Was There a Recent Past Where “Everyone” Read and Loved the Classics?

06/10/202606/04/20264 Comments

Background

A few years ago, it was trendy for people (teachers, librarians, parents, the average reader) to declare that classics are “out.” They’re not relevant, they’re not relatable, they’re often bigoted, and no one actually likes or understands them anyway. Children should, thus, only be reading things published within the past decade that they can see themselves in, to keep them engaged and loving reading. There was enough backing for this point of view that, in fact, many classrooms do allow students to read more contemporary books. Your local high school might currently be assigning The Hunger Games instead of Hamlet (or it might be assigning both, or neither; the current discourse is that many US students don’t read long texts at all, but only excerpts).

The backlash to this line of thinking has arrived, however. Now, you can find multiple popular social media accounts that gain followers by talking about how we need to bring the classics back. True readers read the classics. Smart people appreciate and understand them. They study the Great Works. You, a follower of these accounts, are an intelligent person who has culture, unlike the stupid people who do not read and love the classics. You’re in the in group of people with brilliant minds and an enlightened soul. It’s such a shame that other people aren’t.

I like classics and have been advocating for reading them for years, but some of the discourse is getting weird. And I think some of these accounts are rewriting the past, creating nostalgia for a time and a culture I’m not sure existed.

One claim I see crop up is that children used to love the classics, but they don’t anymore, and to restore both culture and a love of reading we just need to bring back Ivanhoe and Robin Hood. But was there a time where everyone knew, loved, and adored books like Ivanoe?

Thoughts on the Past (1950s and ’60s)

On one hand, yes, I think you can argue people used to read classics more. Or that it was expected that younger children could handle reading classics. Michael @ My Comic Relief, for instance, brought to my attention this 2016 quote from Bob Dylan, where he talks about reading classics in grammar school that are largely resigned to high school required reading (if at all) today:

Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Tale of Two Cities, all the rest — typical grammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of human nature, and a standard to measure things by. I took all that with me when I started composing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental. Specific books that have stuck with me ever since I read them way back in grammar school – I want to tell you about three of them: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey.

Dyan was born in 1941, so let us assume he was speaking of roughly 1950 when he mentions “grammar school.”

This reminded me of a Leave It to Beaver episode that aired in 1960 where Beaver, about in fourth grade, reads Ivanhoe for an assignment. The episode is about how Beaver’s father loved the book when he was a boy, and Beaver comes to love it, too. It is not considered a strange choice of reading material for a child of about ten.

(Personally, I only read Ivanhoe once I was in a college course, and we actually discussed whether the book should be considered “children’s literature,” as it had been for decades. My opinion was no. I think a child can read, understand, and like it, but I don’t think the themes in the book are presented in a way that is “for children” vs. “for adults.”)

So, I think there’s evidence from these examples that classics like these used to be assigned in school more than they are today, at least in this period of time, around the 1905s.

But is that the same thing as saying that “most” children enjoyed these books or would read them on their own, if not required to for school?

My Own Experience

I was not alive in the 1950s, and I don’t think the people running these classics social media accounts were either. And my experience in school was somewhat mixed. Required reading choices were somewhat at the whim of the particular teacher of the English class. So I did read things like The Count of Monte Cristo and Of Mice and Men in middle school (not elementary school!), and a local high school teacher made it clear she thought these choices were insane and inappropriate for that age! Required summer reading for my freshman English class was Summer of My German Soldier and The Hobbit, more modern than Ivanhoe and Moby Dick, but certainly not contemporary novels from the YA section. In elementary school, we read things like A Wrinkle in Time; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and The Giver.

But what were kids reading in their free time? Were the children of my millennial past obsessed with Robin Hood and King Arthur as these social media accounts claim?

Er . . . not really.

