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Booklist: The Magicians by Lev Grossman and Doors To Other Worlds

I recently discovered The Magicians while surfing Netflix. Yes, I know I’m late to the party. It’s based on a book of the same name by Lev Grossman, and I’m going to say that in this case the show is much better than the book. The Magicians tells the story of Quentin, a nerdy, WASPY, and very unhappy teenager obsessed with a series of fantasy novels about four children who escape the real world through portals to a magical world called Fillory where they go on quests and eventually become kings and queens. Quentin turns out to have magical powers and receives an invitation to attend a school of magic. Brakebills, which he travels to through a portal. Despite being located in upstate New York, it is always summer there. Unfortunately, eventually the students graduate, their idyll ends, and they have to function in the real world. Quentin and his friends find the means to visit Fillory through a portal, but they haven’t been invited or given a quest and they’re just as lost there as they are anywhere else. It’s like forcing your way into Narnia, a child’s world, after already getting jaded and aging out.

Reading The Magicians is kind of like reading Harry Potter if the characters were always drunk, the teachers weren’t involved in students’ lives, and there was no plot or character development except that Quentin isn’t unhappy all the time when he’s at Brakebills.  The characters are mostly unlikable and the story is mostly uninteresting. The characters that are most interesting to me in the television series are ciphers in the book. The action and character development that keep me going back to the show were probably the only reason I managed to get to the end of the book– I kept waiting for something to HAPPEN.

But what the book did do was make me think about the stories I know that do have portals and doors to other worlds (and the Neitherlands in The Magicians very much reminded me of the Wood between the Worlds in The Magician’s Nephew). Some of them may make you roll your eyes (I know there are radically differing opinions on the Chronicles of Narnia) but they are an essential part of many stories. You might not even realize how many portals there are.

Rudine Sims-Bishop writes

“Books are sometimes windows, offering visions of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”

If you are a reader, you know what she’s talking about in a figurative sense. Here is a short list of books (that do not include The Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter) that have literal windows, portals, and doors.

 

Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak.

In this strange and beautiful picture book, Ida’s baby sister is kidnapped by the goblins, and Ida climbs out the window backwards (accidentally) to search for her. This book inspired the movie Labyrinth, and you can spot it in the main character’s bedroom if you search for it.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire.

Portals and doors show up in a lot of Seanan McGuire’s books, but this spare, poetic novella is heartbreaking. What happens to the children who go through a doorway to another world when that world no longer wants them, or they can’t find their way back? It’s not a pretty thing. McGuire has written two other related titles, Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky, but while I also enjoyed them, Every Heart a Doorway is, in my opinion, the standout.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

There’s nothing officially magical about finding the key and opening the door to the Secret Garden except for the changes it makes in two prickly, miserable, spoiled, lonely children. There is plenty to find fault with in The Secret Garden: there are racist comments about Indians, and negative stereotypes about disability. But there is so much to love, as well, in the ugliness, anger, fear, grief, and finally, after the door is unlocked, the joy we see in Mary and Colin. That’s especially true if you have read the gratingly irritating Little Lord Fauntleroy(I have), in which Burnett spends most of her time describing the titular character’s physical and moral perfection and engaging personality as the cure for his grandfather’s awful behavior and treatment of others.

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

Vellitt Boe is a middle-aged professor of mathematics at Ulthar Women’s College in the Dreamlands who is sent to retrieve a gifted student who has run away with a man from the waking world. This novella is a response to a Lovecraft story called The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which I have not read (and didn’t need to in order to enjoy it)  but is apparently a polar opposite, with a male adventurer from the waking world adventuring through the Dreamlands. This is an inversion of the portal story, in that there is someone from the portal world who travels into ours as an adventurer, rather than the other way around.

Eric by Terry Pratchett

This loose take on the Faust story is not Terry Pratchett’s strongest book by far, but it does have entertaining moments. It also has multiple portals and, yes, a literal door. Rincewind is the Discworld’s worst  and unluckiest wizard, who by pure chance hasn’t yet met a fatal end (he is also one of my least favorite characters, but works out perfectly for this story). He is accompanied by the exceedingly loyal and carnivorous Luggage wherever he goes.  While passing though the Dungeon Dimensions, somehow he has been summoned by Eric, a thirteen year old demonologist, who insists that Rincewind grant him three very grandiose wishes, which Rincewind fulfills in his typical unlucky and nearly-fatal manner. In the meantime, a struggle for power is going on in the city of the demons between those who like doing things the old-fashioned way and the current king, who is trying to modernize.  For Rincewind and Eric, the only way back home is through the door to Hell, but they’ll have to work their way through the mutinous members of a newly-established bureaucracy and a number of people who are unhappy with them for things they said and did on their journey, but relieved to see them go.

