Bad Characters

A few days ago, Coral decided she needed to make my life a little more interesting. I walk into the snake room in the morning to turn the lamps on and I see Barbossa acting strangely. He's in a weird angle and he looks nervous (don't ask me how I knew he was nervous, I've just had him long enough to KNOW). I look around his cage for feces but I didn't see any. Finally, I lift my eyes and I see Coral with her whole body squeezed between the wall and the back of Barbossa's cage. Somehow, she managed to slide her cage door open and walk over to my poor shy baby's cage to terrify him and me. I guess it amuses her. I put her back and made sure the door was fully closed. She'll probably do it again one of these days, so I'm going to have to come up with some type of lock for the door.
Crazy, crazy snake.

I just finished "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman. I did not like this book. People describe it as an adult version of Harry Potter but I actually considered it much more childish than any of the J.K. Rowling books. Adding sex scenes and curse words really does not add maturity to a book. We know, they're teenagers, they have sex and they curse, big deal. I don't feel more grown up reading about it.

The main character, Quentin, is completely unlikable. He is supposed to be an anti-hero, the skinny, tall misfit who makes it into a magical school where he thinks he will finally find what's been missing from his life. Sounds good, right? Predictable and completely done, but good. Well, it's not. I usually root for the anti-heroes but none of the ones in this book had anything remotely interesting about them. The story line, as I said, is nothing new so the least the author could do is make the characters cool. Think of the worst, whiniest, apathetic teenagers you've ever met and then give them magical powers and you'll have the torture Mr. Grossman put us through. It's actually a shame that he chose such poor characters and storyline because his writing style is actually quite beautiful. All he needs is to come up with his own ideas and leave the magic to the professionals.