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Kyra has a book based on this concept. The book is terrible, but theres a button at the end you can push to make ducks sounds. So she likes to read it and push the button with every finger (its cute seeing her struggle with her pinky). Eric Carle is popular in that he has dozens of books on shelves, and people give them out. But man his books suck.
When they aren’t derivative they’re boring and they mostly just milk on visual conceit over and over again.
Good To Be Blue tags me with a book meme. A perfect excuse to pontificate on literature.
1. One book that changed your life? Snow Crash. This isn’t a deep philisophical choice, I realize that. I have a lot more to say about this, but I’ll spare you. Suffice to say about once a year I have an urge to read this book.
2. One book you have read more than once? The Stand/Shogun. Both of these books are gigantic immersive books. I get lost in both of them, which is why every once in a while I feel like I need to reread them.
3. One book you would want on a desert island? The Bible. It’s long and I think in the event of stranding I’d be in a very spiritual mood.
4. One book that made you laugh? Run with the horses. There are three books in this series but this is my favorite. A young country boy in the 30′s goes to med school. Funny funny stuff.
5. One book that made you cry? We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. Large industrial genocide is scary, but low level personal genocide is horrific. People murdered their neighbors with machetes. Not just one guy, or one neighborhood, but the entire country. That is a special kind of pointless madness that I can’t reconcile with the modern world.
6. One book you wish had been written? This summer I planned on writing a story for a zombie anthology that was accepting submissions until July. I had a story I wanted to write, I even started it, but I never got around to finishing it and the deadline passed. The book is out now.
7. One book you wish had never been written? Frank and Izzy set sail. I hated this book the first time I read it. So did Kim. Kyra loved it. Now we go through great lengths to engineer bedtime so the other person has to read it.
8. One book you are currently reading? I’m embarressed to admit this: Guns of the South. It’s an alternate history of the Civil War in which the confederate army recieves a supply of AK-47′s from the future (yeah, really). That the south was supposed to win the civil war is a piece of Conservative dogma that I don’t really understand, but this book is the Mary Sue golden helicopter super happy wish fullfillment ice cream sunday of that little belief. Every third paragraph the author goes through special pains to make it clear how great it was to be black in the south. Happy slaves excited when their white betters recognize them. Smiling slave coachman. Slave owners randomly go off on long monologues about how great they treat their slaves and how bad it is to be cruel to them. Joyous harmony of blacks and whites interacting. You can feel the author looking over your shoulder saying: See? Not bad at all.
The irony of men who own other men discoursing on how hard they’ll fight to stay free from still other men is rich.
Also: the book is boring, there’s lots of time spent training people to field strip an AK-47 (No brick making though), dullsville. The Turner Diaries was much more disgustingly racist, but at least things happened. This was recommended to me, but I probably won’t finish it.
9. One book you have been meaning to read? Pride and Prejudice. I’m cheating because I read this a week ago. I’ve been meaning to read a some Jane Austen, and I finally got around to it. It was OK. I had trouble with the speaking conventions, which made it flow slowly for me.
10. Now tag five people: kim, rachel, matt, andy, and steve.
The New York Times has a list of the best 25 american fiction books of the last 25 years.
I have to admit I’ve only read one of them (A Confederacy of Dunces) so I’m not really qualified to comment too much but I would like to point out that there is very little science fiction on that list. And I can think of two books right away that didn’t get a vote that don’t suprise me and one that didn’t get a vote which actually does suprise me. But I think I’ll have to read the list first before I go running my mouth.
Yeah. The end of the world draws ever closer.
Cards Phillies!. It’s opening day today. Cardinals and Phillies. Now it’s officially summer. Kim and I’s first game is going to be the 14th of April, Kyras will probably be some time pretty soon after that.
Kyra loves lift the flap books, and she especiall loves My little people school bus book (so much so that we bought two more because you can get sick of them pretty quick, at least we can, Kyra not so much).
Anyway, click through that link and read the reviews:
Behind one door on the left, was grandma, tied up with a rope. 2. Behind a door on the right was a little African Americn child dressed up like a Native American child.
