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indigodragonfly's review against another edition
5.0
Such a thoughtful, massive nonfiction collection from a favorite fiction writer! Of particular note, I quite enjoyed the "Some Things I Believe" section, "Films and Movies and Me," the Tori Amos & Amanda Palmer celebrations|musings, and from the "Stardust and Fairy Tales" section through to the finale. Dive in, take what you want or need. Return at will: this isn't meant to be a cover-to-cover linear kind of read. But if you love Neil (as I do), reading this is a must. It's a window into the seemingly endless mind and imagination of one of our finest living authors.
dchrisl's review against another edition
3.0
Some things got repeated that could have been left out. It was interesting hearing his views.
wyntrchylde's review against another edition
3.0
The View from the Cheap Seats
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: William Morrow / HarperCollins Publishing
Published In: New York City, NY
Date: 2016
Pgs: 522
_________________________________________________
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
Neil Gaiman non-fiction essays on authors, music, storytelling, comics, bookshops, travel, fairy tales, America, inspiration, libraries, ghosts, the Academy Awards, etc
_________________________________________________
Genre:
Literature
Fiction
Essays
Correspondence
Letters
Speeches
Why this book:
Neil Gaiman.
522 pages on writing, authors, where stories come from, the inner workings, thoughts, dreams, research...
_________________________________________________
Favorite Character:
Neil Gaiman, his ideas, his ideals, his character.
The Feel:
Sitting down with a very intelligent friend who has strong opinions and having a wide ranging discussion about life, the universe, and everything in it.
Love all the behind the scenes of the writing of American Gods speeches and essays, a favorite.
Favorite Scene / Quote:
From Credo: “I believe that you can set your own ideas against ideas you dislike. That you should be free to argue, explain, clarify, debate, offend, insult, rage, mock, sing, dramatize, and deny. I do not believe that burning, murdering, exploding people, smashing their heads with rocks (to let the bad ideas out), drowning them or even defeating them will work to contain ideas you do not like. Ideas spring up where you do not expect them, like weeds, and are as difficult to control.”
I love that quote from Credo because it brings to mind every “no you move” essay and speech that I’ve ever heard in my life.
From Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading, and Daydreaming: The Reading Agency Lecture, 2013: “...I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons---a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan for its future growth---how many cells are they going to need? ...using a very simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of ten- and eleven-year olds couldn’t read. …”
That is disheartening.
Telling Lies for a Living...and Why We Do it: the Newbery Medal Speech, 2009: Love the speech. The Graveyard Book is one of my favorites.
Four Bookshops: “...all of those bookshops come back, the shelves, and the people. And most of all, the books, their covers bright, then, pages filled with infinite possibilities. I wonder who I would have been, without those shelves, without those people, without books.”
The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography: “Now the advantage of genre to a creator is it gives you something to play to and to play against. It gives you a net and the shape of the game. Sometimes it gives you balls.”
That puts me in mind that genre is the set of accepted cliches that provide the framework.
What The [Very Bad Swearword] is a Children’s Book, Anyway? The Zena Sutherland Lecture: Walking home from private school, Gaiman heard a joke with that dirty word in it. He repeated it to his friends at school. One of them promptly went home and told it to their mother, who withdrew the boy from that school and raised hell. Gaiman was excoriated over it and his mother was called to the school. She was told that the only reason he wasn’t removed was because the other boy was already gone and they didn’t want to lose 2 school fees. Over a joke that the young Neil Gaiman already didn’t remember. And he had to tell his mother when she asked that he had used the word fuck. He stated that he learned two important lessons: be extremely selective with your audiences; words have power. I would submit that he learned four lessons with the other two being: some people have giant sticks up their bums; money talks and bullshit walks.
“...do not come to authors for answers. You come to us for questions.”
Enjoyed his take on Lovecraft, Jack Kirby, and Astro City.
Wisdom:
How Dare You: On America and Writing About It: Slowly I realized both that the America I’d been writing was wholly fictional, and that the real America, the one underneath the what-you-see-is-what-you-get surface, was much stranger than the fictions.
