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Whistle Stopper - Anansi Boys
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List Price: $39.95
Our Price: $12.89
Your Save: $ 27.06 ( 68% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: HarperAudio
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060823849
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 0060823844
Label: HarperAudio
Manufacturer: HarperAudio
Number Of Items: 8
Publication Date: 2005-09-01
Publisher: HarperAudio
Release Date: 2005-09-20
Studio: HarperAudio
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Mythology for the modern age, gods with dysfunctional families
Comment: Gaiman did it again. Delighted me thoroughly and completely in a most satisfying manner. Had me chuckling through the day and left me lying in bed with a smile on my face (and my husband reading Murakami in equal pleasure beside me, so wipe that smirk off your face. We only invite authors in covers under the covers with us. Kinky, we're not.)
I don't rightly recall which Gaiman was my first, though I was the first in the family to discover him. Devoured Good Omens, Neverwhere, Smoke and Mirrors and Stardust with equal abandon and delight. Nearly wept with joy when American Gods came out. Whipped through Coraline in a skinny minute. Bought Anansi Boys pre publication and had it in my hot little hands the day it came out-- only to have it snatched away by Boyczuk, who we have raised right-- he likes Gaiman. (Gaiman's blog is one that the lad checks daily and since he knows his father and I are fans, he'll give us updates on what's happening in Gaiman-land. Filming is just about concluded on Stardust with Michelle Pheifer and Robert DiNero for starters-- Gaiman says the bits he's seen are like nothing he's seen before. I'm pumped!) Then the book was taken over by mr czuk, and elder brother, and shoveled into some corner of the house where it languished for far too long. I finally dug it out from a shelf in the guest room, where it had slid behind a John Irving and a Christopher Moore. I sent it up to the mountains in a box of hardbacks, knowing that I had too big a TBR pile in Charleston, but that at the cabin, someday this summer I'd finish whatever book I brought up with me, then be able to curl up with my sweet Neil and read uninterrupted. Which I did, and I did. Ah bliss.
So now on to the book, or back where I started. Everyone and his or her brother (including mine) has probably read this by now. Gaiman doesn't sit around unread on fans' shelves for long, except with the rare (read "such as happened to me") mishap. Mythology for the modern age, gods with dysfunctional families-- wonderful. Even the liner notes had me grinning like a fool. "God is dead. Meet the kids." I followed poor sap Charlie Nancy (aka Fat Charlie) through his embarrassing childhood, and dull as dishwater (except for do-good Rosie) life as an accountant. Saw him get mixed up in stuff he was too dense to even pick up on, deal with the death of a parent he despised, discover Spider--a dashing and daring previously unknown brother, and then see his life go to a proverbial hell in a hand basket. All told with clarity, humor and a wit that is utterly delightful. Into this mix, introduce aging and sometimes angry gods, legends of the trickster Anansi and you're off and running. Sometimes, the sheer ridiculousness of it was enough to carry me along, other times the plot ran away with me and made me miss my tea. All in all, it was a fun day of reading Mr Gaiman provided me with. (And I still think him to be utterly charming in interviews and utterly darling in pictures. Plus, he likes BookCrossing! Any wonder why he is one of my favorite authors?)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Neil Gaiman does it again
Comment: Anansi Boys tells the story about a man named Fat Charlie Nancy, who leads a normal if not boring life. He works for an awful man named Grahme Coats. He is engaged to a very nice woman named Rosie. Rosies mom hates Charlie. He and Rosie are in the process of planning their wedding when Charlie gets a call that his father died. He flys out to the funeral and find out information that he never knew. One is that his father was a God and the other is that he has a brother named Spider. Spider comes into his life and turns it upside down and Charlie tries to make sense of everything. This book contains magic, murder, love, deception, along with a bit of singing and dancing. This is a fun and well written book that I highly recommend.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Nice way to escape reality for a bit
Comment: Fat Charlie was dubbed so by his dad when just a chubby child. Unfortunately, even though he shed the pounds the name stuck. Many years later Fat Charlie is living an unremarkable life, with a crappy job and a girlfriend who insists on making him "wait until marriage". When Charlie's dad dies he learns some amazingly unbelieveable things and his boring life is forever changed.
This one has a lot of wit and was just offbeat enough to hold my attention. Charlie is an every-guy sort of character who is easy to like as he bumbles his way through some very odd changes in his life. The book is populated with interesting people and takes a lot of twists and turns that aren't expected. Gaiman wrote it and it reads like a twisted fairy-tale so how can you go wrong with that?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poor for Gaiman
Comment: American Gods was a fun take on gods. With that in mind, I looked forward to Anansi Boys. Oooops. The book was about as predictable as could be. Nothing original existed in the book and it often seemed its purpose was to piece together a few shticks that came to the mind of the author. True, some of the shticks and jokes were cute, but that doesn't make a novel. I was fairly certain how it would end from very early on, and the righting wasn't exciting enough to let me get past that.
If you want a really funny, well written book about ancient gods and modern people wandering around together, get Coyote Blue: A Novel. It's great!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Great Follow Up to American Gods.
Comment: Not so much a sequel, as an "enrichment" to the world Gaiman created in American Gods, Anansi Boys is a much more light-hearted and accessible read. Though not possessing the same level of ambition as AG, it is perhaps more successful because of it. Solidly entertaining.
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Editorial Reviews:
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God is dead. Meet the kids. When Fat Charlie's dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie "Fat Charlie." Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can't shake that name, one of the many embarrassing "gifts" his father bestowed -- before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie's life. Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things. Things like the tall, good-looking stranger who appears on Charlie's doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew. A brother as different from Charlie as night is from day, a brother who's going to show Charlie how to lighten up and have a little fun ... just like Dear Old Dad. And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie. Because, you see, Charlie's dad wasn't just any dad. He was Anansi, a trickster god, the spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and baffle the devil. Some said he could cheat even Death himself. Returning to the territory he so brilliantly explored in his masterful New York Times bestseller American Gods, the incomparable Neil Gaiman offers up a work of dazzling ingenuity, a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth that is at once startling, terrifying, exhilarating, and fiercely funny -- a true wonder of a novel that confirms Stephen King's glowing assessment of the author as "a treasure house of story, and we are lucky to have him." Performed by Lenny Henry
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