So this time I’ll be directly Gai(man) and ask you to give me idiot-proof directions which even a golden retriever could understand, like a link to a collection, the name of a representative single work to buy which provides a good starting point, or something like that. From the online descriptions I’ve read of the series and your connection of them with Chesterton, they sound like excellent lazy summer afternoon reading material (yes, I’m Gai 😝).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47754698)

https://www.amazon.com/Sandman-Vol-Dolls-House/dp/1401227996

Your local library may well have some of this stuff too

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47754931)

I also just realized that my local upscale hipster boutique bookstores probably have that kind of thing, too! Golden Lives Matter, needless to say, but sometimes my identifying-as-canine brain can miss some obvious things hiding in plain sight… 🐶

Also, I had no idea Neil Gaiman wrote Coraline, if I’m understanding that book cover in your second link correctly - whose movie adaptation blew my mind when it came out, an instant classic like James and the Giant Peach or Nightmare Before Christmas, stop motion that feels genuinely inspired by the source material rather than a gimmick. (Also loved that recent Little Prince stop motion one with Jeff Bridges - okay sorry for the stream-of-consciousness digression!)

So basically Gaiman sounds like someone who is prolific but also the rare Boomer who is also genuinely talented, like how I’ve heard Stephen King described, but I’ve never read him because I don’t really like horror stuff - BUT I’m also open to suggestions there / similar stuff you like if you feel inclined (the dreamscape Gaiman thing sounds enthralling, I like Roald Dahl’s Ghost Stories collection, and I’ve always liked Simpsons Halloween episodes, Thank!)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47755036)

If you don't like horror but like good fantasy stuff with a dark edge, then Ray Bradbury is 180. Excellent mix of science fiction and fantasy and horror and sometimes just straightforward non-genre fiction. He also has a fundamentally optimistic and warm and all-American view of the world (which makes the times that he lets his wicked side out the more shocking). Again, even the most rudimentary public library will have The Illustrated Man or The Martian Chronicles or one of his other collections, and you strike me as someone who'd really enjoy Something Wicked This Way Comes (a dark fantasy/horror novel about boyhood, and fatherhood, and youth, and life). It's dark but ultimately very joyous and life-affirming.

In terms of King himself--my go-to recommendation for people who are curious about King but don't like horror is Different Seasons. That's four novellas, each of which is good. "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" was the source material for "The Shawshank Redemption," and "The Body" is the source material for "Stand by Me." "Apt Pupil" is very horrific although well-written, and "The Breathing Method" is a slight piece with a little macabre tinge.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47755141)

Man, talk about great minds think alike! Martian Chronicles was assigned in junior year high school English class by a wise hippie MILF (who also LOVED Murakami, and it took me a few decades to finally get what I was missing out on all those years); and I’ve never been able to forget it, decades later. So I’m excited that you like him, because I’ve been on the diving board looking for the right time to dive in… 🙏

I’ve always loved the Shawshank movie - something about going through the most retarded shit (literally in some cases!) imaginable but being glad you did in the end, it highly and humanely resonates with our human comedy condition, I think. And those other 3 also sound like something I’d enjoy, taken together as a kind of sampler. (I remember enjoying Goosebumps stuff growing up, too!)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47755816)

Yeah, "Mars Is Heaven" is one of my favorite stories of his (that's the one that reads like a nasty parody of his own small-town Americana). But get yourself any other collection of his, and if you like that (you will) then do Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is Bradbury at his most Bradburian.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756027)

Speaking of which, I’m not only excited to pick up the threads of the too-long paused Bradbury adventure (I also recently learned a while back that he worked with Disney in writing the script for an EPCOT attraction or something cool like that? Either way, gorgeous guy)…

…BUT I’m also excited to purchase them from one or more of the local trendy places, which tend to be staffed by an endearing variety of lovably sarcastic gays reminiscent of the Autoadmit chorus, no-nonsense waifish lesbians who would have been distant (most of all to their children) WASP matriarchs in a past life, but many of whom have an earnestly playful and authentically feminine spark buried deep down despite the modern mind/soul melt…

…and of course, last but certainly not least, an endless array of staggeringly attractive ultra-maternal women from virtually every demographic imaginable, yet who all share the same hippie / artsy chic style, and would make excellent Catholic homemakers, somewhere over the rainbow! (In this life they are excellent homemakers, but for their pampered fur babies, naturally) 😝

🙏🙏🙏

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756449)

I keep picturing this as a John Hughes spinoff 😂 and/or that Aerosmith one about different levels of virtual reality, starring Alicia Silverstone circa the 1990s, who else? 😁

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756459)

not into the genre specifically these days but was looking for something very light while i do prole goy mr fixit shit. do you have anything that fits those parameters?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756084)

A gorgeous collection of detective fiction short stories, Chesterton’s reluctant aristocrat Horne Fisher, AKA “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

In awe of Fisher’s grasp of the facts, one character tells him, “Fisher, I should say that what you don’t know isn’t worth knowing.”

“You are wrong,” replies Fisher with a very unusual abruptness and even bitterness. “It’s what I do know that isn’t worth knowing.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756495)

better than the tv series imo though.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756096)

Do you have any comics recommendations? I've never been super into them, aside from horror comics (the EC stuff, some of the Warren stuff, and more hardcore stuff from the 80s like Twisted Tales and Gore Shriek), some horror manga (mostly Junji Ito) and some stuff like Doom Patrol, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and Swamp Thing (so pretty entry level I guess). And I used to read Crossed when I was younger but it really doesn't hold up well at all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756103)

the comic books of my youth are for children and you've already identified all the "prestige" graphic novels im aware of.

do you have any recs for light reads while thingdoing? im burnt out on pods.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756107)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756120)

https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/seven-strange-ghostly-tales-unabridged/id1417666710

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5541751&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5304212",#47756519)