sphinxes

Now this is commitment to a joke! Not to mention a long way to go. But entertaining. And occasionally very funny.

This is a curiosity, though: 'Howard' talks of the pages of Coraline having a "... cellary flavor to it. It reminded me of dust and spiders. Dust and spiders...like in the basement, where I kept most of my books last winter, while the downstairs was being remodeled." Curious because of the nature of the novel, that is, since it is a creepy children's story about a girl who walks through a door in her house into another world where a woman tries to keep her for her own. Makes me wonder if perhaps he was eating the pages that described Coraline's experience of her other father decaying in the cellar...

I especially liked this, though:

"A matter of some concern: Neil Gaiman's words are staying with me longer than anticipated. You might say I'm haunted by them. That is, I've noticed (or, rather, I haven't noticed), er....

"Something's been missing from my morning routine.

"Every page I've ingested remains so.

"Look at me; I'm a book bag.

"I'd like to think the stories are simply being sublimated into a higher form, joining with the stream of my consciousness and floating away, but the tightness of my waistband tells me otherwise. I mixed this morning's reads (ten pages of Neverwhere) with a generous helping of All-Bran. It tasted terrible at first, but some sliced strawberries and sugar eased it down."

I do, I have to say, like the idea of stories entering the blood stream. Becoming part of an individual in a physical sense. Literature as party drug?