The Good Fairies of New York-- Martin Millar-- Review

The Cottingley Fairies, Photograph from 1917


The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar is the story of two tiny winged fairies who end up in New York after a drunken evening. They end up in the house of Dinnie, a drunken, nasty, fat slob who can barely play the violin. They
discover that Dinnie has a magical fairy violin and scheme to get it.

Across the street is a very beautiful girl, Kerry who is a singer, artist, painter, sculptor, and shoplifter. Morag decides to move in with Kerry and help her out. Morag steals money from banks to help Kerry pay the rent.

Meanwhile, across the street, Morag is teaching Dinnie to play the violin. He also promises to make Kerry fall in love with Dinnie if he gives Morag the magic violin. Thus Morag begins a program of reforming Dinnie starting with making him wear
a pony tail, listen to alternative rock, become a vegetarian, lose weight, and stop watching the sex channel late at night.

Meanwhile the other fairies from Scotland are looking for Heather and Morag. They are in central park talking to the squirrels and other wildlife. The fairies are constantly fighting, making love, stealing, drinking, and carrying on.. It can be a bit saucy at times. It is all done in a humorous manner. This book would be part of the adult book collection, not the teenage collection.

There is a bag lady, Ghanaian fairies, Chinese fairies, Italian fairies, Scottish Fairies, English fairies, and the ghost of an electric guitarist.

This book is a combinations of a low rent love story, comedy, and urban fantasy. There is a rather unique style. If you like Terry Pratchett, you might like this book. It is not a very serious book at all. Neil Gaiman wrote the introduction to the book.

Morning Thoughts

I have finished reading The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. I read it while I was on the train. I noticed in back that Martin Millar also writes as Martin Scott. Martin Scott writes a series called Thraxas about a fat detective in a sword and sorcery setting. Thraxas won the World Fantasy Award. His website looks pretty interesting. http://www.martinmillar.com/ Lonely Werewolf Girl looks like something I might read. I am looking at The Good Fairies of New York and Rainbow's End. I am going to start writing a short review for each tonight.

This morning, I went and got my car from the shop. Then I rushed to get to the train. I usually just drive my car to get groceries, the laundry, and a few places around the neighborhood which I can't get to by bus or if I need to take someone somewhere. I sometimes wonder why I still have it.

I did my usual things when I first get in, checking my email, and checking the general reference email. Someone wanted to know if their email worked, so they sent a message to the reference box for the library. I also checked the processing of some of the reference books before they went out on the shelves.

There were three books which I hadn't had a chance to check out last night. Futurecast, How Superpowers, Populations, and Globalization Will Change the Way You Live And Work by Robert J. Shapiro, this was on the New York Times Bestseller List. Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost which is a fantasy novel, and Hot Text Web Writing That Works by Jonathan and Lisa Price. I think, the next book I am going to read is Hot Text. Hopefully, this will improve my web context writing skills.

I did a brief bit of cleaning up my blog and added some more keywords to my blog posts.

Thoughts for Today

Today has been pretty quiet. I discarded a large number of books today, mainly reference books. I haven't discarded any law books today.

On the subway here, I alternated between reading, The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar, and Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge. Both are fun to read.

While I was looking at Twitter this morning, I noticed that Tor had a link from their Twitter account to their Facebook account. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tor-Books/8303497342 . I followed the link to a list of books they were blogging about on Facebook. One of them seemed particularly interesting, Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi. This is part of the Old Man's War setting, a military science fiction setting.

Booksales

After my trip to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival, I stopped off at a used bookstore called Housing Works in Manhattan. I was surprised at how sparse the selection was. The selection used to be quite good. I guess not as many people are donating books to charitable organizations.

I should not be surprised. They don't have a booksale at the library near my house. This is kind of surprising. You would think every library needs a book sale. But, I guess this is getting quaint and old. People are clearly not reading as many books so booksales don't do as well.

The booksale at our library even looks a little quaint to me. It doesn't seem to be selling a whole lot of books. Even our larger booksale didn't do so well with a room full of books. Very few booksellers came to buy books. According to my supervisor, the book dealers used to line up to buy books from our booksale. Maybe, people are selling their books on ebay instead. You never can be too sure about these things. When I went to the sale, I did not see much to buy. However, I did buy a brownie and a cup of coffee.

Right now, It is very hot where I am working. It is 92 degrees inside. The fans are blowing around the building while I am sitting here. I took some time to look through the New York Times Book Review for this week, but didn't find anything.

I put another book on hold, The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. It is #7 on the Publishers Weekly Nonfiction Bestseller List. I think the book is focused on the rise of China and India. I'm not too sure yet. I also placed Shadowbridge by Gary Frost on hold.

Two more books came in for me to read, The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. There is a surprise, Neil Gaiman wrote an introduction to the book which should be entertaining. The book is a trade paperback. The other book which came in is Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge.

When I get up to walk around the building I sweat a bit. I weeded some more law books this morning. My library aide, called in sick today. It is quite hot.