QUESTIONS for the AVID READER Part III

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QUESTIONS for the AVID READER Part III

1SassyLassy
apr 28, 2021, 8:53 am

One thing the last 15 months or so has taught us, is that life can fall out from under us. Why not a scenario like this?


Source: Depositphotos

QUESTION 16 New Worlds

Some unknown force has blocked your access to all books originating in your own language(s) and culture(s). You now have to explore books from other cultures and languages, which will magically be made available in a language you can read. What new to you worlds would you choose?

2rocketjk
apr 28, 2021, 11:17 am

QUESTION 16 New Worlds

a) Yiddish, to learn about the culture and language of my ancestors.
b) Finnish, because I found the country and people fascinating when my wife and I visited
c) Irish/Gaelic, because I find the idea of ancient Irish history fascinating, too
d) One or more West African languages/worlds, because it's a giant blank spot in my knowledge.

Is that the sort of thing you meant?

3SassyLassy
apr 28, 2021, 1:36 pm

>2 rocketjk: Absolutely what I meant - pushing oneself out of the current comfort zone, into something new.

I suspect you could get immersed in even one of those worlds, although all four together would make a great study.
Do you have any authors or books in particular in mind?

4rocketjk
Redigeret: apr 28, 2021, 3:52 pm

>3 SassyLassy: Particular authors and books in mind? Not that much. The research into that would be one of the fun parts of the project. As to Yiddish, it would be a question of reading many of the authors I already love, like Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Singer, in the original, and then finding out about authors I'd never heard of because they were never translated. In Finnish, I don't know much beyond Väinö Linna's wonderful Under the North Star trilogy and his Unknown Soldier, which I have read in English. So, again, it would be a question of research. As far as reading in Irish, at this point I don't know who is available in print in that language, but my guess is that by now there's plenty to choose from. Finally, there are a lot of great West African writers, of course, I assume writing in many different languages. More research!

5cindydavid4
Redigeret: apr 28, 2021, 6:27 pm

I am fascinated by ancient history and would love to find Lost libraries: of Alexander, Sarejavo, Timbuktu,Mayan - Im assumng physical condition and helpful governments would be a given in this special force?

6cindydavid4
apr 28, 2021, 6:17 pm

>2 rocketjk: got two books for you to check out re Yiddish (you probably already know about The New Joys of Yiddish if not, get it! )Yiddish a nation of words the book not only gives a very readable history but opened up my eyes to the battle going on among zionists over what to use for the language for the new state of israel. I had no idea. (btw it confused me greatly as a child why it was called the state of israel if it wasn't in the US....)

I remember reading Company of Liars while I loved it I questioned that the Jewish woman would be using yiddish so early in the middle ages.She wrote me back a lovely letter and explained thet the roots actualy go back to Roman times!

About Yiddishe life and culture

There was once a world

World of our Fathers

The Living Lens The Forward was the leading Jewish Newspaper in the us in the early years

Memories of my life in a polish village short but beautifully written and moving

Oh you must read Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books Aaron Lansky.

Hope that helps!!!!

7rocketjk
Redigeret: apr 28, 2021, 7:15 pm

>6 cindydavid4: Thanks! I'm aware of quite a few of those books and have read a couple of them. Outwitting History is on my shelves awaiting my attention. Thanks for bringing my attention to it. I remember a long time ago reading a NY Times (I think!) article about Lansky and his project.

I might have given an incorrect impression that I was starting from scratch in learning about this culture, which isn't the case. Instead, I was thinking of being able to dive deeper into it by suddenly and magically being able to read Yiddish and become familiar with untranslated authors. But I do thank you for those suggestions. Another good book, which my wife has read but I haven't yet, is Boychiks in the Hood.

From wikipedia: "Boychiks in the Hood is a 1995 memoir by Robert Eisenberg that chronicles Eisenberg's travels around the world visiting different Hasidic communities. Einsenberg wrote the memoir as a way to explore communities where Yiddish was the first language spoken among all generations. It is widely recognized as a reputable source for information on Hasidic life."

Regarding the debate between Yiddish and Hebrew as the language for Israel, this I was aware of. Among other things, orthodox Jews believed for some reason I've never fully understood that Hebrew was a language to be used only for prayer and Torah/Talmud study until such time that the Messiah should appear. I suspect it was a way to ensure that only the male elite could have the prestigious privilege of studying the law and commentaries as contained in the holy books.

At any rate, even within many of the Jewish socialist farming communes that existed in the early decades of the 20th century in the U.S. (my wife's grandparents lived on one and her mother was born there), there was a debate about whether to speak in Yiddish, Hebrew or English. And whether they were socialists or communists. Etc.

8cindydavid4
apr 28, 2021, 11:50 pm

>7 rocketjk: I might have given an incorrect impression that I was starting from scratch in learning about this culture, which isn't the case

oh I knew that based on previous posts, but figured I'd give you the titles that I have at home and figured you can pick and choose any or none!

Yeah that language debate goes along with who is a jew debate. I have been told that I cannot be Jewish If I do not support the govt of Israel without question. Fortunately I am able to ignore them, but there are people around me that would be surprised or upset if I told the so I don't. Ive also been told by some in the humanistic or reform movement that I am too traditional for them. Ah well What always frustrates me about these debates (and really any major issue) is that people see everything in black and white, and Ive always been able to see many sides of an issue, the world is many shades of grey.

9rocketjk
apr 29, 2021, 2:52 am

>8 cindydavid4: "oh I knew that based on previous posts, but figured I'd give you the titles that I have at home and figured you can pick and choose any or none!"

Thanks! I appreciate your taking the time, and it's a great list.

"Ah well What always frustrates me about these debates (and really any major issue) is that people see everything in black and white, and Ive always been able to see many sides of an issue, the world is many shades of grey."

Amen!

10tonikat
apr 29, 2021, 5:01 am

The Chinese poets, the buddhist scriptures in Chinese. But then also Sanskrit and also what the early Buddhist texts are in. Oh and ancient Greek -- and as long as I don't have to work to remember conjugations and declensions then Latin.

Oh and German

and I guess my french topped up to standard

and Russian.

that'd be a start.

11SassyLassy
apr 29, 2021, 10:20 am

>2 rocketjk: >5 cindydavid4: >10 tonikat: Hello all. Remember that in >1 SassyLassy: above, all these books you are thinking of will magically be made available in a language you can read., so go wild, or more prosaically, look for translations.

12cindydavid4
apr 29, 2021, 10:35 am

Oh, right!!!!What a powerfulforce!Will have to think on this....

13rocketjk
apr 29, 2021, 11:39 am

>11 SassyLassy: "will magically be made available in a language you can read., "

I was thinking of it the other way round, that I would magically be able to read the books in their original languages, though I guess it works out the same in the end. :)

14tonikat
apr 29, 2021, 12:02 pm

have you seen the movie Arrival? a universal language, very poetic as well . . .

15rocketjk
apr 29, 2021, 12:12 pm

>14 tonikat: Do you recommend seeing the movie?

16SassyLassy
apr 29, 2021, 1:33 pm

>13 rocketjk: I was thinking of it the other way round, that I would magically be able to read the books in their original languages

Even better!

17AnnieMod
apr 29, 2021, 3:40 pm

Q16

Even if the books in a culture/language somehow become available, their context and background won't be there - books don't exist in a vacuum and if you had lost your languages/cultures, you lose the ability to make the parallels needed to understand as an adult. If the magical device we used to get us the books somehow solves this problem as well, then I am not sure that it matters what culture it is really - it will feel like your own.

I am lucky to be able to read in two of the major international languages - Russian and English, with neither of them being my native one. Each of them had opened different worlds for me and each had allowed me to dive into other cultures. But they had also taught me that looking at any culture from outside is always going to be different than looking from the inside and that has nothing to do with reading - it is about shared experiences and mythology (in all its meanings). Cross-reading back in the days (English books in Russian and Russian ones in English and BOTH in Bulgarian) helped a lot with that missing shared-ness. Losing that ability will make a new culture either incomprehensible or (if magic helps here) familiar enough so that it won't feel new.

I am not sure if that is what the question was really asking but... :)

18tonikat
apr 29, 2021, 5:49 pm

>15 rocketjk: definitely, it's a beaut

and all will come clear as to why I mentioned it

19cindydavid4
apr 29, 2021, 9:28 pm

>13 rocketjk: hee was thinking the same. Yeah probably both is possible

20cindydavid4
apr 29, 2021, 9:38 pm

>17 AnnieMod: Even if the books in a culture/language somehow become available, their context and background won't be there - books don't exist in a vacuum and if you had lost your languages/cultures, you lose the ability to make the parallels needed to understand as an adult. If the magical device we used to get us the books somehow solves this problem as well, then I am not sure that it matters what culture it is really - it will feel like your own.

True that; but if this powerful force could do the first, it can no doubt do the other? that assumes you'd recall the history, and connections of every culture which would make you all knowing....

>17 AnnieMod: I am not sure if that is what the question was really asking but... :)

Hee, yeah probably not, but interesting to talkabout

21LolaWalser
apr 30, 2021, 3:02 pm

>1 SassyLassy:

China, India, Japan

That would be me nicely set for a lifetime of reading... or several.

