This review has been almost a year in the making, but it’s finally happening! After how much I didn’t really like Kelly Link when Bibliomancy did her Magic for Beginners collection, I’m upset about how much I liked this collection. Shhh, don’t tell Taylor.
Magic for Beginners
Top Ten Most Intimidating Books
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish!
Okay, this is going to be the loosest use of the definition of “intimidating” in all of time and space. I taught myself to read at 3 and read and can read 700 page books in a disturbingly short period of time, so “intimidating” isn’t usually what I apply to books–I tend to look at challenging books as a challenge of how long it’ll take me to finish them. But anyways. Here we go (in no particular order)!
Bibliomancy for Beginners: Review and Hangout Video for “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link
All of you probably know how this works by now. I give you my review of this book, and then you get to watch the video of my book club talking about it. It’s pretty cool. Also, this week, Taylor and I went AT each other with verbal sparring, so it’s interesting to say the least. Here we go!
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
The nine stories in Link’s second collection are the spitting image of those in her acclaimed debut, Stranger Things Happen: effervescent blends of quirky humor and pathos that transform stock themes of genre fiction into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy. In “Stone Animals,” a house’s haunting takes the unusual form of hordes of rabbits that camp out nightly on the front lawn. This proves just one of several benign but inexplicable phenomena that begin to pull apart the family newly moved into the house as surely as a more sinister supernatural influence might. The title story beautifully captures the unpredictable potential of teenage lives through its account of a group of adolescent schoolfriends whose experiences subtly parallel events in a surreal TV fantasy series. Zombies serve as the focus for a young man’s anxieties about his future in “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” and offer suggestive counterpoint to the lives of two convenience store clerks who serve them in “The Hortlak.” Not only does Link find fresh perspectives from which to explore familiar premises, she also forges ingenious connections between disparate images and narrative approaches to suggest a convincing alternate logic that shapes the worlds of her highly original fantasies.
2 stars
Oh boy did I have opinions on this one. Ooh boy. Considering that this was Taylor’s pick and he and Michaela from The Pied Piper Calls loved it … I had a teeny tiny bit of an … unpopular opinion. (Which is why you should watch the hangout because ohmygod.)
Bibliomancy for Beginners Google+ Hangout for “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link happens TONIGHT!
Check back here at 8:30 PM EST for Bibliomancy for Beginners live hangout for Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link!
I don’t know if you’ve been following my Goodreads/Twitter but … it’s going to be an interesting hangout. I ended up giving this one a rating of two stars on Goodreads, while Michaela from The Pied Piper Calls gave it four. Where do Taylor and Rachel fall? Watch the video to find out!
Short stories not your thing? Check back next week for our hangout video for Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Froer! If you get a chance to look at this book, DO IT, because the pages are all cut out and it’s really crazy just to look at. It’ll be one heck of a hangout! (Also, next Tuesday is my birthday. So there is that.)
At 8:30 PM, this post will be updated with the live link to the hangout!
Weekly Wrap-Up + Stacking the Shelves #13
I don’t know if this is for myself or you guys, but I’m going to start doing weekly wrap up posts along with my Stacking the Shelves videos. So if you want to watch the video…go! If you don’t, here’s a summary of what’s happening:
My Life is a Notebook 