Time Lords

Has anyone else noticed some parallels between the Old Ones in Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising sequence and the Time Lords of the Doctor Who universe? The connection came to me listening to the audiobook of Silver on the Tree with the Budza. I could quite happily listen to Alex Jennings read the phone book.

My friends keep telling me I need an Intervention for my Doctor Who problem, which is really not a Doctor Who problem but a David Tennant problem. It's keeping me off the streets, true, but also keeping me away from other things I could and should be doing. But it feeds the Muse.

But in a completely different way than the Cooper does. I sink into her stories like a stone, always marveling at the command of language, the perfect pitch, the perfect marriage of closely observed family life on the one hand, and mind-boggling magical cosmology on the other. No one does supernatural scary quite like Susan Cooper, except possibly the late, great Martin Booth.

J. K. Rowling's Coattails

Hatching Magic is this week's pick for the Washington Post's KidsPost Summer of Magical Reading Book Club.

It's a weird ride, here on the long coattails of J. K. Rowling. On the one hand, it has to feel good to see fantasy books on so many "What to read next" lists. And I personally get a huge lift just being on the same list as such greats as Lloyd Alexander, Ursula LeGuin, Susan Cooper, and Diana Wynne Jones. It's great company to keep. But its discouraging and depressing to read about research that shows that just because a young reader is wild about Harry, it doesn't follow they'll tackle another fantasy writer, or even another book at all.

So I think I'm not alone in wondering how bumpy the landing is going to be.

If you haven't read it, check out Ron Charles's editorial on the Post website, "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading."

I'm looking forward to exploring a used bookstore in Maine, where I can put my hand on a battered paperback, and make my own small, personal rediscovery. Maybe it will be a literary novel, a mystery, some great nature writing...maybe even a fantasy.