Book rec

[brigdh]

Flist! You have failed me. Neil Gaiman has a new book out and no one told me. It's a book of short stories, and it's called Fragile Things.

You can read one of them online, A Study In Emerald. Apparently this won the Hugo Award in 2004, so a few of you might have read it already, but everyone who hasn't? Go right now. It is unbelievably good. Sherlocke Holmes meets Lovecraft, and yet it totally makes sense. I'm particularly fond of it because I've been reading the Sherlocke Holmes books recently, and the parallels between the first story and this one are amazing; I love how it's almost the same and yet completely different.

Also, man, look at that dialouge at the end of the first part. It reads like something out of a Saiyuki reinc fic; Gaiman is totally a Holmes/Watson shipper.

Comments

[chiasmus.livejournal.com]

I just saw that book when I was out tonight. XD And I want to know why no one told me, either.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally stumbled over it accidently. We need more press on this!

[scribblemoose]

I can recommend subscribing to the rss feed of Neil Gaiman's blog:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/officialgaiman/

Then you need never miss out again. :)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! I'd been meaning to do that, but hadn't got around to it.

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, thanks for reccing. That was so AWESOME. Not least because of his voice - I've read everything Conan Doyle ever wrote, and when I started reading that I was absolutely SURE that Gaiman was ripping off A Study in Scarlet word-for-word with a few changes - but he didn't. He's just That Good. ^____^

I guessed halfway through - I'm for some reason sensitive to the trick of avoiding names to diguise identity. ^_^ However this did nothing to dismiss my shrieking glee at the end with the whole "so totally PWND" note. :D

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

(Although, I have to disagree on the Holmes/Watson shippingness - since it's [SPOILER][/SPOILER]

How many Sherlock Holmes stories have you read? Have you got to the awesome cool one where Holmes really thinks Watson's dead for a split second and goes all OMGNO!! ? )

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes, you're right! I couldn't sort out the identities at first- who was who- though I caught that it wasn't the old arrangement.

I've read the first four books, so up to the one where Holmes 'dies'.