We may or may not have had a post recently about the 10th anniversary of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, a novel we discussed on Episode 70. Now here’s some more news to shove down your brainpipe. According to The Hollywood Reporter, none other than Tom Hanks’s (Hanx) production studio will be producing a television series based on the story.

From the article:

Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions is set to produce an open-ended series, American Gods, for HBO, based on Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novel…

…The series-in-development, revolving around the question “are you a god if no one believes in you?” is executive produced by Goetzman and Hanks, with Bob Richardson, and Gaiman on board as executive producer and writer.

Now slated for six seasons, each season will be of 10-12, hour-long episodes with a budget of around $35-40 million per season, targeted to debut on the cable powerhouse in 2013 at the earliest.

If this news doesn’t make you excited in the least, you might need to check your pulse. For those keeping track, American Gods is a story about a man named Shadow with a somewhat checkered past that gets involved working as a bodyguard for a man named Mr. Wednesday. This man takes Shadow to some very unusual places on their travels across America, and soon Shadow learns that some of the people they meet are actually gods that have immigrated to America via the beliefs of the people. And then hijinx ensue!

It continues to go without saying that I am a Gaiman fan, and his continued success is always a good thing for the literary world. This show coming to HBO can only mean good things, as well, because any series that ends up on that channel tends to be of a very high caliber (see Game of Thrones).

Now all there is to do is hope that the Mayans were wrong so we can all simply get to 2013.

American Gods

Here are the dates and cities:

New York City, NY – Tuesday, June 21 at 8:00pm
92nd Street Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, Lexington Ave @ 92nd Street

Portsmouth, NH – Wednesday, June 22 at 7:30pm
The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, NH 03801

Washington, DC – Thursday, June 23 at 6:30pm (This one is already sold out. Sorry DCers.)
National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW Washington, DC 20045

Minneapolis, MN – Friday, June 24 at 8:00pm
Fitzgerald Theatre, 10 E. Exchange St.; St. Paul MN

Seattle, WA – Sunday, June 26 at 7:00pm
Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave. Seattle WA 98101

San Francisco, CA – Monday, June 27 at 7:30pm
First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA

Los Angeles, CA – Tuesday, June 28 at 8:00pm
Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211

For more ticketing information, head over to Neil’s post for links to the venues.

Additionally, if you haven’t read American Gods, you should probably do yourself a favor and get to it, you won’t be disappointed. And if you are, you probably didn’t read it right. For our take, you can check out Episode 70.

Books:

• The Graveyard Book

Movies:

• A Simple Plan

Right click and download the eighty-seventh episode here:

• MP4 261mb

Comments or questions? Email us at: pnbfans(at)gmail(dot)com

RT from @neilhimself: For all of you doing NaNoWriMo, or just writing a book: http://bit.ly/jvSNO was the letter of encouragement I wrote.

It turns out that Neil Gaiman at points has doubts on his own work. We’ve finally solved the mystery, he IS human. You’re not the only one who gets stuck writing, don’t worry. A couple of years ago, Gaiman sent this letter to NaNoWriMo as encouragement for would be writers. Here’s an excerpt:

You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that even if you finish it it won’t have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began—a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read—it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

Welcome to the club.

Check out the whole thing, it’s worth a read, and definitely helps. I was honestly not feeling too hot about churning out 1,600 words today, but after reading his letter it’s helped to ease the pain a little.

p.s. I’m up to 5,000 words! Have to hit 6,667 tonight.

Books:

• Coraline

Movies:

• Coraline (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy w/ 3D) [Blu-ray]
• Eastbound & Down: The Complete First Season

Right click and download the seventy-seventh episode here:

• MP4 279mb

Comments or questions? Email us at: pnbfans(at)gmail(dot)com

Books:

• American Gods: A Novel

Movies:

• La Femme Nikita [Blu-ray]

Right click and download the seventieth episode here:

• MP4 257mb

Comments or questions? Email us at: pnbfans(at)gmail(dot)com

It was really kind of difficult to find something that I wanted simply because I wasn’t standing somewhere holding it in my hand. Call me old fashioned, but I do like to physically hold and open and flip through a book before buying it, as it will be my compatriot in the hours it and I will spend together. While I don’t think my difficulties with finding something is a fault of Audible at all, I do like the experience and steps one has to go through with buying traditional novels. I like going to the store and wading through isles to find that one novel that looks the best. Buying the same literature online in the fashion that Audible presents feels very sterile and uninteresting.

I did, however, find two novels that I had somewhat on my periphery: Coraline and The Graveyard Book. I’ve been on a Gaiman kick lately. We’ll see how they go. I hope to have some impressions on the show here in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Books:

• Stardust

Movies:

• Stardust (Widescreen Edition)
• Pickup on South Street – Criterion Collection

Right click and download the sixty-seventh episode here:

• MP4 293mb

Comments or questions? Email us at: pnbfans(at)gmail(dot)com

This week, I forced myself to make a tough decision.  I was either going to review Good Omens, a collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, or Marvel 1602, a graphic novel compiling Gaiman’s vision of Europe in the year 1602 if Marvel superheroes had existed back then as they do today.  From this post’s title, you should know which way that decision went.  Still, I do highly recommend Marvel 1602.  I enjoyed it in a way that made me feel uncomfortably geeky.

