I was on the metro coming home and re-reading American Gods again. I finished The Graveyard Book over the weekend and started Slaughterhouse Five last night. So, naturally, I was thinking to myself "Man, I should really get back to A Feast For Crows" (I was also thinking, "I'd really like to live in Lakeside", but that's beside the point.) I'm still only halfway through the fourth ASOIAF book, even though I started it a month ago. But I hate the Ironborn so much, and all of the Dornish characters still confuse me and there aren't nearly enough Sansa or Arya chapters, so I've been drifting towards other books.
Anyway, I had just recommitted myself to AFFC when the lady sitting next to me needed to get off the train. I let her out and scooted toward the inside and noticed a book sitting between the seat and the wall. I'm all set to call after the woman that she left her book when I see a notice taped to the cover:
Traveling Book
I'm not Lost - I'm on a journey
I turned the book over and discovered a classic: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. There are instructions for registering the book on a website to track its journey and pass it on when you've finished.
Now if you know me, you know I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to read a book. Especially since The Graveyard Book, which I'm still kind of ambivalent about, was based on The Jungle Book. It's like the universe telling me I have to read this book to gain a better understanding of the book I just finished. Or at least a really awesome coincidence.
So now A Feast For Crows has been pushed back another week while I dive into The Jungle Book.
There are just way too many books out there that I want to read.
I took a break from A Song of Ice and Fire to read the new edition of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (my review of which is so far incredibly disjointed and will probably stay that way). This turned out to be a good thing, as it actually gave me a bit more insight into ASOIAF.
I had reached the point in American Gods with the god in Las Vegas. The one that everyone always forgets and I can never figure out. Armed with my internet connection, I decided to figure it out once and for all. My search led me to a complete listing of the gods that appear in American Gods, which seemed like a reasonable place to find my answer. Scrolling though, I came across Bran, the Fisher King, and little alarm bells started ringing in my head.
Bran was a king in Irish mythology who got co-opted as the guardian of the grail in the Arthurian legends. He usually appears injured and unable to walk or move around by himself. He is usually called the Fisher King (because all he can do anymore is fish) and sometimes the Wounded King. The kingdom suffers along with his injuries, experiencing war and famine.
This discovery sent me down a rabbit hole of research. I remember learning about the Fisher King in my Arthurian literature class in college. It's one of the legends we spent the most time on. We watched the original movie about Perceval (which you need to be stoned to properly appreciate), read Bernard Malamud's The Natural to look for the parallels and watched that movie adaptation as well. We even watched The Fisher King, which seemed like the biggest stretch of the legend. I think we read (or were supposed to read) Chretian de Troye's Perceval, and I still have the anthology that it's a part of.
The Fisher King got renamed for more recent adaptations, which is why I never picked up on this connection before. He is Pelles in Perceval and Roy Hobbs (the hobbled king) in The Natural. But he is always wounded, always ruling in some way over a barren land, always waiting to be saved through the grail quest.
George RR Martin must have been aware of these parallels. It's one of the more insidious myths if you start looking for it, and any serious fantasy author is sure to go looking. Bran's name and injuries were no accident. Now when I pick the books back up, I'll be paying closer attention to hints about a grail quest of some sort.
I'm also going to have to re-read some of the Arthur legends. I have a decent collection of them, thanks to that class I took, and I didn't read nearly as many as I should have. Then, of course, I'll need to re-read A Song of Ice and Fire with an eye open for King Arthur. I'm sure he's in there in a thousand little ways and I just haven't picked up on it yet.
I never did figure out who the Las Vegas god is. Damn, Neil Gaiman's good.
First there's this video. Except insert Eliza Dushku for S Michelle Gellar.
She's such a dork. It's adorable.
Apparently American Gods got picked up for SIX seasons on HBO. Tom Hanks' production company is funding this with a huge amount of money. But I'm not sure how they're going to turn one novel into six seasons of television, 10-12 hour-long episodes each. Unless this is true
I really hope this is true. And maybe one season will be dedicated to Anansi Boys as well.
