Magical Librarians

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Hello, everyone. \ Welcome back to your show. I am so excited to have with you today about magical libraries. So this is a bite-sized recommendation. What'd your favorite authors read and recommend cat's best. Jan has an episode that's airing around this time a couple of weeks before, or a couple of weeks after.

So there'll be a couple of cats. Busting opposites. We love cat. She's amazing. And she's a good friend of the show. I really love chatting with her. And we recorded this episode in 2022, when she was promoting the perfect crimes of Marion Hayes. This is a fun history from Roman. Say, you should definitely read.

It's a queer historical . It's fun. It's just, Rumpy, it's just comforting. The reason why I pulled it out is because cat came and shares her recommendations and magical libraries. And as get a library card month, and I'm like a huge library supporter.

So I figure what better way to celebrate this month with some magical libraries. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Cat Sebastian: Hi Tad, welcome to What to Renext podcast. Hi, Laura. Thanks for having me. So happy to have you back. So tell us what you've been up to. [00:01:00] So my book that comes out in June is about it's two people who fall in love via blackmail letters, which is I mean, obviously you have to be pretty bad at like, at both at like blackmailing and also being blackmailed in order for that to happen.

Cat Sebastian: But these are like 2 disaster bisexuals who everything they do is just going wrong. And this is just part of it going wrong. And and basically they, one of them is like a self styled Robin Hood type of figure who thinks he's doing crime for the right reasons. And the other one is like a pretty uptight bossy.

Cat Sebastian: Like she's currently sort of married to a Duke, but it turns out it's bigamous. And so he's like, what I'm going to do as my good deed of the day is like blackmail, blackmail some rich people, and so he sends her a letter. And she responds with a really mean letter of his of her own.

Cat Sebastian: And it turns out that he just really can't resist mean women. And, things go downhill from there. And she winds up [00:02:00] needing to flee from the law after she kills her sort of husband. And they had to go on a road trip like, like you do in romance novels. Like you do in a romance novel, just along with blackmailing, killing, murder and all the other fun stuff.

Cat Sebastian: I probably should have mentioned the title. That's the The Perfect crimes of Marian Hayes. Well, it is a perfect crime that she just said. Right. I mean, it has to be done. It has to be done. Yes. And her husband was horrible. So like really not a nice guy. Someone had to kill him. He needed killing, and Mary did it.

Cat Sebastian: Let's chat some book recommendations. Do you have any books to recommend our listeners to pick up?

Cat Sebastian: I do. Okay. So I put together a list of books that are about magical libraries and or magical librarians, because there's so many. Like, because once I started listing. Once I started listing them, I realized there were like 50 more, and so I had to like narrow my scope down, like, and take out the dystopian librarians.

Cat Sebastian: Do you know what I mean? Like, okay. So this is only magical libraries and librarians. Okay, so the first one is Atlas Six by Olivia Blake. [00:03:00] Okay, and she's an author who I am, I know her work from fanfic. Okay, like from fanfic in the fandom that we don't talk about. Okay. And yeah. Yeah, I'm like, I know her from literally a 300, 000 word fix.

Cat Sebastian: She wrote for like my least favorite pairing in the world. And yet I read it in like two days. It was a completely like, like I was obsessed. Okay. Like I was at one of my kids music rehearsals, music recitals. Like, thinking to myself, like, what if I read fanfic on my phone while this is happening? And I was like, no, Kat, no, like, that's really bad mom territory, but anyway, so I knew that she could, if she could make me care about that situation, I could read any, you know what I mean? Like, anything, right? And sure enough, like, I was sucked into this entire world that she made where you've got, like, a bunch of people who seem like smart, intelligent people, but they're making like truly horrible life choices because they've been given access to what they're told is the library of Alexandria, which has not been lost, but it has been [00:04:00] hidden and it contains like all kinds of arcane knowledge.

Cat Sebastian: So they go and they basically lock themselves up in a year to presumably do terrible things to one another or whatever, and have horrible things happen to them because they get access to this knowledge. And like, There's a bazillion point of view characters in this book. Like it's wacky and sprawling and it's all over the place.

