THE GRAVEYARD BOOK By Neil Gaiman – Reviewed

It’s difficult to review a book like there. And there are so few books like this. Books that you experience, rather than read. Books which envelope you, books which takes you to a new world and let you explore that world and introduce you to new friends.

Books that touch you. Writers that speak to you.

These are rare things. Much like The Thief of Always, The Hobbit, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Graveyard Book is a tale of wonder, of imagination, a coming of age tale of adventure.

Nobody Owens’s family is killed one night when he’s a toddler, and whilst the murderer is searching for him, Bod slips out and finds himself in a graveyard, adopted by the ghosts who live there. But to keep Bod safe from the murderer he can’t leave his new home, and must learn to live the life of a live human within his ghostly confines.

Bod slowly grows up, learning the skills he needs to survive in his strange surroundings, but longing for the life of a live person, without even knowing it.

Gaiman creates a magical world, part Harry Potter, part Tim Burton. The plot follows the trials and tribulations of Bod’s growing up, a simple tale, but with the ever growing presence of the murderer making life all the more difficult for the young child.

Ok, so there are several places where things are nicely slotted into place and then become suddenly important, Bod meeting a witch and then needing her magic to escape after being trapped by a dodgy pawnbroker. But these aren’t glaring, and it’s only those reading this with a critical eye that are likely to notice.

And that’s what I mean by this being a difficult book to review. While you read it you enjoy it, you love every minute of it. You can’t help but feel a tug at the heartstrings every time you put it down, the urge to continue discovering the story made me finish the book in barely two days, despite a full-time job interfering.

This is the kind of book that children should be made to read. Not because they can learn from it, although they will, but because this is the sort of book that makes you feel you have discovered a wonderful, magical world, and will make children want to read more.

The Graveyard Book will no doubt make Gaiman many more fans, and deservedly so. He’s created a wonderful world and filled it with people who you can’t help but love.

Enchanting and beautiful. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Credit Crunch: A Survivor’s Guide

The credit crunch has hit me hard. I haven’t lost my job (so far), but my income has decreased significantly (about 25%), the threat of redundancy has loomed over me for the whole of 2009 and is likely to be an issue again in 2010. During this time of difficulties I’ve had to tighten my belt, to cut costs, I’ve had to crunch my own credit, look at my needs and expenses and try to put together a back-up fund for emergencies.

It has been hard. The credit crunch was unexpected by most people, including me, and because there was no warning I found myself unprepared.

To give you some background, I have a full-time job (the joy!), I live in rented accommodation (which until recently I enjoyed alone). I enjoy good food, regular holidays, lots of tv channels, unrestricted broadband internet access, buying things when I want them, not having to save forever to get an iPod touch, and being in control of my money.

That is until I realised how precariously balanced I was on the financial divide. The divide between the haves and have-nots. Because of the credit-crisis it’s not so much of a divide any more, and there’s no border patrol stopping you going over to the other side now.

I plan to put together a series of articles aimed at making you look at your money and getting you to think about how you spend it. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme, it’s not a 12-step debt removal system, it’s just a common-sense way of looking at money and how you use it. The idea is to take in this information and use it to save yourself some money without having to go without too much.

Next time: Budgeting

Work… It’s shite

I don’t normally let work get to me. I’m a fairly easy going person, and I’ve worked in the same place (although doing slightly different jobs) for almost ten years. I’m an administrator in a large public company, so very unexciting for the most part.

I’ve been fortunate so far. I generally don’t have to do too much work and can get away with doing more important things in my work-time, such as looking at porn, playing on myspace, writing (when I get some occasional peace!), and reading things that I probably shouldn’t be reading at work. I see these as perks of the job that make up for the poor wages.

Apathy is killing my career. In fact, it’s only this year that I’ve begun to think of my job as a career. Before I turned thirty-three it was always a job, just a job, and eventually I’ll get a proper job. With real money. And real work.

But at the beginning of this year something started to change. I got a lot more work to do, not only enough to fill my time (which was pretty well filled with my hobbies anyway), but it spilled over into my time and made me quite stressed. I cut out the hobbies and found I had a little more time to fit in work-related stuff. Then the work continued to pile up.

It’s still continuing, the work is still piling up, due to a merger our department had with another department. Right now I’m doing far too much work and my easy life is over. The thing that makes it worse is that the threat of redundancy has been hanging over us since January and still no one quite knows what’s going on, not even the managers. Which really can’t be good.

The sheer amount of work I have to do is finally getting to me, and I think I’m gonna have a meltdown sometime soon. Last week I made an error which will cost the department money. This week, the week yet to come, we will be running something we shouldn’t be running due to a miscommunication that could be construed as my fault, although strictly speaking it wasn’t.

Also this week I have to fill in a form to say why they should keep me. As if it isn’t obvious!  

Right now I’m thinking unemployment can’t be that bad! I’d get a lot more time to read and to write and watch porn and horror films that I record on cable. Except cable might have to go to save a bit of cash, and new books will be impossible. And I might have to cut down the broadband too, no more myspace, no more porn… What other hobbies are not cost effective?

Work sucks. But what’s the alternative?