It is that time friends, our first #CannonBookClub of the year is officially underway. Good Omens is getting the television adaption treatment, but first it will get the Cannonballer experience – assuming we all survive the apocalypse of course.
Ground rules remain the same as they always have. For those of you who might be joining in for #CannonBookClub for the first time (hello new friends!) all are welcome. The topics are numbered, and we ask that you refer to them below by that number to help people find the conversation topics they are looking for. If you are responding to someone else’s thoughts, please try to reply directly to them and also tell us about your own ponderings on the book. While we’ve never once had to use it and don’t expect to now, comments that are not germane to our discussion will be removed.
We will also be talking on our Social Media platforms, and of course in our Facebook group, Cannonball Read Book Chat, with some additional prompts, so feel free to wander over there throughout the course of today and tomorrow.
On to the topics:
- This collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is quick-witted and quirky, does it live up to your expectations?
- A few Cannonballers and I feel this book has a woman problem, did you notice it and it detract from your enjoyment?
- How is the theme of the vital importance of free will used in the book? Is it the ineffable, average incompetence, or something else?
- Crowley and Aziraphale view the world from very different angles, but does that mean they view it differently?
- Did the actions in Good Omens feel fated? Were good and evil always going to come out this way?
- Children characters in books are notoriously difficult to do well. How did Adam and the Them strike you? Plot moppets or something else?
- Do you feel comic satire ages well? What about this one in particular?
- Which of the big questions that the plot asks struck you as the most interestingly answered?
- What from the book do you most want to see play out on screen in the TV mini-series?
- My thoughts and feelings don’t fit into the above categories, meet me in the comments.
So, what say you?
MsWas says
May 17, 2019 at 11:14 am#1 I really loved this book. I laughed a lot, and definitely appreciated the humor
#9 Loved that the music always turned into Queen in Crowley’s car. That soundtrack is right up my alley, so I’m all for it. I know there’s one moment where they talk about what tape (?) they are putting in, and then it turns into Queen. Can’t wait to see that car on screen.
I wonder how Them’s focus on the environment will come across now. Egad, Good Omens is TWENTY NINE years old!! In 1990 climate change was more of an obscure cause. Now it’s panic-inducing.
emmalita says
May 17, 2019 at 2:09 pmI’m still finishing the book. It is a reread, but I am finding I had forgotten a lot of stuff with Adam and the Them.
emmalita says
May 17, 2019 at 2:08 pm#2 Good Omens age really shows in its portrayal of women and in it’s jokey references to a lot of things that aren’t appropriate for jokey references. I have rolled my eyes a few times.
faintingviolet says
May 17, 2019 at 2:50 pmThere were several sexual politics scenarios where I rolled my eyes very, very hard. Why did our very few women characters have to sleep with less than stellar men characters? WHY??
MsWas says
May 17, 2019 at 2:52 pmit does show its age
GetoffmyLawnn says
May 18, 2019 at 12:09 amI really didn’t want Anathema and Newt to hook up, there was NO need, no impetus.
LittlePlat says
May 18, 2019 at 2:09 pmI felt the same. It was sort of a ‘pair the spares’ sort of moment
MarkAbaddon says
May 19, 2019 at 11:37 amI think everyone would agree with that statement, I commented on it myself. It felt like it was included because it may have been expected by the audience at the time but it is the one aspect of the novel that has aged the worst
GetOffMyLawnn says
May 17, 2019 at 2:08 pm#1 I wanted it to be a lot more funnier! I couldn’t find the Pratchett I am used to, I needed his sharp observations (I found them in the footnotes) and his style seems to be in the nascent stage here. I liked it the book a lot, but it is by far NOT my fav Sir Terry book.
#2 I didn’t like Shadwell at all. He moves past the “ornery man” trope and his hostility to Madame Tracey is inexcusable. OR why she tolerates it. It did distract from the overall pleasure of the book. In addition, Newt was a useless character. What was he even doing? I don’t see why Anathema needed him AT ALL. She’s already figured out where everything was going to happen.
