Why you should read Neil Gaiman

I haven't read American Gods yet... but I came across this bit a while back and it was recently dropped in my lap again. Incredible. Enjoy.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the Big One comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
American Gods, ch. 13 [Sam] (2001)

Summer Reading

Productive procrastination at it's best...

Here's the start of my summer reading list (I used Amazon's wish list to create it because that was the best I could come up with).





Please let me know what else NEEDS to be on it.

Oh, and uh...

Khaled Hosseini's new book, A Thousand Splendid Suns is out... definitely get on it!

...and if you haven't read Kite Runner, get on that too.

SERIOUSLY!

Oh, he's also coming July 2nd for a reading/Q&A/signing... buy tickets @ Bookworks. Just do it, really.

Straight up

Augusten Burroughs

I'm sure you've probably heard of him... Wrote that one book... has a boy with a box over his head on the cover... A New York Times Bestseller... they made a movie of it... movie had a lot of great actors... everyone I know hated it... I loved it...

Anyway... His 5th book came out last year, I was excited (of course) but couldn't read it right away. Books are first published in hardback and I don't like hardback so I had to wait 'till the paperback edition was released. This is sorta good cuz paperbacks are usually cheaper than hardbacks unless of course it's used at Hastings... then the hardbacks are like $4.99 and the paperbacks are somewhere around $7.50... this doesn't make too much sense. I think they do it to drive people like me nuts... whatever. I'm think I'm just extra bitter because I didn't want to spend $7.50 on a used, better edition of Dave Egger's AHWOSG that has the cool appendix of "Mistakes we Knew we Were Making" when I already own the book and have (somewhere) a photo copy my aunt sent me of the appendix. So the better edition of Burroughs' was released on April 17th this year... I was a month late in purchasing it cuz A. I'm poor and B. School was still in session (and I don't read during school... I mean "for pleasure")... so I bought it yesterday... or maybe it was the day before... yeah it was, so I wasn't really a full month behind (yesssss!). I'm about 22ish pages into it and love it, I actually wish I was reading it right now... I just love his voice... wonderful. I actually forgot the part that I was planning on mentioning in the blog... probably because I can't stop thinking about that Eggers book I can't find anywhere that they have at Hastings...for only $7.50... I'm gonna go buy it when I get off work. Oh yeah, Burroughs is awesome and makes me want to go to London even more... he's so cool... and great... maybe I'll read more after buying Eggers book. I hope it's still there. oofta.