Lev Grossman's Magicians Trilogy

                   

Lev Grossman's The Magicians trilogy takes Harry Potter, Narnia, and other stories and tropes and mashes them up into something new. It left me with lots of complicated thoughts that I’m still trying to sort out and for that alone I’m grateful for this series.  

I usually try to avoid spoilers when writing about books here but this time I'm making an exception. If you want to avoid spoilers, stop reading here. If not, here are some of my thoughts:  

The trilogy starts out as a coming age / figuring out life in your 20s story. At the beginning of the first book Quentin is a high school senior. He’s at the point of in life when it feels like you’re waiting for life to begin, as if one’s current situation isn’t actual life. Quentin gets that life-is-starting-now moment when he finds himself sitting in a room taking an entrance exam for Brakebills, the one and only magical college in North America. It all seems so promising, so fun and exciting, and then it isn’t. Turns out that doing magic is well, less magical than one might expect. It requires memorization, mastering precise hand movements, and learning ancient languages. One thing that I found odd (and that I'm still wrestling with) is that in Grossman's conception magic is not fun. It can be fun at times, but mostly it is tedious, hard work. Not only it is hard, in a way magic ruins people. Magic makes some parts of ordinary life (like holding down a job) easy if not unnecessary. Without something to care about Quentin and his friends spend their post-college days drinking and partying, which ends up being less fun than it sounds. It's like they one the lottery but don't know what to do now that they no longer have to work to pay the rent.

In the first two books Quentin is forever looking for an adventure. He is never happy with what he has. This would be a less annoying trait if he were working toward something. For instance, if you’re dream is to build the best widget and your first prototype is good but you know you can do better so you keep trying, then it is good to not be satisfied. That is drive; that is motivation and ambition. Quentin’s dissatisfaction with life is more about it never being like it is in the Narnia like Fillory books. Quentin’s whole concept of adulthood is wrapped up in a fantasy and when confronted with the reality of day-to-day life he’s bored. But instead of building a career or a relationship he just goes looking for another adventure. Even more annoying is that Quentin never anticipates the potential dangers of his adventures. It is like he expects life to be like a children’s story where there is always a happy ending. 

One of the most interesting characters in the series is Julia. Julia sat for the exam Quentin did but failed. I think I, as a reader, am supposed to feel sorry for Julia or feel that she was unjustly treated in this instance. I don’t.  When Julia tells her story in The Magician King (book 2) she remarks that Quentin walked into the exam room “buckled right down and killed that exam, because magic school? That was just the kind of thing he’d been waiting to happen his whole life.” The way I see it Quentin and Julia were faced with an unexpected opportunity. Quentin grabbed it and went with it. He didn’t think too hard about it; he just accepted it and decided to see where the opportunity would lead. Julia, in contrast, sat back and thought about what the opportunity might mean. I don’t fault Julia for the way she reacted. It was totally reasonable under the circumstances, but I don’t feel sorry for her either or feel she was treated unfairly. She had the same chance as Quentin and didn’t take it. There is something to be said about being open to opportunities and ready to grab them when they come sailing by.

Notwithstanding my lack of sympathy for Julia’s initial rejection by the world of magic, I totally loved her journey (well except for the part I’ll get to in a minute). After failing the exam her memory was supposed to be erased of all things magic and Brakebills related but it didn’t take.  Julia remembered, not all of it but there was a thread of something that kept nagging her. She grabbed that thread and ended up institutionalized and multiple prescriptions for anti-depressants. Once again Grossman made magic not fun. In The Magician King it is practically a symbol for mental illness. Mental illness diagnosis notwithstanding, Julia went and found magic on her own, Brakebills be damned. And she wasn’t the only one. I love the idea that there was this underground world of magic. One of the things in that struck me about the first book was not only that magic was boring, it was elitist and exclusionary. Outside of Brakebills all kinds of people are doing magic. 

Julia ascends up the ranks of the magical world and becomes the best there is. More importantly she finds a home among other prescription carrying depressives. Together they dig for the roots of magic and end of stumbling upon a demon trickster god who kills most of them and rapes Julia. This was infuriating. Not only that she was raped, but that she loses her humanity. She becomes a powerful goddess in the end, but exactly what is the message here?