What The [Very Bad Swearword] is a Children’s Book, Anyway? The Zena Sutherland Lecture: Children are very good at looking away.
Loved the story of his 11-year old daughter liking R.L. Stine and his taking it as an oppotunity to introduce her to Stephen King’s Carrie. ...and her still glaring at him whenever Stephen King comes up in conversation.
On Stephen King for the Sunday Times: They pay me absurd amounts of money for something that i would do for free” - Stephen King.
Pacing:
Non-fiction about writing, culture, storytelling...pace is not your friend here.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Themes and stories repeat between many speeches, addresses, and essays.
Hmm Moments:
The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography: Love the reference to Sturgeon’s Law with 90% of everything being crap. And the final 10% falling along the spectrum between good and awesome. I feel that it is more a Bell Curve between unreadable crap and the best ever.
Love the way that he references a paper that compared musicals, pornography, and Westerns as a way to explain genre. Imagein those 3 without songs, sex, and gunfights, respectively. Remove them and you have soap operas and the same fan may not crossover.
What The [Very Bad Swearword] is a Children’s Book, Anyway? The Zena Sutherland Lecture: Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you’re ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from it whatever you can. Then, perhaps, you will come back to it when you’re older, and you will find the book has changed because you have changed as well, and the book is wiser, or more foolish, because you are wiser or more foolish than you were as a child.
That exact circumstance is how I discovered Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream, which my understanding of has evolved a number of times over the years. One of my favorites. I have re-read it three or four times. And another re-read should be in my near future.
WTF Moments:
Ghost in the Machine: Some Hallowe’en Thoughts: When he tells the story of the blogger, without any identifying characteristics on the site, blogs about wanting to commit suicide, flat, bleak, hopeless, not a cry for help, just didn’t want to live any longer. He tried to find out where the blogger was and what he could do to send help. She described getting the pills a few at a time so they wouldn’t be missed from medicine cabinets. And finally, she posted “Tonight.” Helpless, he swallowed the feeling of not knowing who to tell and how to help. And then, she started to post again, at this point, I thought he was going to tell us that she was doing some kind of sociology project. However, she posted that she was cold and lonely where she was. He thinks she knows he’s still reading. Brr, that’s good.
These Are Not Our Faces: “There was a story I was told as a child, about a little girl who peeked in through a writer’s window one night, and saw him writing. He had taken his false face off to write and had hung it behind the door, for he wrote with his real face on. And she saw him, and he saw her. And, from that day to this, nobody has ever seen the little girl again.” This is the reason that writers look just like other people today, though sometimes their lips move as they write. “This is why people who encounter [fantasy] writers...are rarely satisfied by the wholly inferior person that they meet.”
I don’t believe that I’ve ever managed to write with my true face. Maybe this is why I haven’t been truly satisfied with anything that I’ve written...yet.
Meh / PFFT Moments:
The later sections of the book has blurbs written for other books and intros which aren’t as good as some of the essays and speeches in the earlier parts of the book.
_________________________________________________
Last Page Sound:
An interesting read.
Author Assessment:
To me, Gaiman writes like Morgan Freeman speaks. In the same way that I would listen to Freeman read the phonebook, I would read Neil Gaiman if he wrote a trilogy about the life of a mayfly.
Editorial Assessment:
Could have realistically been trimmed by a good 200 pages and wouldn’t have suffered from the absence.
Knee Jerk Reaction:
glad I read it
Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library
South Campus
Irving, TX
Dewey Decimal System:
824.914
G141v
Would recommend to:
genre fans
_________________________________________________
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: William Morrow / HarperCollins Publishing
Published In: New York City, NY
Date: 2016
Pgs: 522
_________________________________________________
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
Neil Gaiman non-fiction essays on authors, music, storytelling, comics, bookshops, travel, fairy tales, America, inspiration, libraries, ghosts, the Academy Awards, etc
_________________________________________________
Genre:
Literature
Fiction
Essays
Correspondence
Letters
Speeches
Why this book:
Neil Gaiman.
522 pages on writing, authors, where stories come from, the inner workings, thoughts, dreams, research...
