gement | The Graveyard Book

In very very short: Do read it. It's delightful.

Had me hooked by the end of page two. Had me laughing out loud by the end of page 27, at which point I had to put it away last night to go to bed. The rest I devoured today by 5:30 pm, without appreciably neglecting work in the process.

I finished reading it and thought, "What a wonderful book! I'm so glad it won the Newbery Award." Then I fiddled around with my computer for an hour, because I'd been reading the book to the exclusion of checking my email, even though I hadn't gotten to check my email in 48 hours. (I've sworn off checking personal mail at work until Easter this year.)

After an hour, I realized I was in an emotional earthquake. I had made good enough friends with the characters that I was desperately worried about their wellbeing after the end of the book. It made me cry. Not the immediate yank-yank-have-an-emotional-scene-here crying that some books inspire, but a really deep emotion. I was Unsettled.

I briefly considered salving my discomfort with television, but that would have been a waste. I don't remember the last time a book got to me this authentically. I just sat with it a while, and cried a bit, and demanded hugs from my near and dear. It was lovely.

Fair disclosure, I like a lot of what Neil Gaiman writes. Not all-inclusively or uncritically, but I tend to like him more often than not. I was in the college Sandman cult, and Coraline scared the pants offa me. But this felt different, and more electrifying and solid and... more There than anything else of his than I think I've read.

Also, one of the chapters is a direct and conscious lift of my favorite chapter of The Jungle Book, and it's lovingly and delightfully done. So I'm on a book high, and I'm making a point of posting about it instead of letting it slip away.