Upon finishing my reread of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I am pretty sure it is my favorite book of his. And I suspect that is because I have absolutely no clue what to make of it. It is an absolutely fantastic story, in every sense of the word. But… Read more »
Monthly Archives: December 2018
First Lines: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was a selection of The Missus’s book-club she didn’t get to. I had previously read Haruki Murakami’s The Strange Library, and since that was a nice, quaint, strange, weird, but enjoyable little book, I dove in. Well, these books were little alike. This one took hard work… Read more »
First Lines: Hansel & Gretel
In the case of Neil Gaiman and Lorenzo Mattotti’s Hansel & Gretel, the pictures came first. They were created in 2007 for an exhibition to celebrate the opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of the opera of the same name. Later, Gaiman was shown Mattotti’s stark, black ink art, and asked to retell the story…. Read more »
Seen Live: Symfonieorkest Koninklijk Conservatorium & Codarts
Every friday, there is a classical lunch concert in TivoliVredenburg. For free. So when I had a week off and I saw a potentially interesting program consisting of three early works by Prokofiev, I made a point of attending. I know very little about classical music. I couldn’t tell you anything useful about exactly what… Read more »
First Lines: Good Omens
The upcoming television series of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens caused a lot of excitement on Twitter, which in turn caused me to re-read the book. The plot is about a demon having misplaced the Antichrist, who is now needed on account of Armageddon being scheduled for next Saturday, just after tea. The… Read more »