Enchanted Ivy Campus Tour: Stop Two

Stop Two of the Enchanted Ivy Campus Tour!

A little background... I wrote a book about magic at Princeton. It's called Enchanted Ivy, and it's coming out on Oct 12 from Simon & Schuster. This tour illustrates its world. (Cue the dun-dun sound effect from Law & Order.)

East Pyne Courtyard


This is the arch into the East Pyne Courtyard, the foreign languages department. In this courtyard:

"A weight smashed hard into the center of her back. Lily lurched forward and slammed down knees-first on the slate flagstones."

This courtyard is also the place where some friends of mine streaked the campus tour during our senior year. The man in this photo was not one of the streakers.

Unseeing Reader


If you look up... a little higher... not that high... you can see the gargoyle from chapter two of Enchanted Ivy. She's called the Unseeing Reader. Here's a close-up:


She's supposed to illustrate that the purpose of the university is the enlightenment of the students. Or a serious misunderstanding of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.

Firestone Library


I really, really love libraries.

That said, the stacks of Firestone Library are, well... creepy. Sure, you enter in this warm wood sunlit lobby. But then you take the elevator down into dark, silent catacombs.


Seniors have carrells, basically closets, that they can use to write their theses. So when you're in the stacks, you hear the click, click, click of laptops from people you can't see. Kind of like Poe's tell-tale heart. It's also dark. Each row has its own light, which means the overall lighting for the floor is minimal. And in some areas, the bookshelves are pressed together. They separate with the turn of a crank, and when you turn the crank, there's always the risk that you'll discover the skeleton of some student who was trapped there long ago... (Cue spooky ghost music.)

Coming soon... stop three! And click here to read stop one, or view all Enchanted Ivy Campus Tour blog posts at once.

5 days until Enchanted Ivy!