Series creator Lev Grossman returns to BOOM! Studios for an all-new story in the world of The Magicians with Lilah Sturges and artist Pius Bak that features the first appearance of the next generation of heroes and villains! Long after Quentin Coldwater has graduated from Brakebills, Dean Fogg welcomes the first class in Brakebills history to include hedge magicians, who are known for being dangerous practitioners of unsanctioned magic. As these two student bodies clash to prove their superiority, everyone at Brakebills is forced to take a side – not realizing a new threat has targeted them all! But the reason for this change at Brakebills will rock them to their core – and shock longtime fans of The Magicians!

This collection of essays serves as a response to passionate discussions regarding how librarians are perceived, reigniting an examination of librarian presentation within the field and in the public eye, employing theories and methodologies from throughout the social sciences. Through deconstructing the perceived truths of our profession and employing a critical eye, we can work towards improved status, increased diversity, and greater acceptance of each other.

The depictions of librarians in over 374 novels, short stories, and plays in English are the focus of this fully annotated reference work. Librarians, no less than other professionals, want to know how they are depicted in fiction. The stereotypical or fictional librarian--the one with the bun, comfortable shoes, and dour demeanor--may be fading, but fiction teaches a lesson about public perception. Actually, story librarians are often described as adaptable, knowledgeable, shrewd, tactful, tender and intelligent--traits that the authors, and by extension the readers, look for in their librarians. All entries include complete bibliographic data, followed by a lengthy annotation that discusses how the librarian fits into the story and gives insight to how he or she is depicted. Title and author indexes are provided for further utility.

Readers, Reading, and Librarians reaffirms librarians' enthusiasm for books and readers in the midst of the evolution of libraries from reading centers to information centers where librarians are now Web masters, information scientists, and media experts. It explores the future of the book as a medium and examines reasons for the decline in pleasure reading and the need for librarians to sponsor book groups. With nearly two hundred open-ended interviews with readers who read for pleasure, this book looks at how and why they choose or reject certain books.

Unashamedly a book for the bookish, yet accessible and frequently entertaining, this is the first book devoted to how libraries are depicted in imaginative writing. Covering fiction, poetry, and drama from the late Middle Ages to the present, it runs the gamut of British and American literature, as well as examining a range of fiction in other languages—from Rabelais and Cervantes to modern and contemporary French, Italian, Japanese, and Russian writing. While the tropes of the complex catalogue and the bibliomaniacal reader persist throughout the centuries, libraries also emerge as societal battle-sites where issues of personality, gender, cultural power, and national identity are contested repeatedly and often in surprising ways. As well as examining how libraries were deployed in their work by canonical authors from Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Swift to Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Jorge Luis Borges, the volume also examines in detail the haunted libraries of Margaret Oliphant and M. R. James, and a range of much less familiar historic and contemporary authors. Alert to the depiction of librarians as well as of book-rooms and institutional readers, this book will inform, entertain, and delight. At a time when traditional libraries are under pressure, Libraries in Literature shows the power of their lasting fascination.

This vital book reaffirms librarians’enthusiasm for books and readers in the midst of the evolution of libraries-from reading centers to information centers where librarians are now Web masters, information scientists, and media experts. Readers, Reading, and Librarians explores the future of the book as a medium. With nearly two hundred open-ended interviews with readers who read for pleasure, this book looks at how and why they choose or reject certain books. Readers, Reading, and Librarians examines: reasons for the current decline in pleasure reading the need for librarians to sponsor book groups the current focus on “electronic wonders” balancing the missions of acting as an advisory service for readers and maintaining your library's technological services and much more!