Content
There are seven entities, called the Endless. They have existed since the dawn of time and are thought to be among the most powerful beings in the universe.

Listed in their order of “birth”, they are called Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Desire and Delirium.

Destruction has abandoned his realm, and Delight turned into Delirium. Other than that, they still fulfill their functions, as they have done from the very beginning.

Although all the seven Endless play major parts, Dream - also called Lord Shaper and Morpheus, amongst many other names – is the main protagonist of the series The Sandman, which was written by Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is among my favourite authors, and other books I would highly recommend are “Neverwhere“, “Good Omens“, “American Gods“, “The Graveyard Book“, “Smoke and Mirrors” and “Fragile Things” (the last two being collections of short stories).

Style
The Sandman consists of ten graphic novels. In every book, he works with around ten different artists. Thus the visual style changes a lot throughout the books.

I don’t like “comics”. The Sandman is not a comic. It’s one of the most inspiring, most creative, most ingenious, mysterious, thoughtful, it’s one of the most intelligent “graphic novel serious” ever written.

As are Neil Gaiman’s other books.

Rating
1+
Must read if you are somehow interested in fantasy, myths, religion, history, psychology or literature.

(Thanks to D. for hosting me for half a year in Norway, for having the books in the shelf, and for working so much that I actually had the time to read all of them)

Quotes

“When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you awake, you always forget.”
– Dream

“Not knowing everything is all that makes it okay, sometimes.”
– Delirium

“The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are wave functions. The endless ar repeating motifs. The Endless are echoes of darkness, and nothing more.”
– Destruction

“This is the second brother I have lost, whispered Despair in her shadowy voice. I cared for him, very much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him. He was a creature of hope. For dreams are hopes, and echoes of hopes.”
– Despair

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Content
The full title of the book reads like this:
“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem”.

And it really is the story as presented in “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen. Just with a couple of zombies as extra.

To give you an example, I will present the first line of each books:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

So, it’s rather close really.

Pride, Prejudice & Zombies is written “by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith“, says the book. If you look at the back cover, you’ll find details about the authors:

Jane Austen is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature. Seth Grahame-Smith once took a class in English literature. He lives in Los Angeles.

Style
Hilarious. Grahame-Smith mimicks Austen’s style perfectly. An example:

Elizabeth: one of our heroines. An athletic zombie slayer par excellence. Beautiful, wild. Looking for a husband. Well, her parents are looking for a husband for her. She’s quite happy without.
Charlotte: Elizabeth’s best friend, who was bitten by a zombie a couple of weeks ago, and is slowly transforming. Elizabeth can’t bring herself to kill her, so she tries to cover up Charlotte’s symptoms.

The following scene takes place at a dinner in a very luxurious castle:

Elizabeth watched Charlotte bow slightly, and then limp to the furniture to the furthest corner of the room, where she lifted the bottom of her gown and bent her knees into a squat. Elizabeth immediately excused herself, rose, and (taking care not to draw attention) grabbed Charlotte by the arm and escorted her to the toilette, where she watched her stricken friend suffer through a quarter-hour of a sickness so severe that decorum prevents its description in these pages.

Rating
2

You can buy the book on Amazon for currently 8.74 Euros, no shipping costs:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

(this posting is dedicated to Sara who didn’t help me out with the word “back cover”)
(thanks to Marit for the book!)

Inhalt
Severin lebt im Prag der Zwanziger Jahre. Er ist anders als die anderen Menschen, irgendetwas unterscheidet ihn. Alles ist ihm fremd, bleibt ihm fremd, und dennoch besitzt er eine unwiderstehliche Anziehungskraft.

Es gab welche, für die der Glanz des Lebens nur ein Trugfeuer war. Höhnisch mit unseligen Händen, Parias, die eine hündische Angst durch die Straßen hetzte, Mörder und Gezeichnete. [...]
Er hatte es schon immer gefühlt, schon damals, wie er als Knabe in dem wilden Buche las und nach Abenteuern hungerte. In den blassen Flammen seiner wurmstichigen Jugend war immer ein rötlicher Hauch gewesen, der aus den schlimmsten Verstecken seines Herzen kam. Das Glück der andern war ihm ein kindisches Bilderrätsel. Planlos hatte er mit dem Schicksal gespielt und war an seinen armseligen Mausefallen vorbeigestolpert, ohne sich zu verletzen.

“Severins Gang in die Finsternis” erschien im Jahre 1914 als zweiter Roman von Paul Leppin, der selbst in Prag aufgewachsen ist. Eine sehr lesenswerte Biographie, v.a. wenn man sich noch nicht so sehr mit der Frühlings-Generation auseinandergesetzt hat (nicht zu verwechseln mit dem Prager Frühling).

Stil
Man muss mit Superlativen vorsichtig sein … aber ich denke, ich kenne keinen Autor, der derart bildlich zu beschreiben vermag.

