Book #3

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Want good reading? Neil Gaiman's your man. Unfortunately, now that I've read Anansi Boys, I've read all of his books. I guess I'll have to work on my Sandman collection.

Gaiman has become one of my very favorite authors over the last year or two. I loved Good Omens and American Gods, which were the first two books of his I read; when I found The Sandman I was even more impressed. Now that I've read Neverwhere and Stardust and Smoke and Mirrors and now, Anansi Boys, I think I can safely say that he's become one of my heroes. He has this amazing ability to inspire me; maybe it's because I feel that my writing is similar to his, but even if I'm not on his level, I enjoy everything about his books: his humor, the characters, the themes and the concepts.

Anansi Boys was as good as the rest. It's the story of the son of Anansi the Spider (and I wish I had thought of writing about Anansi; I remember the exercise in oral legends from Underwood Elementary school, and how "Anansi" became "a Nazi" by the third retelling) living in modern day England. Anansi dies, and his son, Fat Charlie Nancy, discovers that he has a brother that he didn't know about; wackiness ensues, along with some rather spooky bits and some really interesting thoughts about the power of storytelling. One of the big themes of the book is how much our stories influence our lives; Anansi owns all the stories, they say, because he stole them and bought them and earned them from Tiger, who had them before the Spider came. When the Tiger had all the stories, they were all about savagery and bloodshed and being the strongest and fiercest, because that is what Tiger is; it was Anansi that made the stories focus on cleverness and fun, on getting the greatest reward for the least effort by using your brain. The point is that Anansi's stories were what made people grow and evolve, and use their minds to become more than animals.

So stories are what make us human, and what make us what we are. I like that. I wonder just how much of me comes from the first stories I learned, the books I read that stuck with me -- like Tolkien and Sherlock Holmes and Poe and Dr. Seuss and King Arthur. And Harriet the Spy and Alvin's Secret Code. I think the answer to that is: quite a lot. Think how different I might be if my first important stories had been about athletes, or rock stars, or war heroes.

Anyway, I loved the book, very funny and thoughtful and yes, inspiring. I finished it this morning, and then ran right to the computer where I wrote half of a story about storytellers. Now that's a good book.