#4 Crowley and Aziraphale both view it differently, but their understanding is the same, eventually they are both outliers from the rest of their own, and understand it much better than most.
#6 I disliked the Them, except for Pepper & Wensleydale (in places, not always). Adam Young is a terrible Antichrist, so uninteresting. Initially, I found it very difficult to understand which was the kid that got replaced, and wondered what happened to the other two. The story writing felt disjointed to me, the jumps and the sudden entry of characters that don’t repeat made it tough to enjoy the book.
Only once I read the “Facts of the book” at the end of book did I relate Adam to William, Crompton’s seminal character who was very mischievous but has his heart in the right place (I’ve read several of his books as a teen), though Adam felt dumber in essence, compared to William.
#9. I want to see who they choose for the four Horsemen and want to see the CGI for Crowley’s Bentley!
All in all, the portions of the book I thoroughly enjoyed was Neil on Sir Terry and vice versa. The journey of the book interested me far more than the book itself. It’s fine, it has nothing too terrible (except for Shadwell, who is extremely unlikeable), and the ending felt like a let down (much like American Gods), but I love how Neil describes his interactions with Sir Terry, and that made me want to buy every single book Sir Terry has written and enjoy it like a hot buttery crumpet, completely soul satisfying. I want to read this book again, for his humour and would love to read an illustrated version too!
faintingviolet says
May 17, 2019 at 2:53 pm#4, I agree, I thought that A & C had a very honest and perceptive view of reality here on earth, even if their authors occasionally let them down.
GetoffmyLawnn says
May 18, 2019 at 12:11 amThank you for expressing what I was unable to! Their authors didn’t flesh them as much as they could have, and I think the actors Tennant and Sheen will be far more able to put it across (I strongly hope)!.
Manimama says
May 19, 2019 at 8:04 pmI think you hit the mail on the head here!
denesteak says
May 18, 2019 at 1:06 pm2. To be honest I didn’t really think of it until I saw how many visible women were in the tv adaptation. I think male-led fiction has sort of trained me to expect men/boys in the roles, and it really shows how even though I consider myself staunchly feminist, my perception is still something shaped by patriarchy. Happy to have tv bust up that lens 🙂
6. I thought the children were done well in the sense that they knew they were smarter and better than the adults thought they were. Like adults think they’re off playing — and they are! — but it also had so much more riding on it. And the whole “looking to the leader to see what’s next” is something I still see play out among adults who grew up together.
Also, I feel like the first time I ever read it I was laughing out loud publicly. Now I regard it like an old-friends-reminiscing-on-things type of funny — “oh hah, right that was funny” — and it feels a bit muted now. I don’t know if it’s because the satire hasn’t really aged well or if I’ve changed.
This book still has a really solid place in my heart though and I read it BECAUSE of cannonball, because so many cannonballers raved about it.
blauracke says
May 18, 2019 at 7:38 pm#1 I expected it to be funny and to at least make me smile, and that it easily did. I also really liked that it showed that Gaiman and Pratchett must have had a ton of fun writing this. On the downside I think that they sometimes went overboard with their fun and that the book would have benefitted from a little trimming of the fat.
#2 I read this book for the first time many, many years ago and I do not remember that I noticed any issues like this back then. However, time passes, I’ve grown older, and my awareness of such problems is much higher than it was. So, this time around I noticed how few women there were. In the two groups of four, the Them and the Horsemen, there was one woman/girl in each group. Why? This seems like a quota. Oh, we have to have a woman in a group of four, but only one, that’s enough. Why where there only Dukes of Hell and no Duchesses? There’s a scene with Anathema and Newt where they talk about the Antichrist, and Newt asks whether he could be a she because “it’s the 20th century after all. Equal opportunities.” Is that funny? I don’t think so. For me it reads like a swipe at feminism, even if it was not intended like that. Instead they could have been really subversive and in fact made the Antichrist a girl. So, yes, sadly, it did detract from my enjoyment a bit.
