In Continuum.

Neverwhere

I think it is rather rare for me to accept a book borrowed from somebody else.I was/am never the borrowing type of person,really.I remember the time when Kenneth offered to lean me his copy of The Time Traveler's Wife,i read the back of the book and told him i will buy the book myself.It's not a show-off of how much money i have,how much of those i can spare,or whatever character judgement you have on me that has got to do with my wealth.Really,i just prefer the feeling of really owning a book,and not the bittersweet feeling of parting with it when the date due is nearing.I dont know,i guess i like the experimenting stage of books,the researches i go through before actually going down to town and stuff.

Anyway,back to the point of borrowing books from others.Im not sure if i am being stingy or whatever,but whenever somebody asks me to lend them a book after i am done,i'd advice them to go to the National Library,indirectly rejecting their question.Because really,i hate to lend books to others.It's the way people can never take care of your books as well as you'd like.It's not like i take perfect care of my books,wrapping them up with plastic,sealing them up in an air-tight box,stow them away in some God-forsaken chamber twenty feet below the surface of the earth and locked up in a vault with fifty security cameras,accessed only by an iris scan,finger print identification,and voice recognition.

No,i dont do that.Im pretty sure that kind of things happen somewhere in this world,though.Perhaps the library of the Vatican does this sort of things,locking their copies of the new and old testaments,or original copies of paintings,or manuscripts written by artists and writers of old.Anyway,i think it is always easier to forgive yourself,when there is a bend in a corner of the book you bought,or a coffee stain,whatever.

So a couple of weeks ago Corinna urged me to read one of her favourite books,"Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman.First of all,i never thought much about this guy.I was aware of his talents,sure.But never really the interest in his books.I mean,i am way past the "fantasy" stage,left it in Secondary School and moved on.So when Corinna reintroduced this author to me i was rather skeptical of him.Afterall,he doesnt write very conventional stories,and the fact that he is unconventional made me a little nervous,considering the bad books that i have read going along that same route of unconventionalism.

As a "Part 2" of my birthday present,she stuffed that book into my hand when we met at Bugis MRT Station,all excited and proclaimed that she read it three times over(Wow,three times!).So i thought,this guy must have got a couple of tricks up his sleeve,huh?Despite the bad recommendations like Sophie's World and The Alchemist,i accepted the book and trusted her for one last time.

Well,i wouldnt say the book was horribly great,but i thought it was a pleasant read(Especially after the fact that Suite Francaise was such a depressing book).Neverwhere really is about the little adventure of this guy called Richard Mayhew,after meeting a girl named Door,journeys to the underworld of London,meeting other fellow underworlders,and helping Door to avenge her family with the help from De Marquis and Hunter,a bodyguard.

What fascinated me was the description of Gaiman's world.He is not terribly descriptive i am afraid.I mean,i have read better writers of course,but his world is somewhat different from the reality we are so used to.Or rather,the fantasy world most authors attempt to create(The only other world created by an author,and sounded believable was Middle Earth).Anyway,his paragraphs reminded me of the graphic novels i have read a couple of months earlier,and i must say that the little twist towards the end,though was predictable,was rather unpredictable all at once.What i mean is,that i knew that some kind of twist was coming up,and guessed a couple of them,but when it actually happened i was still pleasantly surprised(I knew about Islington all along).

However much i disliked the character development(I found an absolute lack of that aspect.All the characters were robbed of character development,shallow,and i found myself not caring much about the life and death of the character,until the thought of Door being someone the fictionalized version of Corinna),i thought the idea appealed a lot.I mean,an ordinary guy being dragged into this mumbo-jumbo under the streets of London and still emerging as the Warrior.That's...appealing.

And despite being a little cliche towards the end,i liked how Richard gave up what he used to live for,and re-entered the underworld at his own will,simply by drawing marks on the wall and knocking on it,as if to open some kind of fantastical door.

I guess in some ways,every one of us wonder if this is it."It" being the daily routines in our lives,the way things work in some sort of system.We wake up in the morning,we brush our teeth,we break our fast,then we go to work.After that we head on home,relax a little to a cup of coffee and music,call up your boyfriend or girlfriend and have a chat,then later on the in the weekend hang out with them as you talk about the fucked up things that happened throughout the weeks.I guess some people,any people,will realise or wish that there is something more,than just these.These mundane things that occur over and over again.It might just be the adrenaline rush of some kind of adventure in somebody's life,some kind of difference we seek to our lives.Whatever it is,really,i guess we all wish to break away somehow,and enter a door in the wall and disappear,even if it is for a while.

That is what books do to me,i guess.That is what Neverwhere,like so many other books(Good ones,mind you)do to me when i read them.They bring me to a place so unexpected,a realm so different from my own life that i cannot stop to wonder if,this is...well,it.

So thanks,for the book.No bends or crack in the spine,i assure you.I found a water stain on chapter 22,or was it 20?That wasnt by me,really.Thanks for the book,i enjoyed it quite a bit.It sure redeemed the horrendous Sophie's World and The Alchemist,looking forward to other Gaiman works.;)