Track Listing

1. Precious Things
2. Angels
3. Silent All These Years
4. Cornflake Girl
5. Mary
6. God
7. Winter
8. Spark
9. Way Down
10. Professional Widow
11. Mr. Zebra
12. Crucify
13. Me and A Gun
14. Bliss
15. Playboy Mommy
16. Baker Baker
17. Tear in Your Hand
18. Sweet Dreams
19. Jackie's Strength
20. Snow Cherries from France

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11118 in Music
• Released on: 2003-11-17
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
After a full decade of unbroken success, the world's premier singer/songwriter marks her departure from east/west with Tales of a Librarian, her first best-of compilation. But where most acts simply slap together a few crowd-pleasers, preferring to concentrate on new material for their new label, Amos brings her usual perfectionism. Taking the very rare opportunity to revisit her songs, she has personally and purposefully remastered 18, while adding two new beauties in "Angels" and "Snow Cherries from France". For the most part this remastering has entailed a rearranging of the backgrounds, particularly the percussion and backing vocals (one of Amos's greatest strengths). The result is that the early tracks now sound more contemporary and sophisticated, making this album an easier entry-point for new listeners. The biggest difference is in the vocals, now even more up close and personal--and the originals were already frighteningly intimate. If anything's lost it's a certain fragility, some moments where Amos seemed about to be buried under the music and perhaps forced to stay silent for yet more years. Drama, that is. Still, it's an interesting exercise and the songs, naturally, are superb. Many of the best are here--"Winter", "Cornflake Girl", "Crucify", "Baker Baker"--more than enough to satisfy even the most rabid fan. --Dominic Wills

CD Description
First anthology from one of the most interesting artists inmodern popular music is a good introduction to her stark and powerful dissection of sexual politics. Features tracks from her five Atlantic studio albums, including 'Silent All These Years', 'Crucify', 'Cornflake Girl', 'Winter', the harrowing 'Me And A Gun' and the massively popular but hugely misrepresentative Armand Van Helden club mix of 'Professional Widow', as well as four new songs.

Customer Reviews

An excellent archive...
For anyone who knows of Tori Amos, you will already know that she is one of the most innovative, mature and creative female artists of our time, and this collection is the proof. Along with two new songs, Angels and Snow Cherries From France, there are some of Tori's most loved tracks from her Atlantic recording period. The real highlights are the dark and theatrical Spark...perhaps one of Tori's most beautiful and emotionally charged songs to date, Bliss...showing a beautiful affair with electronica, Cornflake Girl...a classic upbeat track and Professional Widow...a raw, almost scary track. Tori has also revisited B-sides Mary and Sweet Dreams, and they sound the better for it, which is no easy task. Mary is a definate stand out and Sweet dreams showing that Tori can handle uplifting, upbeat songs as well as her slower, thoughtful ones.
The new tracks are more reminicent of her newer works, which is no bad thing by a long way, as they capture yet another side to this incredibly talented artists work, both of them are as beautiful and sensitive as one would expect from Tori, Angels being a new masterpiece and will surely be hailed as a classic before long.
Tori has so many important and poignant songs, that it is virtually impossible to narrow them down to a twenty track collection, there are certain tracks that perhaps should have been included here that are not present, but the selected tracks all stand their own ground, and this collection out shines most other contemporary artists 'best ofs'.
An excellent collection, that should be a must for any serious record collector.

Great collection for the un-initiated
Always being compared to Kate Bush is very unfair on Tori. This collection should go a fair way to dispelling that myth. This focuses us on Tori Amos songwriting skills hence there are no tracks included from the 'Strange Little Girls' CD and also none from the recent Scarlet's Walk album.

Shame that Pretty Good Year was left off also but the accompanying DVD has a version on. The new recordings are all very good and will no doubt tempt the fans who own the original 1st 5 albums to buy this also.

This would make a sensible buy for anyone intrigued by Tori but so far still hesitant about buying any of her back catalogue.

My advice is buy this for a good compilation of the early tracks but also to buy Little Earthquakes and Under The Pink aswell as they deserve to be heard in full.

10 years on and we are still awaiting a Kate Bush follow up to the Red Shoes. In this time Tori has released 6 albums and now a compilation. We also had a live album on Venus aswell.

You cannot fault her on that at least.

A Fitting Close to the East West/Atlantic Years
With a wealth of material from the period with Atlantic/East West it was always deemed virtually impossible to select tracks for a retrospective that would please Toriphiles.
It was Tori's intention to release a compilation after Choirgirl Hotel which would include hard-to-find b-sides along with a smattering of live tracks plus a couple of new songs. That album ended up becoming To Venus And Back, as the new material kept on coming.

It is possible that had that original retrospective seen the light of day, that Tales Of a Librarian may not have ended up in the way it has done.

I for one am pleased that instead of allowing Atlantic to cobble their own 'best of' which would have undoubtedly revolved around the standards 'Silent', 'Spark', 'Cornflake' and 'Lite Sneeze' we get something that has obviously been deconstructed very carefully and given some considerable thought. Tori Amos obviously cares enough about her 'girls' to ensure that any 'best of' compilation truly bears a collection of songs that sum up her journey, as opposed to a collection of songs that earn their place on the record because of chart positions.

I'm pleased that this collection gives us so much more than the singles. Even down to the beautiful artwork and packaging, this is a record that the artist is undoubtedly proud of. As a fan, I am also proud to own it.