I made something of an event of reading The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home by Catherynne M. Valente. It’s not every day (or year) that I read the final book in the best series I’ve encountered in…probably a decade. I’ve heard it said that you’ll never love a book you meet as an adult with the same devotion that you loved beloved books met in childhood, or in the passionate teenage years. I find new books to love every year, but Fairyland is the only series that really does approach the same level as, say, the Song of the Lioness (mainstay of my childhood) or L. M. Montgomery en masse (because all her books feel kind of like one series).
So it was no small matter, reading the final book. I reread all four of the previous books (Circumnavigated, Fell Beneath, Soared Over, and Boy Who Lost) over the span of a couple weeks, and I read with a pencil in hand. I virtually never underline or highlight books I read, and on the rare occasion when I do, it’s virtually always nonfiction and some variety of philosophy (casting the philosophy net wide enough to include both Thoreau and Brene Brown). But I reread Fairyland and underlined sentences and paragraphs that were insightful, or deeply clever, or just gorgeous writing–and I probably averaged one to two underlinings per page, for all four books. They really are that good.
And then I approached book five, The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home. And it thoroughly lived up to all the books that came before it. Lots of underlining going on here too. It’s hard to talk about the plot without spoilers–so suffice to say that September and her friends are in a race for the crown of Fairyland, against all Fairyland’s past rulers. But it’s not a simple race. It’s a race hardly discernible from a quest, with an occasional foray into magical dueling, and no shortage of strange creatures and obstacles and mix-ups along the way. Continue reading “Book Review: The Girl Who Raced Fairyland”
So, a little history: I have only ever read one book in the Goosebumps series. You see, they were wildly popular when I was a kid, when I was right in the throes of the “I won’t be into something because it’s popular” stage. Also, I was pretty sure they’d be creepy and gross. So I vowed to never read an R. L. Stine book, and only broke it some 15 years later to read The Phantom of the Auditorium because, 
I picked up Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis because it had the most fascinating sounding premise: every time Nolan closes his eyes, even to blink, his consciousness flashes to another body in another world. Which makes life for him extremely challenging!
Reading down my list of Newbery Medal winners, I liked the sound of The Grey King by Susan Cooper. If I had realized it was part (Book Four) of her Dark Is Rising series, I might not have. However, by the time I realized that I had the audiobook sitting in my car and nothing else to listen to, so away we went. And it wasn’t terrible. But I wouldn’t have given it any awards either.
The world grew less funny last March with the death of Terry Pratchett, creator of Discworld, my go-to author during blue times, and the reigning king of my “funniest book read this year” category every year. Honestly, it makes me want to reach for a Pratchett book–which I did near the end of 2015, when I realized that Pratchett’s final Discworld book had somehow come out without my noticing! That was The Shepherd’s Crown, fifth book in the Tiffany Aching subseries.
Tales of the Marvelous 