Made of Library

I was hesitant when I discovered this was a continuation of the American Gods story. I always am when I have enjoyed a stand-alone book and then find out that there was more written later and it’s not a proper sequel. If it’s part of the story then why wasn’t it included in the book in the first place? It feels like an attempt to cash in on the success of the original, rather than for any artistic reason or for the sake of the story. I’ve been burned before, but I should have more faith in Gaiman by now.   It took me a little while to buy in. It didn’t immediately feel right to me that this is what Shadow is doing now. It didn’t seem to fit at first, but after thinking about possible alternatives it started to make more sense. I think Shadow is going to spend the rest of his days as a wanderer, never finding a place to call home, while gods old and new constantly try to use him for their own means. Poor Shadow. This novella was full of the things that made American God...

It took me a while to settle into the style and feel, but ultimately reading One Hundred Years of Solitude was a surreal experience. The town of Macondo and its inhabitants are hidden away from time. Everything that happened here could have happened in a year or a hundred years or a thousand years. The only way to you have of telling is the changing generations, the births, deaths and marriages, and even that isn’t always a reliable indicator. This feeling of time being suspended was enjoyable once you accepted it, and it felt like the book could go on forever because of it. When I realised that the names were going to be repeated I thought I was going to have a problem keeping straight who was who. It was written in such a way that whenever you started to wonder if you had confused one Aureliano with another there would be a reminder, by referring back to some previous event that happened to remind you which branch of the family tree was under discussion. The was no real over...