What Mrs. N's Been Reading - Stardust

Ok, for the first time in quite a while, I ventured out of the Teen realm for my reading material and picked up Neil Gaiman's Stardust. The reason for this venturing was that I was considering doing a book vs. movie discussion on this one for next summer's Teen Summer Reading Program. I'm probably going to hear from irate Gaiman fans, but I just couldn't really get into this one. In fact, it was the first book in quite a while that I seriously considered bailing out on under the philosophy - "Why waste time on a bad book when there are so many good ones." After about 2 weeks , when I was only half way through (and it's a fairly short book), I tried to figure out why it was taking me so darn long. After a little thought I decided that basically, I really didn't care about any of the characters. Stardust is considered somewhat of a classic in some circles, but I found the story to be not terribly original, and all of the characters to be the kind of whiny people that I don't want to be around in real life either. I may still show the movie next summer. I haven't seen it yet, so I'm not sure. The book has one stupid passage that makes it inappropriate for middle-schoolers, therefore ruining it as a book discussion book. What's really annoying about that, is that the passage really wasn't necessary. Yes, you need to know Tristran's parentage to understand some other things, but you don't need all of the intimate details. Sorry Gaiman fans, but I can't recommend this one. On to another Teen book.