A Couple Nights At The Museum

Letting my brain have a little break from the holidays, I picked up a book I have had on my shelf FOREVER.  The book is From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg a Middle Grade book that has been on my radar for a really really long time.  I am very glad I finally got the opportunity to read it and I will tell all about it, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Claudia Kincade is feeling under appreciated and stuck so she decides to run away...well not run away so much as run to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  Knowing that it will take a lot of money to live in a museum in NYC,  Claudia recruits her little brother Jamie, who is famous for his ability to save money.  The two take their time planning their trip and when they think they have thought of everything, hop on a train.  As soon as they get there, Jamie starts fretting about money and Claudia appoints him treasurer with the final say so about all their purchases.  The two kids go to the museum (when this book was written it was still free to go in) and plan on how to stay after closing.  Their plan works and the two kids end up spending the night a bed that had been carved in the 16th century.  The children spend a couple days and nights in the museum, skulking around, reading everything and carefully eating to conserve their funds.  One day they come across a statue only called Angel and Claudia is instantly enamored.  They read an article about the popularity of the statue and the mystery that surrounds it.  It seems that the statue was bought at an auction for the unheard of low price of 225 from the eccentric Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  The mystery concerns the artist of the sculpture, it is rumored to be the great Michelangelo, but there is no hard proof.  Claudia decides that they cannot go home until they have uncovered the mystery.  After much studying, library time and frustration the children finally decide that only Mrs. Frankweiler will have the answers and go to visit her.  She gets the children to tell her their story in return for letting them find the proof of Michelangelo's artistry of the Angel.  Claudia, though forbidden from sharing the secret, finally feels as if she is ready to go home.  The children head home, and all is well.

This was a fun, quick little read that hit most of my sweet spots.  The biggest issue with it...well really the only real issue with it, is that it comes across as a bit dated as the events in the book could never ever happen now...but that aside it was pretty awesome.  Right of the bat I identified with Claudia and her yearning to be more, to experience something different, to be extraordinary...but still being to good of a girl to act out to, or be weird to get it.  I also understand her enjoyment of planning things, almost more then the actual experience she is planning.  Both of these sensations were ones I had a lot when I was her age, and it was nice to connect with her so quickly.  Since I am a bit obsessed with NYC lately, and having just visited many of the places in the book, a few months ago, I was pretty happy to read about them.  I want to meet Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and go through her files and read all about what seem to be her numerous adventures.  I want to live in a museum and have all the time in the world to read up on EVERYTHING in the museum and not worry about moving out of peoples way.  Mostly this book was awesome because it made me want to go do things.  It got me excited about a lot of stuff and that is always a good thing in a book.   Like I said it was a pretty quick, straight forward book.  I would recommend it to anybody who has every wanted to run away, live in a museum, or just looking for a nice quick read.  I give it 8 out of ten old paintings of dogs.  Happy Reading Everybody!

How did I not read this book growing up?  If you could "live" anywhere for a week or two where would it be? Who would you choose to come with you (I would pick my Mamma...which completely void the whole point of running away)?

New York, New York!

Hello all, I got the chance to spend an amazing weekend in New York City with a good chunk of my family and let me tell you it was AWESOME!  Seriously I am so moving there...now who wants to pay me $3500 a month to read...anybody?  There were a zillion amazing things about this city that never sleeps, but of course most of my favorite parts involved literary awesomeness.  We started that day with a little Starbucks and meandering through lower Manhattan.  I knew it was gonna be a good day when I spotted a massive Barnes and Nobles.  We started with the WTC memorial

I have to admit now that I am part of the fire and rescue community this takes on even more meaning then it did before.  I am fortunate that I did not lose anybody, but being there really brings it home.
After that a little Tribeca film and food fest action

How creepy cool are those human puppets?  It was fun to watch them interact with the crowd, they creeped out the adults, but the kids loved them.
The next day we started off at Bryant Park, it was absolutely beautiful, and the best part was on the other side was the New York Public Library!!!!!!!!!!!

This place is the one place I really wanted to go while we were here, and it was so awesome.  I named the lions Author and Chester (supposedly they are called Patience and Fortitude, but I like my names better).  I did not get to go inside, but that just means I'll have to go back :-)
Times Square, Carnegie Hall, and another Starbucks run got us to Central Park.