I was a big fan of Howard Pyle in middle school. I read Pyle’s versions of King Arthur and Robin Hood multiple times. And I can tell you I was basically the only kid checking those books out of the school library. My classmates? They enjoyed nonfiction books, maybe about sports or athletes, and popular series like Goosebumps and Animorphs. One time a boy with a crush on me made me read one of his favorite books, which was about a giant green slime blob taking over a town. (I gave it a shot, but it wasn’t really my thing.)

If other people lived a childhood where the people around them loved classics and discussing the great tales of old like Robin Hood and King Arthur, maybe they just grew up with a different background than I did. Perhaps their parents were English professors?? My parents didn’t read and still don’t read now. No one passed down their love of the classics to me. I stumbled upon that on my own. And there weren’t many other kids to talk about the books I read/liked with because most of them simply were not reading them. If the general public had a better working knowledge of classics than they do today, I’m sure part of that came from retellings, like Disney’s take on Robin Hood or Quest for Camelot or even the Wishbone series. The kids I knew who read classics were kids you’d brand as “avid/advanced readers” and not “average kid in fifth grade.”

Conclusion

I do love classics, and I do still think other people should read them and there’s much to enjoy. And I really like the idea that we can “expect more” of young kids and that they might be able to handle more complex books than adults sometimes give them credit for these days. They wouldn’t understand the books the same way an adult reader would, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand them at all or that their understanding is wrong. The beauty of rereading is that you can get something different from the same book at different ages.

But I do think some of the online discourse surrounding classics is getting bizarre. Personally, I never lived in some idyllic society where every child was a reader and we were all inspired by classic heroes like Ivanoe and Robin Hood. That simply didn’t happen.

Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic by Tabitha Stanmore

06/09/202605/29/2026Leave a comment

Information

Goodreads: Cunning Folk
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Source: Purchased
Published: May 28, 2024

Official Summary

A spritely and deeply researched history of magical problem-solving in a distant, unsettled, and strangely familiar time.

it’s 1600, and you’ve lost your keys. You’ve scoured your house. They’re nowhere to be found. What do you do? In medieval and early modern Europe, the first port of call might very well have been cunning practitioners of “service magic.” Neither feared (like witches), nor venerated (like saints), cunning folk were essential to everyday life, a ubiquitous presence in a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane. For people young and old, male and female, highborn and low, practical magic was a cherished resource with which to navigate life’s many challenges, from recovering stolen linens to seizing the throne, and everything in between. In historian Tabitha Stanmore’s beguiling account, we meet lovelorn widows and dissolute nobles, selfless healers and renegade monks. We listen in on Queen Elizabeth I’s astrology readings and track treasure hunters trying to unearth buried gold without upsetting the fairies that guard it. Much like us, premodern people lived in bewildering times, buffeted by forces beyond their control. Their anxieties are instantly recognizable, and as Stanmore reveals, their faith in magic has much to teach us about how we accommodate ourselves to the irrational in our allegedly enlightened lives today.

Charming in every sense of the word, Cunning Folk is an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world, and a thought-provoking commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.

Review

Tabitha Stanmore explores the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern period and the use of “service magic,” something that would have been distinct from “witchcraft” and shows readers how everyone from peasants to kings could have consulted “cunning folk” for practical magical aid.

I’m glad I read some Goodreads reviews before starting this book because they tempered my expectations. The book leans heavily on anecdotes, which are certainly interesting, but analysis is sparse. Stamore mostly recounts various stories of people who went to local cunning folk for anything from help to locate their lost spoons to help murdering their enemies to help predicting the futures. She shows readers how often people did this, why they woud have, and what means they would have used to it. For example, you could use astrology, but you could also use a piece of bread stuck through with knives and ask some “yes” or “no” questions and see which way the loaf spun.

The main idea is that people seemed to generally believe in magic and, for much of England’s history, certain types of magic would not have been seen as “bad.” Today, people fixate on witch trials and the idea that witchcraft was outlawed and severely punished, but asking someone to use magic to help you locate your lost sheep was not “witchcraft.” Even when people turned to magic for darker purposes like murder, in some cases the charge was, well, that they were trying to murder someone, not that they were using witchcraft. The means was irrelevant to the crime.

