Book Review - Cast in Shadow

Title: Cast in Shadow
Author: Michelle Sagara
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Luna; Original edition (August 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0373802366
ISBN-13: 978-0373802364
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches

A story where words are not only mightier than the sword, but they are also capable of blowing up a building.

At the onset of puberty, Elianne discovers words like tattoos forming on her arms and legs. Then all hell breaks loose - children are being murdered and found with these same marks in the fief of Nightshade - her home - a rough, lawless, wrong-side-of-the-river place. Seven years after she escaped from Nightshade and found a home in the grand city of Elantra, Elianne, now called Kaylin Neya, finds that history is repeating itself.

This fantasy story, the first in the Chronicles of Elantra series, takes place in a beautifully described world with strange races and many problems. Kaylin is a Hawk, one of the three branches of service in the Halls of Law, in which she is part of the police force for the city. She is sent back into the heart of Nightshade to investigate the resurgence of these murders with former friend and current enemy, Severn. With the help of a Dragon lord and the Lord of Nightshade (a Barrani, an immortal, elf-like race, who are as arrogant and cold as they are beautiful), Kaylin must learn about the ancient language that makes up the marks on her body and the powers they give her in order to fight the evil that's searching for her.

While much of this story is made up of the fantastic, at its heart is the trauma of Kaylin's youth and how she struggles to overcome it. She is forced to face the past before she can move on to the present concerns. This story envelops the reader in its fantasy world, but what I found most compelling is Sagara's depiction of words and names and the power they can hold. In this place that power is tangible; it can both save a life and bring down walls (both figuratively and literally). Recommended.

The New Library World

A bar in the salon? Outdoor reading gardens? Discussions by celebrity chefs? That's my kind of library!

My Own Private Hell

I got five books in the mail today from Amazon, and I have no time to read them!


*Sob!*

Welcome Library Friends!

As some of my old readers know, I'm currently in grad school studying Library Science. For the next few months, you will see a lot more posts on books and school stuff - I promise, it will be far more interesting than my posts on the garden and the food I ate on vacation.

To my Readers' Advisory class: Hi! I'm Rachel - welcome to my little corner of cyberspace. It's not much, but it's mine. I started this blog when I got into grad school, which wasn't too long ago (this is only my second semester). Anyway, I hope my writing doesn't bore you!

Tonight in class Andrea asked a few people about books that affected them, that made an impact or had something about it that stuck with them. I started to think about where my love of reading began, and I've come up with a three-part conclusion.

1) When I was little, my mom used to take me to the library all the time and I would come home with stacks of books half as tall as I was, and we would read them together. And when I was old enough, I participated in our library's Book It! program and got things like a DQ cone or Pizza Hut pizza for reading books. I loved those books, but the bribes didn't hurt either.

2) When I was in elementary school, I read the Chronicles of Narnia. I got sooo involved in those books. It was the first time a book made me cry and it certainly got my imagination moving.

3) Finally, in high school, my mom got me a book series: The Mark of the Lion trilogy by Francine Rivers. It takes place in Jerusalem, Rome, and Germania around 70AD. The first two books follow the story of a Jewish-Christian slave girl and her Roman masters. The third book follows a gladiator and his journey back home after he wins his freedom in the arena.

I got excited about reading as a kid, and I still read occasionally until my teen years, but I was only a 'reader' not a 'reader.' But I've basically had a book glued to my hand since I read the Rivers' books. I was hooked, no turning back.

What book got you hooked?

Season's Greetings

I don't know if I've mentioned this before on my blog, but anyone who knows me knows that I hate winter. Scratch that - I LOATHE winter. I actually start getting bummed in August, while it's still eleventy-eight degrees and the humidity is so thick that what hair isn't sticking to your neck is frizzed out in a giant puff ball, because August means that summer is almost over, fall is about to start, and fall is a prelude to winter. Yes, I have issues.

But, for whatever reason, I get sucked into the holiday spirit of the months between October and December and get super excited about Christmas and decorating for Christmas and shopping for Christmas and eventually actually celebrating Christmas. (That being said, I refuse to leave the house on Black Friday - of all the ways to leave this earth, trampled by crazed shoppers trying to get a talking Elmo doll is not the way I'd like to go. Poor Walmart guy, that was so sad.)

Anyway, today we hung our Christmas lights outside and I think it may have been the best Christmas-lights-hanging I've ever experienced. Probably because it was about 65 degrees out there this afternoon. There is something to be said for nailing the lights onto the porch rail when your fingers AREN'T frozen.

The Christmas lights were my third step into the holiday season. First step: hot chocolate. You can claim hot chocolate for any cold weather time, so it's an acceptable fall beverage. But seriously, hot chocolate belongs to Christmas. Next was an early viewing of a Christmas movie last week. While You Were Sleeping is one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies (even if it's not technically a Christmas movie, but kind of is), and I will watch it a good dozen times between now and the Big Day. We've already played it twice (somehow my mom and I both managed to sleep through the entire thing the first time around). And finally, today we got the Christmas lights up. That is normally a post-Thanksgiving activity, but when you have such nice weather in November, you have to take advantage of the opportunity - I mean, this is Indiana. We could have 10 feet of snow the weekend after Turkey Day.

I will try to hold out on the Christmas music until after Thanksgiving - you have to save something for the real season, right? And then the indoor tree has to go up (I love the twinkle lights in the living room when it's dark in the house; such a happy, warm glow), but that will go after Turkey Day, too. And then Merry Christmas and Happy New Year followed by 3 months of frozen-over H-E-double-hockey-sticks (only broken up by the most hockey-stickish of holidays: Valentine's Day. Bleck, blarg, barf.).