3. The pretend Native American had a bow and arrows on his back.
4. All children on the stage are Caucasian except for the mock Native American behind the door on the right and two minorities peaking around the curtain on the left. 5. The audience in comprised of 10 individuals-7 caucasians sitting on the left and 3 minorities sitting on the right (mix them up).
We had taken quite a long break from this book until recently. Kyra seems quite engrossed in the picture, but we never got through the entire story until a couple of weeks ago. She refers to it as “Kyra’s book” and sits proudly while looking through it. I can only assume that it’s because it looks like a bigger, thinner version of 1776, a book that Josh is currently reading (albiet it’s coming along slower than he’d probably want since every time he tries to read it, Kyra stops what she’s reading and asks for “Daddy’s book.”)
Awesome thread on Crooked Timber today:
What is the most embarrassing book that CT readers idolized when they were teenagers or pre-teens? Painful confessions welcome.
I’ve read a lot of the stuff they’re talking about and am embarressed about a good deal of it, but it lead to a good comment:
I had a fun conversation with Teresa Nielsen Hayden about this a few months ago – we agreed that a healthy ecosystem of books has to have a solid proportion of junk. Kids begin to read by picking up trash, some of which is, well, trashy, and some of which is actually pretty well written stuff in garish covers. By accidentally coming across these pearls, and learning to distinguish them from irredeemable junk, they then develop their own tastes, which can, with a bit of luck, lead them in 1001 different wonderful directions as they grow older. Junk as gateway drug – but not only gateway drug, as some junk is actually hidden treasure. I feel strongly on this – I usually find that people who haven’t had a decent quotient of junk reading at some point in their lives aren’t very interesting, for my own idiosyncratic values of ‘interesting.’
This is something I have to remember with Kyra (and Luke too, who is the victim of this sort of thing from me all the time). Kids read horrible books, stupid, wooden, plotless, artless books that are miserable, but they’ll figure that out, and they need too on their own.
Speaking of horrible books: Matt read Haunted (by Chuck Palahuniuk) a while ago and said it was one of the worst books he’d ever read. I assumed he just didn’t make a practice of reading bad books and thus had no way to judge. But it turns out he was spot on: Haunted was terrible. Thats two books in a row of Chucks that have been really bad. Me and Kim were talking about it and wondering how many more bad books it would take for our Chuck Palahuniuk collection to become a source of embarrasement on our bookshelves.
I mentioned I’m reading the Aubrey Maturin books and unfortunatly I’ve been nursing the eigth one for a while. The library by work where I get my books from usually hasn’t had the The Ionian Mission for a while. I have a hold on it, but it’s not due until the 19th of December. I don’t want to buy the 9th book in a series, because thats a slippery slope to buying 21 books. I could borrow it from my dad, but I’m a little nervous about how Kyra treats paperbacks and he’s got a matching set that I’m not sure I could replace a book if I needed too.
But glory to heaven: Kim searched the Mesa Library and couldn’t find it (she put a hold on it and they swore it would be there the next day but no luck) so she went to the Tempe library and Success! Thank you Kimberly! Thank you for going out of your way to find it for me. I’m so lucky.
I’m about halfway through the Aubrey/Maturin series of books and I’ve started to look into the history and backstory. Consider this your Wikipedia based field trip:
First and foremost Nelson, the man who looms large although unseen over our hero Jack Aubrey. Jack Aubrey is based off an actual commander Thomas Cochrane while Maturin is based off of Joseph Banks (also if you’ve ever wondered about Catalan wonder no more).
The battle of the Nile is alluded to often as a pivotal event in Aubrey’s life, but never fleshed out. A little information on the War of 1812 which figures prominently. Probably worth looking up Napolean against whom The Royal Navy spent the Napoleonic Wars fighting. (Theres an interesting tie in here: The Dutch navy was put under control of the Royal Navy as a result of William of Orange’s takeover of England which makes up much of the plot of Neal Stephensons Baroque Cycle it was this addition that cemented the Royal Navy’s status as the greatest navy in the world). That’s enough historical background to get you well centered in the time period.
It’s worth noting that The main Aubrey Maturin page has information about the historical basis for the various books.
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