The first is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I bought it new back in — gulp! — 2001 and have been trying to read it ever since. I've probably started it three or four times over the years. Each time, I've enjoyed it, but something has kept me from finishing. This summer, I vowed to read it all.
That makes it sound like reading Gaiman's book was a chore. It really wasn't. The epic tale of gods who hitched a ride to North America via the people who immigrated here and subsequently withered as people's beliefs faltered is wonderfully rich and thoughtful. I'm pretty well versed in Greek and Roman mythology and not so much in other cultures' pantheons, so many of the gods in play here were unfamiliar, but that did not keep me from enjoying the characters and their story.
A critic (I forget which one) once noted that Gaiman is a poet who happens to work in prose. I found myself coming back to that description many times while reading. The book tells the episodic adventures of an ex-prisoner named Shadow whose life becomes intertwined with various deities. While Shadow and his dilemmas are always interesting, each one does not necessarily compel the reader to move on to the next. This might explain why it took me twenty-one years of starting and stopping before I finally read the novel straight through.
Gaiman is to be commended for resisting what had to be an urge to spread this story across multiple books. Extra subplots could have padded the main narrative into a trilogy, but the author sticks with a refreshing done-in-one approach, instead.
By the end of the novel, the various pieces and parts of the narrative congeal into a not-unpleasant whole, and Gaiman successfully hides what, in retrospect, should have been an obvious plot point.
I liked this book very much, but I can also see why it has polarized readers, something the author alludes to in a new introduction for an annotated edition a few years ago. Recommended, but with reservations.
Another book scratched from my summer reading list is The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer. This is a book I first read decades ago and became interested in revisiting.
Meyer writes an excellent pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, here in the thralls of cocaine addiction. His loyal assistant, Dr. John Watson, arranges for Holmes to receive help from the real-life Sigmond Freud, which necessitates a visit to Austria. Watson employs various machinations, including a hound dog and Holmes' own brother, to trick the great detective into making the journey.
The first half of the novel details Holmes' treatment and recovery and is probably the part that most readers remember most vividly. I know that I did.
The second half deals with Holmes and Watson partnering with the psychotherapist to solve a high-stakes mystery. It climaxes with an exciting chase by rail, with the trio racing against time to avert an all-out war.
Meyer gets the voices and mannerisms of Holmes and Watson just right, and he sticks to the familiar stance among Holmes fans and critics that the detective is a real person. Hence, a longish introduction explains how an unpublished manuscript by Watson comes into Meyer's possession. Some may find this part tedious, but it's all part of the fun.
Holmes is a character I like to encounter periodically. A friend and I once concluded that reading too many of the stories at once dulls the enjoyment, so I have been picking my way through the canon for even longer than I have been trying to read American Gods. One day, I'll get to them all.
In the meantime, I have Meyer's second pastiche, The West End Horror, ready to go. This is one I haven't read, so I'm looking forward to it.
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