22SassyLassy
apr 30, 2021, 5:24 pm

>17 AnnieMod: >20 cindydavid4: I am not sure if that is what the question was really asking but... :)

That's what I like best about these threads - responses can develop in whatever direction they go.

23SassyLassy
maj 6, 2021, 9:14 am




QUESTION 17 Dystopian Reading and Covid

We haven't really talked about Covid and all its implications in these threads this year. However, now well into the second year of it, do you find yourself reading more from the realms of dystopia? Conversely, if you read lots of dystopian novels before, have you now moved away from them?

24dchaikin
maj 6, 2021, 1:27 pm

Q16 i was going to start with Hebrew, but then understood your question a little better. Loosing books of my culture would not really impact what I read from other cultures in any predictable way I can think of. I’m trying to imagine, but I sense my response could be somewhere between good riddance and a craving for what’s lost - which isn’t really narrowing it down any. So, what would be next? I’m interested in other cultures now, that might not change any, although I would have more time for them and not worry about translations - that would be nice. The cultures I constantly feel I’m missing out on are Israeli lit, mainland European lit and all the old classics in European languages I don’t speak. Of course, there’s also the rest of the world. I just haven’t trained myself to look at any of them too much just now.

25dchaikin
maj 6, 2021, 1:35 pm

Q17 I don’t really do this stuff, unless it crosses my other paths. So no change except this - just thinking about last year during the worst covid isolation brings up a lot of anxiety. Also listening to what other people did or are doing during Covid isolation does the same. It’s not fear of the virus, but anxiety with how I handled the isolation. I felt weaker somehow during it and that seems to be what makes me so worked up (along with some consequences). So, all this may make reading these kinds of books harder for me now than pre-covid.

I remember in March 2020 my daughter had us all watch the movie Parasite. I had to walk out because I felt so much anxiety and it was getting worse the more I watched. (It’s not that nerve wracking a movie.)

26Deleted
Redigeret: maj 6, 2021, 3:17 pm

I think we've been living in some type of dystopia since before I was born in the 1950s. Cold War, Joseph McCarthy--you can come up with some real life horror or other that provides dystopian fodder every five or 10 years.

I think the human race has a collective death wish: "Hey, I know! Let's make HUGE BOMBS that can kill everybody and then sell them to unstable governments. Or, how about we deplete our farm land with mono cultures until we have to use so much fertilizer on it that it will run off into the lakes and POISON YOUR DOG if he drinks it! And if that doesn't work, let's make a bunch of crap that we don't need by burning mass quantities of fossil fuels until our kids get asthma so bad THEY CAN'T PLAY OUTSIDE! Plus, wouldn't it be fun if we could all live in a TV reality show by electing leaders who said crazy stuff and were COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED for the job??? And if all else fails, we can think up some GENOCIDES!"

And so on.

I haven't stopped reading dystopian novels. If anything, I am more drawn to them, if only because I know I'm not the only person who thinks that way.

But I get why people might decide to forego dystopian novels involving world-wide pandemics right now.

27dchaikin
maj 6, 2021, 3:19 pm

>26 nohrt4me2: seems like a good historical summary to me.

28shadrach_anki
maj 6, 2021, 4:34 pm

Q17

As I have already been actively avoiding dystopian literature for years, the current situation with Covid has not appreciably changed my reading patterns in that regard. If anything, I am even less likely than I was before to pick up things with dystopian elements. I find the genre as a whole to be fatalistic, depressing, lacking in hope, and generally bad for one's mental health (particularly when one engages in a steady diet of the stuff, literarily speaking).

29LolaWalser
maj 6, 2021, 5:21 pm

Covid hasn't affected the type of stuff I read, and I neither pursue nor avoid dystopias, but in general I feel like >26 nohrt4me2:, that we live in a dystopia. I can't think of any story that doesn't correspond to something that has or is happening somewhere already.

30jjmcgaffey
maj 6, 2021, 8:05 pm

>26 nohrt4me2: Your summary immediately triggered this in my head:

https://secularsolstice.github.io/Ballad_of_Smallpox_Gone/gen/

Particularly the third and fourth verses. But overall, it's a hopeful song...

I don't read dystopias, as I understand the concept - I've been in some discussions that presented very different views than mine, though. I don't read stories that don't end well, or at least in hope. Grim grim grim end of story is not something I'm willing to spend time on. So no, COVID hasn't affected my reading related to that.

31cindydavid4
maj 6, 2021, 9:00 pm

>29 LolaWalser: Covid hasn't affected the type of stuff I read, and I neither pursue nor avoid dystopias, but in general I feel like >26 nohrt4me2: nohrt4me2:, that we live in a dystopia. I can't think of any story that doesn't correspond to something that has or is happening somewhere already.

Ditto. Covid honestly has not changed my reading, I read what I want when I want it. But lately year, dystopia novels feel like reading the news, ya know?

That being said, it was helpful, and somewhat hopeful, for me to read Calais in Ordinary Time. The plague hits, horrible stuff happens to all sorts of people, but it ends on a good note I thought. and very likely our dystopia will as well. We have lots of people who know more and are doing more to stop the cycle of lies, hate, fear, violence. Trying to, anyway. At least they are in my little bubble.....

32cindydavid4
maj 6, 2021, 9:05 pm

>30 jjmcgaffey: wow,never heard that before, yeah, pretty much true

33tonikat
maj 7, 2021, 6:27 am

>31 cindydavid4: i stopped myself from saying yesterday that i read the newspapers, glad it is not just me. woke up to election results here, politics seems especially so.

34Deleted
Redigeret: maj 7, 2021, 8:41 am

>30 jjmcgaffey: Thank you so much for that! It reminds me to be grateful, as the news usually doesn't. One of the the things that that the pandemic has done is make me see how regular people just keep chugging and trying to hold things together--the grocery store people, the pharmacies, the hospitals, the funeral homes, the libraries, the fire department, the teachers, etc. "No (hu)man is an island" and all that. I hope those still lone-wolfing it out there for whatever reason get their epiphanies soon.

>28 shadrach_anki: I realize I'm not going to convert you, but not all dystopian novels end in gloom and doom. Even some as grim as A Canticle for Liebowitz or The Road have moments of grace. And some have lovely endings, such as Fahrenheit 451 or Station Eleven. Whether my mental health is suspect for having read those books, of course, is really up to the professionals ...

35cindydavid4
maj 7, 2021, 12:26 pm

>34 nohrt4me2: Even some as grim as A Canticle for Liebowitz or The Road have moments of grace. And some have lovely endings, such as Fahrenheit 451 or Station Eleven.

yes! with the exception of the road, all of those have been favs of mine, that leave you with hope, if not happiness.

36NanaCC
Redigeret: maj 7, 2021, 5:24 pm

I’ve never been a fan of dystopian novels, except possibly for The Stand. I saw this post on twitter earlier this week. And thought, how true....

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1388838376195907589?s=10

I can’t think about reading anything disease related at this point.

37lisapeet
Redigeret: maj 7, 2021, 8:55 pm

I like dystopian fiction... way more than dystopian nonfiction, that's for sure. I read a lot of Heavy Metal magazine type comix in my early teens and that whole punk rock/scrappy/end times ethos has always kind of appealed to me. That said, I don't read a ton of it, either before the pandemic or now. But when it crosses my path I'm usually game.

I don't know... the difference between that and THIS gestures vaguely around is pretty marked in my mind, and my utter horror of the latter doesn't really bleed over into the former.

38SassyLassy
maj 8, 2021, 9:57 am

>35 cindydavid4: >36 NanaCC: Glad to see the mentions of these books, as I was going to ask if these three books would still have an appeal:

Station Eleven
The Road
The Stand

Are these, as sort of "gateway" books to dystopias, more credible to today's world, since basically everything in them is already here (no sort of sci-fi twists)?
------
I will have to read A Canticle for Liebowitz

39dchaikin
Redigeret: maj 8, 2021, 10:39 am

>38 SassyLassy: for what it’s worth, I see The Road as largely an excuse for Cormac McCarthy to have a sparsity... to be able to write minimally, putting gore and tenderness (but entirely male) adjacent. I don’t know how that fits into the larger world of dystopia, but it fits very easily into his style.

40lisapeet
maj 8, 2021, 11:24 am

>39 dchaikin: Some really memorable images in that one, though—McCarthy's definitely still got it there. The father looking out the window and then filling up the bathtub with water, and the mother asking, "What are you doing?"... that one has stayed with me, such a little, mundane, and entirely believable sequence.

Two good-if-not-amazing post-apocalyptic books I read during this past year were Diane Cook's The New Wilderness, about a group of people traversing set-aside wildlands after some unspecified disaster—more about the interpersonal dynamics than the survival angle—and Sarah Pinsker's A Song for a New Day, which I haven't seen get a lot of attention here. It's set post-unspecified pandemic with music as its focus—public gatherings banned and music is channeled into mega-retail AI channels, so live music is forced underground. It's a great premise, superimposing the rise of giant corporate entities with American fear, and how a desire to stay safe can become stifling legislation—especially fascinating because it was written well in advance of this pandemic and she got so much right.

