Books

Book 427: The Magician King (The Magicians #2) – Lev Grossman

I finally got this one from the library and I’m on hold for the final book, the bf bought it recently, so we all know I’ll steal his Kindle to blaze through it before I even get close to being off the hold list at the library. I would’ve read this one even faster, but (unfortunately) I had to be sociable this weekend and had to actually do work in my day-job, pesky things.

Picking up not too long after the last book, The Magician King takes place almost exclusively in Fillory, the imaginary world (a la Narnia) in which Quentin and friends now live. I don’t know how I missed it, but at the end of the first book there was a huge OMG moment that I really want to talk about, but won’t until after the jump. (The TV show gives it away in the first episode.) I guess I was so enthralled I did not make the connection to who the third person was who came to get Quentin!? I have no idea! So if you don’t want spoilers for The Magicians I probably wouldn’t read the rest of this response. (Or at least skip to the next bold line.)

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Books

Book 421: The Magicians (The Magicians #1) – Lev Grossman

This book very strongly reminded me of the opening lines of MTV’s Real World: “what happens when people stop being polite…and start getting real.” This book is Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia without the young adult editing. It is the harsh realities of being a late-teens/early twenties magician.The sex, death, drugs, cursing and general frivolity of that time of life are all over this book.

I of course planned to read this book but never got around to it, but then all of a sudden SyFy is making a series (imdb link) and I had to move it forward! Thankfully I was able to get a copy from the library after a couple of weeks, now I just need the next two to come in on my Kindle and I’ll be all set to go!

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Books

Book 417: A Knight of the Word (Word & Void #2) – Terry Brooks

Picking up five years after the action in Running with the Demon, A Knight of the Word takes off at a fast pace and keeps going. If you could skip the first book of the Word & Void trilogy I would recommend it. This one was a huge step forward and I think the 80 fewer pages in this book were all description from the first book, making this one better. I mean you should read both, but know if you make it through the first one, you’ve got this great one to look forward to!

I wasn’t sure how I would like this book with the five years between the two stories and taking the action away from Nest and putting it solely on John Ross. Brooks didn’t let me down though, the story moved quickly to include Nest. It was a bit sad hearing about everything that happened since the end of Running with the Demon, but it was great to be back in the world again so quickly.

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Books

Book 412: Are You My Mother? – Alison Bechdel

After re-reading Fun Home for book group I dove right into the follow-up Are You My Mother? As much as I enjoyed it and ultimately identified with it, it didn’t live up to the magical experience of Fun Home. It’s hard to say whether this lack of magic was a result of the intense navel gazing or the less compelling surface emotional story. To be honest it could be the daughter identifying with mother as this is an experience/story that I will never experience in the same way.

This being said, the story was still eloquently and humorously told! The graphics were just as poignant and detailed as those in the original. I enjoyed the complete color shift from the green-gray to the red, especially when Bechdel revisited scenes from her earlier work and the emphasis changed slightly. The book list in Are You My Mother? wasn’t quite as long as Fun Home but it was still pretty impressive at 38 separate works listed.

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ARC, Books

Book 402: Prejudice & Pride – Lynn Messina

I’m not sure where to put this one. It agitated me from the beginning because of its portrayal of fundraising professionals (more on that later), but Messina’s interpretation of Austen’s wit may or may not have made up for that (I’m still trying to determine that for sure).

We all know I love some Jane Austen fan-fiction and I just got a new Wuthering Heights fan-fiction novel so when the publicist* for the novel reached out to me with a copy** of this novel mentioning the upcoming Curtis Sittenfeld adaptation, Eligible, for The Austen Project, I knew I had to say yes. I’m still not sure about the cover because it’s just a bit too disjointed for me, but you know what they say about not judging a book by its cover right?

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