I did learn things from the book. For one, I wasn’t aware that a lot of “trial by combat” did not involve weapons, but rather men wrestling each other. And, apparently, men using spells to try to get a sneaky advantage in the fight. But what I learned were general historical facts like this. Again, there’s just not a lot of analysis/interpretation in the book, considering it’s based on the author’s PhD dissertation. When there is some type of interpretation, it often feels like something you could have come up with yourself like, “The magic workers must have had enough success that people kept paying them, since reputation was everything at this time,” or, “Court records are only full of people complaining about magic not working; successes are not recorded because happy customers do not complain.” The value of the book is that Stanmore did a bunch of research she’s presenting in one place for readers to peruse, and not so much what she’s concluding about her own research.

There’s also the weird sense that Stanmore might believe in magic? I actually thought at the beginning of the book that she did not but was occasionally coyly saying things to the effect of, “I don’t know if this guy was magic or not. I wasn’t there,” basically for marketing purposes. You know, not taking a side an implying magic might be real because that could be alluring to readers. But she concludes the book with a story about how she went to a palm reader (and apparently frequently does, to great success with many of them being very accurate) and then polling her acquaintances and concluding that most of them believe in some type of magic, too. Make of this what you will because I am not 100% sure what to do with it. I also recently came across a historian professor who was tweeting about haunted places he’s been and another that stated confidently that Rasputin was magic. So maybe the conclusion is that studying the history of the occult just attracts people who think magic is real.

The book is interesting. I do recommend it. Just go in expecting a lot of anecdotes.

Series or Standalones? How Much Is Too Much? (Fantasy with Friends)

06/08/202606/10/202610 Comments

Fantasy with Friends is a meme hosted here at Pages Unbound that poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works. Feel free to leave a comment, even if you are not participating this week! And, if you are participating, remember to comment with your link! (See the schedule for future discussion topics here.)

This Week’s Prompt: Do you currently prefer standalone fantasies or series? Is there a certain number of books that seems like “too much,” whether that means the series feels intimidating to start or just that the author might need to move on to something else? Is there a point at which you worry that a series is just a “cash grab?”

This Week’s Participants

As with anything, the answer is, of course, it depends on how well it’s done. I love a good standalone, and I love a series of any size, as long as each installment in the series is well-written and feels like a meaningful contribution to the world/characters. But for the sake of the question, I’ll go into more detail.

Standalones

I’m not sure there’s a reason anyone would dislike a standalone, besides the fact that if you love the book, you of course will want to see more! Standalones are great because you have a fully contained story you can finish and just feel the sense of completion. No waiting two years for the next book to be released, and by then you’ve forgotten what’s already happened. You’re just done. And if the author wants to write more in the world, hopefully it will be another book that can stand on its own.

Standalone books are also great for books that are just ok, which I don’t think publishers tend to take into account. They like series because they feel there’s a built in-audience for marketing the next book. But, as a reader, there are so many books where I read book one and think, “It was fine, but that’s enough. I don’t care enough to continue with this story. And if book two isn’t even out yet, I’m certainly not going to be waiting for it and buying it 18 months from now. I’m moving on and looking for something to read I will like better.” Now, if the author wrote an entirely new book, I might check it out, even if I thought their other book was ok but not great. But I’m just not going to continue with a series I don’t care that much about when there are millions of other books in the world.

Series

Series are fantastic because you get more time with characters and a world you love, and the author gets more time to develop things. Standalones can be difficult and get more accusations of things like instalove because there’s only so much space for characters to fall in love. In a series, however, it can take three books for characters to fall in love if the author wants! So things can just feel more fleshed-out.

But . . . they can also feel drawn out. Whether a story needs x number of books to be told is definitely a consideration.