41cindydavid4
maj 8, 2021, 12:13 pm

>38 SassyLassy: Oh my god Canticle was one of the first sci fi books I remember being blown away by. Just incredible and so on target. (He had a sequel that didn't work, and killed himself a few years later, sadly)

not sure about the stand or the road , loved station eleven; wouldn't say its more credible to todays world. Most of whats happening in the book isnt yet. But I prefer my sci fi to just touch the border of the reality of our world. Which is why Canticle works so well - yes in our world that would have happened, but here not quite

42Deleted
Redigeret: maj 8, 2021, 12:46 pm

>39 dchaikin: I have never read anything by McCarthy except "The Road," and I read it only because it was a dystopian novel. So I don't exactly follow what you're saying here, especially about the male adjacent gore and tenderness.

Your comment did send me off on speculation about whether dystopias dreamed up by women writers are less gory than those by men. There might be less blood in women's dystopian novels, but more cruelty.

About 10 years ago, I did a short retrospective study of women's dystopias from the early 20th century onward. My conclusion was that women's dystopian novels often include some elements of humorous social satire (men's dystopian novels are rarely funny), but that they often lack the kernel of hope for the future that dystopians by men do.

FWIW, and speaking of male/female dystopias: "The Road" makes an interesting parallel read with The Giver, which was on the reading list for the YA Lit class I taught. Students had all read "The Giver" in high school and were sick of it, so I was looking for a new lens to view it through. Looking at the way the two authors reveal the dystopian landscape and at the similarly ambiguous endings was helpful. But the main challenge was to explain why high schools have "The Giver" on their reading lists but not "The Road."

Also interests me that high schools have dropped "Romeo and Juliet" from lit curriculum (teen suicide), but still let the kiddies read "Macbeth," which is drenched in blood.

43dchaikin
maj 8, 2021, 1:16 pm

>42 nohrt4me2: interesting about The Giver and The Road. I didn’t mean to comment on gender in scifi, only that CM tends to be hyper-male. The gore in The Road is substantial reduced from what it is in many of his other novels - especially Blood Meridian - which is practically an ode to gore. (And it works. It might be his best novel.)

44Deleted
maj 8, 2021, 4:33 pm

>43 dchaikin: Thanks! Might have to sample some of McCarthy's other stuff. I liked the reportorial style of "The Road" because it didn't jack up the really awful things that happen in it. It also seemed to be reflective of his two very numbed-out and shell-shocked protagonists. I am not sure I saw anything hyper-male in "The Road," so would be interesting to see how he handles another type of story.

45dchaikin
maj 8, 2021, 5:02 pm

>44 nohrt4me2: The Road is hyper-male in the sense that it’s all men. He kills off the mom before the start of the book. A few of his books have women as prominent secondary characters but I don’t any of them have a scene with, say, two women talking to each other (except possibly a mother and daughter in Suttree).

46Deleted
maj 8, 2021, 5:19 pm

>45 dchaikin: There's the woman who appears as a mother figure to the boy at the very end of "The Road." Given that the only other woman we've seen is the boy's mother (setting aside the people in the barn ...), I think we're supposed to have some pretty ambivalent feelings when she turns up.

Whatever the father's intentions and plans are are also pretty ambiguous, imo. He clearly means to protect the boy, but whether he's following the only course of action available to him or whether he's completely deluded is unclear.

I may be wholly off-base here, but I wonder if you could argue that women in "The Road" are conspicuous by their absence? It begs you to think about how this would have played out had there been women around to influence the situation. I remember thinking something like that when i watched "The Searchers" with john Wayne many years ago.

47rocketjk
maj 8, 2021, 6:09 pm

I haven't changed my reading based on the pandemic. As to dystopian novels, the most recent I've read was Arkady by British writer Patrick Langley, which I read and reviewed in 2019. It was quite good, I thought. As I recall, very little gore, if any.

48cindydavid4
maj 8, 2021, 6:19 pm

>42 nohrt4me2: Your comment did send me off on speculation about whether dystopias dreamed up by women writers are less gory than those by men. There might be less blood in women's dystopian novels, but more cruelty.

See Stone Sky and The Poppy War as two books (series) by women writers that are incribibly violent and gory, but so well written you cant turn away. Just sayin :)

49cindydavid4
Redigeret: maj 8, 2021, 8:13 pm

sorry double post

50dchaikin
maj 8, 2021, 7:11 pm

>46 nohrt4me2: “conspicuous by their absence”

That makes a lot of sense to me.

51avaland
maj 9, 2021, 7:01 am

#18 Dystopias

Late to the party on this one...Norhrt4me2ha created the Dystopian group and I signed on early. It seemed that for many years we two kept it going (being fairly regular readers of this kind of tale) as other readers came and went, .

However, that said, my reading of this genre precipitously and thus posting on the group declined over the last two or three years (I wonder why...hmm...because it felt like we were living in a dystopia, maybe?!) But.... it hasn't stopped me from watching dystopian stories i.e. The Handmaid's Tale, Snowpiercer, some of Man in the High Castle, Continuum, Watchmen....

Perhaps during the recent years I needed my reading to be something different? Or perhaps I'm getting my dystopian buzz from dramatized sources and don't feel the need to read it?

>48 cindydavid4: I might agree with you re: more cruelty, less blood. Would have to have a deep think to be sure :-)

52cindydavid4
Redigeret: maj 9, 2021, 5:30 pm

>51 avaland: see my response above. just as much blood. Cruelty does so often arise tho, I don't think its just women authors. ButI do remember high school well and agree, girls seemed to be are cruel than boys

53baswood
maj 9, 2021, 4:30 pm

Locked down in my house today and for the foreseeable future because of coronavirus I gazed out my window on a bright sunny day, no cars on the road no people walking; thinking about my next dash to the shops for food; the only thing missing was the Triffids. Reading a post apocalyptic novel especially one as good as this during the start of a world wide pandemic is in some ways a surreal or should that be a real experience. OK I have to admit that the vast majority of the worlds population has not gone blind and there are no killer carnivorous plants lurking in the hedgerows, but there is a killer disease out there, which is spreading rapidly and cannot be controlled.

This was the opening paragraph to my review of the Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham which I read in early 2020

I read a little science fiction mainly stuff from the 1950's and so there will be some Dystopia, but I don't go looking for it and I don't avoid it.

54LolaWalser
maj 9, 2021, 5:05 pm

>52 cindydavid4:

girls are more cruel than boys

Oh, please, let's not.

55Deleted
maj 9, 2021, 5:23 pm

Clarification: My original suggestion in Comment #46 wasn't that women are more cruel than men, but that dystopian novels by women might emphasize psychological cruelty over killing and gore. I don't know that that's accurate, just something to think about. And because this idea is still percolating, I certainly would not want to posit any reasons for *why* dystopians by women might include more cruelty than gore.

56cindydavid4
Redigeret: maj 9, 2021, 5:31 pm

>54 LolaWalser: well in my humble experience....but yeah, lets not :) I edited my post above btw

>55 nohrt4me2: but that dystopian novels by women might emphasize psychological cruelty over killing and gore

ah ok thanks for clarifying that. I think there is something to be said for that idea. And yeah, I don't want to posit why either. nuff said, except that it sells?

57bragan
maj 10, 2021, 4:00 am

My own short and somewhat belated answer to Question 17:

I normally like dystopian and really love post-apocalyptic stories, but I have found myself shying away from them lately. It may be some time before I'm entirely comfortable reading a pandemic-based novel again, for sure.

58AlisonY
maj 10, 2021, 4:28 am

I think I don't like dystopian novels, but I read and really enjoyed The Road, Blindness and The Mandibles, for example, so perhaps I enjoy them more than I think.

Maybe it's more that they're not the kind of novels I regularly seek out, but I can enjoy one from time to time.

59Deleted
maj 10, 2021, 3:13 pm

>58 AlisonY: I enjoyed "The Mandibles," too. I sensed an interesting libertarian/rightwing lean in her ending. Politically, I lean left into the Pinko zone, but I think dystopians coming from the right are often just as interesting. In fact, I think that dystopian fiction provides territory where otherwise politically polarized people can find some common ground about their fears for the future. A co-worker who was very right-wing told me about the TV series "Jericho." I enjoyed it, and we had some refreshingly un-fraught conversations about it over lunch. Another dystopian that might come from the right is 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, which I also have on my reading list.

I have downloaded "Blindness," as I have had Saramago on my "to read" list of authors for a long time, but haven't yet got around to him.

60cindydavid4
maj 10, 2021, 5:34 pm

Love Saramago but had so much trouble reading Blindness; just too much for me to take, it was a DNF for me

61Nickelini
maj 11, 2021, 11:22 pm

>23 SassyLassy: Somehow this thread started without my noticing, so I'm way behind . . .

Q 17 Dystopia

Never really been my thing, but dystopian books can be great now and again. I did get a bit burnt out on the genre though in the autumn of 2007 when I was at university (as a 40-something year old) and my 20th century British literature course that semester picked dystopias for the theme. I read 7 dystopian novels, and while I was at it, read Handmaid's Tale and Fahrenheit 451 on the side. Also, the summer before this course, my mom died.

I've been kinda done with this genre since then, but I do pick one up once a year or so.

62thorold
Redigeret: maj 12, 2021, 5:38 am

I lost track of this one as well, somehow. Briefly:

Q16 New Worlds: I'm with those who want the language I can now magically understand to be the one the books are written in. And I'd be happy to try my hand at exploring any new culture the magicians assign. Maybe Arabic and/or Farsi if I get a choice, since those are languages with rich pickings but ones I'm not very likely to get to by my own efforts.

