Chapter One Hundred Forty-Two: Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

With this post, I will finally be caught up with my backlog of blog posts and my next post will not happen until I've finished the book I'm working on now!  But I'm getting ahead of myself--for now, I want to write about Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer.  I found this book while wandering at random through the local library, trying to find something that caught my interest.  I was intrigued by the title, which I found rather mysterious, and even though the subject-matter seemed a bit darker than I wanted, I was snared by the narrative voice of one of the main characters (the narration switches between them) and decided I'd give this book a go.  On the whole, I'm glad I read it, even though it was a bit dark.  Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots tells the story of a teenage girl and an older woman who meet at just the right time.  The girl, Lorca (like the poet) is trying to avoid being sent to boarding school by her distant mother after she's kicked out of public school for cutting herself.  The woman, Victoria, is trying to deal with the death of her husband, who had been the center of her life for years.  Victoria and Lorca are brought together by cooking, and it's the story of their separate struggles and their newfound relationship.  It's not as corny as I'm afraid I'm making it sound, but neither is it unduly edgy.  I was absorbed into this story and couldn't let go until I got to the end!

Chapter One Hundred Forty-One: The Boston Girl

So I really lucked out that I was able to get my hands on Anita Diamant's most recent novel from the library so quickly, since it's been popular enough that all of the copies are generally on hold.  And then I was stuck with a terrible summer cold, so I had nothing better to do than spend an afternoon reading The Boston Girl.  It was an absolutely delightful afternoon!  (Other than the cold...)   The Boston Girl is the story of one woman's life in Boston and Rockport from 1915 until the mid 1930s, as the main character (Addie) narrates it to her granddaughter.  Addie makes for an excellent narrator: she's thoughtful but not too serious or somber, even when recalling the darker moments of her life, and her narration feels really fresh, like she's reliving her life as she tells it.  The story is her attempt to answer her grown granddaughter's question of how she became the woman she was, and the fictitious Addie--the only American-born daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants--certainly has an interesting life to recount, starting from the time she was 15 and first started to experience some independence from her parents through settlement house programs, particularly a book group and a summer retreat in Rockport.  If you like historical fiction or just a really good story, I'd highly recommend The Boston Girl.  I can see why it's been earning so much praise!

Chapter One Hundred Forty: The World's Strongest Librarian

So the full title of this book by Salt Lake City librarian Josh Hanagarne is The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family.  As the full title suggests, this is a memoir written by a librarian with Tourette's Syndrome.  He was raised Mormon in rural Utah and Nevada and has spent a lot of his life trying to figure out how to deal with his Tourette's--ultimately, he finds extreme strength training to be the most helpful in managing his condition, hence the title The World's Strongest Librarian.  This is a fascinating life story, well-written and thoughtful, and I really enjoyed reading it.

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Nine: Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman (Trilogy)

So I was in the mood for some lighter fare when I encountered this trilogy by Pamela Aidan while working at the library, and I simply couldn't resist!  I haven't read much in the way of Pride and Prejudice spinoffs or fan fiction or related works or whatever you want to call them, but this trilogy, which retells the events of Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy's perspective, exceeded my expectations.  Of the three novels--An Assembly Such As This, Duty and Desire, and These Three Remain--I only felt the middle installment lagged a little, as it covers the time in Pride and Prejudice during which Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy don't interact at all.  Naturally this is where Aidan's story has to go farthest from the original, and while the plot has a bit more period political intrigue than I'd like, she does an excellent job of fleshing out Darcy's character and personality.  As a casual fan of Pride and Prejudice (I'm certainly not an Austen junkie, not having read any of her other works), I really enjoyed reading this trilogy and found it a lot of fun and an excellent casual summer read.

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Eight: Edward Eager's Tales of Magic (Half Magic, etc.)

