry Pratchett. Good Omens. However, I was wrong. They’re doing it as a mini-series over at Amazon Prime. Not only that, but it has David Tennant (the 10th Doctor for those of you playing along at home) and Michael Sheen as two of the main characters.

Right then. I’m in and I’m looking forward to this. Moreso now that they released a teaser/trailer at this year’s Comicon. It looks amazeballs…. but don’t take my word for it.