Answers without, answers within

I know where ~I~ want to be this Halloween: at The House on the Rock!! Spring Green, Wisconsin, see you then! Now to get my hubby to get time off…

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is one of my all-time favorite books — American Gods is a magnificent story that explores what happens to the gods brought to America by the diverse immigrant believers, and the impact of the newer ‘religions’ of money and technology on the very soul of America.

Well, that’s one layer of it, anyway!

Norse Mythology totally resonated with me back in college, and it felt so good to revisit Odin, Loki and the gang in an unusual modern setting.  It also helped unlock my own creativity, seeing how one could take such old constructs and put them in a modern setting for a fantastic story!

Here are some the gods and other mythical beings featured in American Gods: Allvis, Anansi, Anubis, Ashtaroth, Balder, Baron Samedi, Bielebog, Czernobog, Damballa-Wedo, Eostre, Ganesha, Gorgons, Hadrian, Horus, Johnny Appleseed, Kali, Kitsune, Leprechauns, Mawu, Mithras, Pan, Sha Wujing, Shiva, Thunderbirds, Wisakedjak, Yggdrasil, Zorya — [click here for a full list (caution, includes spoilers)]

Just read it, if you haven’t already. It haunts, it sweeps, and it will blow you away (… although I admit it’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea…)

Featured prominently in American Gods is the eccentric The House on the Rock (”… a monument to kitsch and wonder and madness and uncertainty …” says Mr Gaiman himself), specifically its world’s largest carousel that in real life isn’t allowed to be ridden, but in the book it can be, and serves as a portal to, well, elsewhere.

Carousel at The House on the Rock

My husband and I were certainly not the first nor last people who read the book then took a trip to see The House on the Rock for ourselves (I do regret we didn’t have the time to do a complete tour, and therefore didn’t actually see the carousel); both Neil Gaiman and the folks at The House on the Rock hear such things from fans all the time…

me at the Infinity Room, June 2008

… so much so that the folks at The House on the Rock have approached Neil Gaiman with the idea of throwing an American Gods-themed shindig over this year’s Halloween weekend!  They are looking for suggestions, so if you have any, please drop Mr Gaiman an email and he’ll pass it along (read his full blog post about it here).  Me? I’m going to have to (re-)re-read American Gods before I have any pithy suggestions to make, since my brain is still in squeeee! mode right now.

Spending Halloween at The House on the Rock - who’da thunk?!