So I'll enjoy my twinkle lights as long as I can. But instead of sugar plums, I'll be dreaming of tropical beaches and palm fronds dancing in my head (just the palm fronds will be dancing, not the beaches).

Information Take-Out

The internet is chock-full of information. You can find everything under the sun: online diaries, satellite maps, the latest sports scores, celebrity mug shots, patent information, IRS forms, and oh-so-much more. Not only can you get information about any subject, you can also make it so you don't have to hunt through lots of other information to find what interests you. No, you can go to a site like Bloglines or use tools like Google Alerts to get the information you want gathered in one place and even delivered to your email or mobile device. No hunting necessary - set it up once and you're done!

So for the last few days I've been taking advantage of this information take-out and delivery service and set myself up with a few RSS feeds through Bloglines relating to my new academic field: Library Science. I got a lot of information about a lot of different things regarding libraries, librarians, and library technology. Some of it was interesting (see posts below about two such articles), some over my head, some dull, and some dead (as in dead links). Still, it was nice to get all of this information sent to me. I'm still new to this library stuff (ironically, that was the name of one of the feeds I followed: Library Stuff), so getting constant updates on current and topical information has helped me learn a lot.

Gotta love technology!

Simmer Down

There's a story hitting the internet (among other media, of course) about a librarian in Cheshire, CT defending the inclusion of a book in their collection. This particular book is drawing fire from the area because of its subject matter - it's a true crime book about a triple murder that occurred in Cheshire. The librarian added two copies of the book to the collection because patrons were requesting it, but that lit a fire under some community members who think that book should never have been printed, let alone have a place in the library.

I'm not going to comment one way or another about this story - about whether or not the librarian should have added this book to the collection or whether or not the book should be removed - primarily because there was a gag order on the case, so I don't know about the legality involved in printing the book in the first place. But what struck me more than anything about this article were the comments added after the article ended. A large number of the commenters are downright nasty in their words. They don't counter their arguments with rational reasoning; instead, many use name calling and threatening language to get their point across. One person wrote, "To all the jerks defending their rights to read this book, I hope something as horrific as this ever[sic] happens to you or someone you know!" Another warned readers to be careful that they don't spill on the book or drop it in the toilet before returning it to the library, in a tone that blatantly meant the contrary. A person on the side of the library wrote, "If you want to live in a society where the government limits your freedom by denying you choices, then I suggest you move to Iran or North Korea. Otherwise, stay away from the library and mind your own business."

I read things like this and it makes me twitchy. It's the same reason why I try to stay away from political debates. People fight dirty. They let their emotions, their anger, their determination to make their side be heard override their ability to state their opinion in a calm and reasoned matter. The people who want the book off the shelves are allowed to be upset. And the people who agree with the library's decision to put the book on the shelves have the right to want to keep it there. But name calling and nastiness aren't going to convince someone to join your side. Rather, you should just simmer down and discuss this like grownups.

The Traveling Librarian?

I have always longed to travel, and I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I can incorporate travel into my career - either by going from place to place with my home base in the US or moving away to a job in another country. When I decided that I wanted to become a librarian, I figured my travel opportunities would rely strictly on vacations, conferences, and volunteering.

So when I came across this article from the Library Journal, I got a tingle of that old wanderlust. The title of the article is Going International! and was written by a librarian who had worked internationally for 11 years. One thing that really impressed me about this article was that it was more than a simple "You should be an international librarian; it's great!" article - the kind that you read with high hopes but come away with no useful information. This article had it all: personal stories, suggestions for what type of person should go, the areas of librarianship hiring internationally, where to look for jobs, contract suggestions, what you should consider if you have a family or pets traveling with you, and the knowledge that you're hearing from someone who has first-hand experience with all of these issues and knows what they're talking about. To top it off, the article, which was considerable in length, was followed by a list of resources as long as the article itself.

One thing I really liked in the article is that she addressed the idea of fear as a motive keeping people from pursuing international work - fear of travel in hostile times, fear of living in hostile environments, and fear of the unknown. One thing that holds me back is fear of change - if I take this big step, will it have been the right decision? What if I take a giant leap - move far away, leave everything behind - and it was a great big mistake? But if you let that fear affect your decisions, you'll miss out on a lot of fantastic opportunities, like working as a librarian in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the places the author worked.

The moral of this story? If you're interested in international librarianship (as a career or as a volunteer) this is a great article. And don't let fear keep you from doing something amazing.

Remodel!

No, your eyes do not deceive you, nor are you lost. My blog just got remodeled!

In honor of the new look, here's a little poem:

Books to the ceiling
Books to the sky
My pile of books is a mile high
How I love them
How I need them
I'll grow a long beard by the time I read them
-Arnold Lobel

Everything but the beard bit is true! (I hope!)

Small Towns

I've been enamored of small towns since I first started watching Gilmore Girls (fabulous show, you should check it out. Lauren Graham should have won an Emmy for it). I wanted to live in my own Stars Hollow, even with the locals who know all your business. I'll take a Taylor Dosie or Human Kirk (as opposed to Cat Kirk) any day to have the ambiance and charm and color of a beautiful little community.

However, I feared that cool small towns like that only existed in TV and movies (Stars Hollow is now Eastwick, and it gives me warm fuzzies to see that beautiful set again). But in a new article by Budget Travel, apparently cool small towns really do exist! I'd take just about any town from this list, but my heart is now set on Cayucos, California, population 3000.