Und ein wunderbares und überlebensgroßes Glück rann ihm wie siedendes Metall ins Blut und brannte in sein armes, von der Liebe bewältigtes Herz eine süße, korallenrote Narbe.

Paul Leppin ist ein Großmeister der synästhetischen Beschreibungen, ich habe mir beim Lesen häufig “genau so ist es!” gedacht, und doch habe ich zuvor die geschilerten Dinge niemals in dieser Form beschrieben gefunden. Er gibt Gerüchen Farbe und Gedanken einen Geschmack.
Kurt Pinthus rezensierte das Buch kurz nach dem Erscheinen im Jahre 1914:

“Dies ist ein Gespensterroman, in dem kein Gespenst unheimlich Grausen verbreitend auftritt. Sondern eins der stillsten, unaufdringlichsten und dennoch ernstesten, künstlerischsten Bücher, die in den letzten Monaten emportauchten. Zugleich ein Buch, das beunruhigt, das niederdrückt, das ein wirreres Grauen in uns weckt als unheimliche Geschichten und spukhafte Abenteuer. Denn das Grauen rührt uns an, welches das Leben, das Geschehen an sich birgt, jenes scheinbar hintaumelnde, sinnlose Geschehen, das unbiegsam, unverwirrbar trotz aller Wirrnis zu seinem Ziele zwingt.”

Bewertung
1

Und hier gibt es das Buch bei Amazon (zur Zeit 12.90€).

(Danke an Solveig – ohne Dich wäre mein Bücherregal nur halb so voll, und ich ein reicher Mann.)

Content
Wikipedia sums it up quite nicely:

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian’s beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Talking in Basil’s garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil’s, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry’s world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfilment of the senses. Realising that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, expressing his desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian’s wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.

Style
I can’t remember reading a book so slowly, so carefully. Every sentence feels like a precious truth made of glass. I tend to highlight sentences or paragraphs I like with a red pencil – the book is a red mess. Especially the very philosophical, contradictory and hedonistic character Lord Henry Wotton is a source of ingenious inspiration.
Wow. The downside of reading this book is the depression following afterwards, because you will soon realize that “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde. Oh cruel world!

Rating
1

(You get the book for ridiculous 2.40€ on Amazon - no shipping costs.)

Quotes

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

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I just realized that I haven’t written about Terry Pratchett yet. Actually, I also realized that I haven’t read nearly enough books of him. So … oh well, I think you already got the message :) …

Content
Small Gods is one of the many Discworld Novels he wrote. I won’t go into very much detail here, it’s mainly about religion and religious people living on a flat world (disc), which is carried by 4 elephants standing on shell of a giant turtle, which is swimming through the universe. There are many gods on the discworld, but they can only live as long as people believe in them. The more followers they have, the more powerful they are.
The god Om has a whole state praying to him. Omnianism is state religion in Omnia. There’s lots of inquisition and burning people going on. But soon the God finds out that out of those hundreds of thousands of followers, actually only one person believes in him – and he has to get his powers back, because he’s trapped in the body of a little turtoise, powerless, and things get difficult …

Style
Pratchett is such an awesome writer. He manages to talk about real people, to criticize society, to ask very difficult questions and point out very tough things by writing a hilarious, extremely inventive, ingenious story about a funny dude running around with a god trapped in the body of a small tortoise. The book is never serious. The book never feels heavy, I actually laughed a lot reading in the metro, and still, between the lines, there’s a lot of truth going on. Serious truth. It’s an incredible skill cheering people up whilst adressing such issues.
And apart from this “meta” writing skills, his writing skills are amazing and outstanding. I decided to allow myself one discworld novel a month from now on, until I run out of money or books eventually.

Rating
1

(Thanks to Thomas for the awesome book!)

Quotes

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary grey goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys.

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Ich habe gerade das Buch “Manifest des Evolutionären Humanismus – Plädoyer für eine zeitgemäße Leitkultur” von Michael Schmidt-Salomon fertig gelesen, und finde es insgesamt schlicht schwierig.

Positiv ist hervorzuheben, dass er wunderschön schreibt, dass er viele Dinge beim Namen nennt, die meiner Meinung nach absolut korrekt sind, und dass er nicht nur Fakten, sondern auch Gedankengänge und Schlüsse präsentiert, die (zumindest für mich) neu waren; auch hat er sehr ordentlich recherchiert, und listet fast durchgehend Quellen auf.

Negativ (aber unterhaltsam) ist eindeutig die polemische Art, die er teilweise an den Tag legt – darüberhinaus hat er auch hin und wieder schlicht Unrecht (so behauptet er z.B., Einstein hätte lediglich einen metaphorischen Glauben besessen, was faktisch falsch ist, wenn man die Veröffentlichungen Einsteins als Grundlage nimmt; auch behauptet er mehrfach, Religionen wären “widerlegt”, was natürlich Unsinn ist – an anderer Stelle sagt er nämlich selbst, dass man die Nicht-Existenz eines Gottes natürlich niemals verifizieren kann).