_________________________________________________
Favorite Character:
Neil Gaiman, his ideas, his ideals, his character.
The Feel:
Sitting down with a very intelligent friend who has strong opinions and having a wide ranging discussion about life, the universe, and everything in it.
Love all the behind the scenes of the writing of American Gods speeches and essays, a favorite.
Favorite Scene / Quote:
From Credo: “I believe that you can set your own ideas against ideas you dislike. That you should be free to argue, explain, clarify, debate, offend, insult, rage, mock, sing, dramatize, and deny. I do not believe that burning, murdering, exploding people, smashing their heads with rocks (to let the bad ideas out), drowning them or even defeating them will work to contain ideas you do not like. Ideas spring up where you do not expect them, like weeds, and are as difficult to control.”
I love that quote from Credo because it brings to mind every “no you move” essay and speech that I’ve ever heard in my life.
From Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading, and Daydreaming: The Reading Agency Lecture, 2013: “...I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons---a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan for its future growth---how many cells are they going to need? ...using a very simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of ten- and eleven-year olds couldn’t read. …”
That is disheartening.
Telling Lies for a Living...and Why We Do it: the Newbery Medal Speech, 2009: Love the speech. The Graveyard Book is one of my favorites.
Four Bookshops: “...all of those bookshops come back, the shelves, and the people. And most of all, the books, their covers bright, then, pages filled with infinite possibilities. I wonder who I would have been, without those shelves, without those people, without books.”
The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography: “Now the advantage of genre to a creator is it gives you something to play to and to play against. It gives you a net and the shape of the game. Sometimes it gives you balls.”
That puts me in mind that genre is the set of accepted cliches that provide the framework.
What The [Very Bad Swearword] is a Children’s Book, Anyway? The Zena Sutherland Lecture: Walking home from private school, Gaiman heard a joke with that dirty word in it. He repeated it to his friends at school. One of them promptly went home and told it to their mother, who withdrew the boy from that school and raised hell. Gaiman was excoriated over it and his mother was called to the school. She was told that the only reason he wasn’t removed was because the other boy was already gone and they didn’t want to lose 2 school fees. Over a joke that the young Neil Gaiman already didn’t remember. And he had to tell his mother when she asked that he had used the word fuck. He stated that he learned two important lessons: be extremely selective with your audiences; words have power. I would submit that he learned four lessons with the other two being: some people have giant sticks up their bums; money talks and bullshit walks.
“...do not come to authors for answers. You come to us for questions.”
Enjoyed his take on Lovecraft, Jack Kirby, and Astro City.
Wisdom:
How Dare You: On America and Writing About It: Slowly I realized both that the America I’d been writing was wholly fictional, and that the real America, the one underneath the what-you-see-is-what-you-get surface, was much stranger than the fictions.
What The [Very Bad Swearword] is a Children’s Book, Anyway? The Zena Sutherland Lecture: Children are very good at looking away.
Loved the story of his 11-year old daughter liking R.L. Stine and his taking it as an oppotunity to introduce her to Stephen King’s Carrie. ...and her still glaring at him whenever Stephen King comes up in conversation.
On Stephen King for the Sunday Times: They pay me absurd amounts of money for something that i would do for free” - Stephen King.
Pacing:
Non-fiction about writing, culture, storytelling...pace is not your friend here.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Themes and stories repeat between many speeches, addresses, and essays.
Hmm Moments:
The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography: Love the reference to Sturgeon’s Law with 90% of everything being crap. And the final 10% falling along the spectrum between good and awesome. I feel that it is more a Bell Curve between unreadable crap and the best ever.
Love the way that he references a paper that compared musicals, pornography, and Westerns as a way to explain genre. Imagein those 3 without songs, sex, and gunfights, respectively. Remove them and you have soap operas and the same fan may not crossover.
What The [Very Bad Swearword] is a Children’s Book, Anyway? The Zena Sutherland Lecture: Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you’re ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from it whatever you can. Then, perhaps, you will come back to it when you’re older, and you will find the book has changed because you have changed as well, and the book is wiser, or more foolish, because you are wiser or more foolish than you were as a child.