As for whether a series is “too long,” again, it depends. I think trilogies and quartets work well for a lot of stories. It’s not often I read three books focused on the same protagonist/storyline and end up thinking, “Wow, I need more of that.” You can see why many authors turn to companion series and prequels after this. If a series is longer, however, it’s helpful if the author planned it to be so from the beginning, instead of just adding more and more stuff because the publisher thought it was selling well enough that they should capitalize on it. (I do think you see this kind of thing mostly in middle grade series.)

And if a series gets super long before I start reading it . . . I will be intimidated. I may never start it because I don’t want to commit.

Read Krysta’s thoughts on when authors are “milking” a series here.

Storm Breaker by Nisha J. Tuli

06/07/202605/28/2026Leave a comment

Information

Goodreads: Storm Breaker
Series: Storm Breaker #1
Age Category: Young Adult
Source: Purchased
Published: May 5, 2026

Official Summary

From the publisher who brought you Fourth Wing comes your next romantasy obsession…

For nineteen-year-old Poet Graves, New Manhattan has always promised safety—if she obeys. Raised within the ruling Houses and betrothed to a powerful heir, she enters Amery Academy knowing her future has already been decided.

But Amery is nothing like she imagined. Its trials are brutal, its loyalties conditional, and its rules designed to expose weakness. As Poet struggles to survive, she must hide the truth that could get her the storms don’t fear her—they answer back.

When a dangerous outsider from beyond the city walls enters the academy, Poet is drawn to him despite everything she’s been taught to believe. He threatens the life she’s been promised. And choosing him could cost her not just her future, but her freedom.

A gripping dystopian romance filled with forbidden power, ruthless challenges, and a heroine who refuses to burn quietly—perfect for fans of Divergent and The Hunger Games.

Review

If you miss the YA dystopian phase of the early 2010s, well, it’s back. Veronica Roth herself is releasing an alternate version of Divergent herself later this year, while Nisha J. Tuli has given us Storm Breaker, a dystopian set in future Manhattan where humans have messed up the world through greed and climate change. She says it’s inspired by Divergent, The Hunger Games, and Fourth Wing — and you can certainly tell. The book is fun, but it’s hard to say it offers readers anything new.

I genuinely believe the publisher came out up front saying the book was inspired by these others because, if they didn’t say it, then readers would have. Divergent comes to mind quickly as one opens the pages. The society has four Houses with different skills/values that teens have to choose from to belong to for the rest of their lives. The protagonist might choose a different House from the one she is raised in. She might even go through some tests to see if she can belong to that house, which culminates in jumping from a building into a net down below. Does this sound familiar? To be fair, the idea of “Houses” isn’t new. People love that stuff, both readers and publishers because it’s great for marketing. You can make all kinds of House merch to sell and set up “Which House do you belong in” personality quizzes online. But . . . the net? I think someone should have edited that part out and come up with a different task for our protagonist.

The author’s note suggests that what makes this dystopian timely is that the future it envisions is based on current events in our world. And yet . . . these issues don’t seem particularly distinct from those being raise around 2012 either. People were talking about climate change and finite resources and stuff like that back then, too. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t say any particular themes stood out to me here as particularly unique or even interesting. The book isn’t really “about” how society ended up this way; it’s about the protagonist’s chafing in her chosen role and her desire to do something different with her life.

And as a book about a teen learning to choose for herself instead of choosing to do what her father wants to avoid being abused by him, it works. She’s at school (college, really) away from her parents. The perfect time to try to get some distance from controlling parents. And readers get to follow along as she makes her choices and experiences the fall-out. She has to decide if being independent and being true to herself is worth losing a lost of social capital. Now that can be an interesting question for a book to address.

There’s also a romance, of course. No real surprises in this department either, but I think it will satisfy a lot of readers to get the classic male love interesting who’s handsome/mysterious/strong/strangely sensitive. And, of course, he probably knows something about our protagonist’s dystopian world that she does not.

