BOOK REPORT: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Title:                               The Graveyard Book

Author:                            Neil Gaiman

Original Copyright Date:          2008

My Rating:               4.5 out of 5 stars  ( loved it)


Back-cover Description
It takes a graveyard to raise a child. Nobody Owens , known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neitherthe world of the living or the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy -- an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack-- who has already killed Bod's family.

My Thoughts
The Graveyard Book is a fabulously entertaining, not-so-standard coming-of-age story about a boy (standard) being raised in an old, no longer used, graveyard by the ghosts buried there (not-standard).  This story is listed as "Young Adult" or "Children's" but I don't think Neil designed it that way, he just set out to write a great story that just happened to be accessible to most age groups.  

Most of Neil's writing have a dark edge to it, and The Graveyard Book is no different; it is set in a graveyard and death is a not-so-subtle theme throughout, starting off with the murder of Bod's family and continuing with the community of souls who help raise him.  However, the myriad souls which adopt Bod, who range from a roman statesman, a few aristocrats, some well respected craftsmen and  teachers, and others give Bod a diverse and somewhat normal upbringing.  

We've learned from Harry Potter and other young adult stories, death doesn't need to be omitted from young adult books if addressed properly,by not dancing around it and allowing the characters to deal with it. and Neil definitely balances this topic expertly.  The Graveyard Book is an expertly written, clever, and fun story that no one should miss.

BOOK REPORT: Feed by M.T. Anderson

Title:                                            Feed

Author:                                        M.T. Anderson 

Original Copyright Date:          2002

My Rating:                       4 out of 5 stars  ( good )


Backcover Description:
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon — a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson creates a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire ushering us into an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.


My Thoughts:
Wow. That was a literary transition from Robert Louis Stevenson.  I started Feed about 6 minutes after finishing the short story "Markheim" by the aforementioned Stevenson.  The first page of Feed seemed to have, like, every other word, as like, ",like" or something.  Of course that was on purpose.  Feed is a cautionary tale about a society where the computers are linked directly to the brain at a very young age.  Instead of being used for "good and betterment" it functions just like any computer does today.  It is a vehicle for advertisements and social interaction.   It is just like, you know, having Facebook(tm) in your head ALL THE TIME, you know...  

The book is in the "young adult" section of the book store and I initially took the dumbed down language of the eighteen year old main character to be just that, the inner monologue of an eighteen year old.  But, I quickly learned that everyone spoke, like you know, like that and tthat M.T. Anderson knew what he was doing..  Everyone spoke the same, you know language, from the president down to the janitor.  

As I progressed through the book, I realized that there is a very deep subject here, and that is the dumbing down of the individual in the face of all the social media out there.  It really struck close to home.  In the world M. T. Anderson creates, every time a School or Cloud is mentioned it has a trademark symbol around it.  In this world, schools are corporate subsidiaries and clouds are a product.  Considering that this book was written in 2002, well before most of the social media addictions started, it hit very close to home.   

The back cover description nailed it fairly well saying this follows in the footsteps of Orwell, Burgess and Vonnegut, but I would say the biggest shoe it is trying to fill is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. 

This was a really good book and I would recommend it to most anyone.