Recently Husband and I had a kid-less weekend in which we organized the entire house and tossed half our possessions (not really. But that’s what it felt like). During this organizational process, when Husband and I were working in two separate places, I listened to the audiobook of Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman, which was just as enjoyable as one might think.
Gaiman reads the audiobook himself, and at times he reminded me of Alan Rickman (pronunciation, tone of voice). It was pretty delightful.
Here are three things that stood out in Gaiman’s book:
- The stories. Of course the stories are fascinating. For the last year or so I’ve been entrenched in the study of mythology, and this was probably one of the best representations I’ve read of the Norse mythology. Rickman told the stories accurately and yet with much more imaginative elaboration and even some humor, which I found fun.
- The characters. The characters of Norse mythology have always fascinated me, but Gaiman has a way of making characters come alive on the page. He wrote as though he knew these characters, and you could tell, all throughout the book, what a deep love he has for the stories of the Norse gods and the history they represent.
- The addictive nature. Because my kids were gone, I read this book for hours at a time. It wasn’t plotted out like a normal novel, but the stories were so engaging that I couldn’t stop listening. There was tension in every collection, even though I ultimately knew how the stories would turn out. There is something so incredibly charming about the old way of storytelling—the way of the bards—and this book had that element.
Overall, Norse Mythology was a fantastic listen—and I’m sure it would be the same as a read.
The book mentioned above has an affiliate link attached to it, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on it and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. (But if you’re curious whether I’ve read something and what I thought about it, don’t hesitate to ask.)