 

Reader’s note: The quote from Rudine Sims Bishop originally appeared in “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” in Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, volume 6, no.3.

Posted on March 13, 2018 by , Reply

Book List: The Dangers of Reality Television

People have been fearmongering about the dangers of television for decades. Before television became common in every household, they warned of the effects of comic books and rock and roll. More recently, criticism has been aimed at violent video games, heavy metal, and the Internet. But always there in the middle, media critics have had something to say about television, and usually it’s not good.

But as a culture, we got used to television. Then the same old thing, year after year, got kind of boring, and the question for the networks and the cable channels became “what do we do now?” Because we could record the shows and skip past commercials, television shows had to be edgy, to provide something different that would catch our attention enough to really grab us for long enough to get us to sit through an entire show, every week. And what’s more interesting than peeking into someone else’s life?

Actual reality isn’t all that interesting to watch, and it’s also got some really disgusting moments. Who wants to stare at people watching TV, or clipping their toenails? No, it’s the drama of taking people out of their own reality and making them interact in a completely unreal, compressed, environment that is so fascinating. A show like Survivor is kind of like a nonlethal re-enactment of Lord of the Flies— you watch it knowing every episode will mean the end for one of the characters. Watching The Osbournes gives the viewer a window into a world that’s totally bizarre to the rest of us, but normal for the participants. You know it’s all edited to create a storyline that will fit into a half hour or an hour of television, but it gives you a thrill.  And it gives viewers a window that not only allows them see what’s going on, but to separate from it. It’s kind of like watching the gladiators in the ring at the Coliseum, from the stands. It’s a game, but it’s not.  And that’s what makes reality television the perfect setting for a horror story. Here are seven novels that take advantage of the worst aspects of reality television to create nightmares for their characters. As always, not every book on this list will be appropriate or appreciated by every person, so know your reader!

 

 A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay (pre-order)

This book messed with my head. It holds a funhouse mirror up to the creepiness of media manipulation. At the center of the story is Merry. As a child, she witnessed unexplainable and disturbing behaviors from her older sister that became the center of a reality television show, and resulted in family tragedy. The novel itself approaches the story from many angles. Merry as as a young adult, years later; Merry as a child living through the events that changed her life; and a mystery blogger dissecting the show in minute detail all get their say. This was sent to us for review, and is not even out yet, but it falls in the category of “unforgettable” for me.  For the purposes of this list, though,  it succeeds tremendously as a mind-bender that indicts the media, and especially reality television, for altering events, and lives, to fit a predetermined narrative.

 

 The Running Man by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)

The Running Man takes place in a dystopian future where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is so tremendous that the desperate are willing to put themselves in lethal, televised ‘games’ for others’ entertainment. It’s a fast-paced, gripping, terrifying, science fiction thriller. When Stephen King wrote The Running Man in 1982, I am sure he had no idea how prescient the book would be.  At that time 2025 must have seemed endlessly far into the future, and the first reality television show was years away from being created. And yet, as we approach that time, much of what he predicted has become reality– affordable health care still hasn’t made the scene, income inequality has become more and more severe, and people are still bloodthirsty, greedy, and selfish. King created a horrifying world that has become even more so as time marches us forward to his future, set in the year 2025. As a reader’s advisory note, there is also a movie, with Arnold Schwarznegger, and a great media tie-in to one of the lesser-known works of Stephen King.

 

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

A gritty, desolate atmosphere pervades Broken Monsters. While it’s framed as a serial killer novel, it is bizarre from the very beginning, with the discovery of the first body. As you might expect with either a serial killer novel or a horror novel, there’s a fair amount of gore, but it doesn’t overwhelm the story. The plot follows the detective on the case, her daughter, a homeless man, an Internet journalist trying to get his YouTube videos to go viral, and the serial killer. This is a memorable book for me not just because of the storytelling, character development, originality, and atmosphere of the story but also because of the effect the Internet journalist and his videos have on the events of the story. While Beukes is taking a larger look at how social media affects our reality, it’s the journalist’s actions during the climax of events that really struck home with me.

 

 The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

For those who have never heard of The Hunger Games, it’s a YA dystopian novel in which a totalitarian government randomly chooses two candidates from each of its districts to participate in a televised competition in which the participants all attempt to kill each other in order to be the last one standing.   The wealthy can slant the competition by providing favorite competitors with gifts. This is media used as not just an opiate, but as a weapon. It’s gripping, suspenseful, and manages to effectively integrate both friendship and love into a very hostile and dangerous situation that most people really do see as a game. It is the first in a series that also includes Catching Fire and Mockingjay. All of the books have been made into movies. In a move that is painfully ironic, the CW is making a reality show based on the book.

