library services
Various things that are tangentially related to the public library:
1. My request for Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey came in, so I stayed up until after 4 AM to read it. This is one of my Patented Idiot Moves, because I'm really tired now, but I can't say I regret it. If you've been here any time at all, you probably know that it pains and frustrates me when I like things but cannot explain why, but here I think enthusiasm will have to make up for sense. So, um, I enjoyed it. (Also, I think the title is slightly misleading. It makes sense once one has finished the novel, but it did rather make me think the book was going to be about something other than what it was.) It has awesome girls being awesome together, and then being friends because of it; it has complicated boys and at least one awesome teacher (seriously, I would read fic about her); it's got people putting on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and occasionally quoting from it, if that's your sort of thing. It's a book full of arresting images that are well-handled, and use of a mythology I know very little about; and it's about the stories we tell ourselves, and how they make the world. I would recommend it if you like: mythology, especially creation myth; fairy narratives and changelings; the concept of American Gods (regardless of whether you liked the novel itself).
2. I thought that perhaps I would try watching Lost in Austen again, because maybe I could pull together some kind of article on it or something, so I requested it too. But 2 minutes and 34 seconds in, after Amanda had declared that reading Austen a lot was tantamount to sounding like a "terrible loser" (or perhaps she said "horrible": I wouldn't want to be unfair and inaccurate), but then deflected the association by making sure to announce that she "actually had a boyfriend" (because apparently this is the only way not to be a loser, or proof that she hadn't scared off The Menfolk with her horrible Austen-reading ways, or both), I was already quietly seething. So--back to the library it went.
3. My requests for Holly Black's The White Cat and Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Covenant came in today. Aw yeah. Dissertation? What dissertation?
1. My request for Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey came in, so I stayed up until after 4 AM to read it. This is one of my Patented Idiot Moves, because I'm really tired now, but I can't say I regret it. If you've been here any time at all, you probably know that it pains and frustrates me when I like things but cannot explain why, but here I think enthusiasm will have to make up for sense. So, um, I enjoyed it. (Also, I think the title is slightly misleading. It makes sense once one has finished the novel, but it did rather make me think the book was going to be about something other than what it was.) It has awesome girls being awesome together, and then being friends because of it; it has complicated boys and at least one awesome teacher (seriously, I would read fic about her); it's got people putting on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and occasionally quoting from it, if that's your sort of thing. It's a book full of arresting images that are well-handled, and use of a mythology I know very little about; and it's about the stories we tell ourselves, and how they make the world. I would recommend it if you like: mythology, especially creation myth; fairy narratives and changelings; the concept of American Gods (regardless of whether you liked the novel itself).
2. I thought that perhaps I would try watching Lost in Austen again, because maybe I could pull together some kind of article on it or something, so I requested it too. But 2 minutes and 34 seconds in, after Amanda had declared that reading Austen a lot was tantamount to sounding like a "terrible loser" (or perhaps she said "horrible": I wouldn't want to be unfair and inaccurate), but then deflected the association by making sure to announce that she "actually had a boyfriend" (because apparently this is the only way not to be a loser, or proof that she hadn't scared off The Menfolk with her horrible Austen-reading ways, or both), I was already quietly seething. So--back to the library it went.
3. My requests for Holly Black's The White Cat and Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Covenant came in today. Aw yeah. Dissertation? What dissertation?