American Gods By Neil Gaiman

I first read American Gods  about 5 years ago. I loved it–I loved the characters, the little “Coming to America” interludes, how strange and sad the story was, everything. I loved how Neil Gaiman took one of the most stoic characters I’ve ever read — our man Shadow — who should have been boring in his utter acceptance of everything around him, but instead acting as a sounding board for the reader. Shadow absorbed all the insanity around him, took the view of “well, this is my job”, and moved on. He looked big and dumb, but had a whole world underneath that facade. I thought I couldn’t possibly love this book more. Then I listened to the audiobook.

“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t believe in us,” said Mr. Ibis. “We believed in you.”

I downloaded the 10th anniversary “full-cast” production from Audible. It. Is. Incredible. The voice casting is spot on — gruff Mr. Wednesday, Mr. Nancy’s lilt, Shadow’s blase monotone. Best of all, Neil Gaiman reads the “Coming to America” segments, and I love that man’s voice so much I have listened to Stardust (which he also narrates) at least three times. And I loved the luxury of listening to this novel–it’s a good long one and I feel like devoting a couple of hours every day to it (I have a long commute & I work out on my lunch break, so I had plenty of time) really allowed me to immerse myself in Shadow and his world. Oh, and listening to Sam’s speech about what she believes — listening to every single word rather than skimming over them halfway through — is quite an experience.

If you haven’t read American Gods, but love fantasy and mythology and American oddities, you should. It’s a hard plot to really explain, but it boils down to ex-con Shadow taking a job with the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, and the wild world Wednesday opens up to him, full of gods and monsters. It’s incredible. And it’s almost incredibly quotable, as proven by 15 pages of quotes on Goodreads. A few of my favorites:

“This isn’t about what is . . . it’s about what people think is. It’s all imaginary anyway. That’s why it’s important. People only fight over imaginary things.”

“Tell him that we fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam.”

“He’d been a shy, quiet, bookish kid, and that had been painful; now he was a big dumb guy, and nobody expected him to be able to do anything more than move a sofa into the next room on his own.”