November's recommendation: Eight Days of Luke, by Diana Wynne Jones.
This lady is entirely to blame for my warped view of Norse mythology. I had not encountered it before I read Eight Days of Luke, some time during elementary school, so my introduction to these gods convinced me that, contrary to all real evidence, Loki's not actually bad. I shall maintain this opinion until I die.
Like many of her novels, this one concerns a boy in somewhat unhappy circumstances, in the keeping of relatives who deeply resent the necessity of dealing with a nephew who had the bad taste to get himself orphaned. He comes home from boarding school and finds himself condemned by the falling-through of his summer camp plans to spend the next several months at the impossible task of behaving such that his family will actually be happy with him. That dreariness gets livened up, though, when David lets loose his frustrations by making up curse words, and one of them sets off a minor earthquake that supposedly frees a boy named Luke from some kind of horrible prison.
David doesn't believe a word of what Luke has to say about snakes and venom and shackles and the like, but that doesn't particularly bother him, since Luke is the most interesting thing likely to happen to him all summer. The situation gets complicated when Luke's relatives -- many of whom do not appear to like Luke much more than David's relatives like him -- show up trying to find him. David has to race about trying to keep Luke safe from them without giving up his company entirely, which would make his summer even drearier before, and which Luke refuses to do regardless -- after all, where's the fun in that?
I enjoy the book even more these days, now that I can spot more of the mythological references buried in it than I did when I was ten. You don't have to know what's up with Wallsey, though, or the ladies at the tree, to have fun with the story. Luke's an engaging character, and Jones manages to give him a weird blend of boyishness and ancient experience that still, in places, gives me chills. A certain image from the novel reappeared, in altered form, in one of my own stories, which is just one sign of the many ways in which Jones has shaped me as a writer.
Go. Read it. Forever think of Luke as a charming mischief-maker who didn't deserve to get venom dripped on his head for all eternity.