Q17 Dystopia: I've read most of the old standards, but I've never really been strongly attracted to the genre, with or without Covid-19. Blindness is the only one of Saramago's books I didn't enjoy, and much the same goes for Atwood and the Handmaid.

63Deleted
maj 12, 2021, 9:25 am

Speaking of "The Handmaid's Tale": Anyone else finding the current season of the TV series disappointing? There seems to be a lot of emphasis on slo-mo torture and extend scenes of sexual coercion, almost as if somebody is sort of enjoying them. And the heavy-handed irony of runaway handmaids falling into a train car of milk? Hmmm. Atwood has said that some viewers who have lived under tyrannies have criticized the series as unrealistic, saying that the rebel handmaids would have been shot long ago. I sensed a certain amount of oblique criticism of the show on her part. She can comment on the direction of the story, but has no power over where the series creators take her characters.

64AlisonY
maj 12, 2021, 3:29 pm

>59 nohrt4me2: I hope you enjoy Blindness. I thought it was horrifying yet brilliant, but I know a number of people here found many aspects of it just too much.

Interesting thought about dystopian novels creating a middle ground in terms of politics, but I guess if you can't find some level playing field in the middle of a catastrophe then when can you?

65avaland
maj 12, 2021, 4:15 pm

>63 nohrt4me2: will send you some comments privately re this last season on Handmaid’s Tale.

66Deleted
maj 13, 2021, 7:49 am

Just out: "Make Shift," dystopian anthology that looks at post-pandemic life. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/make-shift Looks like an interesting collection of authors.

67SassyLassy
maj 13, 2021, 6:21 pm

>66 nohrt4me2: It had to happen! and it is an interesting collection of authors

>53 baswood: Amazing reading that quote now.

68SassyLassy
maj 13, 2021, 6:31 pm




image from studybreaks.com

QUESTION 18: YA Books

Does the world need YA books? Please tell us why or why not.

69cindydavid4
maj 13, 2021, 7:31 pm

When I was a kid, there were childrens shelves, adults shelve and books for teens that for some reason only held sci fi and fantasy books (which was fine with me but I am sure I was missing out on others esl as I got older) While I was reading adult books by jr hi, I could have done with books that were inbetween. YA has opened up a whole new world, no canon books, but ones kids can actually relate to and discuss in class. For all of those kids who struggled in the traditional Eng Lit classes, and hated reading because of it, can now find books about their own world and issues they face every day and so perhaps will become life long readers themselves

I have found some YA books that I thought were extraordinary for adult reading - The giver , Inside out and back again, The Miraculous journey of Edmund Tulane come to mind immediately. Whats funny is that i have read many adult books that really were written for YA; those don't tend to do much for me...

70dchaikin
maj 13, 2021, 8:08 pm

Q18 I’m not crazy about YA in mass as the negative stereotypes and the distraction from books that don’t have them bother me. But really, like anything else, it just depends on whether it works and it’s well done. YA fills a market and good YA hopefully gets rewarded. I have enjoyed some books classified as YA.

71NanaCC
maj 13, 2021, 8:19 pm

I think there is a need for the tween/young teen group to have an adult book that is still appropriate for the age group. So many of them are fantastic reads for adults as well. The Book Thief comes to mind.

72LolaWalser
maj 13, 2021, 9:57 pm

>68 SassyLassy:

I should probably skip this question since I read vanishingly little of what gets labelled YA, but, the question does interest me for what it shows about changing trends.

As a teen (in the 1980s), there were books aimed specifically at the younger/young adult reader (to say nothing of children's literature, of course). The main difference I see to that time is that the genre, at least as popularised in the US, has gained a huge adult readership. That was not the case "back in my day".

Otoh, it seems to me that many of the classic books that were considered "for children/young readers" in my environment or in the past in general, have rapidly almost disappeared from consideration for kids as readers--Dumas, Dickens, Verne etc.

73Nickelini
maj 13, 2021, 10:14 pm

>68 SassyLassy:
I'm confused as to what YA actually is . . . .

74jjmcgaffey
maj 13, 2021, 10:55 pm

>73 Nickelini: A marketing angle. Which affect what books get bought (as well as how they're marketed), which affects what gets written...

Like most genres, there are really good books that fall within the boundaries of YA; there are books that are marketed that way that...really don't fit; and there are simplistic formula-written books that don't have anything to them aside from fitting in that genre (yes, it's a genre. The paragraph above is the (ok, a) definition of genre).

I read a lot of YA, because authors I like and books I like from them are marketed that way. I have found many books marketed as - well, mostly SF/F (because that's my favorite genre), but probably others as well - that could perfectly well have been marketed as YA. And I've found books marketed as YA that I didn't read or didn't finish because they were so nasty - I'm regularly amazed at what's thought appropriate for younger readers.

And then there's MG and NA and...chop it up finer and finer. But one kid will be reading YA at 8 and one won't be ready for it until they're 15...nothing to do with their reading ability, just what they can handle. And the 8-year-old will be reading some books and unable to read others.

Sure, why not, it's as useful as any other genre - as long as people don't think that being labeled YA magically means it's perfect for every kid of a certain age and not for anyone older or younger. Like any genre.

75thorold
maj 14, 2021, 12:49 am

Q18: YA books

Like others, I’m too old ever to have been considered a “young adult”, so it’s hard to visualise what need that category meets. I don’t know if I’ve ever read any books that would count as YA. I moved on to the general shelves of the library when I’d exhausted the children’s section, and it doesn’t seem to have done me any harm.

In theory, though, it sounds as though it must be a good thing to have an intermediate marketing category that helps less adventurous kids take their first steps into the world of “real” grown-up reading, but it seems weird that that category has taken on such a life of its own and that some people, at least, are apparently content to stick there permanently.

76Deleted
maj 14, 2021, 8:29 am

I taught YA Literature the year I retired. I thought Eleanor and Park was as good as anything I've ever read. I wanted Park's Avon Lady mother to be real. I wanted her to live next door and come over for coffee. I wanted her advice about my own kid.

But your question is, do we NEED YA lit?

To the extent that we need literature about human beings at all ages and in all circumstances of life and in all places, yah, sure, we need YA lit.

To the extent that we need propaganda in the guise of literature to mold teenage attitudes, no, cuz teenagers aren't going to read it.

To the extent that we need a marketing niche for YA books, I'm ambivalent. If a bookshelf labeled YA LIT it attracts kids who don't otherwise read, great. If it ghettoizes really good stories or relegates them to "stepping stones" to "real" literature, that's sad.

77rocketjk
Redigeret: maj 14, 2021, 11:48 am

When I owned a used bookstore I had several robust YA shelves, which I kept right next to the childrens' books, because young folks' reading levels are of course not always chained to their chronological ages. In some cases, the books were read by teens, or preteens with higher reading levels who wanted to read about and/or identify with life as a high schooler. There were some high quality writers in the mix, like John Green. But the vast majority of the YA books I sold were in the genre areas: Science Fiction/Fantasy or YA Romance. YA Romance was for the most part Paranormal Romance. Or, as I used to refer to it to parents looking for books for their kids, Twilight and the Spawn of Twilight. There were several series in both categories that had pretty active sales.

>75 thorold: "an intermediate marketing category that helps less adventurous kids take their first steps into the world of “real” grown-up reading . . ."

This is a pretty good description of the case for the category, I think. Also, it helps parents. Let's say a parent knows their preteen or early teenager liked the Twilight series or the Maze Runner series and wants to encourage them by buying them the first book in a similar series. A book labeled YA is going to have zero graphic sex and as I understand it have a very low level of anything approaching graphic violence, so the parents know they can trust those books on that score. But if they had to go looking in the "adult" paranormal romance or urban fantasy sections for something to give their kids, things get an awful lot dicier along those lines these days.

Here is a completely unscientific conjecture, just a guess on my part: Because kids are brought up with so many TV shows to watch and talk about with their friends, they are attuned to the idea of episodic storytelling. Hence, books in series form, as so many current YA books are created, are right up their alleys. (There are, of course, many "adult" series available now, as well, so that point might be a wash, but I do have a guess that younger readers are particularly attracted to series.)

I also had a YA Classics section which did pretty good trade. I think the young folks who were drawn to them were those who had good teachers and/or had reading behavior modeled strongly at home, but again, that's only an educated guess on my part.

All in all I think that having a broader range of books available, as to reading level and subject matter, is a good thing. There is a lot more competing for kids' attention, diversion- and entertainment-wise, than there was when most of us were young readers. Some young folks today are willing and happy to make the jump as readers to Dickens,' Stevenson's or Dumas' time and place, but I wonder how many of our own contemporaries who turned away from reading might instead have become more frequent readers later if there had been material closer to the modern YA category available to them.

78lisapeet
maj 14, 2021, 12:29 pm

I don't follow much YA, but I think it's great for kids/teens/young adults to have a lot of options. As Jerry said, there's so much competing for their attention these days, for someone to grow up and think of themselves as a reader is always going to be a plus down the line, no matter what it was they were reading. I think having books for every taste and reading level is a good thing.

