I'm finished...

reading the novel, American Gods. I have always been fascinated by the many pantheons of deities in the world, mostly Greco-Roman gods, but this novel brought back knowledge from my childhood when I read about Egyptian gods as well as the Norse. I found myself thankful to my high school teachers for perpetuating my desire, nay... passion... for reading through things like Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythologies.

In one scene in the novel, I found myself smiling about a particular reference to a character needing a mistletoe stick in order to kill another character who, apparently, is a son of Odin, the king of the Norse gods. I smiled because I knew the reference was to Balder, Odin's son, who is paralleled with someone in the book. It just reinforces the idea of what I tell my students that they need to know "things", like mythology, because you never know when you'll need to be "in" on the joke or understand the obscure reference.

In any event, novel exceeded my expectations, namely because of the complexities of the plot development. The main character, Shadow, has his life redirected so many times, it's a wonder that he didn't lose his mind with everything he had to do for Mr. Wednesday. Another interesting fact is that "Wednesday" comes from "Woden's Day," and Woden is a name used by Odin... so, I guess you can figure out who represents the king of the Æsir (one of the principal groups of the Norse pantheon). I remain fascinated by Gaiman's personification of various gods and goddesses, namely Thoth, Ibis, and Easter (which is more of a festival than a true divine figure, unless you consider her personified as Ishtar, a goddess of fertility, love, and sex).

More to come!