I’ve been hesitant to re-read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman for years. It was the first Gaiman book I’d ever read and it led to me to become a big fan of the author. My fear was that it would never live up to that initial reading, but I’m happy to report it was just as excellent the second time around! The book has any number of little nuggets you can dwell on, but I like this one:

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep between rhododendrons, to find the spaces between the fences.”

Its a small portion of the book not really even directly relevant to the main plot, but is representative of a larger theme of using “landscape as a memory-shaping, time-shifting medium” I’ve come to recognize and really appreciate in fantasy literature.