When I was of that demographic, in the '70s, there were plenty of "age-appropriate" books—the Judy Blumes, the Paul Zindels, etc.—and I remember zig-zagging among those, sf and fantasy, and regular adult books. I did he same when picking books for my son, definitely making sure that there was plenty of good quality in there. I think kids who read widely probably always will, though I can't quite imagine what it's like to parent in the age of screens. We never had a TV when my son was growing up and I know it encouraged him to read more—I think we got our first home computer when he was 10.

I don't read much in the way of YA myself, but I know quite a few adults in their 30s and 40s who read almost nothing but.

79bragan
maj 14, 2021, 1:20 pm

>68 SassyLassy: Yes. The world needs all kinds of books, for all kinds of people, all ages, and all tastes, or it would be a much poorer world.

Next question. ;)

80cindydavid4
Redigeret: maj 14, 2021, 2:17 pm

>77 rocketjk: A book labeled YA is going to have zero graphic sex and as I understand it have a very low level of anything approaching graphic violence, so the parents know they can trust those books on that score. But if they had to go looking in the "adult" paranormal romance or urban fantasy sections for something to give their kids, things get an awful lot dicier along those lines these days.

you are right for the most part but You'd be surprised by how dicier things have gotten in YA books. Not as bad as adult books wuold be, but it pays for parents to know their kids maturity level and ability to deal (similar to knowing how they might react to certain movies) and /or be prepared to have a good discussion with the kiddo about the read if it might be problematic

>77 rocketjk: I wonder how many of our own contemporaries who turned away from reading might instead have become more frequent readers later if there had been material closer to the modern YA category available to them

Oh I so agree, and think having the variety that exists now in kiddie/YA lit really encourages life long reading

81LolaWalser
maj 14, 2021, 9:10 pm

>77 rocketjk:

they are attuned to the idea of episodic storytelling

Haven't they always been? Think of the film serials and the comics, and plenty of chapter books too, the Hardy boys, Nancy Drew, Tarzan etc.

>78 lisapeet:

I don't read much in the way of YA myself, but I know quite a few adults in their 30s and 40s who read almost nothing but.

It's this sort of thing that surprises me--I mean, strikes as "new". I was recalling some of the YA stuff I read as a teen and although it was by no means simplistic, there's just no picturing my mother, say, then in her thirties, reading the same thing. It just... wouldn't occur to her. So I think marketing, making it "okay" for adults to read, does play a big role.

I wonder how much the protagonists' age matters, either in attracting or repelling readers? Come to think of it, I don't like the idea of reading lots about teenagers, especially not in a teenage voice, from a teenage POV. It just feels... like a trip I'd already taken and am done with.

82jjmcgaffey
maj 14, 2021, 10:01 pm

>81 LolaWalser: That's the one thing that I'm cautious about in picking a YA book - I cannot deal with teenage angst. "OMG I have a zit/the wrong clothes/whatever, the world is ending!" or "The boy/girl I like likes someone else! My life is over!". On the other hand, that sort of angst tends to be in the formula books, which I avoid anyway. Again, there's a lot of good writing marketed as YA.

Actually, that's a perennial joke - Mercedes Lackey used to be marketed purely as YA (Ok, yeah, magical white horses, obviously for teens, right?). Then she wrote a trilogy in that world with a homosexual main character - his sexuality was a major point, mostly because the adults around him tried desperately to suppress it and suppressed him entirely until he broke loose (He's a teen in the first book, adult in the second and older adult in the third). And suddenly, Lackey was on the adult SF shelves instead of the YA ones. She didn't change, just the marketing perception of her...

83AlisonY
maj 15, 2021, 3:18 am

>81 LolaWalser:, >82 jjmcgaffey: I share the same thoughts on YA. Fantastic for teens as I remember from my own teen reading tastes you want to read about people your own age (at least in early teens), but it wouldn't interest me as an adult, in the same way I'm not about to return to crop tops any time soon.

84Deleted
Redigeret: maj 15, 2021, 7:51 am

Geez, maybe I'm a case of arrested development, but I find the angst at the beginning of adult life remarkably akin to the angst here at the end of life.

I don't want to read Nancy Drew mysteries or anything--I never did--but old age and adolescence have their parallels: What's going on with my/your libido? The zits are gone, doc, but now I've got this skippy heart beat. Why does everyone dismiss what I say because of my age? Why am I here? Sometimes everything is so confusing! Why are my relatives such a pain in the ass! ... and like that.

I don't seek out YA lit, but reading it for that semester I taught it in college was quite interesting.

I construed the question here to be not whether we, as individuals, LIKE YA lit--I doubt it has much appeal for those here between 20 and 65--but whether we collectively NEED it.

85rocketjk
Redigeret: maj 15, 2021, 12:45 pm

>81 LolaWalser: "Haven't they always been? Think of the film serials and the comics, and plenty of chapter books too, the Hardy boys, Nancy Drew, Tarzan etc."

The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Tarzan movies/books have repeating characters, but each book has its own story, so I wouldn't think of them as episodic (i.e. episodes in a continuing story) in the same way as the many trilogies I saw in my store where, as I understood many of them from their synopsis, the storylines are actually carried throughout the three (or more) books. I didn't read any of them, though, so perhaps I'm overstating the number of through-stories in those.

Film serials are mostly before my time, so they didn't occur to me, but sure. The comic books I read were, again, repeating characters but not that often (occasionaly, yes) with stories continued from one edition to the next. In the newspaper comics, the continuing series like Prince Valiant still existed, but I didn't know anyone my age who cared about them. The only continuing comics page strip I followed was Doonsbury, but wasn't until I was past the YA stage.

86cindydavid4
maj 15, 2021, 1:24 pm

>85 rocketjk: The comic books I read were, again, repeating characters but not that often (occasionaly, yes) with stories continued from one edition to the next. In the newspaper comics, the continuing series like Prince Valiant still existed, but I didn't know anyone my age who cared about them. The only continuing comics page strip I followed was Doonsbury, but wasn't until I was past the YA stage.

Whats funny is that I have tried to read Graphic Novels and they just do not appeal to me, perhaps why I was never able to get into the character comics as a kid. (wish I could because Neil Gaimans Sandman would be right up my alley....)

At that age tho I was reading MAD magazine That and Laugh in were my gateways to the likes of Doonesbury, Far Side, etc. All that affected my own sense of humor and outlook on life for good or not so good!

87LolaWalser
maj 15, 2021, 2:10 pm

>86 cindydavid4:

My brother and I loved MAD magazine!

>85 rocketjk:

I forgot superhero comics (all the rage in my childhood), also usually "sagas" told in episodic manner. Anyway, I was just noticing how ubiquitous that form of storytelling is.

>84 nohrt4me2:

I thought the answer was obviously "yes", as far as books as books go: of course there should be books tailored for youth, about youth, from their POV. I think it's the labelling that lends itself to puzzling about, similar to the discussions about "sf" (speculative, science fantasy, sci-fi, fantasy...)

>83 AlisonY:

Yeah, at this point in life there has to be something extra to attract me to a YA title, a curiosity about some specific aspect or other. But then it can happen that I read a book, like recently The Hate U Give, without particularly realising it's marketed as YA. Or maybe marketed also as YA--it gets confusing quickly!

On the point of labels, remember how Harry Potter books had editions "for adults", with less colourful covers? Just shows how simple manipulation of such things, external to the story, can affect the size of the audience.

>82 jjmcgaffey:

Sad, and apparently still happens. Judging by the persistent attempts to ban books with gay characters, etc.

88avaland
maj 15, 2021, 3:21 pm

>64 AlisonY:, >65 avaland: Sorry about the nonsequiter ....

Have opened a discussion thread in the Atwoodians Group open to any who would like to discuss the fourth and last season of the television adaptation of "Handmaid's Tale". One should be current in their watching, otherwise you may encounter spoilers.

89baswood
maj 15, 2021, 4:07 pm

The world certainly does not need YA books.................. It needs the books but not the label. Yet another mindless marketing ploy.

90avaland
Redigeret: maj 16, 2021, 5:53 am

>68 SassyLassy: YA Books

I don't read many YA books, although I have read & enjoyed some. i.e. Julianna Baggot's Pure trilogy, Scott Westerfield's Uglies trilogy, Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials, China Mieville's Un Lun Dun, Gwyneth Jones' works under the name Ann Halam, and all the short stories I can lay my hands on by Margo Lanagan. *

There are others. If I like an author's adult work (i.e. Baggott, Mieville, Jones/Halam), I might check out their YA titles.

There were books for the 12+ back in the day (my day would have been the 60s-- Tom Swift, Hardy Boys, Judy Bolton, Nancy Drew), but they didn't get the kind of attention YA books get now. And after reading my brothers' Tom Swift (we didn't have the other series) I started reading Readers' Digest Condensed Books and my father's WWII novels like candy.

From a former bookseller perspective: "Young Adult" is a marketing category created by the book industry to market specially to pre-teens & teens, in volumes with stories that are directed at young people's concerns/issues and have covers that will appeal to them. They did not do this out of kindness, they did it because they saw it as a money-making enterprise. And you know, the bi-product I think is that more young people might be reading, and reading more. And another bonus was that the covers and stories attract some adults.

Do we need it? Well, a need was likely there, or was created by industry OR some combination of the two. Anything that gets young people reading is fine by me!

* I should note that all these titles are SF or Fantasy.

