I think what I most liked about this book was that Gaiman outlined where each of the stories or poems came from in the introduction. That’s not something authors do often, though he mentioned he thought this was his least thematic short story collection, so perhaps that was his way of pulling things together more for the reader. It was actually more helpful to get back and read those after reading the stories (which he had in fact recommended), but the quick skim head of time was useful.
This was a good near Halloween read- there were some definite creepy stories involved, but also straight fantasy, like “The Sleeper and the Spindle”, which I had no idea had an unillustrated origin. (Coincidentally, BF, who is the main Gaiman collector in the house, just purchased the illustrated version – it arrived in the house a day after this book.)