That exact circumstance is how I discovered Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream, which my understanding of has evolved a number of times over the years. One of my favorites. I have re-read it three or four times. And another re-read should be in my near future.
WTF Moments:
Ghost in the Machine: Some Hallowe’en Thoughts: When he tells the story of the blogger, without any identifying characteristics on the site, blogs about wanting to commit suicide, flat, bleak, hopeless, not a cry for help, just didn’t want to live any longer. He tried to find out where the blogger was and what he could do to send help. She described getting the pills a few at a time so they wouldn’t be missed from medicine cabinets. And finally, she posted “Tonight.” Helpless, he swallowed the feeling of not knowing who to tell and how to help. And then, she started to post again, at this point, I thought he was going to tell us that she was doing some kind of sociology project. However, she posted that she was cold and lonely where she was. He thinks she knows he’s still reading. Brr, that’s good.
These Are Not Our Faces: “There was a story I was told as a child, about a little girl who peeked in through a writer’s window one night, and saw him writing. He had taken his false face off to write and had hung it behind the door, for he wrote with his real face on. And she saw him, and he saw her. And, from that day to this, nobody has ever seen the little girl again.” This is the reason that writers look just like other people today, though sometimes their lips move as they write. “This is why people who encounter [fantasy] writers...are rarely satisfied by the wholly inferior person that they meet.”
I don’t believe that I’ve ever managed to write with my true face. Maybe this is why I haven’t been truly satisfied with anything that I’ve written...yet.
Meh / PFFT Moments:
The later sections of the book has blurbs written for other books and intros which aren’t as good as some of the essays and speeches in the earlier parts of the book.
_________________________________________________
Last Page Sound:
An interesting read.
Author Assessment:
To me, Gaiman writes like Morgan Freeman speaks. In the same way that I would listen to Freeman read the phonebook, I would read Neil Gaiman if he wrote a trilogy about the life of a mayfly.
Editorial Assessment:
Could have realistically been trimmed by a good 200 pages and wouldn’t have suffered from the absence.
Knee Jerk Reaction:
glad I read it
Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library
South Campus
Irving, TX
Dewey Decimal System:
824.914
G141v
Would recommend to:
genre fans
_________________________________________________
eemiillaa's review against another edition
2.0
I am a fan of the author, but I did not enjoy this collection. I did not finish it even after I started skipping around.
annepaulson311's review against another edition
3.0
I like Neil Gaiman's perspective, his books, and his stories. I did, however, find that I lost my interest about half way through this collection of his work. Perhaps, it's better to read each of his essays and speeches one at a time rather than all at the same time. When read all together, there is a lot of overlap, and I drifted into disinterest.
squid_vicious's review against another edition
4.0
Fangirl o'clock! If you've read my reviews, you might have noticed that I love Neil Gaiman, and that while I agree that he sometimes writes less interesting stories, I don't think he ever wrote a truly bad one. I have been known to buy books to which he wrote the introduction because I feel that if it has his stamp of approval, I should read it.
I have been reading Neil's blog and the various articles and interviews that pop up on my Facebook newsfeed for ages, so I already knew he could write solid non-fiction when the occasion presented itself. I also knew most of the entries in "The View from the Cheap Seats" would be snippets I had already read somewhere before (for instance, I have the edition of "Fahrenheit 451" he wrote the introduction for). But I liked the idea of all these little pieces of writing collected together neatly.
If you are a hardcore Neil fan like me, you probably won't find anything new in these pages, and some of it might feel repetitive. But like I said, it's nice to have this little collection of thoughts nicely bundled together as a reference. Mr. Gaiman is insightful, clever, incredibly kind and compassionate and funny in this quintessentially British way. I highlighted a bunch of passages, smiled almost continuously through the 500 pages and I know I will thumb through this tome again soon to refresh my memories on some of the wisdom it contains.
The section "Some Things I Believe" is my favorite, and is mostly about writing, books, the importance of libraries and the power of story-telling was insightful and brilliant: I loved every entry.
