Much of my adult life I selected books for their literary
merit: classic works that made up the
literary cannon, or contemporary works that followed or built on that tradition. What can I say? I was an English major. Then I went to library school, took a
children’s literature class and rediscovered my first love: books that are full of magic.
Now my favorite reads are those that combine English major
nerdy allusions to classical literature with characters, objects, and places
that transcend the limitations of the physical world.
When a book showed up on the new book cart called The
Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic, I couldn’t resist. First time novelist Emily Croy Baker creates
a protagonist who has plenty of book smarts, but no judgment when it comes to
personal relationships. During a
miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, eager to avoid her stalled
dissertation, Nora Fischer wanders off and somehow finds herself in another
realm. There she meets glamorous people who are as eager to meet her as she is
to escape her problems. But when the elegant veneer of this dreamland shatters,
Nora finds herself in a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. And the only way she
can survive is by learning real magic herself.
According to Baker’s website a sequel is in the works.
The Book of Life, final book of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls
Trilogy was published and added to the Peter White Public Library collection
this summer. I was hooked in the first
chapter of the first book, A Discovery of Witches. The main character, a historian interested in
alchemy, is sitting in a library reading room in Oxford, when she realizes the
book before her is a magical text. As it turns out, she is quite magical
herself. Certain elements of the series
border on the silly (she dates a vampire and they go to yoga class together),
but it is all good fun.
City of Dark Magic by Magnes Flyte (pen name for writing
team Meg Howrey and Christina Lynch) explores some of the same alchemic
territory as the All Soul’s Trilogy.
This book stands out in my memory as one of the all-around most fun
reading experiences I’ve had in recent years.
The bulk of the story is somehow simultaneously set in both modern day
and not so modern day Prague. Time becomes fluid in this story.
There are, as the title suggests, elements of dark magic. The protagonist
is a smart young doctoral student of musicology. I learned a few things
about Beethoven. That's enough background--read the book, have fun.
Written in a mock academic style complete with windy
tangential footnotes, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
recounts an important period of English history (1806-1817) when most people
believed magic to be dead. A big, thick,
satisfying read, this book tickled my inner anglophile.
The Golem and Jinni by Helene Wecker explores what happens
when magical creatures from other cultures hit American soil. Set during the turn of the century as immigrants
flocked to New York City, this novel serves as a careful study of both human nature
and American history.
Neil Gaimen explores similar territory in American
Gods. This road trip novel asks the
question what would happen when the gods of different immigrant groups traveled
to America and confronted the gods the indigenous groups? Similarly, the work of Canadian author
Charles deLint explores how the roles of indigenous gods change as we move to a
more urban culture.
Another good Jinni story can be found in AS Byatt’s The
Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye: Five
fairy stories. In the title story, Byatt
relates the strange and uncanny relationship between a world renowned scholar
of the art of story-telling and the marvelous being that lives in a mysterious
bottle, found in a dusty shop in an Istanbul bazaar.
Next for me is A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by
Lady Trent by Marie Brennan. I received an e-mail this morning informing
me that the audiobook is now available for download onto my Ipad through the
Library’s Overdrive service. I can’t
wait!
--Ellen Moore, Webmaster
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