The Questioning Librarian

This morning I finished reading Susan Cooper's excellent Over Sea, Under Stone , the first in her The Dark is Rising sequence. It was in many ways delightfully British, from characters who frequently declared something to be "smashing" to the incorporation of some of the Arthurian legends into the work. This sparked me thinking a bit more about Britain's national mythos, something that J.R.R. Tolkien also spent quite a bit of time thinking about. While many of us would assume that the stories of King Arthur are Britain's national mythology, or might even think for a bit on the tale of Beowulf and Grendel, Tolkien did not consider these uniquely British-- certainly they do not have the same close association with England that the Greek gods have with ancient Greece or that Odin and Thor, or the legends of Sigurd, have with Germany. The tale of Beowulf and his triumph over Grendel comes from continental Europe, of course, and is thus not uniquely British. Tolki...

There is beauty in desolation. There is, for me, a beauty in leafless trees, in cold, wind-swept landscapes, in the gathering of crows calling out into the evening air. Some people dislike the barrenness that comes at the ending of fall, but I take joy in the transition, in seeing the leaves blown across fields, the bare limbs reaching up into the sky like beseeching hands. It is a feeling that is hard to explain. While others see ugliness, the death of summer and decay, I see transition, the fuel for future life being laid down right before our eyes, if only we care to look. We don't like the idea of time slipping away from us; we detest the sight of death and vigorously avoid dealing with the fact that we will all have to face it at one point. Yet continued life depends on the very death and decay we so avoid. This is an inevitable fact of our biosphere, of our cosmos in fact. The nutrients that are taken up in the trees come back to earth when the leaves fall; the tall gras...

There is something special about a fandom. It doesn't matter whether the fandom adores Game of Thrones , cherishes the work of John and Hank Green, or gets giddy at the thought of a new Downton Abbey episode, there's something about these particular shared interests that is unique. Sure, people are unified by other interests, whether political, religious, or even shared sporting interests, but these kinds of things don't have the same level of joy that a fandom has. I was thinking about this fact after I finished reading Rainbow Rowell's newest book Fangirl  this morning, a fantastic work whose protagonist is a freshman in college who enjoys writing fan fiction about Simon Snow, a Harry Potter-like figure. There are plenty of fandoms out there for different t.v. shows, movies, or books, whether it is composed of those who love Lord of the Rings (perhaps the original fandom!), Sherlock, or the inhabitants of Nerdfighteria who closely follow all the YouTube videos of...

This morning I finished watching Django Unchained , the latest Tarantino film to grace movie theaters across the country. There were plenty of critics, but also plenty who loved the film, including myself. The movie follows Django, a freed slave, as he becomes a bounty hunter and seeks to find and free his wife, shooting a good number of Southern slaveholders in the process. The film is partly a revenge fantasy, as Django kills the overseers who whipped his wife, her current owner, and most of the slave master's hired guns and overseers. It seems that quite a number of stories that we enjoy center around the quest for revenge, whether it is The Count of Monte Cristo, the "Kill Bill" series of films or Charles Bronson's character in Death Wish.  It must say something deeply about our culture, perhaps even us as a species, that we take such delight in witnessing characters take revenge on those who have wronged them, almost universally choosing means that are outsi...