Posts tagged fantasy

AUDIOBOOK read by George Guidall

There’s a lot going on in this book.  At it’s core, American Gods is a road-trip story that follows Shadow, a man recently released from prison whose wife died the day before he got out.  Shadow meets Mr. Wednesday on his way home and accepts a job as Mr. Wednesday’s driver and bodyguard.  In the adventures that follow, Shadow learns that Mr. Wednesday and a cast of others that they meet are all gods who came to America in the minds of immigrants and are now eking out an existence without the worship and sacrifices that they used to receive.  The story itself is quite good, but combined with the themes of religion, culture change, and sacrifice, it winds up being a great novel.  I enjoyed this book and the audiobook is expertly read by Guidall.

AUDIOBOOK read by Carolyn McCormick AND ACTUAL BOOK

Wow.  I will start by saying that I was wrong.  Sometimes books get so much hype that I instinctively assume that they are not as good as people are claiming.  When the books are designated as “Young Adult”, my apprehension is even greater.  This trilogy was recommended to me some time ago and I’ve had the audiobooks on my iPod for what seems like forever.  My wife read The Hunger Games a few months ago and demanded that I read it, so I finally gave in and started the first book.  A week later, I had finished all three via a combination of audiobooks and the hard copies that we have at home.  I started all three on audiobook via my usual listening method (in the car during my commute), but found myself ditching the audiobook for each of them with about 100 pages remaining and just reading the rest in one sitting at home.  This is by no means a critique on the audiobooks, which were expertly read by McCormick, but a function of the quality and intensity of the story which I couldn’t wait on or drag out.  By now, I expect everyone has a pretty good idea of what these books are about, so I’ll skip the synopsis and just tell you to read them now and enjoy.

ACTUAL BOOK

Go read this book.  For his first novel, Riggs gathered a number of old photographs, most of which have some sort of photography trick or other oddness.  He then built a story around the collection of photographs.  I don’t want to give anything away about the story as it is too much fun to discover the whole thing yourself.  It’s a quick read (it took me 3 or 4 hours), but I found myself quickly picking it back up anytime I put it down for something else.  Highly enjoyable and I hope we get more books like this out of Riggs.