Anansi Boys

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, and I really recommend it.  It's about the adventures and mishaps of Charlie, the son of the arachnid trickster god Anansi.  I've been a Gaiman fan for years and years and count his Sandman comic series as one of the most influential works in my life.  Gaiman is first of all, a damn fine storyteller.  He has a kean ear for dialogue and lovingly crafts memorable characters and plot points which are engaging to the point of addiction.  But the reason his work resonates so strongly with me is because of his blend of mythology and magic with the contemporary world.  On his blog (which I highly recommend), he mentions that the largest English bookseller chain has decided to move his novels from the Fantasy section and into Fiction.  While I've never been a fan of staunch genre definitions, from a commercial and cultural standpoint, it strikes me as a sort of a victory.  The Fantasy section is generally viewed as having niche appeal for a particular audience, while fiction is meant to appeal to a broader market.  This means more traffic will encounter Gaiman's works, of course.  But more importantly, it means these stories are striking a chord with the general population, and that on a deeper level, there is recognition about how essential myths are to our understanding of ourselves and our own personal journeys.