The Sassy Librarian: fiction

fiction

Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts

I already think highly of Maggie Stiefvater who has a wonderful writing style I fell in love with when I read her novel, Shiver, (reviewed earlier this year), so when I was looking for more fun summer reading, I decided to go to authors I can depend on. I had two of her books in my reading pile, Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception and Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie, but for some reason I had forgotten about them. In my annual August cleanout, I thankfully uncovered their presence and sat down to see if I was going to like them. I don't know why I doubted Maggie - I loved them, and in fact read both in about 7 hours, savoring every word. This author nails romance - real, honest love - and shows how love can not only look different than what you expect, but that true love causes both people to grow as individuals, becoming better people in the process. Just as with Shiver, Stiefvater's prose can be lyrical at times and particularly in these two novels, her music background comes to the forefront, adding a wonderful dimension.

But let's get down to brass tacks re: the plot. Here's how the publisher describes Lament:

Sixteen-year-old Deirdre Monaghan is a painfully shy but prodigiously gifted musician. She's about to find out she's also a cloverhand—one who can see faeries. Deirdre finds herself infatuated with a mysterious boy who enters her ordinary suburban life, seemingly out of thin air. Trouble is, the enigmatic and gorgeous Luke turns out to be a gallowglass—a soulless faerie assassin. An equally hunky—and equally dangerous—dark faerie soldier named Aodhan is also stalking Deirdre. Sworn enemies, Luke and Aodhan each have a deadly assignment from the Faerie Queen. Namely, kill Deirdre before her music captures the attention of the Fae and threatens the Queen's sovereignty. Caught in the crossfire with Deirdre is James, her wisecracking but loyal best friend. Deirdre had been wishing her life weren't so dull, but getting trapped in the middle of a centuries-old faerie war isn't exactly what she had in mind . . .

Deirdre reminds me of a lot of teens I've known, incredibly talented but with overbearing parents attempting to run their lives. Luckily Deirdre has James, her bagpiping best friend (she's a harpist), but she knows that her anxiety and worry causes her to miss a lot in life. At a music competition, Luke appears from seemingly nowhere, and when he encourages her to explore her potential and not play if safe she does just that with wonderful results. But she is a cloverhand, and Luke realizes that he's fallen in love with her, quashing his ability to murder her on behalf of the fairy queen. He must help her realize the power that has been latent within her while also protecting her from the fairies attracted to her and her music.

All characters are well-drawn and I'm beginning to think no one does paranormal romance quite like Maggie Stiefvater (that's right, Stephenie Meyer, you heard me - I still heart Twilight, and I really wish you didn't sell the film rights). That breathless physical contact between two people in love discovering true passion, purrrrr, she manages to get your heart thumping! The music portion of the book, so often an afterthought for many writers as a way of making their character seem well-rounded, is the central focus here and Stiefvater has the chops to add serious depth. For those of you who enjoy reading her blog as I do, you know that she has an incredibly strong musical and artistic background and is actually a harpist. The page on her website devoted to Lament actually has several original songs by her that you can listen to, and I'd strongly recommend it as it helps set the tone of the book.

The "sequel" to Lament is Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie which actually focuses on James. He and Deirdre are at Thornking-Ash School of Music, a boarding school that caters to the incredibly talented (and, in turns out, the musicians most likely to draw faerie attention). I was so glad when I realized that this story would be told from James' point of view - he was a smart, mouthy, loving character in the first book that I wanted to get to know better and that part of me was very satisfied by this novel. My hat is definitely off to Stiefvater in the characterization department - the two books are totally different in feel as the author truly inhabits her characters. Here's the publisher teaser:

James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And it has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and then feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. James has plenty of reasons to fear the faeries, but as he and Nuala collaborate on an achingly beautiful musical composition, James finds his feelings towards Nuala deepening. But the rest of the fairies are not as harmless. As Halloween—the day of the dead—draws near, James will have to battle the Faerie Queen and the horned king of the dead to save Nuala's life and his soul.

Nuala is the second main character of the book and she can certainly hold her own with the bundle of personality that is James. In alternating chapters, their story unfolds as Nuala is attracted to James' music and he, unlike any other mark she has known, rejects her offer of divine inspiration as he has more than enough acquaintance with the trouble fairies can bring to one's life. The more time she spends with him, the more she falls for him, and he for her when he realizes what a bleak and doomed life she has. Nuala must enter the Halloween bonfire every sixteen years, burning herself in order to be reborn from the ashes, but with no memory of her former lives except the names she has born. She is an outcast among the other faeries and an easy victim of their cruelty as they consider her, a leanan sidhe, too contaminated by the humans with whom she must associate in order to survive.

Deirdre is a minor character in this novel, although central to the plot, and we see her only through James and Nuala's eyes and the occasional unsent text to James. If there is any criticism of the book, it's that Deirdre feels a little flat to me, but I could imagine that being from the differing perspectives and the fact that she is devastated by the loss of Luke from her life. Her grief causes her to be both troubled and selfish, but her absence from James' life turns out to have benefits for him as he begins to heal from his love for her and find his true destiny.

