Yes, yes, I finally caved and read this. I have been delaying gratification for quite a while, but I just couldn’t resist the siren call of this book anymore. It has been sitting so alluringly on my bookshelf. Last night I was reading The Sixteen Pleasures and suddenly it became clear to me that if I went another second without reading Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me, my brain would explode. (Nothing against The Sixteen Pleasures, which I’m enjoying.) I am beginning to entertain the notion that my great dislike of everything else I’ve been reading is all to do with the fact that I really wanted to be reading Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me. I mean really reading it, not reading two pages and then putting it away, delaying gratification some more.
Anyway, it was definitely worth the wait. What a totally excellent book. Martin Millar is brilliant. It’s weird because last year around this same time I didn’t care about Martin Millar at all, and now when people ask me who my favorite author is, Martin Millar springs immediately to mind. I wish Neil Gaiman and Martin Millar had a Time-Turner like Hermione and they could sit around and turn back time all over the place, and write dozens and dozens of books for me to read. That would be great. Right now there are only, like, four? five? books of Martin Millar’s that I haven’t read already. Four or five is an extremely small number. I have to dole them out to myself slowly, one by one, over several years, to prolong my enjoyment.
(But not the sequel to Lonely Werewolf Girl. When that comes out I’m going to buy it straight away.)
Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me is all about a young Martin Millar being in love with a girl called Suzy, and going to see Led Zeppelin play a gig in Glasgow, and then talking about it many years later with his friend Manx. I liked it a lot. (Spoilers) He mentioned Buffy and the geeky girl met Led Zeppelin and got advice about life from Robert Plant. How good! An altogether totally pleasing book. And I didn’t even read the end before I got there. (Not the right kind of book for that to be necessary.) This book was funny and also poignant. I like the word poignant. I never get to use it enough.
I’m a bit sad that I’ve read this book and now I haven’t got any other Martin Millar books to read. Our library only has books I’ve already read. But at least now I’m not yearning for it tragically, and hopefully I will be able to enjoy other books.
Or maybe I will just watch Doctor Who a lot, as it’s Christmas and I’m trying to make my big sister who is just home from law school learn to love Doctor Who like my younger sister and I do. This would be more successful if the TV at my parents’ house were in the living room, not the bedroom, because the living room is more comfortable to watch films in. I am pleased about starting the fourth series, as I got tired of Martha not being fierce enough (she was always much cooler when the Doctor wasn’t around), and Donna looks like she will be clever and make the Doctor laugh but not put up with any crap.
P.S. Just can’t say this enough. Thank you, Neil Gaiman, for writing an introduction to The Good Fairies of New York and making me decide to read it. Also, thank you, Amazon.com, for bringing up The Good Fairies of New York when I did a search for Neil Gaiman, because otherwise I wouldn’t have known it existed.