A note: I expect more than I should from this author. I find him to be a brilliant idea man with little substance.

-Suggested Reading Order:

Murder Mystery
Tastings
Snow, Glass, Apples
Only the End of the World Again
Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar
We Can Get Them for You Wholesale
Chivalry
Cold Colors
The Price

Chivalry- an old woman buys the Holy Grail. A full-armored knight comes to seek the Grail. Cute, long-run and dry. The most wonderful thing about this story is that it is quaint and written as gabbish; a runabout talkative form of day-to-day meandering, paying no heed to the extraordinary.

Nicholas Was… - my favorite line "Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night." This is a short short story. It seems, in this piece, there was more to be said but wasn’t.

The Price- The beginning of this piece is bloody brilliant, reflecting harlequin mythos. The story sidesteps this flight of fancy to anecdote, betraying itself with its narrative

Troll Bridge- The strength is the child’s voice (which continues and becomes outlived). The narrative stretches into the mundane: a point and picture of nothingness, an ode to the anticlimactic where, at the end, the story snuffs itself out of hopelessness… like a suicidal cigarette.

The White Road- These story-poems were glanced over with some volume of interest. The White Road- could’ve been the premise for the Corpse Bride, except that at the scene where the corpse bride was supposed to get killed, she does not and lives thereafter.

Changes- A summary of a man and his time split from an invention- a (not the) cure for cancer, side effect- sex change, and what becomes of it as seen by him.

The Daughters of Owls- Phun with mysspellinks.

Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar- Gaiman pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft, typing his lines and taking his name. The descriptive presence shows Gaiman's strength as the main character muddles about a town conversing with two drunkards spouting Lovecraft at lengths with lists of that and this.

Looking for the Girl- The main character buys a dirty magazine in his youth and immortalizes the girl spread between the pages. He devotes his life to finding her, becoming a photographer, selling off all of his worldly possessions, and buying all of the magazines (of which she appears at different intervals in his life- the same and in age, but with a different name).

Only the End of the World Again- Read this substanceless story for its language (it has a Scooby-Doo-ish plot).

Bay Wolf- Fighting something from the Deep! Narrated in pulp “and then I ripped his arm off” fashion.

We Can Get Them For You Wholesale- Brilliant first 3 pages! A man searches through a phone book for an assassin to kill the man who’s cheating with his girlfriend.

Cold Colors- Crazy cool Dealing with computers and computer lingo, software, hardware mixed between metaphors. My favorite part was pigeon selling- people would buy them and spread their blood around their computer.

The Sweeper of Dreams- T’was a nice short; think the ending was a “I have to end this and… meh.”

Vampire Sestina- A vampire poem. The word blood is used. Ironically, the word suck is not.

Mouse- What’s happening takes place in one paragraph near the end of the story. Everything else is exposition to that idea.

Tastings- It’s sexually explitious! An erotic tale with a twist into supernatural fiction. Very well written.

Babycakes- A story about eating babies… (sweet)

Murder Mysteries- I waded through 292 pages to read this story!

Snow, Glass, Apples- …I like the idea of holding her heart on the wall above the bed.

(The short stories not mentioned are partiularly: MEH!)