Modern Fantasy.

I'm going to write about Coraline, its the only Neil Gaiman story i've had any experience with aside from his short story "How to Talk to Girls at Parties". Found here: http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties_(Text)

I have very limited knowledge of writers and new books and such but Neil Gaiman seems to be at the forefront of modern day fantasy writers. His stories in context to history are fresh as well they don't contain the usual elves and dwarves and dragons associated with other fantasy books.

Coraline for me is about a child's need to explore and be a kid. Here she is having just moved into a foggy boring town where she doesn't know anyone. Her parents have become too pre-occupied to pay any attention to her and because of this she gets herself into a load of trouble. So if you will this whole ordeal thats about to fall upon her is the fault of her parents. But non-the-less she goes off exploring her new house where she finds a modern day rabbit hole. A little door in an empty upstairs room. In the beginning its made clear Coraline is bored with her parents and has a general distaste for them at the time. Through this rabbit whole is where she finds an opposite world. Everything is the opposite of what it is in the real world. In this fake world the cat can talk, her parents are energetic and exciting and give her all the attention she could hope for. Something all children can probably relate to. In this modern society too often are adults caught up in their own problems and work to really pay any mind to the problems of a child. They are even seen as mundane silly problems when attention is paid, but the mistake is made in ignoring them. To a child these are the worst things imaginable in life because their experience is limited due to their short life.
Back to what happens. After several visits to this other world with her other mother and other father they tell her in order to stay she must sew buttons over her eyes. Sounds painful. Coraline doesn't want this and escapes, eventually leading to a final showdown with the spider version of Other Mother.
Overall if Coralines parents had paid attention to her none of this would have happened. If only her real mom would have been a mother and her father a father Coraline wouldn't have been bored and maybe they would have been able to solve her problem.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is an interesting short story. From the title it sounds pretty mundane and really when you think about it nothing out of the ordinary happens aside from the strange girls at the party. But i've been in similar situations, I end up following a more outgoing friend to a strange house i've never been to where I don't know a single sole. Its like talking to aliens, everything feels different. At this party while never said you start to get the feeling these girls aren't human. They have very large eyes and one talks about swimming around in the sun. At the end just as the main character is feeling comfortable amongst these beings his friend Vic hurriedly says they must leave, and on the way out we see why. The girl he was there for was standing at the top of the stairs in a mess. Vic had gone too far, his eagerness to mingle turned against him. Its left up to the reader to decide, but I believe Vic tried to have sex with this girl but soon discovered she was an alien. But in the end, even if you think you know a girl they really are all aliens.

His Dark Materials.

I'll be honest, the only experience I have with this story is through the movie, and that made little sense. I could tell right away everything was rushed and they tried to do too much in one movie. Although the polar bear fight and the evil bear getting his jaw smacked off was pretty awesome.

Now to say the author Pullman would be an atheist would be a sort of false truth. The book series is really a comment on human morals and religion. I think the whole point he tries to make from the books is that you don't necessarily need religion to tell you how to act. Morals should be an obvious human nature.

That book about little people.

I did not read the Hobbit until I graduated from high school, but it took me about three years to finish the book, but thats not for lack of knowing how to read. Honestly even as a kid I didn't really know about the book and first found out about it through Ralph Bashkis boring The Hobbit cartoon movie, not knowing it was part of a whole epic and deep detailed universe. Once the movies came out then I really took notice and decided to try the Hobbit as part of one of those 'things everyone must do before they die' sort of thing.

I especially like this books theme of unexpected people going on grand adventures for the sake of adventure. You start off with an ordinary Hobbit known as Bilbo Baggins, which can be interpreted as any normal human comfortable in their day to day. Then Gandolf the wizard shows up and causes a ruckus insisting that Bilbo comes with him on a great adventure with a band of dwarves in search of fortune and a dragon that lives in a mountain. As Bilbo goes further and further from his home of Hobbiton he encounters increasingly different characters. Soon Bilbo finds himself separated from the rest of the group and lost in a deep cave, but is soon discovered by Golem who leads him through the cave until Golem looses him, and the ring. It is there in the deepest darkest part of the cave fate convenes and he comes across The Ring. The sources of all troubles in the world, created with a benevolent purpose for evil. Although at first it wouldn't appear as such and if you didnt know about the later three books It would seem like any other magical ring simply granting the wearer invisibility. However we quickly find the ring may have a greater power to it. Bilbo hears Golem off in the darkness screaming and crying and clamoring for the ring. It has a power of humanoids that makes it irresistible. It takes control of your life and it becomes the only thing you want. Its a drug. It has warped and twisted and unnaturally and unflatteringly extended Golems life. Out of the cave Bilbo remarkably meets back with his group and they make their way to the elf village. After a resupply  they make their way to the mountain with the dragon. Fast forwarding they're stuck on the side of the mountain for days with a battle between orcs and men happening at the foot of the mountain. It is here they sneak into the innards of the mountain and steal the gold and slay the dragon.

The everyman has gone on the ultimate adventure. Someone so content in his surroundings has risen to the top and completed the ultimate adventure and done the greatest task known to man, slain a dragon. Thats what I think this book is really about.

J-Horror

A Wild Sheep Chase is a fairly interesting story. Usually when you hear that something is J-Horror you think of a very very dirty young girl with extremely long unwashed hair and a knack for showing up in odd places. Such as a TV screen, computer screen, and a bathtub. This was much more interesting than that though, at least when compared to whats normally expected from this sort of thing.

First off he's not really being threatened or chased by anything really all that evil. He's on a quest to find a wild sheep and really put meaning and excitement to his otherwise mundane life. The first few chapters of the book are spent established showing us the other people in his life, which is odd since he attends a funeral of an ex-girlfriend, the same day sees his ex-wife waiting for him at his house, then later we see him with his current girlfriend with the nice ears. The book never really hits scary territory, but it does involve a supernatural force that seems to have no way of ending it.  Overall though it was a pretty interesting book.

Vampires are Suckin.

For me vampires are usually hit or miss. They can be pretty interesting when in stories such as Interview with the Vampire or extremely lame and laughable in films like Twilight, or even hilarious in movies such as Dracula: Dead and Loving It by Mel Brookes.

Intereview with the Vampire is one of those times I actually appreciate, and enjoy a vampire tale. I enjoyed finding out an in-depth history of a vampire something we don't usually get. Usually its just some mysterious guy that has a lot of money, and after so many hundreds of years I would hope he would be able to accumulate a lot of money, looks handsome I suppose and tends to somehow know how to talk to people despite having to spend most of it locked up inside while the rest of the world is running about. Interview with the Vampire however gave a life and emotional connection to the characters of Lastat, Louis, and Claudia. Interesting thing about Claudia is that she's five years old when she's bitten. And in this worlds laws when you're bitten you cease to age. She is five years old forever, but after hundreds of years of living one is bound to grow up. She grows ever restless and tired of being five. She starts to desire things older women and vampires desire. Such as the urge to hunt. She even goes so far as to feed one of the vampires a dead human, which again in this universe is a really bad things that makes a vampire really sick. But Claudia is not all heartless so to speak. In France when they meet Armand she is sickened by his ruthless feeding of humans in front of humans under the guise of theater acting. She eventually meets a sad end when the theater vampires take her captive after hearing Lastats story of how she and Louis tried to kill him twice. Which in the vampire world is a big no no.

So in the end we learn that immortality isn't all fun times free of death. It becomes a burden you can't get rid of. While you may have fun from time to time in the end you never see the end of war and murder and suffering.