| Author |
Message |
dave
Username: dave
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 3:40 pm: | |
Gentlemen, I have a favor to ask of you:
I have a 13 year old cousin who is a very bright kid and who I thought was at the tail end of his Tolkien reading stage. However, I went home over Thanksgiving and, much to my chagrin, he was reading Eragon. We all started off reading this kind of stuff, so I can't get too Puritanical about it, but I was trying to think of what books I could get him for Christmas that might get him reading in the right direction. I'm embarrassed to say I'm drawing a big blank though. The realm of kids and young adult fiction is not my forte. Can anyone help with some suggestions? |
martin
Username: martin
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 3:44 pm: | |
Hi, Dave! I work for OUP, and this our current batch of teen fiction:
http://www.oup.com/oxed/children/fictionteen/
Personally, at 13 I was reading Bradbury and Lovecraft - which may explain a lot in later life. |
iotar
Username: iotar
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 3:56 pm: | |
How about Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books? |
iotar
Username: iotar
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 4:04 pm: | |
Bridget reads quite a lot of childrens books, amongst other things. I know she rates Diana Wynne Jones. And I have to admit that I've only seem the Ghibli film of Howl's Moving Castle - but it looks pretty great. On a similarly steampunk vein, I got her Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines, which went down well.
The last kids book I read was E Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle, which was very strange indeed.
And yes, at thirteen I'd probably read my first Viriconium and Jerry Cornelius books. Probably didn't entirely understand what was going on - but that was part of the fun! |
martin
Username: martin
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 4:08 pm: | |
It's a Mel Brooks retort: "Yeah - how about 'em?"
I think I tried Peake about then, but (much as I came to love his work) I just didn't have the attention span for "Gormenghast." So I got diverted into all the usual sf titles put out by firms like Corgi and Panther, and consumed a huge amount of stuff I now find unreadable (Samuel R. Delany springs to mind), plus things like Sladek and Disch that seem even better now than they were in the '70s. |
iotar
Username: iotar
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 4:22 pm: | |
>>"Yeah - how about 'em?"
I have to admit it wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that I got all the way through Titus Groan.
>>So I got diverted into all the usual sf titles put out by firms like Corgi and Panther...
On recent attempts I start to wonder how John Brunner ever seemed big and clever. |
martin
Username: martin
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 4:50 pm: | |
It dawned on me halfway through Delany's "Dhalgren" that "big" did not automatically equal "clever" : a valuable lesson, even if Peake disproved it. I remember opening the Arrow p/b of "Stand on Zanzibar" a couple of times in the local bookshop, and just thinking - no.
I'd read some Cornleius stories at that age, and didn't really get them. Liked the Mal Dean, though, and despite my confusion it was quite clear that This Was Cool. Viriconium wasn't thought of (though I was dodging the earthly, skinhead counterparts of the Barley Bros. in real life, most Saturdays), but I did read Mike's critical essays in "New Worlds Quarterly." This meant I was the only person within shouting distance who'd heard of (let alone read) Harvey Jacobs or "The Atrocity Exhibition": in retrospect, this made me minor hip, but it wasn't a recipe for being a good teenage conversationalist. |
dave
Username: dave
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 4:52 pm: | |
Whoa, thanks guys.
I hadn't considered Peake...I was in my 20s when I read them too. And I've thought about Lovecraft and Viriconium, but...I have to deal with my Aunt.
I have a vivid memory of her catching me reading Pet Semetary when I was 12. It went badly for me. This sort of thing explains a lot in my later life too. But I will say this for myself: at about 15 I realized that King was crap.
Keep 'em coming! |
martin
Username: martin
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 5:10 pm: | |
Actually, I was going to suggest King!
"Pet Sematary" is (if I remember it right) a surprisingly clunky book, dotted with plot-traps and character flaws that were amazing in such an experienced author. But I'd still nudge anyone towards "The Shining" or "Salem's Lot" as a reader or would-be writer, to show how character, action, and an ear for dialogue can build a narrative that you race through almost non-stop.
If King's too much, though, there's Straub's "Ghost Story" - or, if you want to step back a generation, Shirley Jackson: "The Haunting of Hill House," "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (non-supernatural, with one of the best opening paragraphs ever written: anyone who reads it *knows* they're in for something extraordinary - and they're right), short stories like "The Lottery" and "The Tooth." These might even resemble Real Writing enough for your Aunt to give them the nod. |
alex
Username: alex
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 5:39 pm: | |
Alan Garner - Red Shift
Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood
At the same age, I was doing Moorcock, James Herbert and the Pan Books of Horror Stories. |
dave
Username: dave
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 5:51 pm: | |
Thanks Martin.
I'm exagerating a bit though. Both about how strict my aunt is and about King. I read a lot of his stuff when I was young. Haven't re-read him though. |
dave
Username: dave
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 08, 2006 - 6:00 pm: | |
Red Shift looks great, thanks Alex.
Also, I might have to get him Mortal Engines and then read it myself! |
dan
Username: dan
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 - 8:44 pm: | |
I think I was mainly reading Conan books at that age. Perhaps Moorcock, although I've a feeling that started about a year later.
I've said it before, and will probably say it again: Viriconium Nights cauterised an adolescence of reading SF/Fantasy. It had enough of a connection with Moorcock to get me started, but the curiously inconsequential yet beautifully evocative stories helped me to realise that perhaps there was more to life than just quests for magic swords and fair maidens. I never looked back. However, I was about 17 (and very stoned) at the time.
I've been having fun reading to my daughter these last few years (she's now 11), and she's gradually getting closer to my tastes although it's still a battle agreeing on books to read. The His Dark Materials series have been a lot of fun. |
arturo
Username: arturo
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - 10:32 am: | |
My suggestion would be “A wizard of earthsea” and the Taran books by Alexander Lloyd. ( Much better than the Disney adaptation of “The black cauldron” would make you think) |
arturo
Username: arturo
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - 10:56 am: | |
By the way, "The enchanted castle" is very good and it features a power ring that turns the wearer invisible but has a will of its own and will betray the wearer at his time of need. It turns children invisible but older people, the more powerful the better, can work wonders.
As it came out before "The hobbit".
Another well written, and a Tokien influence, children book is "Pook of Pook´s hill" wich can awake an interest in history. |
iotar
Username: iotar
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 - 10:11 am: | |
+1 on A Wizard of Earthsea. The rest of the series are good but that one in particular struck a chord when I were knee-high to a grasshopper.
Not really a children's book, but I remember enjoying G.K.Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday when I was in my early teens. And I was fanatically atheist at the time, so it's perfectly enjoyable in spite of the obvious allegory. There again the obvious allegory in this case is weird and apocalyptic and rather a bit of what you fancy at that age. |
arturo
Username: arturo
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 - 10:31 am: | |
I don´t find the allegory that obvious: I think that sunday is Hope and not many people share that view. |
arturo
Username: arturo
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 1:50 am: | |
I have read an ejoyed "Varjaw paw outlaw" by SF Said, it has cats and Dave McKean illustrations. |
iotar
Username: iotar
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 11:16 am: | |
>> SF Said...
He came along to one of our gigs. He's a mate of Mark's. |
arturo
Username: arturo
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 - 1:10 pm: | |
I picked it up on the stregth of the illustrations but the book itself is quite good. I was afraid of a John Livingstone Cat thing but preaching was kept to a minimun.Colorfultcharacters, snappy plot and good clean prose. |