#4 In my understanding Crowley and Aziraphale are two sides of the same coin, yin and yang, they embody a kind of dualistic principle, but one that is fluid and sometimes even interchangeable, and it that sense, to tie it in with #2, I really felt that one of them should have been a woman. And yes, they view the world in the same way, because for all their differences, they are complementary.
#7 Satire is always a product of its time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it at a different time or that it won’t be funny years later. However, the way a reader enjoys it or understands it may have changed, because some aspects could have a different meaning. Also, the chance that some jokes are outdated or have become unfunny is probably pretty high. In the case of Good Omens I feel that it shows its age because the view on religion has changed. Maybe I’m wearing rose-coloured glasses when I’m thinking back to the 90s but in my mind it was easier back then to make fun of religion and all its rituals and beliefs. Now it seems there’s a huge backlash regarding religious fundamentalism and religion gets tied to the values of society so tightly that they can hardly be separated. On the other hand, maybe it is exactly now that we need a book like this, one that makes fun of it all. And if we want to take a dark view of the world and think about climate change, the end might as well be nigh. So, after thinking about it, I’d say the book is still pretty relevant today.
#9 I’m always hugely apprehensive about adaptations of books because how can any movie or TV series ever measure up to the individual imagination of a reader, and especially when it comes to fantasy? In my best-case scenario they throw caution to the wind and make it into a huge extravaganza. I’m especially looking forward to the scenes with the Horsemen, and I hope they nail the relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale.
I probably sounded a little critical of the book, but the truth is that I do like it a lot, shortcomings and all. It’s a fun romp and just an enjoyable read.
faintingviolet says
May 19, 2019 at 2:03 pmI agree with you on #7, I think the way in which the book pokes at religion would be handled differently now, and in some ways I’m glad the book was written when it was written.
blauracke says
May 19, 2019 at 4:22 pmAgreed, it was probably written at exactly the right time. I guess it’s going to be interesting to see how this will work in the TV series.
Markabaddon says
May 19, 2019 at 10:21 am#1 I loved this book. It is one of the few instances of a collaboration where I cannot tell who wrote any particular passage. The synergy between the two was exceptional.
#2 When I first read the book, I did not feel there was a woman problem but now, after re-reading it after a number of years, I can see where that could be interpreted. The biggest issue is Anathema & why this woman who is so knowledgeable & seemingly together, has to pair up with a guy who is not on her level intellectually.
#4 I think the authors make it clear that both Crowley & Aziraphale view the world very similarly, which is why they work so well together (still not sure I would call them friends). They both love seeing the word grow and develop so they can have new experiences. Are those two supposed to represent Gaiman & Pritchett, I wonder? If so, physically & sartorially, Aziraphale would be Gaiman, but I am not sure that the characters are avatars of their writers. Anyone else pick up on that?
#5 Fate and inevitably certainly play a huge role in the story but good & evil? That is harder to determine. Who really is evil in this? The angels are kinda dickish, and the devils are more focused on their own pleasures to be considered truly evil.
#7 satire often doesn’t age well but I thought this story aged better than most, because the themes of free will & not allowing others to dictate how we are defined, are universal. Some of the elements in the book do feel dated but on the whole it holds up pretty well
#9 I cannot wait to see the 4 horsemen. Oh and Aziraphale driving that car while it is engulfed in flames. And all of Aziraphale’s wardrobe choices. Basically, I just want to watch Tennant just kill it in this role.
faintingviolet says
May 20, 2019 at 8:14 pm#4 – I hadn’t thought of A & C as representative of the authors, and I wonder if it another round of mixing and editing, like the book itself.
#5 – I wrote the question, but I do think there’s evil at play in the book, not in the people per se, but in the forces at play that would put an end to everything., and the dukes seem particularly on the evil side to me.
narfna says
May 20, 2019 at 7:07 pmI just wanted to pop in and say you are all very smart and beautiful humans but every time I came here to say stuff, all my brain did was buzz with inexplicable anxiety over book club? It was weird and I love you all but I can’t say things about this book right now. For seemingly no reason that I can find in my head.
faintingviolet says
May 20, 2019 at 8:15 pmWe all have those days. I had to step back from looking at the comments for a while myself.