Our full title this week is Good Omens: the Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.  (Really, I could stop here, because I know you’ve already fallen in love, but I go on!)  This book begins with the birth of the Antichrist, and it just gets better from there.  Aziraphale and Crawly are an earth-dwelling angel and demon, respectively, who have had integral parts in humanity’s development ever since Crawly gave Eve the apple of ill repute and Aziraphale offered the primeval couple his flaming sword on their way out of the Garden.  Unfortunately for their higher-ups, these two have gotten pretty comfortable during their six thousandish years on Earth.  When the infant Antichrist gets accidentally swapped to another family in the maternity ward, neither one of them is too keen on finding him, so he is allowed to grow up in a quiet English suburb.  You did know the Antichrist was going to be English, right?  His name is Adam.

Agnes Nutter, now, she’s an interesting character.  Much of the book revolves around one of her descendants, Anathema, who has lived her whole life by Agnes Nutter’s nice and accurate prophecies.  Understand now that “nice” here is used in the archaic manner, meaning “exactingly precise.”  Agnes was burned as a witch, which she saw coming.  She left the book where the right person would find and save it after her death, all of which she saw coming.  She tried to forestall the end of the world, which she… you get the idea.

Adam, on the other hand, has no bloody idea who he is.  He lives his life in idyllic simplicity, playing with his friends and subconsciously warping the fabric of reality.  Because of his metaphysical position as the agent of doom, his desires become manifest in the physical world.  For that reason, though there have been many highways planned through his town, none has ever been built.  Contractors and planners have gone mad trying to build it, but they’ve all been stymied by events that defy understanding.  Unless you know who lives in the town.

As with Neverwhere, half the fun of this book is just reading the style used to write it.  Gaiman and Pratchett actually wrote it before either one of them was any kind of famous.  One day, they just decided to collaborate.  When it was finished, they were absolutely proud of the story and absolutely certain they would never do it again.  It doesn’t have the same kind of macabre feeling of other Gaiman works, but it does have the same sense of humor.  The characters are too derranged not to be based on real people.  Particularly fun are the Four Horsemen, who serve as the nucleus of an ad hoc biker gang near the end of the book.  The members of this gang are the big four–Death, War, Famine, Polution (replacing Pestilence after the advent of penicillin)–and the other four–Grievous Bodily Harm, Embarassing Personal Problems, Cruelty to Animals, and Really Cool People.

In short, it’s another fun read.  I do highly recommend it for anyone who is a human.

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, we can get down to business. Last time, I made an allusion to Alice in Wonderland, and it seems like I really ought to follow up with Neverwhere because it shows just how much Gaiman has blown this type of story out of the water.

Our story starts with Richard Mayhew, a run of the mill, 9-to-5, 20-something doofus. He’s the very promising sort of nobody that corporate culture really jives with. His fiancee is what you would get if you were to cross Paris Hilton and an Oxford education. That is, she very capably helps run a museum in London, but she apparently does so with the intention of being seen at the museum. Richard tries his best to keep up with her demands for their relationship, but he even finds that his little rebellions against her tyranny (rebellions that always take place when she’s not around) leave him feeling unfulfilled. At least, until he takes his tumble down the rabbit hole.

One evening, as Richard and Jessica are walking along an empty street, a girl in rags suddenly appears as if thrust from a wall near the sidewalk. Against Jessica’s vehement protests, Richard takes the unconscious girl back to his apartment, where the figurative shit hits the figurative fan. Twenty pages and a vigorous brush with death later, Richard and the girl, whose name is Door, are in London Below, the world where place names are literal and strangeness is the norm. There they meet the Marquis de Carabas and travel the maze of pipes, tunnels, and sewer lines below all of London in their adventure to thwart the terrifying Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar and to discover who has been killing off Door’s family. Someone has been killing them off, you see. Door’s only clue as to why comes from a passage in her father’s diary. Following it, they seek the Angle Islington.

Now, if you have ever read Gaiman’s work before, you’ll know that half the fun of his stories is just reading the way he puts words together. His dry humor runs throughout this story, but it carries a morbid edge that never lets the tone quite become light. For instance, Knightsbridge is a subway stop in London Above, but in London Below it is an actual bridge. A bridge that is very dark. Because it belongs to Night. And sometimes it eats people. Cute people, whom you thought might become key characters and are actually kind of sad to see go. Earl’s Court, again, is a subway stop in London Above, but in London Below, it is an actual court. Held by the Earl. In a subway car. I think you see where I’m going with this. The point is that it is all very amusing to read but does not take away from the gravity of the adventure.

Magic in this one is slightly downplayed but fun when it pops up. It is thankfully not overused as a plot device. The references to actual London landmarks is also fun, and even if you aren’t a Londoner you can follow them on the subway map at the front of the book.

This is a great one, especially if you hate your life. If you see yourself as a Richard Mayhew, wasting away inside as you die the slow death of commercial preoccupation, you must try this novel. It’ll have you wandering down lonely streets, just waiting for some injured girl to pop out of a wall to save you from your stupid life.