book clubbing in July

This month's book club selection was Good Omens (The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch) by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I didn't do such a good job with my genre distribution this time around since we've had two zany British books in the past three months,* but no matter.

I'd heard really good things about Good Omens, but I have to admit that I'm a bit ambivalent about the novel. I like the concept and, yes, I did laugh out loud at some points, but I never really got into it and I definitely felt that it dragged a bit. I probably wasn't in the right mood for the book.

Surprisingly, the other book clubbers were equally ambivalent (though to be fair, there were a few people who didn't actually read the book). Previously we'd read Gaiman's Neverwhere (read post) and we didn't feel that Good Omens was all that different. We discussed its similarities to Dogma, but those of us who had both seen the movie and read the book decided that we liked Dogma better (where Dogma gets into the knitty-gritty, Good Omens is much more superficial in its look at good and evil and the players involved).

We talked about Good Omens for a while, but then we wandered to other topics. It wasn't the most successful choice for us, but none of us regretted having read it.

* May's selection was The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.