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

[maryavatar]

There are a few bits where the Pratchett shines though. You just know the title 'The Nife and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter, Witch' came from him.

I do think that it's very English book. I'm Scottish and I lived in England for ten years, so yes... I got the jokes. I'm not sure I really got them on the level that someone English would though.

[writerlibrarian]

From my perspective, the book is clever but not oh my god so funny. I think it's because most of the joke went way way over my head. Didn't catch them. I found that the most universal things like the Tibet Monks and Atlantis were clever but not hilariously funny.

But from the reviews I read after finishing the book, it's very very funny. I'm thinking way over my head humor in this case.