Cat Sebastian: And I think I read it in like 18 hours, like, like totally, it was that kind of like, like where like, you don't want to, like you're rushing your teeth, but you're still reading, like that kind of, which is like, that's the like high that I'm always chasing after, the next one in a totally different style is the Midnight Library by Matt Haig, which got a whole bunch of attention a couple of years ago from like, and like, and I'm always skeptical when like my mom likes the book, but also the internet likes the book, like, I don't know.

Cat Sebastian: Like, I don't want to read it now because like, what is this, right? Like, I can't please everybody, but now I loved it. I cried like seven times. It was like really embarrassing. And so the premise is that like there exists a library where alternate versions of your life exist, [00:05:00] okay? And so the main character is in a really horrible place at the beginning of the book and then wakes up in some kind of like pocket universe where they're like middle school librarian or something is there, like saying, look, these, the books on these shelves contain versions of your life.

Cat Sebastian: Like, if you had made a different choice, like in a sliding doors type of situation, right, then this is the life you would like that. This is like you. And the rest of the book is them going through. All of these different situations in order to figure out what kind of life they really want to live and like it is like for anyone who's like had that like, Oh, if only I had just done this one other thing, or like, what if, oh my God, like, what if I hadn't done this thing?

Cat Sebastian: And like, then where would I be? Right? Like, like, I met my kid's dad in like a supermarket, like, and so like, what, like, what if I hadn't gone to that supermarket? You know what I mean? Like, that's like, that's like a, Yeah. Like you could have that kind of horrifying. And so like that, I think is something everyone's thought about.

Cat Sebastian: And so it's like a [00:06:00] creepy good or creepy bad feeling to really investigate that for the duration of a book, right? And then I've got a marvelous light by Freya. Markse Okay, and I'm realizing that I have read her name a million times, and I don't know how to pronounce it, so I should probably figure that out.

Cat Sebastian: It's the first in a series, it is like, historical fantasy romance. It's like a really large, good natured himbo, plus a really prickly, reserved Librarian slash archivist and I have to solve like magical mysteries together like that's all you know, you don't need to hear anymore.

Cat Sebastian: It's like himbo plush. I had to make a tag in my book spreadsheet. That's just himbo slash librarian just for this because like that is you know what like that's the dynamic I want more of. I want more of that. Yeah, it's perfect. Yeah. And then I have this tiny bit of a stretch is in other lands by Sarah Reese Brennan, which is one of my favorite comfort reads.

Cat Sebastian: And I think I've read it like four times since March, 2020. Okay. And it's basically, it's your, It's like you're [00:07:00] the classic situation where like a couple of select children from our universe are chosen to go to a magical school in another realm, except the twist here is that the, our main character, Elliot is super skeptical about this from the beginning.

Cat Sebastian: Like, why are we human trafficking children to like go to another world and like be child soldiers? Like this is all super. This is all super fishy, right? And they all like, why do they all want to fight wars when instead Elliot can go hang out in the library and come with, come up with clever diplomatic solutions to everybody's problems.

Cat Sebastian: And he's such a jerk. And he's such a mess. He's a kid at the beginning, and he's like, he's that kid that like, Okay. Nobody can stand in school. You know what I mean? Like, like they like it and it's so, but as an adult, it's so lovely to see like this kid come into his own and also just be like a giant dork and read all of the books in like the creepy magic school library.

Cat Sebastian: So anyway, those are four magic. Librarian books that I loved. I love this recommendation. Although they're [00:08:00] unique enough, like if you're thinking for librarians, but you have some good adjector reads, you have some himbos, you have like sliding doors. So there's a little bit of everything.

Cat Sebastian: And it's funny enough that's how publishing has been working with giving us magic librarians, there's so many more like, this is wild. Who knew this was like a mini trope. I had not thought of this. Yeah, until you realize and then you're like, I need more of these books. And then you're like, Oh, there's more and more.

Cat Sebastian: Awesome. So, Kat, tell us where you can find it online. I am on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Kat S Writes and my website is katsebastian. com. Thank you, Kat, for being on the show. Thank you so much, Laura.