As far as I know, there is no official title that includes all seven children's books that Edward Eager wrote, but unofficially they are sometimes known as the Tales of Magic, which is how I came up with the title for this post.  Eager's seven books, in the order in which they were written, are: Half Magic, Knight's Castle, Magic by the Lake, The Time Garden, Magic or Not?, The Well-Wishers, and Seven-Day Magic.  I had read all of the before except for Seven-Day Magic, which somehow I had missed, but I am glad to have read it now (especially because it features a library book).  These books are all chapter books intended for kids, and they are light fantasy at some of its best.  Eager makes very clear that E. Nesbit is his inspiration, and his books are in that vein.  They all take place in the real world (and in America, for that matter, which is refreshing as so much fantasy is set in Britain) and follow real(istic) children who find magical adventures in everyday life, usually by finding a magical object.  Magic or Not? and The Well-Wishers are perhaps the least fantastical or the most realistic, but I always feel that they have a magic of their own when I'm reading them, and I certainly enjoy them as much as I do the rest of the series.
Another of the things I like about this series is Eager's use of intertextuality, sometimes referencing other books--often those by E. Nesbit, but not always--and sometimes referencing other books in the Tales of Magic group.  I won't go into the details of the plot or characters for all seven of the books--most of the groups of characters appear in two books, except the characters in Seven-Day Magic don't appear in any other Eager book, because the overall feel of the books is really what connects them.  There is a certain nostalgia, found in a certain kind of children's book, to them, which I enjoy every once in a while, and while the characters face their fair share of magical and non-magical problems, in general these books make the world feel simple and safe and surprising.  They're traditional, comfortable sort of books and while in some ways they are very much of their time (mid-1950s to early 1960s), in other ways they still feel relevant and worth reading.  They remind me in a lot of ways of The Green Knowe Chronicles by L.M. Boston, which I re-read last August, and if you enjoy those you'll probably enjoy these (or vice versa).  If you know a kid who likes light fantasy or if you want some easy, quick, light reads for yourself, consider Edward Eager's books.

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Seven: The Thirteenth Tale

After the rather gloomy The Magicians, I didn't know what to read next and solicited suggestions from my library co-workers.  I said I wanted something happy!  (Yes, I said it with an underline.)  Anyway, one of them came up with Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, a novel I probably wouldn't have come upon otherwise (unless I was checking it in or out or reshelving it--I've found a few good books that way).  But I digress!  The Thirteenth Tale follows the stories of two women: a famous and very popular (fictitious) British author near the end of her life and the middle-aged woman she hires to write what will be the only true biography of the reclusive and mysterious author.  Much of the novel takes place at the remote country home of the author, Vida Winter, as she slowly unveils the true story of her childhood and adolescence to her would-be biographer, Margaret.  As Vida's tale unfolds, it intersects in interesting ways with Margaret's life story, shedding light on Margaret's past as well as Vida's.  An emotionally-focused, intriguing novel, it's not perhaps happy, but despite the pain in the story, there is also happiness, and (unlike The Magicians), it left me with a good feeling at the end, a quality I appreciate from a story.

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Six: The Magicians

I've heard so much about The Magicians by Lev Grossman for so long that I finally bit the bullet and checked it out from the library.  In fact, since I'd had it recommended to me by two people during the previous year and since the cover was so intriguing, I decided to check out the whole trilogy so I could just tear through them with no interruptions.  Alas, I couldn't bring myself to bother with the second or third books, although I did finish The Magicians (the first in the series).  The problem was partly that I hated most (maybe all) of the characters, who never seemed to change or learn anything or even to really be happy, and also the narrator (not one of the characters, as far as I could tell) seemed totally devoid of emotion or caring, which I found rather off-putting (and slightly psychopathic--I'm not sure whether that was intentional).  The plot was interesting and original enough, but I just couldn't enjoy or get into a story with so little emotional attachment.  The Magicians felt to me like an attempt to create an edgy, adult hybrid of The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, but I love those books because they are neither edgy nor adult--that's not what I want from this kind of story (or for most kinds of stories, for that matter, but that's just my preference), so The Magicians left me feeling cold.