What is it about the Norse myths that so inspires Neil Gaiman? He'll tell us his new book is Norse Mythology.

You don't get the feeling that these are unknowable, benign beings in the sky.

You get the feeling with the gods that these are not even necessarily people you'd want to hang around with,

but they would make your life more interesting.

What's the first post-Brexit novel? It may well be Ali Smith's Autumn. Our critic, Sarah Lyle, will be here to discuss.

She sort of looks at time like Picasso might look at a landscape or a person or an object from all sides at once,

which is also very reassuring. It's a very warm and reassuring book.

Why is it so hard to write a book about Silicon Valley culture? Nick built in will be here to talk about two new books that try.

Valley of the gods and the kingdom of happiness.

You kind of take a step back and you read this, you're like, what do these people sound like? They're part of a cult.

Are they wearing the same Nike's and black hoodies and black jeans? And it gives you a perspective though that it's kind of a bizarre, bizarre place.

Alexander Alter will give us an update from the literary world. Plus, we'll talk about what we and other people are reading.

This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul.

Neil Gaiman is here. His new book is Norse Mythology. Neil, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for inviting me. What inspired you to write about the Norse Myths?

The initial inspiration was actually eight years ago having lunch with Amy Cherry from Norton, the publisher.

She said, I love the way that you've been dealing with mythology in your fiction over the years. Have you ever thought about just writing doing your retellings of some of the classic stories?

And the moment she said it, I thought actually that would be amazing. That's kind of like being a rock group, being invited to do the ultimate sort of covers out of you.

You're going, this is where it all started. But I'd love Norse Mythology ever since I was a kid.

We used to have reprints in England when I was growing up these black and white reprints of Marvel comics.

You didn't have the original Marvel comics in there? No, we had comics with names like Swam, Smash, Pow, Fantastic and Terrific.

And I think it was in fantastic that they reprinted the adventures of the mighty Thor. But what was fun is they were reprinting them from the beginning.

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