two book reviews

My mom bought me two books for my birthday.



This is the one she bought me when she went to the bookstore and said "hey, I'm looking for this book about an archivist, it just came out in paperback this month." It is... not terrible, but I hated it. I just, I don't know how to describe why I hated it without giving away huge, key plot points, and that would be wrong. It's not a bad book, but I hated the characters, and as a future archivist, the ending made me so angry. Ugh! But hey, it was not necessarily poorly written, it was just not written for me.


This is the book my mom actually meant to get me. Two books about archivists came out in paperback in June; how awesome is that? This book made me much less angry. First, it was set in communist Russia, probably one of my top five favorite settings for a novel. The characters were not constantly blabbing about religion, and Holland covered the whole "tough decisions have to be made" thing in a way that did not make me want to stab myself or him.

So, in conclusion, of the two books about archivists that came out in paperback in June, The Archivist's Story by Travis Holland is far superior to The Archivist by Martha Cooley.

Oh, also, Travis Holland had the author of The Historian blurb his book. How apropos!