Book Review: The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

About:

The View from the Cheap seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman is a compilation of essays on many subjects the author composed. Neil Gaiman is a very prolific author who writes comic-books, TV shows, and books.

• 544 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062262262

My rating for The View from the Cheap seats – 4
Buy The View from the Cheap seats from Amazon.com*
Buy from HarperCollins
More Books by Neil Gaiman*

Thoughts:

I remember hearing about Neil Gaiman when I was still reading comic books (I now moved on to graphic novels – collected works – because I can no longer have the time to keep up with monthly series), I heard about these great, must read, comic book called Sandman. I didn’t pick one up until much later because I enjoyed superhero stories and Sandman was not my kind of hero. Maybe I wasn’t sophisticated enough.

Maybe I’m still not.

I was browsing at a bookstore one day, I don’t remember why, it could have been a trip or maybe I just wanted something different to read – most likely both. I walked into the fiction section because i just finished Alexander Hamilton’s biography by Ron Chernow (this was about a decade or two before the play) and I was looking for something different. I picked up American Gods and never looked back.
I enjoyed the book so much I gave it to a worker at the deli I frequented (I’m still trying to lose that bagel weight).
Ever since then I read anything Mr. Gaiman writes, and even got my beloved wife to read (and enjoy) his works.

The View from the Cheap seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman is a collected book of selected essays and speeches. The book is divided into ten logical sections (comic books, musicians, observations, people, movies, etc.) which, unfortunately do not create a narrative but are interesting on their own nonetheless.

I mostly enjoyed the speeches included in this collection. I don’t know if these are the speeches he wrote or are they were transcribed later on – this is because I can hear him talk in my head and know him to be an excellent writer so it could be that either or. The speeches also seem target to a more specific audience (me?) and hence are personalized more than simply talking to the public at large.
The essays and articles are for people, the speeches are for persons.

The book includes old favorites (“Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming” and “Make Good Art”), as well as new favorites (“The View from the Cheap Seats” about Gaiman’s experience at the Oscars) and much in between. Fans of the author will not be disappointed as he writes about his favorite books, music, movies and projects he worked on including Dr. Who and comics. Mr. Gaiman also wrote about some of the people he cares for and, obviously, love. The obituaries and writings about his wife and daughters are touching, sometimes funny but always full of heart.

And my reading list got much, much longer – I’m even thinking to try reading fantasy again.
Just thinking though.

Synopsis:

There is not synopsis for a collection of essays. The book, however, is divided into ten sections as follows:
I.  Some Things I Believe
II. Some People I have Known
III. Introductions and Musings: Science Fiction
IV. Films and Movies and Me
V.  On Comics and Some of the People Who Make Them
VI. Introductions and Contradictions
VII. Music and the People Who Make It
VIII. On Stardust and Fairy Tales
IX.   Make Good Art
X. The View From the Cheap Seats: Real Things

Buy The View from the Cheap seats from Amazon.com*
Buy from HarperCollins
More Books by Neil Gaiman*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account, the money is usually spent on books