 After the Library, Central Park was the other must see on my list, mostly because of all the literary awesomeness that can be found inside.

Here we have a statue of the great bard William Shakespeare

The famous Alice in Wonderland Statue

The Tempest statue from the Shakespeare Garden

And last but not least, Belvedere Castle...but I call it Rapunzel Tower.
It was a fast and furious two days, but I got to see a lot and hit most of the places I wanted to see.  Soon enough I will do a post on all of the books I love that are set in New York and be little miss know it all on the spots I've been too.  Hopefully you have enjoyed my frantic rush through New York and will share some of your own literary destinations.  Happy Reading Everybody!

The Holy Feast Of I Swear Daddy I Will Kiss The Next Man Who Walks In The Door

We all know that I usually have multiple books going at the same time, this week two of them have been Deadline and Discount Armageddon two very different books, but I noticed they seemed very similar in style.  Ha then I realized they are by the same author Seanan McGuire and her pen name Mira Grant, apparently I like her writing :-) Discount Armageddon was a really fun read, I enjoyed it thoroughly and laughed out loud at several parts.  It is in the dreaded first person narrative, but not a whole lot of angst so it worked. As always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

Verity Price is the middle daughter in the infamous Price family...well infamous if you run in cryptid circles.  What is a cryptid?  I'm glad you asked, because it is crucial to the story.  Cryptids are what we humans would consider creatures from fantasy, everything from the bogeyman to the tooth fairy.  There are also less well known creatures such as the religious Aeslin mice that have been known to make a Holy Feast out of just about anything.  Anyways the sheer variety of cryptids of every shape and size keep our intrepid heroine busy.  Verity is part of group/family that does there best to protect the balance of cryptids/humans.  She protects humans from the nastier cryptids who prey on them, and also protects the more vulnerable of the harmless cryptids from discovery and harm.  She also helps protect them from the Covenant, an organization that shows no mercy when it comes to cryptids, pretty much using the line of thinking that no cryptid is a good cryptid.  Her family is considered traitors for not only leaving the Covenant when they discovered that most cryptids were not only sentient, but harmless as well; but for also intermarrying with the occasional
incubus. Verity lives in New York City with her own little colony of Aeslin mice, keeping the humor factor at a maximum.  She is trying to become a professional ball room dancer and in between keeps an eye on the resident cryptid population.  To help her attempts at keeping the cryptid balance, she works as a waitress and Dave's Fish and Strips.  Yep our girl works at a strip joint, but not just any strip joint, a cryptid strip joint.  The place is owned by Dave the bogeyman and he employs mostly cryptids such as Candy the dragon princess who is impervious to fire, Carol the lesser gorgon who has to wear a wig so her snakes don't bite customers and Ryan a smoking hot Tanuki who can become quit animalistic when the need arises.  Going about her business of Tangoing, waitressing, and patrolling Verity runs into Dominic De Luca a Covenant member who has been sent to the New York area to see if they need to do a purge.  After a bit of a fight Verity escapes to inform her family of his very unwelcome presence in her city.  Later at a ballroom competition she runs into Dominic again, this time he asks her if she has been helping cryptids leave, as he has noticed a marked drop in the population. Verity is confused as she attributed the disappearances to Dominic's Covenant cleansing.  Together, along with Verity's psychic cuckoo of a cousin discover a sleeping dragon.  This is exciting and a wee bit terrifying as dragons were thought to be extinct, long ago exterminated by the Covenant.  Verity uses her contacts in the cryptid community to find out more information. Dominic tags along, shocked to find out that most cryptids are not only sentient, but posses personalities, feelings, and other traits only attributed to humans.  Apparently in their quest to exterminate all non-humans the Covenant keeps up a pretty hard line of propaganda dwelling only on the potential cryptid danger to humans.  After a narrow escape from a new type of lizard man monster that neither of the two had seen before, Verity and Dominic get it on.  Afterwords they get into a huge argument, both of them realizing they will never agree on the way cryptid/human interactions should be dealt with.  Verity tells Candy, the dragon princess about the

