{"id":673,"date":"2007-02-23T09:13:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-23T09:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=673"},"modified":"2025-04-24T17:45:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T17:45:31","slug":"book-log-smoke-and-mirrors-short-fictions-and-illusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=673","title":{"rendered":"Book Log &#8211; Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions<\/i> by Neil Gaiman<\/p>\n<p>The first point I should make is that I read this on my new (refurb) Palm Z22.  It came as a sample book with the eReader software, along with <i>Never Eat Alone<\/i> and some romance novel.  I used to read stuff all the time on my old Palm IIIe, and it&#8217;s nice to always have a book or two on me, wherever I go.  The interface is greatly improved as well.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, I&#8217;ve read a <i>Sandman<\/i>, <i>Good Omens<\/i> (with Terry Pratchett), <i>American Gods<\/i> and, recently, <i>Neverwhere<\/i>.  <i>Good Omens<\/i> is much beloved by many and I am no exception.  But the other three works, done solo, were just OK by my estimation.  I didn&#8217;t plan on going out of my way to get another Neil Gaiman piece.<\/p>\n<p>But there it was in the Palm.  And I&#8217;m glad it was.<\/p>\n<p>I really enjoyed these short stories.  In fact, the shorter the better.  He had a whole collection of two paragraph stories about vampires that were very funny.  <\/p>\n<p>Honestly, though, I skipped most of the &#8220;poetry&#8221;.  If it didn&#8217;t grab me in the first couple stanzas, I was off to the next thing.   I&#8217;m a plebe that way.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a funny story about a woman who finds the Holy Grail in a junk store.  And one about a guy who looks for bargain priced assassinations.  All very creative and fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman The first point I should make is that I read this on my new (refurb) Palm Z22. It came as a sample book with the eReader software, along with Never &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=673\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[481,513],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-log","category-books","tag-book-log-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3447,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions\/3447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}