Four books into the Sookie Stackhouse series, I'm finally willing to admit I'm getting hooked. That's not entirely stubbornness or snobbery talking; only with this one and it's predecessor, Club Dead did I read the books in a hurry. Plus, I liked that Harris thanked a librarian, Doris Ann Norris, in her acknowledgments page.
I couldn't remember the name of a teen vampire series I saw the last time I was at the Tompkins Square branch of the New York Public Library. They didn't have the first book in the series, so I told myself I'd remember it. Ha! So I typed {ya fiction vampires} into a search engine and came up with Vampire Fiction for Young Adults as the first result. I immediately recognized Blue Bloods as the series I was after, and I'll be able to mine the site for more teen vamp books as soon as I'm done with the Blue Bloods. Just thought I'd share. (Maybe all y'all teen librarians know about Monster Librarian, but us ignorant academics aren't quite as well-informed.)
I know, I know, I'm sick of reading all this paranormal fiction. I really need something a little meatier right now. But it also has to be compelling. I've been in a bad way for all of 2009, literarily speaking, I think. Suggestions welcome for literary fiction (along the lines of A Map of Home or Peony in Love, for example) and Twilight readalikes!
There's a post tv show world of Buffy!!! I found out about the comics from A.j. Michel's consumption log. I know it's lame that I didn't know about it already, but I'm really not much of a comics/graphic novels girl, which I know is also lame. So Wolves at the Gate is the third episode of Season 8, with an introductory story written by Mr. Whedon himself. The tone of the comics is the same as the show, though I think Buffy comes off a little more like her earlier seasons persona. The slayer army is still around, as are Xander, Willow, Dawn, and Andrew. Plus Dracula makes a cameo appearance. The biggest surprise, though, is who Buffy starts sleeping with. Now to get ahold of the first two episodes of the season, The Long Way Home and No Future for You, which are sadly n/a at NYPL or Columbia.
The latest in Harrison's Hollows series finds witch Rachel Morgan still mourning her dead vampire boyfriend and trying to regain her memory of his double murder. (Vampires die twice in this reality--first to become undead and then dead dead.)
I had to pick up my brother at the airport, but I might be able to squeeze in a stop at the university library as well as a charm shop for Jenks before that. A locator charm was devilishly hard. I honestly didn't know if I could pull it off. The library would be the only place I could find the recipe. Well, besides the Internet, but that was asking for trouble. p. 93
This was a longish book, 640 pages, but it felt longer. In contrast, here's a short haiku review:
Primary sources
and undead librarians.
Quest for Dracula.
He seemed always to have liked scribes, archivists, librarians, historians -- anyone who handled the past through books. p. 630