The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

Well, this book was a gift from my brother. After bigbadwolf, I couldn't bring myself to buy books in retail price anymore. This book was sold at RM57.90 at Popular book store. For that kind of money, I could buy around 6 books in the bigbadwolf. But, the perk of buying books in normal book store is I can get the latest book that I want. Still, thanks bro! 

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

This novel gives me the feeling of American Gods. The story started with a man (the narrator, it's told in first person narrative) driving around his childhood home after going to a funeral, I think. Then, he started to remember about his childhood, his first kiss and a farm house he visited when he was a child and the girl on the farm house. 

He remembered when his parents faced financial trouble, they rented out a room to lodger, The lodger then committed suicide after losing all his money to gambling, and the lodger chose to die near the farm house because it's at the end of lane with few people. Then, the man (was a child then) met the farm house inhabitants, the old Mrs Hemstock, Mrs Hemstock and Lettie Hemstock. To comfort him, the Hemstock offered him fresh cow milk. The one plot I remembered was it was the first time the narrator drank cow milk directly out of a cow, fresh cow milk, not from a bottle. Hahaha!

Stardust vs Stardust

I like Stardust. However, I don't like the Stardust (movie version). So disappointed with the way it is rewritten for the screenplay. I think it is being sanitized. Luckily I watched it on TV, if I watched it in the cinema, I would feel so sorry for the money spent on the movie ticket.

Part	Book	Movie
The final	The Star was immortal and couldn't have children, at the end of the book, Tristran died and the star was left alone.	However, in the movie version, they had children and live happily ever after.
The 3 witches	In the novel, when The Witch Queen finally caught up with The Star, she realized that she couldn't take her heart because her heart belonged to Tristran (well, it means that she fall in love with him, kind of romantic)	In the movie version, it became a chaos, the witches tried to get The Star's heart even after she fall in love. This part was so unbearable to watch.
Victoria	She married Mr. Monday (Tristran's boss, not so young) and thus helped to free Lady Una.	She looks like a ××○○.

Another part is about Tristran's father, he did not wait for Lady Una, he married another girl and Tristran had a stepmother! There are other things that I don't like, but I have forgotten some details. I wanted to write this after I watched the movie, but I procrastinated. Ahhhhhh!

Stardust

Another novel by Neil Gaiman. Hehe!

Stardust

Just finished the novel today while walking home, I wanted to know the ending. This story was quite of sweet and sad.

The story start with a wall, one side was faire land and another was the village. A market or fair will be held once every 8 years at the wall. People from the faire land will cross over to be at the market. This was the place where Dunstan Thorn met a girl with pointed ears and violet eyes who man a glass flowers store. After Dunstan encounter with the girl, he married a fellow villager. Before his daughter was born, his child with the violet eyed girl was sent to him through the wall, named Tristran Thorn. So, the boy grew up. 

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

This was the book that I have been yearning for some time. Before this, I don't even know Neil Gaiman. After I knew of this book existence from a newspaper column, I tried to find this book in the book stores around Kuala Lumpur, however I could not find it. One thing about book stores in Malaysia was that they just keep the best sellers. Some lesser known or specific titles are hard to find. Unlike in Japan, the books were of huge variety. Anyway, at the end, I bought this book from Amazon Japan. There were 2 kinds of cover, actually I spent a great deal of time deciding which one to buy. Then, I decided to buy the darker tone version. 

The Graveyard Book

The title itself could attract one's attention. A boy raised by residents of graveyard after his parents and a sister were killed by a killer named Jack. After the folks of the graveyard decided to keep him, they argued about his name, then 'nobody' popped out and he was named as 'Nobody Owens'. His adopted parents were Mr. and Mrs. Owens. All called the boy 'BOD', short for nobody. And he had a god father, named Silas, a figure neither human or ghost who secured him all the necessary items needed for a human survival.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

*Just found this in my draft. I started this on 1st December 2011! Talk about procrastination, that's why I think it is useless for me to read 7 habits of highly effective people or atomic habit. I know I won't follow that, though I did read the 7 habits of highly effective people during my Uni days, I still remembered the tattered book, it's the first book in university library that I borrowed that had people queuing up for it, so I couldn't extent the period online. All the advices in the book is good, it's my problem! 

I need to find back "fragile things", I don't even remember "The monarch of the Glen" now. Just read the synopsis online again. 

1st December 2011

This book was a collections of short myth and science fiction stories. I lend this to my friend after I finished it and just got it back 2 days ago after more than 6 months away from me.

Fragile Things

This book was also the first Neil Gaiman's book that I have read. I tried to find his book "the graveyard boy" but to no avail. So when I saw this book, I just grab it to see how it was going. After I read, I even bought "American Gods" from Amazon.jp to know the full story of Shadow from the story "The monarch of the Glen".

There were 31 short stories in this book. (last written on 2011)

*Below continued from February 2026. 

I read this book years ago, don't really remember the content. But I became a fan of Neil Gaiman from this book. After this short stories, I bought more books from him. Some of the short stories in this book are epilogue or prologue of his other stories, part of the reasons I bought more books. 

Well, before investing in books from Neil Gaiman, one could read the short stories first to gauge whether one would like the genre or not. Now Good Omens is waiting there for me to read. 

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Finished reading this book. I knew this book from the Neil Gaiman short stories "Fragile things". After 'fragile', I was so keen on this book that I ordered it online from Amazon Japan. That was the first time I bought things online. It is very convenient in Japan, after placing an order, an email will notify the payment number, and one can pay in any convenience store in Japan. However, one can only pick up the goods from Lawson. Although there are no Lawson near my apartment in walking distance, there's a Lawson in 10 minutes bicycle rides from my apartment. I chose to pick up there.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The book centered around gods, as the tittle suggested. It told of gods were created when the immigrants to America brought along their beliefs. So, there were all sorts of gods, Europeans, native Americans, Asians, Africans, etc. There were new gods too, like media, internet, car ......... For example, the people nowadays spent too much time in front of TV, so it created TV god because people sacrifice their time or love to the TV. Quite odd, but in my family belief, apart from the deity statue that we prayed in our house, other dolls or figures were not allowed on the altar because according to my mom, since we pray everyday to the god, the figurine or doll (something with eyes) will become spirited or jin (a Malay word for you know what) after a period of time. I think the theory was around the same.