The section "Some People I Have Known" was less impressive to me, but that's mostly because I am an ignoramus who isn't familiar with half the people he talks about. I know Douglas, King, Pratchett and I will one day read Gene Wolfe, but the other ones are unknown to my puny brain. That took some of the fun out...
Of course, his famous "Make Good Art" speech is in there, and I have to admit that it might be my favorite entry.
I confess that I skipped a few entries because he was referring people I didn't know or books I had never heard of and it just made me completely confused... But everything I did read was written with an enormous amount of passion, which is something that draws me back to his work over and over again. And as is often the case with Gaiman books, I finished it with a list of new books to hunt down and read (my poor credit card...)
3 and a half, rounded to 4, because it is a mixed bag, but it's one of the best-written mixed bags you are likely to get your hands on.
I have been reading Neil's blog and the various articles and interviews that pop up on my Facebook newsfeed for ages, so I already knew he could write solid non-fiction when the occasion presented itself. I also knew most of the entries in "The View from the Cheap Seats" would be snippets I had already read somewhere before (for instance, I have the edition of "Fahrenheit 451" he wrote the introduction for). But I liked the idea of all these little pieces of writing collected together neatly.
If you are a hardcore Neil fan like me, you probably won't find anything new in these pages, and some of it might feel repetitive. But like I said, it's nice to have this little collection of thoughts nicely bundled together as a reference. Mr. Gaiman is insightful, clever, incredibly kind and compassionate and funny in this quintessentially British way. I highlighted a bunch of passages, smiled almost continuously through the 500 pages and I know I will thumb through this tome again soon to refresh my memories on some of the wisdom it contains.
The section "Some Things I Believe" is my favorite, and is mostly about writing, books, the importance of libraries and the power of story-telling was insightful and brilliant: I loved every entry.
The section "Some People I Have Known" was less impressive to me, but that's mostly because I am an ignoramus who isn't familiar with half the people he talks about. I know Douglas, King, Pratchett and I will one day read Gene Wolfe, but the other ones are unknown to my puny brain. That took some of the fun out...
Of course, his famous "Make Good Art" speech is in there, and I have to admit that it might be my favorite entry.
I confess that I skipped a few entries because he was referring people I didn't know or books I had never heard of and it just made me completely confused... But everything I did read was written with an enormous amount of passion, which is something that draws me back to his work over and over again. And as is often the case with Gaiman books, I finished it with a list of new books to hunt down and read (my poor credit card...)
3 and a half, rounded to 4, because it is a mixed bag, but it's one of the best-written mixed bags you are likely to get your hands on.
dllluebbe's review against another edition
4.0
This is a collections of speeches, book introductions, and other previously written things. It is also a love letter to writing, music, and the people who make good art. I now have a list of people who I want to read, which is the whole point of the collection. It is meant to inspire you to make your own art (and make it uniquely you) and to seek out others who make art.
tmilstein's review against another edition
4.0
These essays are from a variety of sources, some from introductions to books, or from speeches, and so on. My favorite ones were the early writings about books and libraries and his reading habits at a young age. His commencement speech and his Newbury speeches inspired. His essay on Terry Pratchett I'd read before, and it's still compelling. One of his best was his essay on refugees near the end of the book.
I skipped some where the subject didn't interest me, some authors I knew I'd never read and some of the ones about comics.
The whole collection reinforced that he's a remarkable writer and an insightful person. I couldn't help but feel I either knew him or wanted to sit down and have a coffee with him someday. He's on a pedestal yet somehow approachable at the same time. A rare quality.
I skipped some where the subject didn't interest me, some authors I knew I'd never read and some of the ones about comics.
The whole collection reinforced that he's a remarkable writer and an insightful person. I couldn't help but feel I either knew him or wanted to sit down and have a coffee with him someday. He's on a pedestal yet somehow approachable at the same time. A rare quality.
ravenouskitty's review against another edition
4.0
Some of the speeches and other pieces really hit home, others felt a bit repetitve and others I should have skipped because I had no idea who or what Neil was talking about but overall good bits of writing.