91SassyLassy
maj 15, 2021, 4:36 pm

The YA category is variously described as including the age group between 12 - 18 and 12 - 20, which seems to span a vast ocean in maturity levels from one shore to the other. As noted above (>78 lisapeet: and >72 LolaWalser:), there are adults reading these books even further into maturity.

Is this because the books are just too easy, a form of comfort reading? Are they doing a disservice to the development of more complex language, and extended attention and thought processes?

I guess what I'm wondering about here is how is the bridge is made to what might be called literature (not quite the term I want, as I don't mean it in an elitist sense, but I can't think of a proper descriptor - adult books has the wrong ring to it!)

I would have to agree with >90 avaland: that anything that gets young people reading is fine by me, but how is the progression made to more challenging reading?

92Deleted
maj 15, 2021, 5:00 pm

It strikes me that the assumption here is that YA lit is some type of stepping stone to better literature, that it's dumbed down to appeal to the Inferior discernment of teenagers, or is less worthwhile to read because it depicts human kind in a half-baked state. There is a sense that these books are limited or limiting to the reader in some way.

Certainly some YA books are all or some of those things. And some are not.

The discussion prompted me to try to remember the last time I went into a book store and saw a section labelled Women's Lit. Likely the 1980s. Novels by and about women are mixed in with Contemporary Fiction or in the appropriate genre sections.

Given the number of older adults who incorporate YA lit into their reading, I wonder if that section of the book store will eventually disappear, too?

OK, done belaboring this topic now.

93SandDune
maj 16, 2021, 4:16 am

I read a lot of YA and agree that back in the day these would just have been regarded as Children’s books aimed at older children. In my opinion authors like Philip Pullman, Frances Hardinge, China Miéville (for UnLundun & RailSea), Melvin Burgess, Malorie Blackman and Patrick Ness are worth reading at any age. I would say that they are just books with topics that a 12-18 year old audience would find interesting (which doesn’t mean that an older audience wouldn’t find them interesting as well). In the wider range of YA I don’t see any topics that are specifically excluded, although it might be dealt with less graphically than with novels aimed at adults. And I don’t see that they are more likely to be in series that books aimed at adults, maybe more so than literary fiction, but not when compared to fiction as a whole. Those books that have gone on to win the Costa Book of the Year Award, after having won the Costa Children’s prize, count as some of the best books i have ever read (The Amber Spyglass, The Lie Tree).

There is obviously some confusion about what YA means. My local library put up a YA display a few years ago and included Jeet Thayli’s Narcopolis. For those of you that don’t know it it’s a very graphic account of heroin addiction in the seedy side of Bombay. It was when my own son was a young teenager, and I was pretty relaxed about what he read but even I would probably have balked at that one. It was a bit much for me when I read it: I only had read it because my book group was reading the Booker shortlist. So I spoke to the librarian. He insisted it was fine and YA meant 18-25. My argument that if you googled YA or looked at the YA shelf in Waterstones that was not the sort of book you came up with at all, and some little 12 year old (or more likely their mother) would be in for a bit of a shock got nowhere!

94thorold
maj 16, 2021, 5:04 am

>92 nohrt4me2: Yes, categories come and go. "Gay & Lesbian fiction" had a similar trajectory to "Women's fiction", a decade or so later: it was a big step forward when mainstream bookshops started having a special section for it, and it was an even bigger step forward when they didn't need to any more. I'm sure YA will disappear — as a specific label — sooner or later too, when the good elements of it have become indistinguishable from the mainstream and the bad ones forgotten...

>93 SandDune: It's tempting to say that parents are fully entitled to exercise control over what their young children read, but if they choose to delegate that control blindly to publishers, librarians or booksellers they deserve everything they get. In reality, of course, the publishers, librarians and booksellers are probably more afraid of complaints than most parents are of unsuitable books.

95SandDune
maj 16, 2021, 7:21 am

>94 thorold: if they choose to delegate that control blindly to publishers, librarians or booksellers they deserve everything they get For young children yes, for the ‘young adult’ age group (assuming we broadly mean teenagers) then no. A twelve or thirteen year old can go to the library on their own if they’re library users. I wouldn’t expect their parents to be there moderating their reading. And I do think if a library is adopting a different definition than what is normally used then they at least should make it clear that they are doing that. I’m pretty sure that a lot of parents would consider Narcopolis an unsuitable book for a 12 year old. To be honest though, I think it would take a very determined 12 year old to have got much beyond page 3, as the writing is pretty difficult.

I don’t particularly see a reason why the YA label should disappear. Personally I find it a useful label both for myself now and when my son was that sort of age. It’s an indication of a broad category of book, and it would make book buying for young teenagers much more difficult if it didn’t exist. I’d probably compare it more to ‘Crime’ than ‘Gay & Lesbian’ fiction. Crime books can be very varied, but its useful to have the genre separated out in a bookshop for browsing purposes.

96japaul22
maj 16, 2021, 8:03 am

I never had any interest in YA lit until I had an 11 year old boy. Now I have a deep appreciation for the category and the quality of books available in it. Having the designation does help me find appropriate level books for my son that are the right reading level and will interest him. He's turned into a great reader. We still read together as well, and many of the books are really good on their own merit. Standalone books like Hatchett, Holes, Wonder and lots of series, as mentioned above, by James Ponti, Stuart Gibbs, The Ascendence series by Jennifer Neilson - I could go on and on! He also just read the Phillip Pullman series, The Giver quartet, and The Alchemyst series is up next. I also love that some popular nonfiction has come out with a "junior" or YA version. He's read The Boys in the Boat and Trevor Noah's book, Born a Crime in those youth versions and loved both. My son is reading The Other Wes Moore right now which I will also read.

Basically, I've been thrilled with the books being published for the tween age group. It is a whole new world for me and the YA designation did help me find it. My son is not what I would consider a "likely" reader, meaning he would much rather be playing sports or moving around, but he's really gotten into reading and I'm thrilled!

97SandDune
maj 16, 2021, 8:26 am

>96 japaul22: My son is 21 now and I wish there’d been a YA category of non-fiction when he was growing up. There was a lot of children’s non-fiction but it seemed to jump from that to adult with nothing much in between. He was an avid reader of history (he’s now doing a history degree) and by the age of about 10 or 11 (or younger actually) everything aimed at children was too basic for him. But it’s a big jump from a children’s book about the Roman empire to something by Mary Beard or Tom Holland. There seemed to be nothing in between.

98dchaikin
Redigeret: maj 16, 2021, 8:52 am

Unfounded fears about YA

- 1) it shelters. That is YA can be used as a way to shelter readers, including adults (!), from things in the world they don’t want to deal with. By which I mean YA can be an excuse to reinforce white entitlement and avoid challenging it. (You can replace white entitlement with religion, sex-avoidance, and other hot button topics - each with some very different implications, even if they overlap).

That is, like joining only like-minded fb or other online groups, YA can be used shelter groups from other perspectives.

- 2) YA readers may either not expand from that category and this may be all they read ever, or YA may turn off readers.

When i see adults that only read YA and rave about it, this crossed my mind. I think I’m being very unfair, but that doesn’t stop me from being too judgy.

———

These are triggers for me. That is I unreasonably immediately and unconsciously exaggerate their impact. I do believe there is an element of truth to them. But it’s probably overstated. Also when this is true, there are probably other much larger factors involved

——- sorry, not done yet——

I think about 1 because I’m in a community of narrow minded white-supremacist leaning, trump voting scary people who I don’t typically want to know too deeply, except the exceptions.

I think about 2 because of my kids and how they really aren’t great readers and i’m kind of sad about that. I worry pushing YA dumbed down their relationship to literature, that it spoiled it. But, I also know there are much larger factors involved, even if I don’t understand what these are. And my kids do read, and i am grateful for that.

———

I think my thoughts above are largely contradictory and that complicates and confuses and amplifies my feelings toward YA.

99japaul22
maj 16, 2021, 9:06 am

>98 dchaikin: That is interesting and must be a difference state to state. What I've loved about the YA category is how diverse and representative it is. Kids with physical disabilities, addressing discrimination, including girls in non-traditionally feminine roles, my son reading tons of books by women authors and not even thinking about it . . .

Every year Virginia publishes a list called the Virginia Readers Choice list for various reading levels and I've found it to be an incredibly diverse list. My son devours them all, every year, even the ones obviously marketed to girls. Even some of the sports books he's read (like by Mike Lupica) deal with illegal immigration and families split apart. The book The Other Wes Moore is about a man named Wes Moore who is raised in a supportive, financially secure family and he contrasts his life with another man named Wes Moore that grew up a few miles from him whose life circumstances led him to incarceration. A Long Walk to Water is about life in Sudan and is also a really wonderful , eye-opening book.

I think there are wonderful offerings to expand perspective out there. I feel really fortunate that they exist and that we have a wonderful elementary school librarian who is always putting out diverse reading lists.

There is always a way to read narrowly, at any level, but there are plenty of excellent YA books being published. It is something I admit to being surprised by, so I wanted to point it out!

100dchaikin
maj 16, 2021, 9:19 am

>99 japaul22: yes, great points. I’m aware of that. It’s as people approach it. YA typically means clean (where “clean” means age-appropriate sex-censored, in a way). Of course, add a label (say, Christian fiction YA) and, you know, “clean” has more meaning.

