Gotta Lime?

#18 - Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
Finished 4/21/07
Rating: 4/5
Total Pages: 451
Reason for Reading: Once Upon a Time Challenge
REVIEW: Okay, I just have to say this -- Neil Gaiman is too fun for words. *grin* Anansi Boys is quite simply the funnest book I’ve read since I don’t know when. You know you’re into the pages of something truly wonderful when the book makes you laugh out loud – as you read – all alone -- in your third-floor dusty garret. I’m sure my flatmate thinks I’ve quite lost my mind. Suffice it to say that Gaiman really knows how to spin a great story, or in this case maybe I should say "web." Anansi Boys walks a very fine line between horrors too horrible to contemplate and a comic irreverence that has you gasping and giggling in turns. Mr. Gaiman, you have a very twisted sense of humour….and I love it. After American Gods, and now this – yes, I am definitely a certifiable Gaiman-aholic.

* * * * *

Anansi Boys is what a really good read is all about. It's the kind of book that should be read in a huge overstuffed extra comfy armchair with a pitcher of something wet & wonderful and a big bowl of popcorn at your elbow. And don't plan to get up for a good long while, because Gaiman knows how to keep you turning the pages. Don't worry.... Neil won't mind if you get the pages mucky with spilled lemonade, salt, and buttery fingerprints. He just wants to know that you had a good time. And I did. I did indeed.

There were lots of favourite quotes and passages throughout, but my favouritest favourite line didn't appear until the very last page of the novel:
“Mermaids sigh better than anyone.” [p. 451]
I think I must be a mermaid. Ask my friend J who once called my sighs "patentable."

And....here's another sign of a really good writer....My second favourite quote comes from the Gaiman interview tucked into the back of the book:
“I think all geniuses – or the ones that I’ve run into – tend to have a faintly tenuous relationship with the real world, because so much is going on on the inside. They may be geniuses but they often need someone to walk around holding the string. They’re sort of balloons, bobbing around.”

*sigh*......(((grin)))

Listening to: Angel Eyes (Abba), on iTunes radioio70spop.
Buried under: Scads and scads and scads of foolscap and anthropology books, all (thankfully) interspersed with a scattered collection of Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V5's [extra fine] in an array of lovely colours....I may not surface for awhile.