Good Omens

I was in the airport on Friday getting ready to come back, and had to buy a travel book. You know, some light bit of fluff to help me wile away the time. I had not had the self discipline to stop reading my travel book once I got to Virginia, so it was just dead weight that I left behind in the hotel. I picked up just one book in Hudson's before picking up and settling on "Good Omens." The description sounded light and funny, and probably a bit of a play on preconceived notions.

I liked that about the movie "Dogma." The way it took the religious concept of the angels and muses and what-not and sort of addressed them, not disrespectfully, but rather with a humorous twist. Sort of like when you're taught in grade school about "personification." Just gave them all a personality you could understand.

I liked that about "Wicked" - the way it took the idea you had about everything that happened and turned it around from a different point of view.

So I bought the paperback and settled down for a read. And aside from those minor disturbances over the whole issue of psychic Northwest attendants rebooking my flights and sending me on miniature dates with John the TSA agent, I read it pretty much non-stop. Well, except for blowing my nose and coughing. I digress.

It's a delightful book. The Amazon description and the Wikipedia description are both pretty accurate, though neither showed the book cover I have. The two main characters are a good angel and a bad angel (he didn't so much as fall, as saunter in a downward direction) and the book is really a bit more about personal concepts of good and evil. I thought it really funny how they sort of . . . . let your mind wander to the old movies with Damien and the U.S. diplomat. . . but completely spun it to have the devil-child raised by a perfectly normal British couple. Why? Because the Satanic nurse in the hospital screwed up and switched him at birth. No one realized it for 11 years. Not the bad angel, not the good angel, not the satanic nurse, not the perfectly normal British parents, nobody.

It was all just rather fun to me. If you need light fluff that has a slightly different spin on an old story, pick it up.