American Gods by Neil Gaiman March 30, 2007
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Again, I’m no fan of Sci-Fi nor Fantasy. I treated the book in allegorical way–it was about our lives, our experiences, our thoughts and feelings. With this approach in mind, I liked it.
Yesterday I realized that it’s very difficult to briefly describe this book without making the description sound childish or silly. It’s precisely like in the passage about the map, being a precise representation of a piece of land only when the map is in the big scale. As you move from small maps to bigger ones you gain accuracy, but at the same time you approach the original. So–don’t read descriptions, read the book instead. It could be shorter, though 
.
Significant moments:
- of course the tree. So much more beautiful description of a person’s life than what i saw recently online when a popular icon’s life has been summarized only by a series of a dozen pictures. Popular media is really revolting.
- this is a bad place for gods. Old gods are forgotten, and the new ones are abandoned shortly after they arrived. What do we need to find the good gods, and obey their rules? How much must we be shaken to come back to whatever we know deep inside is the right way of living???
Another great read by George Guidall. He is not afraid to use pauses, to read slowly, when the story requires it.
Second Glance by Jodi Picoult March 13, 2007
Posted by Book Reader in George Guidall, Jodi Picoult.2 comments
I should never allow myself to jump from a great book to another before writing down my thoughts about the first one. It happened this time with this incredibly rich and so emotionally powerful book by Jodi Picoult. It’s been more than a week since the time I finished it, and I’m already having problems remembering all the incredible details.
I recommend this book to people who look for emotions, a little bit of mysticism, uncertainty, and warmth. I recommend this book to people who look for a plot that runs in seemingly separate threads, to suddenly find all of them converge in a single point. I recommend it to people who want to find interesting believable characters.
Of course, there are numerous important questions asked in the book. Yes, questions, not answers!!! That is the quality I liked best—I was not told what to think, how to decide, no—I was given information needed to find my own answers. I was shown parallels where they initially seemed not to exists—genetic research and Vermont Eugenics Society. Life, death, and suicide. Love beyond the grave.
Superior read. 5 out of 5. Superior performance by George Guidall, who narrates the audio version. 6 out of 5.
