POP! Reads

Our book for February is:



American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Guess this is my excuse to finally go to the library and pick it up.

^ I suppose it is.

Of course, I no longer have an excuse not to read this book either. Thanks, POP! Reads!

Has anyone started reading the book yet?

Ahh, nuts. Of all the times my girlfriend Gwen borrows my copy.

Oh, well. Not like I haven't read it five times already.

I just picked it up, going to crack it open tonight before modern family

Shadow, a man with a universal look, gets some startlingly taboo news about his wife, and then finds a job with a tall man named Wednesday...

Man, to even think about it brings me back. You guys are in for a ride. Literarily.

just finished chapter 1.... I can tell this book is going to suck me in this weekend

Anybody reach any further in the book?

Spoiler:

I've been so caught up in LOTR I haven't been reading American Gods. Bad me!

Has anyone else started?

^ I'll be up for chatting about it.

The only thing fresh in my head is the final story of Fragile Things, Monarch of the Glen, featuring Shadow.

I've met one of my goals regarding AG. I have finally made it past Chapter 1!

I've made it to the part where Shadow has received his visitor at the Motel America. I read that right before I went to sleep! *shudder*

This book keeps surprising me. The depth and layers of it amaze me. Especially the sections about the gods coming to the New World.

All the, dare I say, mystic convergences happening around Shadow make me laugh out loud. Audrey fucking Burton?!?! Are you kidding me? I screamed like the bitch was ruining my life instead of Shadow's!

Where are you at friends? I want to know what you think.

I am saving all my comments until I finish.

I was looking forward to reading this, but I couldn't find it at the used bookstore I go to. I will read it eventually, but probably not this month.

flux336 wrote:
All the, dare I say, mystic convergences happening around Shadow make me laugh out loud. Audrey fucking Burton?!?! Are you kidding me? I screamed like the bitch was ruining my life instead of Shadow's!

Gaiman gets a bit NC-17 with the references to sex. Wait till later with the...

Spoiler:

Have you seriously not read this before, Flux? I'd thought you had? Oh, wait, you're giving it another read-through, aren't you?

BlueMaxx wrote:
Gaiman gets a bit NC-17 with the references to sex. Wait till later with the...

Spoiler:

Have you seriously not read this before, Flux? I'd thought you had? Oh, wait, you're giving it another read-through, aren't you?

I'd started reading it before but didn't finish it. This will be my first complete read-through.

I thought the Bilquis scene was more explicit. Gaiman certainly isn't shy anymore.

flux336 wrote:
I thought the Bilquis scene was more explicit. Gaiman certainly isn't shy anymore.

I've only seem him get shy with some of his intermediate and kids books. He's been getting dirty in dark-fantasy for awhile. Heh.

I can't believe I forgot to add this!!

SPOILERS AHEAD

BlueMaxx wrote:I've only seem him get shy with some of his intermediate and kids books. He's been getting dirty in dark-fantasy for awhile. Heh.

I remember reading an interview where he'd mentioned being shy about writing sex scenes. I'll have to look it up.

In his introduction to Smoke and Mirrors he talks about it taking him four years to write the short story, Tastings because he would get embarassed and have to stop writing. Of course that was in 1998. A lot can happen in 12 years.

I have officially finished the book! Yay! Has anyone else finished it?

Okay, so I have a ton of questions I'm considering:

Ultimately, what was the big idea? Does anyone feel that the stakes were big enough? What would have happened if the gods had destroyed one another? No one actually explicitly stated the consequences did they? Would Wednesday just have been super-powerful? Would the Land have just destroyed everything and everyone or just the gods?

Where you at, peoples?!

^ Sorry.

flux336 wrote:

BlueMaxx wrote:I've only seem him get shy with some of his intermediate and kids books. He's been getting dirty in dark-fantasy for awhile. Heh.

I remember reading an interview where he'd mentioned being shy about writing sex scenes. I'll have to look it up.

In his introduction to Smoke and Mirrors he talks about it taking him four years to write the short story, Tastings because he would get embarassed and have to stop writing. Of course that was in 1998. A lot can happen in 12 years.

Huh, didn't know that. Seems so open. And yeah, who knows, maybe he is more open after 12 years. He is going out with a Dresdon Doll. They seem kind of trampy. I kid, I kid.

flux336 wrote:Okay, so I have a ton of questions I'm considering:

Ultimately, what was the big idea? Does anyone feel that the stakes were big enough? What would have happened if the gods had destroyed one another? No one actually explicitly stated the consequences did they? Would Wednesday just have been super-powerful? Would the Land have just destroyed everything and everyone or just the gods?

The big idea. These gods stood not so much for religion but for beliefs, ideals made manifest by the tangible idolatry of people's desires, interests, concepts for which they form power (Past: the elements, death, etc. Present: media, money, drugs, etc.). Our gods are who and what we make them to be. The term American Gods didn't imply old gods living in The States but the gods formed through the ideals and beliefs and fears, etc. of the American people. I don't believe he was being nasty about America, like some British writers feel the need to do. USA is the epitome of a culture meld. We have all these lingering gods from all these other cultures being overshadowed by our new way of thinking. An instant-gratification based society where everything that is practical, stylish, lucrative, pleasureable and/or status-driven have become our pantheon of deities. Just as Johnny Appleseed was sort of a agriculture deity of sorts for past American ideals.

Wednesday and Low-Key wanted to try to bring back a more primitive and archaic world. Simpler. Gaining the power of the immense chaos from the clash of the gods of old and new would fuel Loki. The sacrfice to Odin would position himself back as creator god, moving Yahweh over, thus forming the world in the image he had it. I imagine, anyway. Being that he's a creator god, that seems like a pretty valid guess. Plus, most of the gods that were in the way would be dead and out of the way for this new world. Odin survived only due to the fact that Icelanders still believe in many of the old-world beliefs of their ancestors, unlike many places in the world. And with this incarnation, you could see the influence a culture consciousness like America's can have on a sacred being (a concept) like Odin, not so much saying the old ways were more pure but just different. Things are not black and white, and nor would be the gods within this gray world be.

Everyone know who Shadow was? (I didn't find out until way after reading the series.)

^ That was what was taken from me, by the by. Not an absolute. Forgot to put that.

Oh, and Shadow was Baldur. He stood for a few things, like joy and beauty. Which could explain his universal look, as referenced by the prison guards at the beginning. I think sunlight was also Baldur, which makes his current name, Shadow, a bit more suggestive of how America had transmogrified his being. He took on the goodness instilled in the U.S. And, even in that sense, how him and what he stood for was tricked and pushed and hassled, yet overcame.