The book is entertaining. It has all the elements one could want from a book of this type. If you like YA dystopians and want more of what we were getting about 15 years ago, here it is! It’s just kind of . . . weird to get a book that seems as it would not have been out of place around 2012, something that would have been published as a “response” to Divergent and not something that stands apart in its own right. Granted, today’s teens would not have been been teens in 2012, so my reaction to this is probably not the reaction of the true target audience. Yet publishing has always known that adults tend to read YA. This might, in fact, be some type of attempt at nostalgia for millennials. I have no idea. It’s fine, just not unique.

The Queen’s Granddaughter by Diane Zahler

06/06/202604/26/20261 Comment

illustrated young girl with curly reddish hair riding a horse in a royal entourage

Information

Goodreads: The Queen’s Granddaughter
Series: None
Age Category: Middle Grade
Source: Library
Published: 2026

Summary

Twelve-year-old Blanca of Castile, granddaughter of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, dreads her grandmother’s visit. Surely Queen Elenaor will take away Blanca’s beloved older sister to marry into France. But Queen Eleanor chooses Blanca instead. Blanca does not want to leave her home or family, or marry someone she’s never met. But her grandmother always gets her way. Now the two of them must journey to France together, into an uncertain future.

Review

Whenever an author chooses to do something entirely different, it is a risk. The decision to ignore market trends could make the book feel refreshing and unique. Or it could lead to questions like, “Who is this book for?” I think The Queen’s Granddaughter is going to be a tough sell to the target audience. Most middle grade novels right now are extremely fast-paced and plot-driven. The Queen’s Granddaughter reads slowly and features a historical character many people have probably never heard of. I enjoyed it well enough, but I cannot imagine a large audience of tweens who would pick it up.

The Queen’s Granddaughter interestingly feels like a book not touched by the current market at all. I could see this book being published, say, twenty or thirty years ago. And not only because historical fiction does not seem very trendy right now. This is a book that focuses on character development, rather than plot. Even when Blanca and Eleanor set off on a dangerous journey to France, nothing much seems to happen. Yes, they get attacked by enemies and so on, but, somehow, none of it feels very pressing. The focus remains on Blanca and her irritation over being chosen to marry into France.

The hook, I believe, is for readers to imagine what it must have been like for a twelve-year-old to have no control over their destiny. Children, of course, in general do not have a lot of say over their lives; their caregivers usually make major decisions for them. So I think Blanca is supposed to feel relatable in this sense. Even though she lived long ago, and having to leave one’s family forever to marry someone one has never met is presumably not something tween readers today will generally experience. But wishing for more agency, and trying to figure out what to do when big life changes happen, are certainly relatable.

Altogether, though, I do not know if the relatability aspect will be enough. Blanca (Blanche) is not really a recognizable figure for most, so the title will not grab attention that way. And the pacing will probably feel too slow for the average tween reader, used to books that pack in a lot more action. This is a great pick for tweens who enjoy character-driven historical fiction, but I’m not sure it’s going to sell a lot of copies, frankly.

Book Reviews Vs. Book Reactions and Reviewers’ (Lack of?) Confidence

06/05/202605/26/202621 Comments

On May 21, The Point published a piece titled “Common Readers: BookTok’s Critical Values” by Selen Ozturk, which argues that BookTok posters primarily talk about books in terms of how they emotionally react to them and how much they relate to them; their audience is people who are in the same in group because they can be expected to have the same type of emotional reactions to the same types of books.

Ozturk writes:

Videos in the highest range of likes often involve BookTokers reading from the book or clutching it verklempt. The more articulate reviews are no less reactive. One starts: “I was sitting right here, five minutes ago, and I finished the book, and I’m feeling every emotion possible … I’m feeling the depression and ecstasy of the [faerie kingdom] Hybern.”

These reviews claim, in so many words or none: “This book’s good or bad because of how it made me feel, so it will make you feel that way, because we’re the same kind of reader.”
The Point, Selen Ozturk

Ozturk’s observations highlight the fact that many book “reviews” online these days are not really reviewing the craft, quality, or themes of the books they discuss; instead, they are personal reactions to the books, where readers discuss how a particular book made them feel. They laughed. They cried. They lusted. Why they felt any of these things might not even come up. The point is that they felt something. And, yes, the implication is you will feel the same things, too, and that’s why you should read the book.

