June Book Club discussion post

[writerlibrarian]

June Book Club : Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Book description, links and other stuff at Harper Collins site.

So you can post your thoughts, your reviews here.

A few ideas for discussions, you can totally ignore them, they are there to start up discussions.

Both Gaiman and Pratchett are on record about writing Good Omens for fun and that in the end they are not sure for some parts who wrote what? Are the Pratchett parts obvious, are the Gaiman parts obvious?

Good Omens was written before the whole Internet made it easy to write in tandem and being physically thousand of miles apart. Would it be different if it was written now?

Do you need to have a British background to "get" the humor (jokes) in Good Omens?

Angels mythology, anyone?

Apocalyptic fiction: From Good Omens to The Road ?

Let's the discussions begin....

Comments

[bliumchik]

I'm a childhood Pratchett fan and actually got into Neil Gaiman through reading Good Omens back in the day (and boy am I glad I did). It's generally one of my favourite books!

On later read-throughs the thing I appreciate most is the sly humour in those tiny little absurdities like the Tibetans and Atlantis. I sense a connection to Discworld there. I'm particularly a fan of Newton Pulsifer and fascinated by his kind of "reverse superpower" (if only it could be harnessed for... awesome!)

As apocalyptic fiction goes it's interesting because most of the genre is POST-apocalyptic fiction - that is, the apocalypse is DESCRIBED, but mostly so as to talk about what people do afterwards. I haven't read that many apocalypse-averted types, except as incorporated into your general epic sciffy/fantasy book like Harry Potter or whatever. Thoughts?

[writerlibrarian]

That's what I was thinking, this is almost a anti-apocalyptic tale. We get to see a glimpse of what it would be instead of what it becomes.

I haven't read much of apocalypses that do not happen. Probably something to look into. I'll go look and come back with something. *g*