sleeping dragon, causing Verity to be "invited" to the Nest. There Verity discovers the dragon princesses are actually the female of the dragon species, evolved and adapted to fit in with humans.  The supposedly extinct dragons were only the male of the species.  The females have been able to reproduce and keep at least the female side of the species alive by parthenogenesis, but they can't keep it up forever.  They eventually figure out that it is all unmarried females disappearing and that a snake cult is trying to wake and control the dragon through virgin sacrifices (note that this is not the way to wake a dragon up, but silly stupid humans don't know that).  When one of the cryptid girls that Verity and Dominic had talked to goes missing Verity takes to the sewers to find her.  Unfortunately the girl is dead, and Verity herself makes a very narrow escape.  She runs into Dominic who takes the death of the cryptid girl to heart, realizing that he cannot just blindly kill all cryptids he offers to go get the body while Verity goes to work to warn the other girls.  At the club Verity, Candy and Istas a Waheela get ambushed by the lizard men.  Candy gets away but Istas and Verity are taken to become virgin sacra fices to the sleeping dragon.  After a bloody battle won with the help of Dominic and Sarah (Verity's cousin) who had been summoned by Candy the dragon wakes up.  He and Candy have a moment and the dragon turns out to be very nice.  Dominic and the dragon make a deal that as long as they leave each other alone, one will not hunt the other.  Dominic agrees to keep Verity's presence in New York a secret and not hunt harmless cryptids.  Verity goes back to dancing, waitressing and cryptid keeping and the start of a new series is born.

I really enjoyed this book, it was funny, the pacing was good, the characters were all well written, just a good book overall.  Verity is how you write a kick-ass girl.  I know sometimes I complain about the trope of a kick-ass girl, but that is because that seems to be all there is to them.  With Verity it works for a couple of reasons a) She was raised to be a kick-ass girl, so she has a reason to be, it's what keeps her alive. b) She is not a perfect kick-ass girl, she has her believable weaknesses, the biggest being that sometimes she believes to much in her own kick-assness and forgets that other people/cryptids are capable of kicking her ass. c) There is a lot more to her then just her kick-assness. I like how this is written in a kind of classic, almost comic book style, there is fighting, supernatural creatures, and even the occasional skimpy clothing...ok there is a lot of skimpy clothing, but even that serves a purpose.  I think one of my favorite things in the whole book (besides the Aeslin mice), which I have noticed in the authors other books as well is that there is a good bit of actual science in the story.  Now a lot of books would either skip this part, or get really bogged

down in the details, but Ms. McGuire manages to stuff a lot of it in without once slowing down the pace of the book.  I also liked how she used science to point out some of the problems with the hard line Covenant thinking.  In science what makes a gorilla a protected animal, but a Sasquatch a cryptid in need of extermination?  A Madhura who for all intents and purposes is a sweet loving human who just happens to be able to slow decay and bleed sweet smelling blood needs to be killed, but a homicidal human is to be protected?  I also like how Dominic does not have an instant change of heart...not even after he sleeps with Verity.  His change is gradual and comes about as he learns about real life away from the sheltered, propaganda ridden walls of the Covenant.  He also does not come all the way around to Verity's way of thinking, just becomes a bit more tolerant of it, also he call her insufferable woman a lot, which for some reason reminds me of Pride and Prejudice, which is always a good thing. The only things I didn't like are super nit picky.  I wanted to see more of Verity's dancing, she talks about it a lot, but we only really get to see her do it twice.  I want to know more about Verity's family, they seem fascinating, but I think that we will get more of that in later books.  I am definitely looking forward to reading the next books in the series!
Why do tropes sometimes work and sometimes suck patootie?  What cryptid most intrigues you?  What do you think defines a cryptid versus "normal" nature?  Do you sometimes just love a kick-ass book?  Do you think that I really like to type kick-ass?

Fairies In The Big Apple

WoooHoooo, found a new favorite book! I love that feeling when you start a book and just know you are going to be good friends, here let me introduce you.  Readers this is The Good Fairies of New York and it is AWESOME!!!  This book has it all traveling, romance, tragedy, epic battles, forces of good and evil, music, magic spells, curses, and of course FAIRIES!