Ich habe mir die Mühe gemacht, einige Gedanken abzutippen, weil ich sie für spannend/diskussionswürdig halte. Ich hoffe, lieber Herr Schmidt-Salmon, dass sie das nicht als Copyrightverletzung sehen – schließlich soll das ganze der Verbreitung des Buches dienen.

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Oh well, this was some kind of a reading weekend I guess … after finishing the vampire clan novel series yesterday (13 books), I just read the last page of the fourth book of the Otherland series:

• Otherland I: City of Golden Shadow (1996)
• Otherland II: River of Blue Fire (1998)
• Otherland III: Mountain of Black Glass (1999)
• Otherland IV: Sea of Silver Light (2001).

Finished. Finally. Took me from February 2007 till today, actually.

Phew …

Content:
Umm … 4000+ pages of content, I’m actually skipping that part, I think. Let’s see what wikipedia has to say …

Otherland is a series of four science fiction (cyberpunk) novels written by Tad Williams. The story is set in the mid-to-late 21st century (Some hints to a character’s age shows that the story takes place in the 2070s) where technology has advanced somewhat from the modern day. The most notable advancement has been the development of the ability for people to attach themselves fully to a computer via a nerve interface in order to experience an online world, called simply “the net”, as virtually real. Tad Williams weaves an intricate plot spanning four thick volumes and creates a picture of a future society where virtual worlds are fully integrated into everyday life.
His proposed ability to immerse oneself fully in a simulation gives him a great deal of artistic freedom, and the story winds through alternate interpretations of many classical literary works such as Through the Looking Glass, The Odyssey, The War of the Worlds, and The Wizard of Oz, which are in the book available as entertainment simulations.

Style:
A lot of different plots and characters. The first book is rather a mess, in the second book it gets rather clear how the stories are intertwined – what the characters have to do with each other – but only the end of the fourth book really gives the broad picture.
The whole idea, and the way the future is depicted, is very creative and smart – I like it. Especially if you’re into “realistic” Sci-Fi or even Cyberpunk settings, if you like movies like the Matrix series, or just think about the future of the internet and scientific progress a lot, the Otherland series will be something for you.
But then again, you do need some patience for it :) …

Rating:
1-2

Hurray – after 2 years of reading, I finally managed to finish the 13 books of the Vampire the Masquerade Clan Novel series (VtM is a roleplay game). The problem was not the reading though, but getting my hands on all of the books. They are not sold anymore (although not being that old really, published 1999-2001 as far as I know), so you have to buy them secondhand on ebay or amazon, which can be quite a story really … I payed around 5 euros for most of the books, but for some rare copies (such as Malkavian or Brujah) I had to pay around 20.
Well, here’s a short review …

Content:
The 13 books cover around half a year of story, from very different angles and perspectives. The tale is rather epic, all in all, but many characters are just youngsters, having small problems in their small world. Then again, very old vampires get depicted in other parts of the story … a great and interesting mixture really.

Style:
Oh well, written by a lot of different authors, in very different styles. I didn’t like the 12th novel, Tremere, a lot, but I loved all novels written by Gherbod Fleming and some other authors (favourite books being Gangrel, Setite, Malkavian and Nosferatu).
Each book covers the story from ~ May 1999 till November 1999; each book tells parts of the “whole” story, but also sets a focus on a substory which sometimes contributes to the main plot, sometimes not. Around 30 of the main characters can be found in most of the books. Although the story is not really moving chronologically throughout the series (each book starting and ending at around the same time – give or take a month), the novels should be read in the right order, because the first stories cover main events and leave greater gaps, the following ones fill those gaps, put more sense and background to the whole story, and focus more and more on the ending of the series.
I can’t tell you if this novel series is good for people not playing the roleplaying game Vampire the Masquerade … I have the impression that everything is explained properly, and that you can get into it pretty easily even if you’re not familiar with the game. Especially if you’re interested in vampires, I guess.
For people familiar with the genre, I can highly recommend it. Smart plot, very creative and detailed characters, very … umm … well, you get a very close “feeling” to those characters (even if they’re some hundred or thousand years of age), great ideas… and the different books are written differently, for example the Brujah book is rather straightforward, chronological, direct (as the Brujah, the vampire clan of rockers, gangs, and tough guys), whereas for instance the novel Malkavian (the “crazy” vampires) is a mad labyrinth of plot, with a lot of jumps in the story, some lose ends, and many many riddles …

Rating:
1-2, depending on the book.

Ich spare mir diesmal eine ausführliche Rezension, da sie dem Buch nicht gerechet werden könnte – Camus schafft es, in dem Buch Menschen mit verschiedenen Menschenbildern gleichberechtigt auftreten zu lassen und ihre Geschichte zu erzählen, und überlässt es dem Leser, eine für Camus selbst selbstverständliche Wahl zu treffen.

Das Buch soll für sich selbst sprechen:
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