From Amazon.com:
American Gods is Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything from the onslaught of the information age to the meaning of death, but he doesn't sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and narrative style he's been delivering since his Sandman days.

Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book.

Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.

More than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of the country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face about what's real and what's not.

I literally couldn't put this book down. I really enjoyed this novel and am looking forward to reading more of Gaiman's work.

Reserved for msjoanna for the Hot Titles! old-school relay.

Dropped in the mailbox this morning.

This arrived today. I'm looking forward to reading it. Thanks so much for keeping the relay going.

I'm still looking forward to reading this, but have decided to put it on my kindle instead of reading the hard copy, so I'm releasing the hard copy into indygo88's Best of BC bookbox.

Sorry to have held onto it for so long without actually reading it. I'll try to remember to update here after I read the ebook version.

July 2016:

Finally ended up listening to the audiobook version of this --
Really enjoyed reading this one. The full cast recording was available from my library and the readers were excellent. I also really enjoyed the interview with the author where he addressed the question of what a British guy is doing trying to write an expansive American novel. I read [book:Anansi Boys|2744] a few years ago. I think it would probably have been better to read this one first, but it was fun to see a few familiar characters here. I also just realized they are making a tv show about this book, which I think could be really fun.

I'm finding it hard to describe what the book was really about. It's plot driven in a certain way -- there's a road trip and a quest-like mission, and gods (old and new). But there's more here than just an adventure story. There's mythology, and Americana, and a great protagonist named Shadow.

Just go read the book already. You know you want to have read it before the tv series starts anyway.

Pulling this from the box. I read it a few years ago. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but my favorite Neil Gaiman book is Neverwhere and I tend to compare all of his books to that one.

To be released tomorrow for Neil Gaiman's birthday.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

On the window ledge, inside. Happy Birthday Neil Gaiman!



"Don't ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read... "
— Neil Gaiman