Skip to main content
search
Tag

Neil Gaiman

The Story of Neil Gaiman’s Cousin Helen

By Books & Authors, InspirationNo Comments
neil-gaiman-author-image

Neil Gaiman, Image from The Byre Theatre.

 The Writer Neil Gaiman used to think that making up stories for a living was trivial. That was until he learned the story of his cousin Helen. Here is Neil Gaiman sharing the story of his cousin Helen:

“Helen is 96 and now lives in Florida. At the end of World War II, Helen and her two sisters wound up in a refugee camp in Southern Europe having fled Poland. Homeless and displaced, they finally ended up in America.

In Poland, Helen had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto. There was a corpse run every morning, transferring the corpses out of the ghetto and she snuck back in on the returning transport. I think she snuck back out that way, amongst the corpses, too. Inside the ghetto, she started teaching the local girls arithmetic and grammar. At that point in time, books were illegal and there was a death sentence for anyone found possessing one. However, Helen had a Polish translation of Gone with the Wind and she kept it hidden behind a loose brick in the wall. She would stay up late every night reading so that when the girls came in the next day she could tell them what had happened in the chapters she had read the previous night and just for that hour these girls got out of the Warsaw Ghetto and they got to visit the American South.

Helen’s story – this story – made me realise that what I do is not trivial. If you make up stuff for a living, which is basically what I do, you can feel kind of trivial sometimes but this made me realise that fiction is not just escapism, it can actually be escape, and it’s worth dying for.” – Neil Gaiman

(From The UN Refugee Agency, Last accessed: Sunday 17th July 2016.)

People need stories, we always have. In ancient history, our ancestors sat around camp fires telling one another stories, illuminated by the glow of the fire. Then they began writing them down and having them printed and published in books. Today we still have printed books and ebooks are in their infancy.

In the future, people will still need stories. To understand why this statement is true, you need to understand why people read stories. We read stories to light up our imagination, for pleasure, for entertainment, to make us laugh, to make us cry, to be thrilled, to make us feel alive, to give us hope, to unwind, to escape and to learn.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Wednesday 20 July 2016

Book Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

By Amazon, Books & Authors, ReviewsNo Comments
the-graveyard-book-neil-gaiman-cover In The Graveyard Book, Nobody Owens (also known as Bod) is saved from murder by Ghosts. As a toddler, Bod, crawls out of his cot and walks up the hill to The Graveyard in the dead of night. Meanwhile his family are being murdered in their sleep by a man named Jack.

Jack tracks Bod up to The Graveyard. The ghosts save Bod’s life after Mrs Owens makes a promise to the Spector that is Bod’s mother. The ghosts agree to raise Bod and grant him the Freedom of The Graveyard.

Bod is to be raised by ghost surrogate parents Mr & Mrs Owens, with Silas who belongs to neither the world of the living or the world of the dead acting as Bod’s Guardian.

This is the start of a truly remarkable adventure story. Bod is taken through a gravestone that leads to a desert and city of the ghouls, he develops a friendship with a dead Witch and a living girl, he is taught how to fade, he goes to an ordinary school and uses

fear and dreamwalking to deal with bullies, he learns the ways of The Sleer and finally learns the truth of why his living family was murdered, why the man Jack is still after him and has to fight off The Jack’s order.

The Graveyard Book is the most wonderfully imaginative story that I’ve read in a long time. As the plot unravels the reader is captivated throughout and ponders on the mystery of why the man Jack murdered Bod’s family and why he continues to search for Bod to finish the job of wiping out his family.

The characters are superbly surrounded in mystery with hidden talents that make each character brilliant.

The Graveyard Book has made it on to my top shelf – where I keep my favourite books and there is no doubt in my mind that it is a book I will read again and again. It was a book that I honestly didn’t want to ever end.

At the end of the book, in an acknowledgments section Gaiman writes that this book was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, that Gaiman read as a child, and also inspired by his own children at a certain age. This inspiration shines through as I found myself thinking that The Graveyard Book reminded me of the story of The Jungle Book, way before getting to the end acknowledgements section.