I've been watching a whole lot of Supernatural lately. Like, a lot. It's basically two hot guys driving around the country slaying demons. It's very fun and kind of addicting. The guys are really hot. And it's a surprisingly smart show when it comes to knowing the ins and outs of the genre. It's less smart about women, but that's okay. It's mostly about the guys and the demons.
I've been re-reading the Sookie Stackhouse books in preparation for the True Blood premiere. It's in two weeks; I can't wait! I'm also planning on picking up the next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series as soon as Game of Thrones ends (finale next week). I thought there was a nice bit of symmetry to that.
Finally, I saw this and kind of want one:
It's a trap door in your floor that leads to a mini wine cellar. Someday when I'm rich...
HBO appears to be going after the geek demographic. They started True Blood several years ago, which was a smash success and begins its fourth season in June. This Sunday marks the premiere of The Game of Thrones, based on George R R Martin's book series A Song of Ice and Fire. These books are epic and long, and I've only read the first one, but I look forward to reading the rest. I'm sort of holding off until after the TV series starts, though. Then, they announced today that they bought the rights to Neil Gaiman's American Gods and are going to produce a mini-series based on the novel, with Mr. Gaiman signed on as one of the writers.
Be still my geeky heart.
Anyway, it worked. I convinced Boyfriend to add HBO to our Verizon subscription (by promising to pay for it), and I can't wait to see these stories translated to the small screen (which is actually pretty big these days).
American Gods was basically my introduction to Neil Gaiman. I'd read the first Sandman graphic novel, Preludes and Nocturnes, and was saving up to buy the rest of the series. Then an ex-boyfriend gave me American Gods because he thought I'd like it, and he was right. I finished the book before I realized that it was written by the same guy as Sandman and immediately started seeking out his other work.
This novel isn't for everyone. It's a slow burn book. There's more introspection and philosophizing than action and adventure. It's based on the premise that all the immigrants brought their gods to America with them. Over the years, those gods have been lost or forgotten. They've been replaced by the newer gods of television and telephone (now being replaced by the gods of Google, Netflix, and Facebook, of course). And the old gods are pissed. They're looking for a fight. One last moment of shining glory before they are forgotten completely.
The protagonist is a man named Shadow, a former convict. He is released from jail just in time for his wife's funeral, after which the mysterious Mr. Wednesday (Norse god Odin) offers him a job as an assistant. Together they travel across America, gathering up the old gods and convincing them to fight in the impending war. As I said, the story is slow. But I'm in love with the premise. I think it does a lot better on a second read through.
I've been meaning to re-read American Gods anyway. I recently discovered that a version was released in 2005 with 40 extra pages. My copy is from 2001, so I'm anxious to know what I'm missing. Boyfriend kindly went and bought it, but he's reading it now. I'll have to wait until he finishes. Even though I could probably read the entire thing before he got around to picking it up again. Oh well. If you've seen my currently reading/to read list, you'll know that I have plenty to keep me occupied in the meantime. As long as I get around to it before the series premieres on HBO. Which, let's be honest, is probably years away and might not even happen. (Fingers crossed it does)
In the meantime, I'll leave you with one of the most famous and oft-quoted passages from the books, Sam's "I believe" speech, which is available on a t-shirt
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledly lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Also, allow me to geek out because Game of Thrones premieres this weekend! This book was awesome. There are a lot of characters, which can be a bit of a brain stretch. The chapters switch off perspectives between several characters and locations. But you end up with a whole lot of threads weaving together into an epic political intrigue. With dragons (eventually).
Seriously guys, dragons make everything better.
Game of Thrones also has a bunch of strong female characters. There are queens and princesses telling their story right alongside the kings and princes. And all of them are interesting, fleshed out characters. I really can't wait to see how this translates to the screen. Here's a preview:
So much intrigue! Here's a slightly less cryptic trailer:
That first scene was lifted straight from the book. And the landscapes! It all looks so gorgeous and wonderful. Plus, Sean Bean!