Both books are must-reads for anyone interested in fairy lore, and I put Maggie Stiefvater completely parallel with my other favorite fairy author, Melissa Marr (they are high-fiving each other on tandem clouds) in their commitment to Gaelic folklore and the great combination of sexy menace they give their fairy characters. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Linger, the sequel to Shiver, and enjoy this author's unbelievable talent one more time.

I'm going to have to split my blog entries of this preconference into more than a few sections because, for one measly afternoon, the organizers packed in two days worth of information!

I sweltered through the three block walk from the Convention Center to the Embassy Suites hotel ("walking distance of Convention Center" really needs to be revised in 90 degree DC weather) arriving with a rather healthy glow. Two bottles of water and some trail mix later, I settled into a comfy chair outside the ballroom to spread my conference program and exhibit hall in order to map out my swag attack (more on this philosophy in a different entry). I was REALLY early so I got to see the committee members, headed by the ebullient Wendy Stephens from Buckthorn High School in Alabama bustle around reading everything in preparation for their many guest speakers and panelists.

The agenda itself was impressive but no more so that the quality of presenter that followed. I'm going to focus for now on the first segment which was what I like to call the "academic" portion, namely two excellent speakers focusing on the research and data we have surrounding the changing landscape of the adolescent reader and the implications this knowledge has for our targeting them for recreational reading promotion.

Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age

Dr. Eliza Dresang from the University of Washington, Seattle was the first up to speak about her theories of Radical Change, aptly explained in her 1999 book Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age. It's a credit to the quality of her theories in this book that, despite resource types and the information age evolving exponentially since its publication, her theories hold up extremely well and are as applicable as when this book originally debuted.

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

She highlighted three major digital age principles for Radical Change, namely the presence of interactivity (dynamic, nonlinear, non-sequential learning behavior and resources), connectivity (construction of social worlds, communities, and the expanded self-perception that comes from these associations), and finally access (which breaks the long-standing information barriers and opens up worlds to users). No librarian in the room was about to argue the existence of these three factors in the lives of the kids we serve, and I appreciated that she cited the technological futurists attempting to help us understand where our world was evolving, like Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame) and Henry Jenkins (professor at MIT), author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.

Dr. Dresang made a point of bringing in the significance of recent research to enhance our understanding of the far-reaching impact of her theories and how they affect our vision of "library resources". Teens are reading (duh, we knew that, didn't we?) and their brains are changing through their regular interaction with technology, which is literally shaping the areas of the brain accessed during this type of activity. They prefer "digitally designed" resources and also prefer situations that allow for the three conditions listed above - interactivity, connectivity, and access. This sounds a lot like the "what should our classrooms and teaching look like?" discussions I've had with teachers and administrators.

Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn

Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning

iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind

But she also cautions us by indicating the research which shows that teens preferences do not equate to them possessing the skills to process and dominate these technologies that they prefer. Gary Smalls, a University of California scientist has conducted brain research showing the negative effects of brain function of teens using technology and multitasking their way out of deeper understanding, much of which is summarized in his book, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Other scholars, some critical of the larger benefit to be had by adolescent use of technology, include Mark Prensky, author of Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning, Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn by Larry Rosen, and Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. Dr. Dresang indicates that these authors come from various academic disciplines and, while she may be occasionally skeptical of their approach at times, they all provide valuable and important arguments for our critical understanding of teen use of technology. Collectively it seems all researchers agree that children need to be taught to use technology critically and wisely, exploiting the best it has to offer while also understanding the weaknesses it possess to true personal development.

Moral of the story? Teens are positive about technology and are attracted to the ways in which it satisfies their developmental need to develop an individualized persona while collaborating and sharing in various communities, but they lack they technology and literacy skills to fully wring the best our of information they find. Luckily for them, they have librarians to help, eh?

Following Dr. Dresang was the erudite and informative Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research for the Pew Internet & American Life Project. She blew the crowd away with the data she presented from a few recently published studies - "Teens and Mobile Phones" and "Social Media and Young Adults" - both of which she combined to give us a comprehensive picture which she called "Teens, the Internet and Communication Technology". The reason that this data is so vital is that the Pew Foundation has been following these trends for long enough that they were able to take the collected data and compare it to 2004 data, giving us a snapshot of the various trends society has experienced over the last several years. In technology years (which are kind of like dog years), these time span is equivalent to a century and the results are fascinating to say the least.

I liked Kristen's approach, namely that the researchers wanted to take the commonly held myths about teens - all teens use the internet, every teen has a cell phone and texts all day long, teens have been supplanted by adults on social networks, teens love Twitter, and teens are active creators of content online - and really peel back the surface to see what lay underneath.

What Pew discovered (see the great slides embedded above from Kristen's presentation) was interesting. People who make sweeping generalizations about adolescent technology use are apt to forget the socioeconomic factors that make up the digital divide. While I was impressed with how many households now have access to the internet, I was reminded (and appalled) at the number of homes still laboring under dial up connections (10% of reporting households). When combined with the number of households with no computer (8%) and families with a computer but no internet connection (4%) that's a whopping 22% of American households with no access to the rich 2.0 environment preferred by teens. The trend that the Pew Foundation has conjectured is that their data shows teens from homes with low income levels use their cell phones for primary access to the internet, causing the researchers to predict that the major trend for future years will be that "all internet access for teens will be from mobile internet devices". Take a look at the data. I believe her!