Tag Archives: series

Fantastic Fictional Libraries

Libraries are magical places, and I don’t just say this because I’m a huge library nerd. Besides, I’m in good company being one; Sir Terry Pratchett, in his Science of Discworld (Vaughan doesn’t have our own copy, but you can borrow Overdrive books from our partner systems using your VPL library card) books says, “There is no higher life form than a librarian.” I’m one of those, too, mainly due to my love for libraries and what we do. Where else can you come to borrow free books/movies/games/any of the so many other collections we have without paying a dime*1? We’re a place to cool off on hot days or warm up on cold ones, and there’s no pressure to buy anything. Do you need access to the internet or even a whole computer? We’ve got you covered! And all of this isn’t even touching on our programming and staff expertise. There’s a reason that a TV aardvark*2 once sang that “Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.”  But while all this is magical, it’s also ever so mundane. Our dragons, unicorns, robots etc., are all contained within the pages of the books on our shelves*3. Some books contain even more magic than others, for described on their pages are libraries whose magic is far more than mundane. Dragons*4 stalk their halls, the books they store come to life and attempt to escape, and if you travel far enough and know the way, you can even use them to travel through time itself. If libraries have always seemed to be mystical places to you, these books will help reinforce that feeling.

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Pamela’s Picks: The Flavia de Luce Mysteries by Alan Bradley

 

 

I’ve always enjoyed series books from my earliest days since my parents read me the Little Grey Rabbit books by Alison Uttley. Then as I grew up I read other series on my own and enjoyed detective series like Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. Now I am enjoying a current mystery series – the Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley. Flavia is a young motherless girl growing up in 1950s England in a run down mansion with her father and two sisters. Her great interest is chemistry and she often uses this a way to solve the mysteries that she comes across. What I enjoy most about this series is that Flavia actually grows up and matures unlike Nancy Drew who solved thousands of mysteries all at the same age.The next book in the series,  The Golden Tresses Of The Dead, will be published in January 2019 and I can’t wait to to read it!

The Kingkiller Chronicle Series

The Name of the Wind book coverThis summer I decided to start reading The Kingkiller Chronicle series by Patrick Rothfuss after serendipitously coming across a five dollar copy of The Name of the Wind in a used book store.

This, my friends, was a mistake.

Not to say the book wasn’t good! It was fantastic! I blazed through it in a couple of days fueled only by sunshine and cider, and I then immediately grabbed the second one. It is also, however, one of those currently unfinished fantasy series that makes you reflect on your life choices, and wonder why you didn’t just wait for the last in the series to be released before starting. Therefore, as a good friend, I then made sure to pass it along to as many of my friends as possible so that we could all wait in agony together. During the course of recommending this series (and ruining several people’s lives when they found out about the as of yet unreleased third book), I then made my second discovery; every single person I’ve talked to loves this series but they also all HATE the protagonist, Kvothe. Continue reading