American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman  541 pp.

After watching the first episode of the "American Gods" television series, I realized I needed to re-read this book. My first reading was sometime in the early 2000s (it was published in 2001) and there was much I had forgotten. The story of paroled convict Shadow Moon, the ghost of his dead wife, Mr. Wednesday, Mr. Nancy, and a host of others focuses on an approaching war between the old gods that were brought to this country by immigrants and the new gods that were created here. Mr. Wednesday (Wotan/Odin) hires Shadow to help him round up the old gods to assist him in fighting the new gods of media, technology, electronics, etc. There were many details I had forgotten from reading it so long ago. And I still wish Mr. Jacquel (Anubis) and Mr. Ibis (Thoth) were in more of the story. I listened to the George Guidall read audio book but the apparently the full cast version contains parts that Gaiman originally edited out so I may have to listen to that one day. It has a solid place in my list of all time favorite books.

The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, 399 pages, translated by Ken Liu, audio narrated by Luke Daniels.

A book that starts with the Cultural Revolution in 1960s Beijing and then spins out about four light years. Along the way there's an online game, the Three-Body. Those in the Three-Body  they have a problem, namely that the world they inhabit has a tendency to self-destruct. There are too many suns, it gets too hot, and then it gets too cold and the inhabitants have to use some extreme measures to survive.
The people who play the game start to think about it all differently when they realize that maybe it's not a game.
There are a lot of interesting characters and some convoluted storylines. It is easy to see why The Three-Body Problem won the Hugo last year.

Check our catalog.