Get Lost in Literature

"The English are never going to think I'm posh, but if I fit into their fantasy, then they'll at least think I'm royalty."   Robin Swift is a Cantonese boy rescued from cholera and spirited away to London by his new caretaker, Professor Lovell. Professor Lovell impresses upon Robin the importance of words and makes him spend every moment studying language. Robin works hard to impress the Professor and before long he's accepted into the college of Babel... A school designed to study language so it can be translated into magic. I really liked this book. To start with, the writing was absolutely impeccable, including very literal word play, and even though I'm no linguist, the translations seemed well-researched. The setting is designed to mirror our own world, making it easy to imagine the fantasy is real. Within the story, the author included footnotes that added to the story's intrigue rather than slowing it down. The plot had plenty of meat on its bon...

  "...the right book exactly, at exactly the right time."  This story is a wonderfully lighthearted, humorously told, fast-paced adventure, fit for any bookworm who has ever dreamed of having an adventure.  Clay Jannon is deeply relatable (I too was unemployed during a recession) nerd looking for a job; he finds one at a bookstore in the shady part of town. But it's a bookstore where no one ever buys a book and the customers are asking for unusual titles with names that can't be pronounced... The terms of his employment include a promise to his boss that he will not open the books, but the best adventures start with a little rule breaking.   I spent the entire day reading this. No regrets. It's kind of odd to classify this as a fantasy, to call it just fiction is also a tad unfair. This is fantasy like a daydream is a fantasy; no spells are cast and no wild creatures frolic, but there is magic in the written word. Robin Sloan writes an atmosphere fit for a wizard ...

"I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me." Death has a story to tell about something that happened in 1939 Nazi Germany. A story about newly orphaned Liesel Meminger and her new foster parents Hans and Rosa Hubermann. A story about Rudy Steiner, the boy who wants to steal a kiss from her, and Max Vandenburg, the Jew who lives in her basement. This is one of those books that exceeds expectations by such a degree, I'm left awestruck. This is not what I expected from a book labeled YA. The language in this book is simple yes, which I suppose is for the benefit of the Young Adult, and about a child growing up in Nazi Germany, but the story is complex enough for the Old Adult, with a pile of emotional triggers ( code for I cried...a lot ). The story itself, is narrated by Death. That Death would take notice of anything besides ferrying souls between worlds, lends the ha...

First I want to start by saying this is the most relatable character I've read in years. Mor loves books.  "I care about so few people really. Sometimes it feels as if its only books that make life worth living, like on Halloween when I wanted to be alive because I hadn't finished Babel 17. I'm sure that isn't normal. I care more about people in books more than the people I see every day."  This is how I feel all the time. It's hard for me to relate to non-readers, even harder to relate to people who have no imagination. When I open a book, creep inside its pages, characters can come to life. So when I read this story, this girl who sees fairies and reads SF, who sees her librarian more than her friends...Well, I can't help but wonder if Jo Walton secretly wrote a fantastical spin off of my life. This is a story told by Morwenna (Mori) in diary formatting ( a format I normally dislike, but the book is just that good ) and she manages to dro...