My normal (not so) quick summary is gonna be a little bit different this time because it is not a traditionally linear book, it jumps around in little vignettes that are all tied together by one big storyline, but I will do my best.  The main characters in this book are Heather and Morag, two Scottish fairy friends who want nothing more than to start a radical punk fairy band.  They are wee lasses with big attitudes and a penchant for getting into trouble.  The trouble starts when they are run out of Scotland for cutting up a piece of a great clan banner and end up in New York City.  The drunk fairies get separated from their group and end up in the apartment of Dinnie, an overweight, struggling violinist who is about as crass as they come.  The fairies end up in a fight and Morag moves in across the street with Kerry, the beautiful, Botticelli obsessed, New York Dolls playing, flower child.  Kerry has Crohn's disease, which forces her to wear a colostomy bag,

scaring away potential suitors.  Heather discovers that the violin Dinnie is playing so horribly is actually a long lost relic of her clan and it's return would allow Heather to return to Scotland in good graces.  Heather makes a deal with Dinnie, she will help him win the love of Kerry and he will give her the violin, the deal is void if he does not do everything she says, Dinnie agrees.  Morag also discovers the violin and also makes a deal with Dinnie, if she makes Kerry fall in love with him, he will give Morag the violin. While Heather is busy making Dinnie presentable, Morag is helping Kerry finish her ancient Celtic flower alphabet that features a rare triple bloomed Welsh Poppy which is passed around to almost every character in the book.  Meanwhile a whole bunch of other stuff is happening.  The group that Heather and Morag came to New York with includes the children of the current English fairy king, who are being sought after to depose their father ever since he became a tyrant who forces fairies to work in factories (it makes sense in the book I promise).  The leader of the fairy evolution in England falls in love with the step-daughter of the King.  The king sends mercenaries to New York to retrieve his children.  A homeless woman who thinks she is the a Greek warlord alternately wreaks havoc with the fairies plans and helps them overcome the mercenaries. Meanwhile, Heather and Morag's shenanigans (I love that word) have inadvertently gotten them in trouble with the different bands of fairies that live in New York (more specifically Chinese, Italian, and Ghanaian).  Eventually all of the misunderstandings are worked out and they band together to fight of the mercenaries.  Kerry and Dinnie struggle to find some common ground, each fairy trying to win the violin.  Eventually Kerry gets very sick and it is Dinnie who gets her to the hospital and stays with her.  In the end, everybody gets what they want/need and all if forgiven until the next disaster.
Like I said the plot line is kind of all over the place, but that just adds to the charm of this book.  There is so many many many things that just make me so happy about this book, so I'm gonna just jump right in and
spew my happiness all over the place.  My main love is Heather and Morag, they are best friends and worst enemies and remind me of so many great friendships that I have had with other girls/women.  This is actually rare in books, most of the time a love story, or even a friendship that is central is between a guy and a girl, always the male/female dynamic, this female friendship just makes me smile.  I love that their is plenty of competition between the girls, but it is over things like talent and ability and not some guy that is central to their conflicts.  I love the complete indifference to human social standards the fairies have, waltzing in and pretty much doing what they please in these humans lives.  I also appreciate how they come to appreciate their humans.  I love the contrast between the fairies of all the different countries, the Scottish fairies are dreamy and just want to drink whisky and play music, the Irish fairies are fierce and don't take nothing from nobody, the English fairies are repressed and on the verge of a revolution, and the New York fairies are tough, live day to day types. I also love how they all come together in the end to fight for the common good. I love how music is a common theme for everybody, human and fairy alike.  I like how different music is introduced, everything from traditional reels and jigs played on a penny whistle to punk rock being played on the violin and guitar.  I love how the heads off all three of the greatest Scottish fairy clans are strong women fairies.  I love how human pain and suffering is not hidden and how appalled by the ignorant human behavior the fairies are.  But mostly I love that this book exists, I just love it!

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To sum up my summing up, I would say this book is a wild ride that takes you everywhere.  It is quick paced and jumpy and funny and sweet and all over the place in a good way.  It is however a book intended for adults, there is a LOT of swearing, a LOT a LOT of drinking, drug use, sex, and death.  If you have delicate sensibilities I would skip this one.  However if you don't mind a bit of crassness (all of which is necessary for the story) and you love fairies, urban fantasy, humor, or a good time then get thee to the bookstore and geteth this book!  I give it a 9 out of 10 crimson and blue dyed locks of golden hair.
What do you think of alternative books like this?  Do you think it's ok to use stereotypes to get a point across?  Is it nice to sometimes read about love between flawed people or do you prefer the fantasy escapist version instead (both are valid)?  Did this rambling make any sense whatsoever?