This got me thinking about why people approach books this way, and why so few people seem to engage with the what the book is doing or how it’s doing it or whether it’s “good” in any way beyond eliciting emotion in the reader (not that eliciting emotion is nothing!).

One thing I’ve heard over the years blogging here from blog readers/other bloggers is that some people don’t like any kind of review that is “too analytical.” They don’t want to read that kind of review and they don’t want to write it. They say it reminds them of school, and that means it’s boring. It’s work. It’s not fun. Waving a book on video and squeeing, “This is so cute! So romantic! I love the love interest! He’s tall and hot and his hand can totally envelop the hand of the protagonist!” is just pure low-effort fun. You don’t feel like you’re “in a class” or “doing an assignment” engaging with that type of content.

The other thing I’ve heard from multiple people is that they don’t feel “qualified” to review books. I’ve come across various elaborations on this. It’s because they haven’t written a book themselves so they can’t pretend to judge a book someone else has written. It’s because they don’t have an advanced degree in literature. It’s because they’re “not a professional.” It’s because they don’t feel they have something to say that no one else has said before. The bottom line is that they don’t feel confident they can offer any type of analysis of a book. They don’t know how to begin, or they fear someone will come along and tell them they’re wrong.

But you can’t be wrong about your emotions. If you say you read a book and you cried, well, that’s just your experience. No one can tell you you didn’t cry! And, assuming the book has some obvious sad parts, no one can really tell you that you shouldn’t have cried or the book wouldn’t make anyone cry. Saying how you reacted to a book seems easily accessible to people.

The bonus is that it attracts an audience, too. Ozturk might be decrying that there’s no real substance to these types of videos, but tons of people are glued to their screens watching them. A thorough, analytical review that engages with the content and form of a book just doesn’t get as many views as someone sobbing dramatically on BookTok does.

I love a good emotional book as much as anyone, and making readers feel something is actually hard. There’s nothing worse than reading a book and knowing the author wants you to feel a certain way, but you don’t because the craft just isn’t there to make you feel that thing.

Yet I think the impulse of some readers to avoid engaging with anything else in books is a bit sad. I, in fact, read a Substack article a couple weeks ago in which a college student declared she was no longer going to write reviews because she felt she had nothing worthwhile to say and only “experts” should be publishing reviews online. Yet reading and having an opinion on a book isn’t about being “qualified,” especially when we’re talking about fiction books specifically published for the “general” reader. No one’s asking for opinions on monographs in a specialized field of study; that might be better left to the experts. US high schools generally give students the building blocks to engage with books in critical ways, teaching kids about themes, literary devices, etc. I think most people have enough knowledge to go on to their personal lives and say whether a book worked for them and why or why not, whether the themes were interesting or why or why not. Or maybe the book had no apparent themes and was wishy-washy about its own message! These are things I believe readers are capable of recognizing and commenting on, and yet some people shy away due to a lack of a confidence that their thoughts have any merit.

I don’t think this is going to change any time soon; there’s not going to be a big switch to people “reviewing” books instead of only “reacting” to them. Reactions get too much attention for the people posting them to want to do anything else. But I would love if it more readers somehow found the confidence to believe they could analyze books, if they wanted to.

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

06/04/202604/25/20262 Comments

Information

Goodreads: A Civil Contract
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Source: Library
Published: 1961

Summary

Adam Deveril returns from the war to find that his family home is mortgaged and himself on the brink of ruin, thanks to his father. Though he is in love with the flirtatious and beautiful Julia, he is no longer in any position to marry her. Then he receives an offer. Marry the plain Jenny and her city father will bestow his wealth upon the couple, allowing Adam to save his home and offer his sisters a better future.

Review

A Civil Contract is perhaps my favorite Georgette Heyer novel so far, as it departs from her usual formula to offer a more mature look at love. No sudden kidnappings, highway robberies, or other escapades here. This is a quiet book about a marriage of convenience that shows that love can be found in everyday moments.

