Some rolling thoughts as I went through the book:
I have no idea what’s going on.
Jessica is a bitch.
Was Richard cheating on her? I think he mentions underwear belonging to someone else… but he doesn’t seem the type…or was this a figment of my imagination…
Richard does not deserve that phone. It makes him appear way cooler than he is.
“Richard was not an enthusiastic holder of pigeons, even at the best of times.”
I like how they used the special effect for Richard’s dream to make it all echo-y. I suppose the text equivalent would have been wobbly text.
Richard reminds me of the guy from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He’s overly polite and a little dumb and naive. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying.
I wonder what Croup and Vanderbar are. They’re not humans – demons, maybe? I think they may be my favorite characters. They make no apology for what they are. (On a side note, the voice Gaiman chooses for Croup reminds me of the voice the narrator chooses for the voice of Caderousse in The Count of Monte Cristo. Yay book club!)
After the ordeal, Richard thinks quite a lot of himself. More than he deserves. I think he goes through more after the ordeal than during it.
While I greatly enjoy listening to Neil Gaiman read his own books, I do have one complaint. He is too British. And by that I mean he’s too soft spoken at times. There were many lines I missed because I could not hear them! I had the volume in my car turned all the way up and I still could not hear him :-(
Wait, there was a radio version, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Sir Christopher Lee and other awesome personages? Why on earth didn’t I listen to that instead?! And there’s a show? Wait, the show came first? Maybe I’ll check them out…
The world that Gaiman built here is, as always, fantastic. There are characters that intrigue me, and I want to know more about them. Actually, I want to know more about almost everyone except Richard. He is the normalcy in all this, and I guess it just shows that normalcy is boring. On the other hand, in that normalcy there is some degree of the abnormal. Richard has prophetic dreams, and he is deemed a safe harbor for Door by whoever chooses that sort of thing.
So, it’s a 3.5 for me, between not being able to hear part of it and getting irritated by Richard being himself.
I have read this book approximately one million times, but I’ve never listened to the audio version. I’ve listened to a few other books read by Gaiman though and you’re right — he’s very soft-spoken!
The radio play is very different from the book, and since I’ve pretty much memorized the book, it made it hard for me to enjoy (like listening to a cover of a song you love). But it might be fun for someone who’s not overly attached to the original! And the casting is superb.
I also need to find the Benedict Cumberbatch/Christopher Lee audio version. That sounds fantastic!