Another interesting character is Alice. She came from a magical family. After her older brother died while at Brakebills the college decided it was best to cut ties with the family and declined to invite her to attend to the school. Alice forced her way in anyway and and she was brilliant. She hooks up with Quentin. They are cute together, then they are horrible to each other. Then she dies in book one, or rather she becomes a ball of blue rage and power. Quentin brings her back to life and she is not happy about it, at least not at first. I’m not sure what to think about this particular sequence. Did he do the right thing? He was trying to help her. He couldn’t have known that she liked being a ball of rage and power. 

The ending was not entirely unexpected, but still pleasing. Fillory was dying and Quentin has to figure out a way to save it. He does save it, but he also moves on and decides to create his own land, which is fitting. It is time for him to grow up and create something for himself. It was a good ending to the series.

Although I am not entirely sure what to think of this series I would recommend it for the simple fact that it gave me lots to think about. This is the kind of book I could talk about for hours.

Bookish Podcasts

I recently began writing for Mocha Girls Read, an online and in-person book club, of which I'm a member. My first post was published today. Check it out and find out about The Wonderful World of Bookish Podcasts. Maybe you already are fans of these podcast, or perhaps you'll discover a new one to enjoy.

Happy reading and listening!

Dark Wild Night by Christina Lauren

  The Wild Seasons series has been an unexpected delight. It started with Sweet Filthy Boy in which three girl friends - Mia, Harlow, and Lola - went to Vegas to celebrate their college graduation and met three sexy guys Ansel (the Frenchman), Finn (the Canadian), and Oliver (the Australian). After a night of drinking and sexy times, the six singles wake up as three married couples. Harlow and Finn and Lola and Oliver quickly get their Vegas marriages annulled. Ansel refuses to give Mia a quickie divorce, insisting they talk about it first. By the end of Sweet Filthy Boy they're happily in love and still married. (This is a romance series so the ending shouldn't be much of a surprise.) Harlow and Finn work out their issues in Dirty Rowdy Thing. Finally in Dark Wild Night we get to Lola and Oliver.

Lola and Oliver seemed like a perfect match from the get go. She writes and draws graphic novels. As the first book in the series opens, he is about to open a comic book store. However good they seem on paper, of the three couples, Lola and Oliver are the only two who didn't spend their night Vegas getting hot and sweaty in a hotel room. Instead they spent the entire evening walking and talking. Back in San Diego (where the three girls are from), Lola and Oliver have become the best of friends. They each secretly want more but for reasons of his and her own, keep things in the friend zone.

In the time since their Vegas marriage, Oliver's and Lola's careers have taken off. Oliver's new business is doing great. Lola's first graphic novel has become a bestseller and is being made into a movie, plus she has a contract for two more books. Perhaps it is her career success that gives Lola the courage to test things out with Oliver. It starts of well but as Lola begins to move forward with Oliver she begins to unravel a bit with her work, which causes her to question herself and her ability to handle all the new changes in her life.

Of the three books in the series, Dark Wild Night might be my favorite. It was steamy hot and full of romance. Lola is a great character. I found her problems in trying to balance work with her social life very  relatable, along with her struggles in protecting her creative vision when it came to her work. My one complaint is that there wasn't enough about Oliver's background. In the prior two books, we learn a great deal about the female characters' childhoods and family lives, as well as that of their new boyfriends/husbands. In this one, all that is revealed about Oliver is that he's from Australia and was raised by his grandparents. Oliver was kind of the perfect boyfriend - understanding, patient, and giving - but it was never quite clear how he got to be that way. Given the pattern of the first two books I was expecting to learn more about who raised him and why he moved to San Diego.

This series started as a trilogy but I have recently learned there will be a fourth book. Can't wait!

2016: A New Year of Reading

In 2015 I took on several reading challenges. I challenged myself to read (1) at least 36 books from my To Be Read (TBR) pile, (2) authors from around the world, and (3) books from thirty-nine different genres. Additionally, I took on (4) Book Riot's Read Harder challenge, (5) the What's In a Name challenge, (6) the Eclectic challenge, and (7) the Goodreads challenge to read one hundred books overall.  Unfortunately, I only managed to complete three of the seven challenges - the TBR challenge, the world challenge, and the Goodreads challenge. I think my failure to complete all my challenges was due to the conflict between choosing a book based on whether it met the requirements of a challenge and choosing a book simply because it interested me. More often than not I went with option number two.

