From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. As author Gaiman demonstrated on his recording of his first children's novel, Coraline, he's more than up to the task of reading his work with great style. Here, again, he performs as a consummate storyteller, reading four stories, two of which have been published as picture books. Gaiman has a slow, suspense-building pace and a slightly ominous tone on "The Wolves in the Walls," in which Lucy tries to warn her preoccupied family of what the creaking, crackling, scritching, scratching noises in their house must surely be. "On The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish," Gaiman's first picture book, the author/narrator rolls along at a jaunty, entertaining clip. On "Crazy Hair," Gaiman is sprightly, reading this silly rhyming poem about the very wild 'do of the 11-year-old narrator, big enough to house nesting birds and lions making a lair, and very resistant to brushing. Listeners and fans are also treated to a reading of "Cinnamon," a colorful original fable about a princess who refuses to speak (though a tiger in the exotically set tale has lots to say). which had previously appeared only on Gaiman's Web site. Gaiman's daughter Maddy conducts a warm, revealing and lively interview with her dad that is likely to charm listeners of all ages. Ages 5-up.
She was really good, too. There was some talk about running the whole interview she did with me on this web site, or over at www.mousecircus.com (Harper Audio had to edit down her interview to the six minutes you get on the CD) and I'll see if we can make it happen.
Also, this just came in about the iTunes download of THE NEIL GAIMAN AUDIO COLLECTION --
Neil,
iTunes conflated all of the story-files, and did not provide a
time-index. Your readers may value the following:
The Wolves in the Walls 16:39
Cinnamon 8:24
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish 13:27
Crazy Hair 3:26
Maddy's Interview 6:46
Cheerio,
Doug
Thanks. I think it's a deliberate decision by iTunes/Audible not to divide audiobooks into sections - probably because the iPod will happily bookmark any audiobook, so you can go away and listen to other things, and when you come back to your audiobook it will remember where you were. Which is very kind of it.
(It works for Audible .aa files and iTunes M4b files. And you can always rename stereo M4A files to M4b, and it'll work on them too.)
( http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=42928926 is the link which should open the AUDIO COLLECTION in iTunes. The iTunes preview is a fun bit from near the beginning of "The Wolves in the Walls".)
This corrected a misapprehension on my part:
Sadly audible.com is not allowing me to purchase either Coraline or American Gods from outside the US. I should be able to purchase it as there is a workaround I've used before but if you thought that Audible were providing world wide access, you are sadly mistaken.
I suppose that contractually Audible is acting more like a publisher (having a license for a certain area of the world) than like a retailer (you can order the CD from Amazon.com wherever you are in the world). Let's see... Ah. Right. It's in their FAQs.... As a distributor, we need to abide by the restrictions that publishers assume when they publish a work.
Interestingly it looks like Audible does have world rights on the LEGENDS II audio collection, which contains the American Gods novella "The Monarch of the Glen".
....
More on Bill Loebs -- from Millarworld:
The good news is, the postal address you guys have, is still current for Bill. You can mail anything, comments, fanmail, job offers, or financial assistance to Bill at:
Bill Loebs
PO Box # 558
Pinckney, MI 48169-0558
Additionally Bill's email: bloebs@yahoo.com is hooked up to a PayPal account, so no one has to collect money on Bill's behalf. You can send any donations you would like to his PayPal account directly to bloebs@yahoo.com
Having said that, I think the best thing that anyone could do for Bill is give him a comic to write.
...
Neil, A rather beautiful black and white movie about muppets, here <http://www.joeytomatoes.com/muppetsovertimeoriginal05.htm>, entitled Overtime. Thought you might like it.Thanks for the stories you tell, Guan
I thought it was lovely.
...
And while we're on the subject (as we were earlier) of audio fiction, someone whose message I can't access right now, sent me a link to http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/02/06/small_shots_of_intoxicating_fiction/
in which two of my stories, on different audio books, get reviewed. (I've still not heard the Christina Pickles "Chivalry" so can't cmment on the reading.)