Neil Gaiman's "Graveyard Book," chapter-a-day reading video from the tour

Neil Gaiman's on tour with his fantastic new book, The Graveyard Book. I'm about halfway through it and enjoying it immensely -- it's the spookiest, coolest, most dream-like and smart young adult horror novel I've read. As he tours, Neil is reading the book aloud, a different chapter at every stop, and his publishers are putting the readings online every day, chapter after chapter. Neil's a fantastic reader, probably the best living author-reader I've heard (except, maybe, for the magnificent, towering brilliance that is Daniel Pinkwater), and this is a do-not-miss bit of free vid.

So... the tour has started. At each tour stop I read a chapter of the book, and each evening's reading is being filmed. (Tour schedule is up at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/09/graveyard-book-tour.html and at Where's Neil)

http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx is the page on which the readings will be posted.

After the show last night (a lovely review of it here in Publishers Weekly), I grabbed a late dinner with my Harper Childrens editor, Elise Howard, at the loveliness that is Sushi Sasabune (73rd and 1st), while filmmaker and cameraman Brady Hall worked late into the night editing the video of last night's chapter, then rendering and uploading it.

So, the FIRST CHAPTER of The Graveyard Book is now up. The short hair looks even odder than it usually does.

Tonight I'll read the second chapter. That should be up by tomorrow. And so on.

By the end of the tour you get a free book. (Well, free in the sense that it's something you don't have to pay for, anyway.)

A Very Useful Post (Thanks, Neil!)

• [salty_horse]

  It’s possible to download the flash video and convert into an mp3 or other formats to listen to on an audio player. So it’s also a free audio book!

• [Abby]

  I’ve got a few audio collections of Neil Gaiman reading his own work, and I have to say that I prefer the readings of his children’s stories. There’s an inflection there, a hint of a smile here, that brings a little fun to it.

  On a vaguely related note, I picked this book up at one of the massive bookstores a few days ago (along with Terry Pratchett’s Nation) as a birthday gift to myself. While Nation is in the Young Adults section, Graveyard Book is in the kid’s area. You know, with the teddy bears and toys. So far, the book isn’t anything like “See Ghost talk. Talk, Ghost, talk!”

• [kiltreiser]

  Neil Gaiman is Jesus. FACT.

  Seriously though, only the best and most worthy human beings ever make wonderful gestures like this, I just hope others are paying attention. Wish Neal Stephenson would do this with Anathem but then again that might take years to complete…

• [erudite_ogre]

  #10: Hmmm. . . that would be cool! Although I want to read the book myself first. . . .

• [Sekino]

  Graveyard Book is in the kid’s area. You know, with the teddy bears and toys. So far, the book isn’t anything like “See Ghost talk. Talk, Ghost, talk!

  That’s great! I hope that will inspire parents to read real books to their kids, not only rhyming ‘baby talk’ stories. And they can equally enjoy it because Gaiman never dumbs down his writing for children (another reason why he rules). To this day, ‘Coraline’ is still one of my favorite books. It’s gorgeous.

• [Sekino]

  Thank you so much for this! I just love Neil Gaiman and own most of his books. They’re the kind you just want to read several times over, like favorite candy.

  I’ve never heard him narrate, but if he is as good at reading as he is at writing, I can’t wait to get started on this.

• [Church]

  Neil’s a very good reader, no doubt, but he’s no Spider Robinson.

• [Robotech_Master]

  I wonder how many wax cylinders it would take if Stephenson were to do an audiobook recording?

• [tim]

  I’m enjoying ‘Fragile Things’ on my iPod right now; and despite being a longtime fan of Spider I think Neil is easily as good as a reader.

  I agree with Cory about Pinkwater too – I loved his old radio show ‘chinwag theater’. Boy was I pissed when they canned that one – and from the tone of the email reply I got from him on asking about it, so was he.

• [Trent Hawkins]

  He needs to do more of these readings. His Cthulhu short story(Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar) was fantastic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN1HElM_ECA

• [Ian Mackereth]

  Oh, Neil’s good, and Spider is at least as good, but I’ve never heard anybody bring their own material to life as well as Harlan Ellison.
  And being Harlan, he tells you this, of course…

  A close second is Australia’s Terry Dowling, who can be surprisingly scary for such an affable bloke!

• [Sekino]

  Okay; listened to the first chapter and I’m hooked. I am very impressed by Neil’s reading (British accent being a huge plus, I’ll admit).

  I’ll definitely keep up with it.

• [wolfiesma]

  It is nice to see some innovation on the book publishing/ distribution front.

• [Robotech_Master]

  Holy crap.

  Neil Gaiman linked to me.

  And then BoingBoing quoted Neil Gaiman.

  Holy crap.

• [stygyan]

  Just ordered Graveyard Book and Coraline… let’s see!

• [Mr_Voodoo]

  Let’s see… awesome writer, great reader, attentive (almost to a fault) to his fans, musician, world traveler, probably an excellent father, lover of cats AND dogs, beekeeper… great hair… wearer of black (without pretension)…

  So he’s pretty much the coolest guy ever. Thanks, Neil. I bet you can dance, too.

  I’ll be over here in the corner, crying into my Absolute Sandman Vol. 3. Which is, of course, f-ing brilliant, btw.