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Okay, I’m a journalist, and journalists put the most important fact in the first sentence: I cried listening to the last chapter of this book. Not because it was sad. Because it made my soul soar. Because it made me cry out, “Yes! This is what a story should be!” Because it grabbed me by the emotions–my happiness, my insecurity, my fear, my memories of and hopes for triumph–and it didn’t let go until I was weeping in an ecstasy of satisfaction.
This is the book I want to read out loud at cons when they’re crazy enough to give me a slot to read… not my stuff! This.
I probably discovered Winter’s Tale in college. It was published my freshman year, and I spent at least an hour a day in the campus bookstore, which, back then, was a respectable establishment. Not only could customers browse the stacks of textbooks themselves, rather than waiting for the staff to fetch them (which meant you had your pick of the lowest-priced used copy), but it was also a well-stocked retail bookstore as well. About the size of my local BooksAMillion, and with about the same ratio of swag to books. No music, though. For music, you had to walk down the Student Union hallway to the Record Coop. (That’s two syllables, if you were wondering. And yes, we all pronounced it as though it held chickens instead of records.)