 

 Kitty’s House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn

This paranormal novel is the seventh title in the Kitty Norville series. Talk show radio host and werewolf Kitty Norville agrees to participate in an all-supernatural  reality television show, expecting it to be a typical reality show with a focus on the drama that emerges from forced interpersonal relationships. Anyone who has read Agatha Christie can probably guess what starts happening once the participants arrive in the remote mountain lodge where the show will be filmed. Fans of Kim Harrison may enjoy this one.
 Fragment by Warren Fahy

Scientists on a ship in the South Pacific who are participating in an “educational” reality television show, SeaLife, land on a remote island, only to be attacked by bizarre predators, with the cameras rolling. Is the footage real, or is it a hoax? The U.S.  government doesn’t wait to find out– it blockades the island to prevent the creatures from escaping, Botanist Nell Duckworth, one of the participants on the show, is on the team of scientists that is sent to investigate the giant, ferocious, arthropods that populate the island. Grounded in science, this frightening, fast-paced thriller has been compared to Jurassic Park.

Castaways by Brian Keene

Trigger warning for graphic rape, gore, and violence. There are a lot of horror readers who enjoy having these ratcheted up– and this novel does that. This is Keene’s tribute to the work of Richard Laymon. According to reviews I’ve read, it’s not Keene’s most original work, either in style or content, although it’s well-paced and reasonably suspenseful, so if you are looking for a good introduction to Keene’s work, you might want to try a different book. However, the plot certainly fits our theme: contestants on a Survivor-style reality show, Castaways, are trapped on the island by a storm. The island, originally thought to be deserted, is in fact populated with monstrous cannibals with horrifying plans for the women trapped on the island.

 

 

 

Posted on April 22, 2015 by , Reply

The Invisible Man @ your library

No, not Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. This one. I understand that it can get confusing. Certainly, the reviewers on Amazon seem confused.

Why yes, I do love this picture.

The Invisible Man is often overlooked, and he’s not only important culturally, but has morphed in some pretty cool ways (link). So I thought I’d shine a light on him, so to speak, and share some information, and some resources, about this unusual monster. Note, if you’re going to be making a homemade Halloween costume for an 8 year old boy who loves monsters, as I am, this is an easy one.

Every single one of the items pictured below is related in some way to the Invisible Man. Want to find out how?

                                    

What with Teen Read Week’s theme this year of “Seek the Unseen” it seems like the perfect time to give some visibility to a human monster often lost in the crowd: the Invisible Man. While the Invisible Man doesn’t have the iconic status of vampires, zombies, man-made creatures, and werewolves, he has, in his invisible way, insinuated himself into popular culture.

As with Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Invisible Man has literary origins, first appearing in a novella of the same name by the famed H.G. Wells. And as with Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man is a cautionary tale about the perils of pride, in taking science just a step too far in the direction of a nightmare. In the novel, Griffin, a scientist who has discovered the secret of invisibility, and tested it on himself, arrives in a small town hoping to complete experiments that will allow him to reverse the process. Obsessed and ambitious even at the beginning, he becomes more and more detached from humanity and willing to commit destructive and amoral acts, until finally he is killed and becomes visible again. The novella was made into a Universal horror film in the 1930s, and since then he has been represented in a number of different ways: as an increasingly psychopathic and violent monster(in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for instance); as a redemptive figure unrelated to the Wells novel except for possessing the power of invisibility(such as the one in the Sci-Fi channel series The Invisible Man); and as an entertaining member of ensemble-related monster movies such as Mad Monster Party and Hotel Transylvania. Queen even introduced him into the world of music with their song “The Invisible Man”. Yet, while he continues to resurface, it doesn’t seem to me that he is especially noticeable (par for the course, I suppose). Many of the tropes of invisibility that appear throughout popular culture (including Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility) can be attributed to The Invisible Man, though, including tween and teen novels (a few are pictured above)  and media (Out of Sight, Out of Mind is a favorite Buffy episode of mine)  I will take a moment to note that the original movie has really awesome special effects– here’s a link— so this is also an opportunity to pull out books on that topic!  As you prepare to seek the unknown for Teen Reed Week you might consider him, and ask teens to consider this: if you had the power of invisibility, what would you do? Where would you go? What kind of person would you want to be?

 

 

 

 

Posted on October 4, 2013 by , Reply
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