101SandDune
maj 16, 2021, 9:39 am

>99 japaul22: >100 dchaikin: I wouldn’t have wanted my son to read YA fiction that ignored difficult topics or those that ‘some’ people considered controversial. But there is a lot of YA fiction about that does deal with these topics. Books like Junk by Melvin Burgess deal with drug taking, Patrick Ness’s books feature gay relationships, the Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman looks at racial inequality, just to give a few examples. And there are definitely ones with sex in! I think like any genre, it depends what books you choose.

My son went through his young adult phase, and he will still read young adult from time to time. But it hasn’t warped his approach to reading. He will pretty much read anytime and anywhere.

102SassyLassy
maj 20, 2021, 6:45 pm

Over on labs39's thread ( https://www.librarything.com/topic/332040#unread ) there was an interesting review and discussion of the high school curriculum in Florida. I thought I had read there that Romeo and Juliet had been discontinued as a school text because of teenage suicide, but it must have been in another thread, so sorry not to acknowledge that person.

This question is somewhat related to >68 SassyLassy: Question 18 above, as it deals with the same age group.



image from Quora

QUESTION 19 Romeo and Juliet and Other Non YA Tales of Teenaged Angst

Teenage suicide, like teenage substance abuse, death, and all the other problems teenagers face has been scrubbed from the curricula in multiple jurisdictions, yet it doesn't stop the problems. Does this kind of well intentioned action do any good, or does it make things worse, by not acknowledging the problems and allowing a venue for discussion?*
________________
* I'll make it more light hearted next question!

103cindydavid4
Redigeret: maj 20, 2021, 7:31 pm

I read the play in HS, at a time when I was discovering an overwhelming depression that turned into a life long illness. Reading it did not make me consider suicide, it did make me hate the story for the adults being such dolts. As an adult I love the prose and know so much of it by heart. I can see using it in HS to teach not only the brilliance of the Bard, but to start a discussion about suicide, a reminder to students that there is always another option.

I do question this :" teenage suicide, like teenage substance abuse, death, and all the other problems teenagers face has been scrubbed from the curricula in multiple jurisdictions, " I don't think they have been scrubbed, in fact I find many current YA novels dealing with just those issues, books that have found their way into HS reading lists. I would say that such scrubbing indeed makes it worse. It means adults: teachers and parents, need to have conversations with children about the issues. But blaming such books will make little difference in the rise of drug use, suicide and other problems. These problems all so much more complex than that.

104LolaWalser
maj 20, 2021, 9:00 pm

Romeo and Juliet didn't come across as teenagers to me when I read the play first, when I was a teenager (the story I knew even far before, from the Lambs' retelling). The few times that I saw it staged, they weren't played by teenagers. I don't know why so much is made of this aspect (their chronological age) nowadays, as if our idea of "teen age" applied back in the 16th century. Certainly they are young and first-time lovers (although Romeo has had a dalliance already), but they are not very comparable to our teenagers in anything but a number.

I don't know what's happening with education re: teenagers (not rhetorical, I mean I simply don't know), but I do notice that social media has created huge complications in some ways. The amplification of signal... Time was, if you had something dealing with a "problematic" theme--drugs, rape, suicide etc.--the discussion would be contained within the classroom, possibly just the one subject, one book or theme (I don't recall teachers ever using such material for "therapy" or confessions, whatever personal experiences those involved may have had) and you'd move on to something else soon enough etc.

But today it--any chance remark, private experience etc.--gets thrown to the whole wide world and may reverberate for ages, ramify and connect, and cycle endlessly, and there's no escaping it, no moving on, and so for every thing.

On the upside, I think kids today have more resources they can also access more easily, so at least no kid, whatever their problem, needs to feel utterly alone. Well, I hope.

105Deleted
maj 20, 2021, 9:07 pm

I doubt it does any good, but I'd defer to sociological studies that said otherise. i'm not an expert on teen suicide and self-harm.

My guess is that curriculum decisions are made to avoid controversy and blame rather than because there is any evidence that suppressing ceertain works causes harm. Somebody on the school board hears teen suicide is up and decides to wipe R&J off the list "to be on the safe side."

Or a parent decides a book is offensive or smutty and gets some like-minded folks together to get it kicked off the list.

Many high schools are moving toward a reading list where the kids choose their own books (with parental approval) or are given alternate selections if their parents don't approve of the books that are on the list. And they're not going to pay English teachers extra for having to teach different books to different kids because, well, teachers only work 9 months out of the year, are overpaid, and belong to pinko unions.

Hover parenting is killing public education, but that's a whole other rant.

106SandDune
maj 21, 2021, 4:25 am

Teenage suicide, like teenage substance abuse, death, and all the other problems teenagers face has been scrubbed from the curricula in multiple jurisdictions Is that happening? Mr SandDune has recently stepped down from being Assistant Principal to being a classroom teacher, so he has taken on some extra classroom sessions, some of which were P.S.H.E. (I think Personal, Social & Health Education). Some of the issues that he has dealt with so far have been online pornography, self-harm, substance abuse. There’ll be a lot more topics as well, those are just the ones I remember and he has only been teaching it since Christmas. I think taking it out would do absolutely no good at all. And those sort of topics seem to be a staple of the more angsty sort of teenage fiction.

In general I think in the U.K. we are less likely to want to ban books for children, maybe because on average we are a lot less religious?

107thorold
maj 21, 2021, 5:22 am

Q 19

I know very little about present-day teenagers, and even less about curricula, so I could probably hire myself out very profitably to the press as an expert on this topic. But I don’t think I have anything very useful to add. Obviously books and press reports do give young people models to copy, but equally obviously loneliness and a sense of isolation and inadequacy are bigger killers than any sense of identification with Werther, Kurt Cobain or Romeo.

We read our share of Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and Arthur Miller at school, we even had a teacher who was a volunteer for the Samaritans and talked to us quite openly about that experience, but that didn’t prevent two of my contemporaries at school from taking their own lives very young. I’m pretty sure the main culprit in both those cases was the extreme pressure we were all under to achieve academic and career success, rather than any sort of romantic illusion. And of course, I wished afterwards that I’d known how bad a state they were in and had been able to offer them some friendship and support, but we were never trained to ask for help...

108jjmcgaffey
maj 21, 2021, 7:47 pm

I've actually seen "problematic" matters come back into (link to previous question) YA books. No idea about schools - though I suspect it's individual schools or school systems making the decisions, so the answer is "all of the above".

I do recall, for several decades, YA books containing anything other than froth being...not published, not read, banned, etc. Anything worse than losing a boyfriend to another girl was verboten. But more recently I think the pendulum has swung a bit too hard in the opposite direction, and every.single.book must have Terrible Things happen and the protagonist(s) must Deal With them. I find both boring, to be honest. Variety, folks! Though if I had to pick one, I'd take froth over Grimdark.

109SassyLassy
maj 23, 2021, 3:08 pm

I'm wondering if making separate books for each particular problem somewhat removes them from the real world, now matter how helpful the book may be, so that the problems are not necessarily seen as existing in conjunction with other things happening around this age group, the way they actually are in real life.

>107 thorold: I’m pretty sure the main culprit in both those cases was the extreme pressure we were all under to achieve academic and career success, I'd like to see how that problem is dealt with in the YA category of books. I wonder if academic success even figures. I just checked out bookriot's list of 10 YA books set in college, and non of them dealt with these matters.

110SassyLassy
maj 25, 2021, 12:11 pm




The Tempest as illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1926)

QUESTION 20 Illustrated Books

We expect children's books to be illustrated, but there is also a long history of books primarily read by adults featuring incredible artists.

Now the same benevolent power that gave you many languages is giving you the gift of being able to create art for books. Which books would you choose and which artistic medium would you use? Which episodes in particular would you like to see illustrated?

Feel free to post some of your favourite artwork from books here.

111Deleted
maj 25, 2021, 3:21 pm

I don't want my books interrupted with illustrations. That said, I like looking at illustrations of stories that are familiar.

I had a lot of fun with my American Lit students looking at illustrations for the stories of Edgar Allen Poe. They brought scads of links and printouts to class, and I asked them to curate a little online art show that high school students could look at, with notes on the stories and artists.

Writers come and go in popularity, but college students in my 30 years of teaching never tired of Poe.

Here's some Poe pictures from Aubrey Beardsley: https://www.openculture.com

112LolaWalser
maj 25, 2021, 4:22 pm

I'm interested in book illustration and have many beloved illustrated books, but not a favourite style. I guess my attitude before every new illustrated book is one of "surprise me".

Thinking of which recent book I'd have liked to see illustrated-- Reclus' Histoire d'un ruisseau, and, why not, done by his friend Frantisek Kupka. But this time, instead of the Art Nouveau-ish graphics he did for Man & Earth, I'd pick his painting, abstract or not

https://sukhasiddhi.blog/frantisek-kupka-leau-ou-la-baigneuse/

113thorold
Redigeret: maj 25, 2021, 4:48 pm

I’m sure it won’t be long before Google comes up with an AI tool you can ask to generate a set of illustrations for book X in the style of artist Y...

Obviously the world needs a new edition of Margaret Thatcher’s The Downing Street Years illustrated by Steve Bell (or maybe even Banksy?).

