I like the idea of a thread of "what we are reading," but a critical comment
would be helpful. Not just "recommended" or "not recommended" but what you
liked about it.
I began to write this and realized that I have been reading a lot of
children's books.
At my house I just got done reading the whole Harry Potter series to my
daughter for the second time. I notice that Rowlings writing style is the
same in every book. She didn't start amateurish in her first book and become
professional by her fourth book. It's the same tone too. I am sure that I
couldn't keep such a thing so uniform for so many pages. I do write and I
don't keep it so uniform, but I write for specialized audiences.
I like the Harry Potter books, but I am a guy who was raised on Lord of the
Rings. It was a life-changing moment when I discovered Lord of the Rings. I
was a dreamy Nebraska boy falling into a whole new world. (We didn't even
have Monty Python on television yet in Nebraska in those days.) I think we
read The Hobbit in a book club, or maybe as part of the classroom. I sought
out the rest of the series myself. What was so life-changing was that my
reading skills weren't really up to Lord of the Rings when I started, but by
the end of the trilogy I was head of the class. On all the standardized
tests my vocabulary skills were phenomenal.
I reread Lord of the Rings a few months ago (after the first time through
Harry Potter and after reading The Hobbit while waiting for the next Harry
Potter book). And I noticed that thing about so much of English writing:
speech and status. I didn't notice when I was a kid reading it. Somebody (I
think it was Jeff Goldblum) had remarked that they couldn't even watch Doctor
Who anymore because of the dialects. High status characters have high
English accents. Low status characters have cockney accents. Even a modern
writer like Rowling does it a little.
The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are an interesting one-two punch. The
Hobbit baits you into Middle Earth and Lord of the Rings immerses you in it.
Maybe Dr. Brin should write a prequel to Startide at the adolescent level.
I have a 9 year old daughter and I am catching up on children's literature
quite a bit. When I left children's literature I didn't look back. I got
into the picture books like Goodnight Moon when my kids were babies, but now
I am reading the next level like the Ramona books. Some of it is just
ghastly. Like the stories they write to sell a doll or related toy. But
other books are quite good. I have noticed that a Newberry or Caldecott
award are no guarantee of quality, and the lack thereof is no shame. I bet
somebody on the list has the inside dope on that fact.
For grown-ups I have been reading "Tom Tichenor's Puppets," 1971. I do
puppetry. I have been reading books of magic tricks. I do magic too. I
especially like "Abracadabra" because it gets into the theory of magic. And
I have been reading "Greek Literature In Translation," an anthology of
ancient Greek dramas and poetry mostly. I have been reading science fiction
for a long time, but I haven't found anybody, except David Brin, who has the
ability to tell a story with the clarity and insight of an Arthur C. Clarke
or an Isaac Asimov. Larry Niven has his moments. I even have an
acquaintance, Robert Reed, who has published science fiction but, aside from
his "Down the Bright Way," I am not enchanted with his work. So I am in a
science fiction dry spell right now.
Longest entry of the day.
Dan
