Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden & Stephen R. Bissette

This book was a must read for me. I happen to be a huge Neil Gaiman fan. As the promo on the jacket says, over the past twenty years, Neil Gaiman has developed into the premier fantasist of his generation, achieving that rarest of combinations--unrivaled critical respect and extraordinary commercial success. He is a pop culture phenomenon and the impact of his work in fiction, film, music, and comic books is unparalleled.

This book is a treasure trove of all things Gaiman. In addition to containing in-depth information and commentary on all his works, it includes rare photographs, artwork, and trivia.

One of the things that impressed me about Neil's early years was the fact that he was about 5 or 6 years old when he read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. Yes, that's right, 5 or 6! I was an adult before I ever read the Chronicles of Narnia--I can't imagine reading that book at such an early age. Neil says that he admired Lewis's prose style (found it faultless) and his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, and thought to himself that was so cool that he'd like to do that when he became an author. [Notice how he says when he became an author, not if he ever became an author.]

On his 7th birthday, his parents got him a boxed set of the Narnia books (all seven of them) and he lay on his bed and read them. That's what he did on his 7th birthday! At age 10 he started reading Tolkien. The point is, he was a reader. He loved reading. Reading gave him pleasure. [I can totally relate to this, as I feel exactly the same way.] He said he was very good at most subjects in school, not because he had a particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out the schoolbooks, and he would read them--which would mean that he knew what was coming up, because he'd read it. He was an incredibly fast and incredibly enthusiastic reader who retained information fairly well. He was a voracious reader who got everything from books. He read more than a book a day, because he always had a book with him and read at any down point.

His parents would drop him off at the library first thing in the morning, and he read his way through the children's library. After he finished, he tried that with the adult library, but found out he couldn't do that with adult books, there were too many, and many he wasn't interested in. But once loose in the adult library, he found he was much more interested in science fiction and fantasy. He jokingly said it got to the point where his parents would frisk him for books before family functions.

What I found interesting is how he turned his love of reading and the written word into writing as a profession. He said one night he could not sleep...just couldn't sleep. He remembered lying there in bed and he had a sort of vision, a train of thought that went--O.K. let's say I'm eighty years old, and I'm on my death bed. And I say to myself, as my life ends, 'I could have been a writer. I could have actually been a writer.' --and he would die not knowing if he was lying to himself or not--and he found that unbearable. He found the thought that he would die thinking he was kidding himself, a terrible thing. He thought it would be better to go and try and be a writer, and to fail, then he would at least know that no, he was put on Earth to be something else. It would be better to do that. It was the worst thing he could think of for himself in the world, at that point, the idea of not knowing if he was lying to himself or not. Because in his heart, he thought he was a writer.

As the book says, Gaiman is a writer, but, first and foremost, he's a fan, a man with a passionate love of story, avidly consuming myths, television, movies, novels, short stories, animation, and comics. He loves to write for writing's sake, and as a means of staying in touch with his legion of fans--his blog, now in its sixth year click here , has over a million unique hits each month. Through it he communicates daily with his fans--those who are devoted to his work.

He truly is the Prince of Stories, and this book is a remarkable chronicle of his work.