Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman, 2017
Fantasy Contemporary fictionLiterary fiction
Neil Gaiman retells the Norse myths as a linked cycle: petty, powerful gods, a clever Loki, and a world that knows it is ending.
Feels like awe, dread and tenderness. About time and memory.
A page from the book
The end of everything, told without a single note of consolation.
Nothing will remain of the armies of the living and of the dead, of the dreams of the gods and the bravery of their warriors, nothing but ash.Soon after, the swollen ocean will swallow the ashes as it washes across all the land, and everything living will be forgotten under the sunless sky.That is how the worlds will end, in ash and flood, in darkness and in ice. That is the final destiny of the gods. Neil Gaiman.Gaiman's novel American Gods also puts Odin and Loki in modern America; Norse Mythology returns to the medieval sources behind those characters.
Books that feel like this
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson, 2009
Also memory and time.
More by Neil Gaiman
Coraline
Neil Gaiman, 2002
A girl discovers a door to a parallel home with a button-eyed mother who wants to keep her. A dark fairy tale about courage and wanting.
American Gods
Neil Gaiman, 2001
A newly released convict takes a job with a mysterious conman and discovers that old gods, brought to America by immigrants, are preparing for war with the new.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman, 2013
A man drives back to the pond at the end of his childhood lane, and remembers the year the ordinary world let something else through.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- What is Norse Mythology like?
- Feels like awe, dread and tenderness. About time and memory.
- What should I read after Norse Mythology?
- If you liked Norse Mythology, try The Red Tent (Anita Diamant), Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson).
A taste of the feed
What a sitcom family can give a kid who has none.
Sitting alone in the dark, watching the show on my laptop, I always found myself imagining that I lived in that warm, well-lit house, and that those smiling, understanding people were my family. That there was nothing so wrong in the world that we couldn’t sort it out by the end of a single half-hour episode (or maybe a two-parter, if it was something really serious).
Ready Player One · Ernest Cline
A rule for surviving rooms where everyone is already guilty.
In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas · Hunter S. Thompson
Death as sleep sounds restful until you try to think it through.
Imagine that, death was just like being asleep. Would he have time to think before it was all over? And would he have time to think that he had thought it? But wait, how much do you have to think before you have finished thinking?
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared · Jonas Jonasson
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed