Bookish Thoughts

At some point, while searching for various Harry Potter and Sandman related things on the internet, I came across an old accusation made by a third party that JK Rowling had stolen the idea for Harry Potter from Neil Gaiman. As far as I can tell, she never commented and he completely denied such charges and demanded an apology from the journalist who had run the story. Both were British authors who wrote fantasy. The comparison was bound to be made. But I had read nearly everything written by both authors at this point and the accusation completely threw me.  Once you got past the fantasy genre, their writing was nothing alike! Okay, so I hadn't (and still haven't) read everything written by Neil Gaiman. I've missed a lot of his comic books and, though it is currently sitting on my bookshelf, I haven't yet found time for The Graveyard Book . I mention this, because the entire thing came rushing back into my head when I bought The Books of Magic . I mean...

I've been struggling through The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara for the past few weeks. A colleague at work loaned it to me. The social obligation this creates is probably the only reason I'm still attempting to finish this book. The Killer Angels is about the Battle of Gettysburg. Three hundred and forty five pages of white men shooting rifles at each other. This isn't really my cup of tea. I generally like historical fiction, but military history bores me. If I'm going to read about a battle I prefer there to be some magical element to it. Dragons or giants or showers of sparks flying back and forth. If you take that away and just show men killing each other with ordinary metal, it gets to be a bit too real. It makes me uncomfortable. Knowing that all of this actually happened doesn't help matters. The thing I find most challenging about this book, though, is that it makes all of the characters real and sympathetic. Lee, Longst...