I first read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods in my late teens. It was winter time and I fitted it in between college classes and bus stops and it struck such a chord with me. The book is full to bursting with rich imagination, and images from that first reading that have stuck with me ever since. Which is why I won’t be watching the new TV adaptation of the book.
Books aren’t necessarily better
I’m not the kind of person to say the book is always better than the film (although it often is). In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say I think The Shining is a better film than it was a book, despite Stephen King being one of my favourite authors. But books and films and television series are different media and connect with you in different ways. Obviously, screen adaptations are more visual. A book can throw pages of description at you but it still relies on its reader interpreting that information and forming an image from it. If it’s on a screen, well, that’s the image that will wind up in your mind’s eye.
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