Always Something Good 

ListenUpVermont, the Vermont digital library still in its first years, is beginning to take real strides towards becoming the all encompassing digital library that we all see on the horizon.  During LUV's first years it seemed the books I wanted either weren't available or there was an incredible wait list that seemed longer than the number of pages in Pillars of the Earth.  Granted at this point there are still plenty of holes in the collection.  But users remember, we are only in our fourth year.  When I don't find what I want, I surf the rest of the collection and try to find something good.  And there always is something good.   I didn't start my search with any of the titles shown above, but was pleasantly surprised by each.

With roadblocks from publishers who have raised prices to ridiculous amounts there is grave concern for the future of our digital library and digital libraries in general.  I see the publishers' points.  InterLibrary Loan would make it exceedingly easy for libraries to buy fewer copies, since it is just a click away from sending a book from your collection to the library in need.  Someone will undoubtedly figure out how to break through the protections designed to keep books out for the one or two week loan periods and we will have the Napster phenomenon with books.  But let's address the real issues and not complain that copies should have limited amounts of checkouts or should cost 800% of the price the book is being sold to any individual that wants a copy.  Libraries need to survive.  Sharing resources brings people to an understanding on how to live.  We already moved from carrying 8 kids all piled up on each other in one car to 8 cars with one kid each.  Let's not all have our own private collection that can never be shared.  It's a matter of style and we are heading in the wrong direction.

A rose my any other name would smell as sweet ...

Was it just the fact that someone named Morgenstern wrote this book that made it magical.  I think some unconscious part of me was waiting for true love and miracles because of that.  Expecting those sorts of things might be the best way to read a book.  Whether Erin is a long lost cousin twice removed or a complete stranger to S. Morgenstern doesn't matter.  The added layer of magic made a brilliant story one stroke better.  

Of course this isn't the long lost original of the The Princess Bride that the other Morgenstern claims exists, but no one has yet to find.  But my mind at least had the thought that it might be which is the more important bit.  What all the forms of magic add up to in The Princess Bride is that that story can cure sick boys.  Erin Morgenstern's novel, I believe, might have the same panacean properties.

The number of characters and threads were many and I must admit that somewhere near the middle I lost track of a thread and a character or two, but the fabric of the book stayed strong throughout.  The miracle of the story never faltered.  Whether it was the circus, the performers, the illusions or the romance, Morgenstern created a tangible illusion as grand as those of her two main characters. 

A friend's recommendation of this led me to believe that there were chapters filled with narrative from the eyes of different dogs.  King actually only did a couple chapters in that style, leaving me to wonder what the story might have been like if there were hundreds of narratives from dogs throughout time.  From that initial description I couldn't quite place my finger on what genre the book should have been in.  It seemed like it was a cross between historical fiction and fantasy.  So the finished product was not exactly what I expected given that much of the story was told from the perspective of a girl in a very realistic, modern setting.  Even if that girl had memories from the last hundred lives she had lived.

Regardless of my misperception, this turned out to be a sensational read.  Everything fit.  It was just good storytelling.  Plenty of swashbuckling description that rivaled Treasure Island.  The thoughts of the pirate turned twentieth century girl in her hundredth life after she dies as a pirate is nonstop ludicrous fun.  

If you are looking for something fun, pick this one up.

National Velvet, Misty of Chincoteague, and the Island Stallion were all staples of my childhood.  At one time or another they were each my favorite.  Bagnold was able to create the best countryside.  I wanted to ride through the moors and farmland.  Misty was real to me when we visited Assateague and saw the ponies swim across the channel.  And the island stallion was just a little bit exotic, so it captured my imagination and allowed the world I lived in to be just a little bit larger and a little bit more mysterious.  

There are of course dozens of stories about boys or girls and horses.  The number ranks right up there with the number of books on dogs dying to save an endangered child.  And though there are dozens of them, the ones we remember all seem to carve a new niche.  That is exactly what Stiefvater does with The Scorpio Races.  

Horses from the sea? I've been writing about Windhorses, so I felt like Stiefvater and I were on the same page.  I was seeing horses in the clouds and hearing them in the wind.  She found those same sights and sounds in the crashing waves.  The fluid, ungraspable nature of water caused my imagination to create many different forms for the horses and Stiefvater's description made them just different enough to make the creatures slightly more magical than the quadrupeds that inspired them.

     The story is still the same.  Winning the race on the back of the underdog horse, but it is told with its own style, so we still get to that place that only horses can take us.

The First Midnight Party

When Charles Dickens published The Old Curiosity Shop, Americans waited on the docks in Boston for the final chapters to see what happened to Nell and her grandfather.  These were the first midnight parties.  That desire to find out what happened as soon as possible.  The masses waiting to know.

After The Old Curiosity Shop that ultimate curiosity waned.

And before Harry Potter there were years of silence.

Then the midnight party was resurrected through Diagan Alley, Quidditch, and the rest of Rowling's writing.

From the ashes of Harry Potter came a phoenix ... and Twilight.

Twilight drank deeply among teens and Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games emerged.

But now the midnight party is but a fragmented memory, a youthful memory in the minds of our teens.

What bit of magic can change that?

Will Veronica Roth's Divergent find a faction of readers?

Or will we listen to the angels from the next in the series of The Daughter of Smoke and Bone.

Will Lu's Legend grow?

We are all waiting for the next big literary explosion, just how long will we have to wait?

Authors Find Something in 2012

Amazing!  

How is that every book I've read this year really rocks!

What was in the water this year? 

Were there more rainbows and less smog?

Did more salmon run?

Was the Mayan thing a push for everyone to work harder on what might be the final book ever published?

Did someone find a four leaf clover?

Whatever happened, please let it continue.  

Night Circus

Ready Player One

Revolution

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

The Running Dream

They just keep coming.

What should I pick up next?

A friend had told me that the main character time travels back to the late eighteenth century France.  That made me skeptical on how realistic the fiction would be or if it would slide into more of a fantastical nature.  Donnelly was able to create a wonderful slide through time that made historical fiction come alive.  She used a journal that survived in a old guitar to begin the time tranformation.  Allowing you to mentally travel back through time with the journal entries.  Then using the main character's recently unstable mind because of the death of her younger brother, she completed the transformation.  The main character took a slight overdose of the medication she was on, giving the possibility that the trip through time was do to the overdose.  While in the alternate time she to complete the work of one of the character's in the journal.  This allowed the wounds brought on by the death of her brother to begin to heal.  

I said it a couple reviews ago, but how come everyone turns to music when they feel like something is missing.  I love it, I just am surprised that so many books with music as the comforting force have come out this year.  

I know love conquers all, but does music as well?