It’s always nice (especially when the year is hurtling towards its close) when one of your reads falls neatly into more than one of your challenges, and Coraline does that, fulfilling the requirements for the [intlink id="926" type="post"]RIP III[/intlink] and the [intlink id="577" type="post"]Mythopoeic[/intlink] challenges (having been nominated in 2003). Even though I’ve technically completed [...]

photo credit: Steven Earnshaw
Now even taking into account that fact that, Neil Gaiman is so good at creating the worlds in his books, very little effort is needed from the reader to place you right in there, but having gone to school right across from this place – and spent many a lunchtime wandering [...]

photo credit: crumpart
It’s a real treat to hear the author read his other own work, especially when like Gaiman, they are as equally proficient at telling tales as they are at writing them. His narration is as good as any I have heard, whether it be author, actor or professional audio-book artist, always clear [...]

Discovered these via Neil Gaiman’s blog.
Going up each day this week is a short featurette about the Coraline movie, currently being made by Henry Selick.
It looks fantastic.
Can’t wait to go see it.

If you haven’t read the book yet go Grab a copy now!

Challenge hosted by, Blue Archipelago
Have you acquired a nice pile of books to read this summer? Do you need some encouragement to get through the pile a bit quicker? Or just an excuse to sit out in the sunshine and escape with a good book?
If so then Blue Archipelago is the right place – this [...]

In the tranquil fields and meadows of long-ago England, there is a small hamlet that has stood on a jut of granite for 600 years. Just to the east stands a high stone wall, for which the village is named. Here, in the hamlet of Wall, young Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester. And here, one crisp October eve, Tristran makes his love a promise — an impetuous vow that will send him through the only breach in the wall, across the pasture…and into the most exhilarating adventure of his life.

Under the streets of London there’s a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks…

Odd’s luck has been bad so far. He lost his father on a Viking expedition, his foot was crushed beneath a tree, and the winter seems to be going on forever. But when Odd flees to the woods and releases a trapped bear, his luck begins to change. The eagle, bear and fox he encounters reveal they’re actually Nordic gods, trapped in animal form by the evil Frost Giants who have conquered Asgard, the city of the gods. Can a twelve-year-old boy reclaim Thor’s hammer, outwit the Frost Giants and release the gods?

Over at Neil Gaiman’s blog, Neil is celebrating the blog’s seventh birthday!

Part of these celebrations is the news, for one month only, he and Harper Collins (his publisher) is going to to make one of his books available, completely free online!