I would highly recommend that anyone and everyone reads The Graveyard Book, which is available to buy on Amazon and at all good book shops.

Review soon,

Antony

mental-health-wisdom-banner



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Saturday 16 July 2016

Good Omens will be on BBC Radio 4 from 22nd December!

By Amazon, Books & Authors, Music & RadioNo Comments
good-omens-pratchett-gaiman-book-cover We’re in for a great treat this festive period; as Good Omens the book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman comes to Radio 4.

I read about it on Radio Times website. It reads:

The radio adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s comic apocalypse novel Good Omens will air at 11pm from the 22nd to the 27th of December, with the last episode a bumper hour-long special.

…Once you’ve marked that date on your advent calendar, feast your eyes on a string of new cast images released by the BBC today and including Merlin’s Colin Morgan, Fresh Meat star Charlotte Ritchie, Mark Heap (Green Wing), Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy), Paterson Joseph (Peep Show), Sherlock’s Louise Brealey and many more…

Good Omens follows the attempts of an angel and a demon (Heap and Serafinowicz) to save the world from the antichrist, but all is not as it seems thanks to a bureaucratic mix-up. Soon, the fate of humanity is left to a gang of young children, a trainee witchfinder (Morgan) and a collection of garbled flashcards.

It was written by Gaiman and Pratchett in 1990, and became a bestseller that remains popular to this day. Now, the two writers have joined up with the team behind the 2013 smash-hit radio adaptation of Gaiman’s book and TV series Neverwhere which starred Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy, Christopher Lee and Natalie Dormer.

Gaiman… has assisted returning Neverwhere director and adaptor Dirk Maggs with the scripts, and both he and Pratchett will make cameo appearances alongside the main cast.

RadioTimes.com caught up with the drama’s star Colin Morgan who explained, despite appearances, you won’t find a better listen for the festive season…

“It’s about the antichrist, at Christmas – nothing more festive that that!” said the Merlin and The Fall actor.

“But it’s got heart and the soul. It’s the escapism, the fantasy element of it, the charm and magic that surrounds Christmas, I think. And it’s pure escapism.

He added: “I think everybody can get something from it. I think fans of Terry and Neil will be extremely pleased.”

Good Omens will begin on Radio 4 on Monday 22nd of December at 11.00pm.

(From: Radio Times, Last accessed: 28th November 2014.)

You can read my book review here: Book Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman.

Can’t wait to hear this fantastic and funny story aloud.

Blog soon,

Antony

Share on Social Media:
Friday 5 December 2014

Book Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

By Amazon, Books & Authors, ReviewsNo Comments
good-omens-pratchett-gaiman-book-cover In Good Omens the world is going to end next Saturday, well at least according to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter. Both heaven and hell are to wage war on earth, but can it be prevented? If it can’t who will win? And what about the ineffable plan?

In Good Omens two of the best writers around – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman present a host of ingenious and eccentric characters including: Aziraphale – Heaven’s Angel, Crowley – A Fallen Angel working for Hell, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Witchfinders Newton Pulsifer & Shadwell, Anathema a descendant of Agnes Nutter and new age spiritualist, Adam with dog and the Them.

The war on Earth will all start in Lower Tadfield, a sleepy village in the English countryside. The plot is creative, eventful and expertly shown by Pratchett and Gaiman. Good Omens is humorous, captivating and hilarious.

Humour litters every page of this book. From the things that characters say and do to the fantastically funny footnotes.

Good Omens was first published in 1990 and it’s no surprise that a book this absorbing and addictive is still being printed today. So if you like humorous books, apocalyptic stories, novels about heaven, hell and all manor of angels and supernatural beings you’ll love this book.

Good Omens is available to buy on Amazon.

Review soon,

Antony

mental-health-wisdom-banner



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


Share on Social Media:
Wednesday 3 December 2014
×