American Gods (the novel) (no spoilers)
So... when I heard Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies,
Dead Like Me -- all shows I LOVE) was doing American Gods, I decided to
read the novel first. Of course I procrastinated that.
I wanted to read it first because in the past, I've experienced a kind of
cognitive dissonance when I started watching a movie or series and
afterward read the book(s) (which came first) because the characters
described were somewhat different than as presented (and than the actors
cast) for the show or movie.
Consequently, I've avoided pre-show buzz. All I knew was that Ian McShane
was cast. Of course, less than 20 pages into the book, I knew what role
*he* was playing... heh.
So over the last week (ish), in between beta-ing efforts, I've been reading
(and listening to, when I couldn't read) Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
What an insane, lovely, sprawling, chaotic, fantastic novel. Having
received a color plate book of The Ring of the Nibelung from my brother in
high school (illustrated by the Hillebrandt brothers, big deal fantasy
illustrators back in the 70s/80s) helped me get some of the mythology, but
it isn't necessary, and in fact, knowing what I knew about Loki (the
mythological creature, not the comic book/movieverse character) was a bit
of a spoiler because, well, he's *Loki*.
(Let's put it this way: back when I worked in IT, we would name our various
servers all kinds of interesting names... but our boss was not pleased when
a couple of the network analysts wanted to name one of the background
servers Loki. "You're going to curse it to crashing a lot," she said. It
didn't, but we all saw her point.)
Never read anything by Gaiman before (terrible omission, I know, but I
haven't really called myself a scifi fan for a couple decades). But now I'm
primed to tackle some other stuff by him.
I know I tried reading some of his stuff in the 90s, but I couldn't get
into it. I think that was my ADD really taking hold though. Or just too
much other shit going on. At any rate. Here we go!
\o/
This entry was originally posted at http://verushka70.dreamwidth.org/84642.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Dead Like Me -- all shows I LOVE) was doing American Gods, I decided to
read the novel first. Of course I procrastinated that.
I wanted to read it first because in the past, I've experienced a kind of
cognitive dissonance when I started watching a movie or series and
afterward read the book(s) (which came first) because the characters
described were somewhat different than as presented (and than the actors
cast) for the show or movie.
Consequently, I've avoided pre-show buzz. All I knew was that Ian McShane
was cast. Of course, less than 20 pages into the book, I knew what role
*he* was playing... heh.
So over the last week (ish), in between beta-ing efforts, I've been reading
(and listening to, when I couldn't read) Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
What an insane, lovely, sprawling, chaotic, fantastic novel. Having
received a color plate book of The Ring of the Nibelung from my brother in
high school (illustrated by the Hillebrandt brothers, big deal fantasy
illustrators back in the 70s/80s) helped me get some of the mythology, but
it isn't necessary, and in fact, knowing what I knew about Loki (the
mythological creature, not the comic book/movieverse character) was a bit
of a spoiler because, well, he's *Loki*.
(Let's put it this way: back when I worked in IT, we would name our various
servers all kinds of interesting names... but our boss was not pleased when
a couple of the network analysts wanted to name one of the background
servers Loki. "You're going to curse it to crashing a lot," she said. It
didn't, but we all saw her point.)
Never read anything by Gaiman before (terrible omission, I know, but I
haven't really called myself a scifi fan for a couple decades). But now I'm
primed to tackle some other stuff by him.
I know I tried reading some of his stuff in the 90s, but I couldn't get
into it. I think that was my ADD really taking hold though. Or just too
much other shit going on. At any rate. Here we go!
\o/
This entry was originally posted at http://verushka70.dreamwidth.org/84642.html. Please comment there using OpenID.