24. American Gods - Neil Gaiman (Book Club)

Ugh. Life is quickly getting away from me and I keep putting off posting until there is a bit of a quiet moment but the books I have read are starting to pile up again. And really as I think about my goal of reading 50 new books by the end of January and I only have 4 months left. Which means I have to pick up the pace a bit. And it shouldn't be that tough of a goal to reach because 50 books in 12 months is only just over 4 books a month. I remember when I used to read 4 books a week. But I think that maybe I didn't really do anything else and now I have 2 daytimers, a wall calendar and a computer reminder so that I don't forget something important. Basically the point is that this shouldn't be an impossible task but it is harder than I anticipated.

Ok. So American God's which was Jago's book club pick for September. And ... I don't really know what to say. The book made you think about religion and mythology and iconography and what people used to worship vs what we (apparently) worship/place importance on today. I was a little bit frustrated because the gods that were referenced weren't really ones that were part of my mythology background - I have a fairly decent base of knowledge for Greek & Roman gods and there are names I recognize from other cultures but for the most part Gaiman was referencing gods that I had minimal familiarity with. Which I think only served to emphasize some of his points about how the "older" gods are being forgotten as we turn to worship technology and media etc. And I can't comfortably say that he is wrong, although I am not sure I 100% agree either.

The book is definitely more plot driven than character driven and other members of my book club found the book hard to get through because they didn't care about the characters. I tend to prefer plot driven novels, but I do agree that a connection with at least ONE of the characters is important as well. I didn't find the lack of "likeable" characters to be a problem, mostly because I was too busy trying to follow the various storylines and figure out the symbolism and put the pieces of the plot together to notice how I felt about the characters as individuals. And maybe it is something that would bother me on subsequent readings. I definitely think this book would lend itself well to a re-read because I was so busy trying to figure out the big picture that I feel like maybe I lost some of the finer points. And maybe it would help if I boned up on my mythology a little more.