The story begins perhaps inauspiciously, with the protagonist Adam Deveril having to give up his dream of marrying the beautiful Julia, as he is on the brink of financial ruin. Instead, he accepts the hand of a woman he has barely met, in exchange for her wealth. Usually, in this type of book, the heiress-seeking suitor is the villain. So it is refreshing to have him star as the protagonist. Readers see his practical side, his desire to provide for his sisters and save his home. They also see his inner turmoil, and his shame at having to accept another man’s money.

A Civil Contract is deeply rewarding, however, as readers see Adam slowly realize that his first love might not be the best love. Yes, it had passion and excitement. But he and Julia, readers can discern, are not particularly well matched. Julia is overly dramatic, seeks attention, and clearly would be happiest if she marries into wealth. Adam is more pragmatic. Jenny’s quiet practicality and her desire to make him comfortable suit him better.

It is admittedly frustrating to watch Jenny work so hard to please Adam, while he continues to wallow in his self pity and fails to appreciate everything she does for him. She memorizes all his likes and dislikes, trying to ease his way and make him comfortable at every turn. All he can do is think about Julia. He’s not always likable, but he is realistic.

I enjoyed A Civil Contract as a more mature story, one that looks at marriages and what makes them work. Jenny might never inspire the passion of Adam’s first love, but she understands him in a way Julia never will.

How We’ve Worked Successfully As Co-bloggers for 15 Years

06/03/202605/21/202613 Comments

Carol inquired on our 15-year blogoversary post how Krysta and I work together behind the scenes on the blog. My first instinct was to say there’s not much to say! We write stuff. We post stuff. However, I realized the boringness of the whole thing is deceptive. It’s not actually easy to find someone you work really well with. And that’s most of the secret: we generally agree on things!

We started Pages Unbound together in 2011. I believe it was my idea, and I asked Krysta to post with me, so we’ve been together since the beginning. A few years in, we actually did try to get another co-blogger. Twice. Both of them ghosted us. We still know them in real life, actually, and they’ve never said anything about just . . . not doing the blog anymore. It’s kind of hilarious. So the first key to having a co-blogger is finding someone who is actually committed to doing it. It’s harder than it sounds!

The other important thing is that Krysta and I have similar visions for the blog, what we want it to do and what voice we want it to have. We have had multiple guest posters over the year, and working with guest posters can also highlight when someone has a completely different approach to blogging than you do. We’ve have to tell people, for instance, they can’t include copyrighted material in their guest posts. I’m not trying to get sued over here! We’ve also had at least one guest poster who was, shall we say, more aggressive in their reviews than Krysta and I normally are. We post negative reviews, but we try not to be too harsh or vitriolic. Co-blogging with someone you know is on the same wave-length about that kind of thing eliminates a lot of stress. I don’t have to worry one day Krysta is going to post something completely insane calling authors names and starting a Twitter mob because we just don’t do that.

On a practical level, we don’t even really coordinate who posts what or when! When we’re hosting a feature like Fantasy with Friends right now, that post goes on a specific day of the week that we keep reserved. Otherwise, Krysta and I just schedule things on days that are free. We do try to mix things up so there aren’t seven reviews in a row and no discussion posts, and I might ask to move one of Krysta’s posts if I want an ARC review on specific date or want to publish a discussion post while it’s still “timely,” but generally we just do our own thing and it works out. We don’t generally collaborate on posts either, unless it’s something like a list of books.

And that’s pretty much it! We do our own thing a lot, but it works because we agree on things!

The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale by C. J. Waggoner

06/02/202606/01/20262 Comments

A small cottage surrounded by icons in vines, including scissors, a cauldron, a pointed witch's hat, and mice

Information

Goodreads: The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Source: Library
Published: 2026

Summary

Deep in the forest, the witch Gretsella (the one with the reasonable prices) dwells alone and satisfied. Until an infant is left on her doorstep. She names him Bradley and raises him as her own. So it is very annoying when the woodland animals begin prophesying him as the future king. Bradley feels he must do his duty, however, so he sets off to ascend the throne. Now all Gretsella has to do is depose him.