This year I am taking on six challenges:
1 - Mount TBR
2 - Specific TBR Challenges (reading certain books & series from my TBR pile)
3 - Reading the World
4 - Book Riot: Read Harder
5 - Genre 
6 - Cloak & Dagger

My main reading goal for 2016 is to whittle down my TBR pile, hence the Mount TBR and specific TBR challenges.  Further, I plan to fulfill the non-TBR challenges (3 through 6 on the above list) with books from my TBR pile. Hopefully by the end of the year my TBR pile will be a fourth (maybe a third) of what is is now.

Four of the six challenges I've done before. The specific TBR and the Cloak & Dagger challenges are new for me. Participants in Cloak & Dagger challenge can read any book from the mystery, suspense, thriller or crime genre. Read one to ten books and you're amateur sleuth, eleven to twenty and you're a detective, twenty-one to thirty and you're inspector, thirty-one or more and you're a special agent. I love mysteries so this challenge is made for me.

I am excited about this new year of reading. So many books and 365 days to read them. With some luck I'll complete all my challenges. Even if I don't, I'm sure to read a bunch of good books in 2016.

Happy New Year & Happy Reading

The Bedside Baccalaureate: The Second Semester Edited by David Rubel

  Every morning for the last six or seven years I have begun my day by reading a page from an nonfiction book that explains how some aspect of the world and/or human history works. The idea is to improve one's knowledge and education on a certain subject or subjects. I started with a book called The Intellectual Devotional. That book became a series with devotionals focused on American history, modern culture, health, and biographies, each of which I devoted a year too. For a change of pace one year I found a devotional for book lovers called appropriately enough, the Bibliophiles Devotional. Each page (365 in total, one for each day of the year) was devoted to a literary classic. Having finished The Intellectual Devotional series, for 2015 I looked for another similar type book and found The Bedside Baccalaureate. Skipping the first book in the series, I decided to begin my mornings in 2015 with a page from The Bedside Baccalaureate: The Second Semester.

Of these type of books I've read, The Bedside Baccalaureate might be my favorite. It is divided into four sections or syllabi. Each syllabus consisted of five courses, for a total of twenty courses. Broadly speaking the courses covered topics in art, literature, the classics, math and engineering, social science, history, economics, physical science, religion, environmental science, and philosophy. I learned a little about the anatomy of the Internet, electricity and magnetism, the roots of the Cold War, the epics of the Trojan War, the Protest Reformation, Sigmund Freud, and Italian Renaissance art. My favorite courses were on game theory, issues in feminism, the 1913 Armory Show, meteorology and climate, the history of modern China, and the origins of Judaism. Some courses or topics I still don't understand. (If there was a test of electricity and magnetism I would absolutely fail). Some topics whet my appetite for more and led me down rabbit holes to find more information. (Who knew game theory would turn out to be so interesting?)

I really enjoyed my morning reading ritual this past year. (Who am I kidding, I enjoy it every year or I wouldn't do it.) These types of books are a great way to learn something knew without it feeling like you're back in school. The small chunks of information (just one page) keep it interesting and remove any iota of intimidation I might have about tackling a new topic, especially one having to do with science or engineering, two things I generally know little about. The Bedside Baccalaureate had the added benefit of being divided into four sections, which meant I didn't spend a whole year on the topics I enjoyed less.

Eventually, maybe in 2017, I will read the first semester of The Bedside Baccalaureate.  For 2016, I'm going to switch things up and pick a nonfiction book from my way-too-big TBR pile. It won't be a devotional but something that hopefully I can divided into small chunks and read slowly. Hopefully it will be just as interesting and educational.

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

  The world is ending. An asteroid is set to collide with planet earth in six months or so. Some people choose to end their individual world prematurely with suicide. Others continue to hope for a last minute saving grace or take comfort in their religious faith. Some decide that if the world is ending they should make the most of what time they have left, whether that means traveling the world, spending time with loved ones, or taking drugs and smoking cigarettes because at this point there are no consequences tomorrow for today's bad choices. Still others continue to live more or less as they did before the idea of an asteroid colliding into the planet became a definite and certain reality. Police detective Henry Palace falls into the last category.

