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Has anyone else read American Gods by Neil Gaiman?

Yup, it was a fantastic book. I hear there's talk of a movie adaptation personally I would rather see HBO or Showtime make a miniseries out of it.

I loved it too. Whenever I find a book I like I pray really hard that they never make a movie out of it.

Lol, true for most books turned movies but to be honest iof you've read Charlene Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels HBO made them in to something that is a lot better than the read. Also take a look at the Dexter series, Showtime made the series story much better as well.

It's interesting how the power of the gods depends on the quantity and quality of worshippers and worship, though the idea has been explored in other books and even games.

Hi there, I a huge fan of Neil Gaiman

American Gods and Neverwhere are two of my favorite books.

I highly recommend American Gods to anyone who is looking for a twist on religious icon and fairy tales. I found it really amusing the take on a world of forgotten gods between the old and the new.

If it was turned into a movie my only problem would be how to put the big battle at the end into a way that works in picture. In the book their is so much going on that you would need to get it just right or else the whole thing falls through. Also for me the book created this really moody atmospheric feel for me through out. I'm not too sure whether you can create that same feeling in film.

Also some of the sub texts and mini stories of demi gods would be difficult to string them into a film so there would be terrible cache of what to leave in and what to take out.

best regards
Boualem Bouderba

There's a lot of mythology running through his work, and the way he takes the familiar and creates new stories out of it is amazing. I did not see the twist coming, though I should have!

this was an awesome book. i really enjoyed reading it.

Tip the Bottle wrote:Lol, true for most books turned movies but to be honest iof you've read Charlene Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels HBO made them in to something that is a lot better than the read. Also take a look at the Dexter series, Showtime made the series story much better as well.

I don't necessarily think they were better than the read, only very different. Yes, the series had a tad more drama and includes so much more, but then again a lot of things in books are lost in the series.

But concerning American Gods... Wow. Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. He always manages to cram so much information into his stories; like in American Gods there are all these little mythological references that at first aren't apparent. He always brings so much more into the story for the readers that can read in between the lines, so to speak. Also it's interesting as Shadow just is Shadow. You never find out what his real name is... I didn't really appreciate American Gods as much as it deserved until I'd read it for about the fifth time.
But I wonder if a movie/miniseries would be able to capture all of that successfully? There is such a feel to it all, it would in my opinion probably just be destroyed as so much wouldfall away. Only about half of the movies/series based on books ever actually get it right anyway...

The American Gods is a fantastic book, but unfortunately it is almost impossible to translate it without the loss of some dose of specific english humor. i've read it twice, first time in polish and then in english, and i must admit that even that the polish translation is very good, it still lacks something. But in english, i've got only one word for this book: Brilliant.

Torky wrote:The American Gods is a fantastic book, but unfortunately it is almost impossible to translate it without the loss of some dose of specific english humor. i've read it twice, first time in polish and then in english, and i must admit that even that the polish translation is very good, it still lacks something. But in english, i've got only one word for this book: Brilliant.

That's interesting, I liked the Czech version very much, but I suppose I should give the English version a try as well. Thanks for the heads up.

A good review of a fine novel, but I must demur against the crack about "Dickens tricks" in terms of the novel.
The phrase is an apt condemnation of Dickens's imitators, but much like Gaiman, Dickens was a great novelist with an ability to merge popular dramatic and prose forms (commedia del arte--ie, Punch--melodrama, romance, and caricature) within serious fiction. In fact, if taken seriously, Gaiman's plots are intended to reveal the "romantic side of familiar things" (i.e., the metaphysical), to quote Dickens's preface to Bleak House.
That caveat aside, Gaiman's novel is well worth reading.

I've recently downloaded this book on my Kindle, and after reading your thoughts I really look forward to reading it!