Hall of the Mountain King; Mannheim Steamroller

Is it too early to listen to Halloween music? I don't know if I'm into it yet. A little over two weeks till the game. It's coming together. I need to call Danny. I just had an idea. I know what to do if Danny can't play. I rule.

I was going to switch to something less cheezy, music-wise, but this is growing on me. I don't really like this album too much. It's midi file versions of some classical tunes. Hold on, I'm switching to my Halloween desktop. Much better. I love Halloween.

I read Neil Gaiman's latest book, Inansi Boys. It was ok. American Gods was better. The problems with Inansi Boys are as follows:
1. Charlie is a mishmash of bad cliches (Are there good cliches?). When the book starts he's rather interesting, but he quickly becomes the "lame brother" archetype as soon as Spider steps on scene.
2. The whole "A Guy Thing" love quadrangle was particularly uninspired in the atrocious Jason Lee vehicle, and isn't any better in the context of a Neil Gaiman novel.
3. The ending, and when I say the ending I mean the last 5 chapters were... I don't know. I think the idea was to show how neat it was that all of these characters are drawn together to one place in a sort of crazy and different ways. It came off as lame and predictable.
4. The book was sort of a "Perfect Strangers" rip off. I mean it was good because Neil Gaiman wrote it, well it was better than it could have been, but it was completely unnecessary.
5. Charlie's dad tells him to give Spider a kiss. The reader is lead to believe that this will be significant. It never happens.
One thing that really bothered me was the whole song thing at the end. I was under the impression that Inansi didn't really heal Charlie's mom, but gave her leave to live the rest of her life how she wanted to. His "magic" was convincing the doctors and what not to let her go. But apparently that isn't what happened. He cured her... but she still died not too much later...
The fact that it was written by Neil Gaiman lends it a certain credibility, on which it seems to coast. I won't read the book again. I'm not saying that you shouldn't read it, but don't judge Mr. Gaiman on this book. He does so much better in other works.

I guess I've ranted enough.