Palace is called to the scene of a hanging. It presents as a suicide, which in a time where the world is literally about to end, is all too common. No one is interested in investigating a death that appears by all accounts to be a suicide, no one except Palace. Something is off about the crime scene and he can't just let it go. So he starts an investigation in a time when almost everyone is asking, what's the point?

I am in an awesome book group called Mocha Girls Read. We used to have our monthly meetings at Mysterious Galaxy, a bookstore that specializes in mysteries and science fiction. Unfortunately it has since closed its doors in L.A. county. (I believe the flagship store in San Diego is still open.) One day about a year or so ago I asked the guy behind the cash register if he had anything to recommend, book wise. This is unusual for me. I have a ridiculously long TBR list and rarely ask people for more books to add to it. If anything I, the librarian, am usually recommending books to other people. But this time I asked and the guy (sorry I don't remember his name) recommended The Last Policeman. It took me awhile to get to it. In fact the third book in the trilogy was released before I got around to reading book one but I finally read it and I have to say, thank you bookseller, for this was a very good read.

The Last Policeman prevents a very interesting scenario - the coming end of the world. If you know with a fair amount of certainty that the world is going to end in six months what would you do with the rest of your life? What kind of person would you choose to be during those last few months. That's the question The Last Policeman presents (or, at least one of the questions). It's easy to say that you would live it up - quit your job and travel, spend time with loved ones, party, sex it up, whatever, but then again if everyone did that the world would kind of end sooner. I mean someone has to keep growing the food and running the electrical plants during those six months or everyone would die of starvation in the dark. So maybe you keep going as you did before you got the news that humanity was on the brink of extinction. You keep going to work, keep waiting for the light to turn green before crossing, and keep eating your vegetables. At least that's what Detective Palace does. The world is ending but he still believes in right and wrong, and that murderers should be brought to justice even if a life sentence only means six months in prison under current circumstances. It is against this backdrop that Palace tries to figure out what happened to Peter Zell, the man found hanging in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant.

The most interesting thing about this book is not the mystery of who done it, but whether asking that question even matters when everyone is going to die soon anyway. The impending end of the world and the associated fallout really ratcheted up the tension. When the world is ending, one can't help but question every one's motives, including that of the police. On the one hand it is admirable that Palace cares about right and wrong today even when tomorrow isn't coming. On the other hand, when most people have decided screw it and checked out mentally or physically the fact that Henry Palace cares so much about this case stands out as a little odd. Throughout the book I rooted for Palace to solve the case while also wanting him to take a vacation day. I can hardly wait to see what awaits Palace in the next two books. I want to see how he changes, if at all, as the date of impact approaches. Will he still be the same straight and arrow cop as death come closer?

Trust Me, I'm Trouble by Mary Elizabeth Summer

Trust Me, I'm Trouble is the second book in a series by Mary Elizabeth Summer about a young grifter who goes by the name Julep Dupree. It picks up not long after the events of the first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying, with Julep now living with a foster family and grieving over the loss of a friend. She's still taking on cases only now her client base extends beyond the halls of her private Catholic high school. When a woman asks for her help in finding out how her husband became an embezzler, Julep knows she should walk away. She doesn't of course, not even when it requires her to infiltrate a shady "leadership" organization. When her new case appears to be connected to her long lost mother, Julep is even more drawn in. Pretty soon it isn't clear who's the con and who's the mark.

Between vacation and National Novel Writing Month in November (my fourth year participating) I inadvertently took some time off from reading books. Trust Me, I'm Trouble was what I picked up when I started reading again and it was exactly what I needed. It's a smart, young adult mystery with some unexpected romance thrown in. It has a great main character in Julep (though I did get a little tired of her self-recrimination over the events from the first book). Julep straddles the line between criminal and hero well, helping others, helping herself and always trying to protect the people around her. The plot was well executed. It had more twists and turns than a roller coaster. Overall it was a very good read and exactly what I was looking for when I started reading again. I don't know what the plans are for this series, but I'm hoping there is more to come.