Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (Reading Challenge Book Review)

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was going to say it’s impossible for Neil Gaiman to write anything I wouldn’t like, but then I remembered Neverwhere, which I couldn’t get into, and I blame that mostly on the rats, which did not become a horror to me until I moved to Seattle in the midst of a seven-year stretch of chronic and heinous insomnia, and my rented-online-sight-unseen apartment turned out to be infested with the hideous creatures, and the job I moved here to take turned out to be the absolute worst employment experience of my life, leading to an almost complete psych breakdown and years of therapy. It became an association thing: I fucking hate rats. I also blame the character named Jessica. I’ve just always disliked that name. No real reason. No idea. But rats + Jessica = couldn’t read the book.

But any other Gaiman book, I’m totally down for.*

Norse Mythology is an absolute delight to read of an evening, wrapped up cozy in a warm blanket, with warm lamplight and a warm cuppa, perhaps rain on the window. The language is not childish but creates that “once upon a time” atmosphere that recalls being read to as a child. This book might be superb on audio.

The stories are wonderful, and this collection includes a nice tour of Yggdrasil and the basics of Norse belief (those interested may want to check out the spiritual path of the Asatru). Gaiman sources his tales straight from the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, all with the unique flavor and rhythm that are Gaiman’s own. All of your favorite gods are here…Odin, Thor, Loki, Frigg, Tyr, Frey and Freya, Heimdall, Baldur…and some you may not have heard of.

My personal favorite was Thor in drag.

*Unless he chooses to name a character Tracy, every Tracy I’ve been intimately involved with having turned out to be a manipulative, backstabbing C U Next Tuesday. It’s a puzzle. I once worked and became sort-of friends with a woman in the screen-name environment of the Internet, and was dismayed when I learned her real name was Tracy. “Don’t be silly,” I told myself, “it’s just a name. Just because her name is Tracy doesn’t mean she’s going to suddenly turn into a skank.” Lesson learned, that I could not have been more wrong, as I pulled not one but two of her knives out of my back. I’m aware that there are probably a great many women named Tracy who are upstanding and moral people. Maybe it’s an alchemical thing, that happens when I become involved with the woman named Tracy. So if you are a Tracy, let’s just not meet, or at least don’t let me know, so all of these Tracy’s can continue being good people. Please, Neil, don’t ever name a character Tracy. Because I know you’re reading this.

This was #17 in my 2017 Reading Challenge, a book published in 2017.

Bookshelves: myth-and-legend, deities-behaving-badly, retelling-a-classic, literary-fiction, once-upon-a-time, religion-sort-of, reading-challenge, short-stories, humor

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