Review

The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale is a delightfully whimsical romp through the world of fantasy. Inverting the typical storyline of the lost heir, it presents a king who is a bit over his head and rather desirous of returning to his simple life in the village. Fortunately, his mother, a witch, is happy to overthrow him. Not that she loves him or wants her son to return home. A witch would never! Pick this one up if you enjoy twisted tales!

This is a novella, so a quick read that is pure entertainment. I got a good chuckle pretty much on every page. When the story is not busy inverting fairy tale tropes, Gretsella is is making pointed observations about the rest of the cast–especially her coven. There are two witches with a brisk business built on the illusion of their harvesting their own herbal ingredients, a young witch trying a little too hard to impress her elders, and a woman named Barb who (the horror!) has married and goes to Zumba. Gretsella has thoughts about them all, even though she is rather untraditional herself. After all, it can’t be that she doesn’t want to let her grown son fly the nest. That would be decidedly unwitchy.

But Gretsella’s confidence is disarming. When confronted with a problem, she simply barges through. When told no, she pretends she didn’t hear. Readers will be rooting for her from the start, knowing she can’t be nearly as wicked as she says. Perhaps just wicked enough to get the job done. And someone has to do it.

Perhaps a bit unexpectedly, the story turns into more of a political satire than a fantasy halfway through. I was surprised by this, as I had assumed the story would stay a little closer to its whimsical roots. However, the barbed humor here is still plenty amusing. Ultimately, it works.

A fun read sure to entertain!

My Favorite Fantasy Tropes (Fantasy with Friends)

06/01/202606/02/202613 Comments

This Week’s Prompt: What are some of your favorite fantasy tropes?

This Week’s Participants

I’m sure there’s some debate about what even counts as a trope, but for the purposes of this post, I honestly looked at various lists of tropes and picked some of the ones I love every time I see them in literature. I stuck to picking mostly “things” like characters or settings and not so much plot points like “the character does x or y.” I also didn’t include things like “the quest,” which seems like the entire plot of a book to me, more than a trope.

1. Secret Heir

This is always fun. Someone is a secret heir to something and needs to reclaim what is rightfully theirs? Sign me up! It’s great in books for any age from middle-grade to adult. Just think of Aragorn in The Lords of the Rings.

2. Magic School

We had a whole question about magic schools in fantasy previously on Fantasy with Friends, but I’m including it because it’s a good trope. There are so many ways to do a magic school that there’s room for creativity, and I just love to imagine myself attending one.

3. Tavern

I probably first fell in love with the idea of a tavern as a meeting spot for the protagonist and their crew in the works of Tamora Pierce, where she introduced The Dancing Dove, home of the Court of the Rogue. Ever since, even though I don’t really frequent taverns in real life, I’ve enjoyed seeing them in books. Bonus points if the author comes up with a really cool name!

4. A Witty Thief

Likable criminal characters who are clever and like to banter always get me turning the pages!

5. What about the Damsel in Distress?

You don’t see this one too much today because there was so much backlash against it. Criticisms ranged from saying it’s overdone (hence, a trope) to saying it’s bad example for young girls to saying it’s just not something people like anymore in this modern age where we know women can be strong.

But, you know, I don’t always have a problem with it. As a kid, I often liked it. There’s probably something there in the fact that, as a child, I inherently had very little power or control over my own life. The idea that someone would come along and fix things for me or magically make my life more awesome was appealing. In some ways, it probably even felt more realistic than the idea that I would be able to make sweeping changes to my own life.

I liked stories of strong girls, as well. I loved watching Sailor Moon and pretending I too was a superhero. But sometimes I could really see the appeal of just sitting around being a lovely pretty princess whose talents were charming things like painting and singing, while someone else did all the dangerous rescuing stuff.

You can read about Krysta’s favorite tropes here.