The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Publisher: Plume

Year: 2009

Pages: 416

In 2009, you cannot write a book about young magicians without knowing that your book will be held up against the Harry Potter series and probably discarded. Since J.K. Rowling dropped her cultural bomb on us all those years ago, we’ve already seen a glut of second-rate wizardry series, just as Stephenie Meyer’s already-execrable Twilight Series launched a tidal wave of slapdash “vampire” novels trying to catch even a sliver of the current mania. Ironically enough, when Grossman did a piece on Meyer for Time, he gushed and flattered and compared her to Rowling in a way that will be important later.

Lev Grossman is not a stupid man; his admiration for Meyer notwithstanding (and I hold the hope that it’s more recognition of her pop lit. cachet), his book reviews for Time are usually pretty good, and he seems like an all-around sensible guy. It seems unlikely, then, that he would dash out yet another book about teenage wizards and expect, without any sense of irony, for it to be lauded and praised. No, what you’ll find is that The Magicians is one part pastiche, one part bildungsroman, two parts satire, and one part miserable, myopic teenage pop lit.

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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Year: 2004

Pages: 800

I’ve read Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell once before; at the time, I focused on two major points. The first was the oft-repeated canard that the book was some clever hybrid of Harry Potter and Jane Austen; as the world was swept up in a fever pitch of Harry Potter mania at the time, I’m sure this made all the sense in the world for every single reviewer alive to say. What better way to bridge the space between your audience and the book than to anchor it to the cultural zeitgeist? The second point was to belabor my initial aversion to the book, couching it defensively in criticisms of Clarke’s (obviously purposefully) Victorian prose.

Having read the book a second time, I can say with some confidence that I was a twit for making either of those two points.

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The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede

Publisher: Guild America

Year: 1993

Pages: 617

I seem determined lately to cover books I discovered in the sixth grade. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, while better as a single volume, was originally marketed—still is—as a series of four books for young adults. I chose the fourth and final book in the series, Talking to Dragons, as the subject of a book report. It was entertaining, I suppose, but surprisingly typical—even formulaic: young man quests with sort, meets beautiful girl, and saves kingdom. One got the distinct impression, however, that a deep, satirical vein ran throughout, though I was perhaps unable to fully appreciate it at the time.

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Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Year: 2006

Pages: 544

Every year or so, I usually try to read a really awful book as part of my ongoing reading project. Back in 2006, I read James Frey’s excremental A Million Little Pieces; in 2008, I read Dan Brown’s unholy The Da Vinci Code. This year I read Twilight.

I do this for a number of reasons. First and probably foremost, I’m an asshole, and enjoy telling people that they have awful taste; in order to do that, however, I really do need to read that awful dreck first.

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