American Gods Bossy Buddy Read

Hey guys!

As I told you last week I was doing a Buddy Read with Evelina from Avalinah´s Books (check her blog by clicking on the title, because it´s really good). This Buddy Read however, was somehow different cause we were not reading the same book: We exchange our TBR piles from Goodreads and picked a book that we have already read for the other. As you can see in the title of this post Evelina chose American Gods for me; for her I choose one of my all-time-favourites, Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

Each of us have prepared a set of questions for each other regarding the books so instead of having the usual review you will be having the reviews in an interview format. You can check Evelina´s opinion about Red Rising and my questions to her by clicking here. I am certainly looking forward to read all her thoughts.

And you can check all my thoughts about American Gods by continue reading this post.

We all know that the show for American Gods has come out quite recently. And then there's also all the bookish talk. Are you approaching this book as something new, or have you watched the series, or read something about it before? What are you expecting, I wonder?

I knew there was a TV show that I am dying to watch, but I am one of those readers that doesn’t like to watch the movie or the TV adaptation until I have read the book, and I am quite good at avoiding spoilers so I went into the book completely blind except for the synopsis.

Have you read anything else by Neil Gaiman?

American Gods was my first book by the author but I fell in love with his writing so I will be reading the rest of his books eventually. But not right away; American Gods, was such a complex reading that now my brain needs a little break from this author.

How was the overall experience? The book is quite long and slow, how did you feel about the pace?

I have really enjoyed this book but I can see that it might not be a book for everyone. As you well said in your question the pace in this book is quite slow, but somehow, I felt compelled by the book within the very first pages, I felt connected to the characters and the story and there is also the fact that I really love to read.

The pace of this book is that slow mostly because is a character driven story so as I was saying in the previous paragraph you get a deeper connection with the characters. But the pace is also that slow because the story is so metaphorical and in a way very critical with the society we live in. I found all those aspects very interesting and the writing of the author only helped me to get more in the story even when, as I have previously said, it was kind of hard for me to read the book.

Did you like Shadow? A lot of people say that they didn't really like him as a character. I can also second that.

Well, contrary to you I really liked Shadow as a character. I found him to be very well constructed and for me it felt almost as I have really met him. Shadow at the end is a great guy that had made some mistakes. And I like the complexity within the characters and the constant dilemmas that he has in searching the right thing to do.

I remember extremely liking Chernobog, even though we can't really be sure if he's the "good guy", or the "bad guy". It's because he was so well done and based in mythology. Which of the god characters did you like best, and why?

I think my favourite god was Mrs. Wednesday. And many that have already read the book might be wondering why? And I think it´s because I liked Shadow so much and I connected so well with him I ended up liking Wednesday as he does, despite all the wrong that Wednesday have done.

Were you familiar with any of the mythologies used in the book (Norse, Russian...) before you read American Gods? If not, did it puzzle you?

I was familiar with some aspects because I really like mythology, for instance I was familiar with the Norse and the Egyptian mythologies but I didn’t know a thing about the Russian one. After reading this book I am looking forward to read some more books about mythologies that I don’t know so we shall see how that intention goes.

American Gods is supposed to be a [slow] series. Will you be reading the next book that comes out, if and when it comes out?

Of course! As I said earlier I am looking forward to read more books by Neil Gaiman. And I really liked American Gods so I will like to read more from Shadow and the rest of the characters, and after that ending things can only get more interesting.

So that was all. And let me tell you guys that I had a lot of fun doing it. I didn’t check Evelina´s questions until I have finished the book because I wanted to be surprised by them as I was with the book. I hope we can do this any other time.

See you all on Wednesday with our usual post