I’d love to see Albrecht Dürer’s engravings for The Hobbit. And the Folio Society’s Collected Works of Jamie Oliver, illustrated by Francis Bacon...

But Hogarth’s engravings for Bridget Jones’s Diary would be fun to see too.

114ELiz_M
Redigeret: maj 25, 2021, 6:21 pm

In a less creative approach, I really want some enterprising publishing house to issue a 60th anniversary edition of The Golden Notebook reproduced as the novel describes the different notebooks. Each page should be edged in the color for the notebook it was supposedly written in. And instead of having "stage directions" explaining what the notebook looked like -- what was crossed out, whether printed, handwritten and whatnot -- just reproduce it graphically:

{The second notebook, the red one, had been begun without any hesitations at all. The British Communist Party was written across the first page, underlined twice, and the date, Jan. 3rd, 1950, set underneath:}


{....After a date in March 1956, a line in heavy black was drawn across the page, marking the end of the neat small entries. And the last eighteen months had been ruled out, every page, with a thick black cross. And now Anna continued in a different writing, not the clear small script of the daily entries, but fluent, rapid, in parts almost unintelligible with the speed it had been written:}

115Deleted
maj 25, 2021, 8:12 pm

>113 thorold: Boy, a computer program that generates pictures in the style of ... I gotta feel two ways about that. Like that PDQ Bach guy who does pop songs in the style of classical composers that certain types of NPR listener finds so clever.

116dchaikin
maj 25, 2021, 9:53 pm

Thinking about what novels in the last 100 years might go well in a medieval style illuminated manuscript - skirting the obvious fantasy genre novels - including Terry Pratchett. Gravity’s Rainbow comes to mind. I’d like to see Plastic Man in illuminated manuscript format. Tom Robbins’s novels might be entertaining.

117Deleted
maj 25, 2021, 10:18 pm

>116 dchaikin: Well, you nixed fantasy, but I thought immediately of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.

118lisapeet
Redigeret: maj 25, 2021, 11:18 pm

I LOVE illustrations, whether they're in picture books or graphic novels/nonfiction or as add-ins to adult fiction. Probably because I started life as an illustrator myself, but I almost always picture illustrations for what I'm reading, at least briefly. Style varies according to the material and my mood, but a lot of the time the more straightforward, non-fantastic stuff is a mix of, I don't know, Posy Simmonds meets Alison Bechdel meets Shaun Tan? Which I guess is basically someone who draws like me but better. But anyway, I love turning narratives into drawings in my head, and I think it's actually good for my own art, to envision myself drawing things that are a bit out of my reach artistically.

119Nickelini
maj 25, 2021, 11:24 pm

>118 lisapeet:
Yes, yes, and yes

120dchaikin
maj 25, 2021, 11:47 pm

>117 nohrt4me2: I would read that tapestry.

121rocketjk
Redigeret: maj 26, 2021, 11:13 am

The first book I thought of for this illustrations topic is one I haven't read since college (and that's a long time ago) but which I noticed on the shelf the other day and thought, "I should reread that . . . ," Call it Sleep, Henry Roth's 1934 novel about a boy trying to make his way in the slums of New York City.

122cindydavid4
Redigeret: maj 26, 2021, 11:25 am

Oh Racham is one of my fav illustrators from the 'golden age of illustration' 1880-1920) Maxwell Parris, Edmond Dulac, Jessie Wilcox Smith. There are modern illustrators that I love, but these never fail to amaze me.

https://www.illustration-art-solutions.com/illustrators.html

123SassyLassy
maj 31, 2021, 4:39 pm

All these responses make me wonder why more books don't come with at least some images in whatever format works.

Although I hadn't thought of pairing artists with books, that seems to be the direction the responses went, which was really fun. I never seem to get around to answering my own questions, but here goes with this one:

The Old Man and the Sea with Roy Lichtenstein
The Lisbeth Salamander books with Ralph Steadman
Alice in Wonderland with Maurice Sendak
Wolf Hall with N C Wyeth
Shuggie Bain with William Hogarth in the style of his Gin Lane illustration

If I could magically have the right artistic bent, I would like to use it on A Midsummer Night's Dream

124LolaWalser
maj 31, 2021, 5:43 pm

The Lisbeth Salamander books with Ralph Steadman

Lol! I take it you were not a fan? (Of Lisbeth etc.)

125SassyLassy
jun 1, 2021, 11:00 am

>124 LolaWalser: I resisted the books for awhile, but then read through them one terrible winter, debating with myself the whole time whether or not I should be doing so or not. I must have liked them to a certain degree to have that strange compulsion to finish them. Lisbeth herself was oddly compelling for all kinds of reasons that probably don't bear too much examining, but also repellent at times.

Steadman seemed like someone whose driving lines could depict Salamander's compulsions and rage.

126SassyLassy
jun 1, 2021, 11:09 am

Something currently being discussed on RidgewayGirl's thread that seemed like it would be of interest here:



QUESTION 21 Breaks with Authors

The question of when to give up on a book has been discussed a lot in various Club Read threads, but when do you give up on an author? Many authors have a wide variation in topic and style over the course of their writing lives, and while one book may rivet the reader, another from the same author may seem completely tedious.

How do you decide when you've had enough? Do you give an author a second or third chance? If so, on what basis?

127rocketjk
jun 1, 2021, 11:35 am

Question 21: Enough, already!

If I read an early book by an author and don't enjoy it, plot- or character-wise, I might give him/her/they a second chance, especially if the work I've read is a relatively early one. And example that comes to mind is Russell Banks. I didn't particularly care for Continental Drift, his 5th book, I think, written about 10 years after he first started publishing, but I haven't ruled out trying another of his someday.

But if I read a book that I think is poorly written, then I'm generally done with that author, unless someone whose standards I respect urges me to try a particular work of that author.

128thorold
jun 1, 2021, 11:38 am

Q21:

Frivolous tangent: have you ever thought about what an odd metaphor "rivet" is in that context? We use it to mean that our attention is fixed irremovably to something, but the thing that tends to go through my mind is the image of a little stud being hit repeatedly on the head with a very large hammer. Certainly there are authors who do that to their readers...

I'm not ruthless enough about giving up on authors, I think: possibly because I often have two or three of their books still on the TBR shelf by the time I decide I don't like them any more. Martin Walser would be an obvious example: I've read about six or seven of his books, only one of which I've really enjoyed, and at least two I've positively disliked. Don't ask why, it's probably literary inertia or something.

I should think the evolution of our taste as readers is possibly even more likely to be a factor in losing patience with an author than changes in what they do. If someone keeps writing variants on the same book, there will usually come a point when I have very little motivation to go on and read more, even though they are very competent at what they do. Alexander McCall Smith and Louise Penny might be good examples of that, for me. If I were about to take a long flight and had forgotten to bring a book (something that has never happened yet, but let's hypothesise), I would have no problem picking up their latest at the airport bookstall, and I'm sure I'd enjoy it, but I'd far rather read something that was going to be less predictable.

129Deleted
jun 1, 2021, 5:25 pm

I'll give any author a couple tries if the charm outweighs the defects the first time around. Usually a second book will tell me whether I want to go on with them.

130cindydavid4
jun 1, 2021, 6:07 pm

I love Anne Tyler, Isabelle Allende, and John Irving for years. Then there got to be a point where their stories were no longer fresh, where it seemed the same plot just different characters and setting, and that they were calling it in.

I'll ususally stick with a new writer if the debut book shows promise. Often will lose them when it is plan that it was a one time thing

131cindydavid4
jun 1, 2021, 11:00 pm

saw this on another thread and thought it was appropo here, as we were recently talking about cover art:

The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature

132dchaikin
jun 2, 2021, 8:43 am

I put an answer on Kay’s thread, but wonder how my answer might differ this morning. My biggest problem with the question is that is hasn’t come up for me recently so I’m sort of hypothesizing.

But, in theory, an author who has a mindset that appeals me, especially one who seems struggling and exploring, would generally appeal to me even if I didn’t like that particular book. Whereas I might not want to revisit an author who puts a clean under-thought novel together. But, not sure that’s consistent with my history. Mostly I thought, “this is trash”, or “this author is an idiot”, or “this is annoying” and then felt I would rather never visit this author again.

I brought up Philip Roth on Kay’s thread. I read American Pastoral and appreciated it was powerful while hating it. Also i felt it’s likely other P.Roth books are also like that. Anyway I’m not very interested in revisiting.

133avaland
jun 2, 2021, 3:14 pm

Question 21: Enough, already!

Regarding second chances. Much depends if I got anything out of reading the first book. Did I make a connection with some part of it, but perhaps not the overall story, for example. That connection might bring me back to that author again.

Is it the author? Or is it me? I'm willing to acknowledge I might not have the patience, or attentiveness at any time (or ever) for some books. Perhaps I can put the book on the shelf and go back to it some time in the future. There are days I can read Joyce Carol Oates and days I can't, you know? And sometimes with an author, I find that I have changed in some way and no longer connect with that author's work and what he or she has to say or perhaps I detect a certain 'sameness' and am tired of it. And as I have grown older, I have honed my literary radar, and choose more wisely.

I have a long list on my iphone/laptop of authors I currently 'follow' (the list reminds me to check if they have something new out). Cindy above mentioned Anne Tyler. I read her first 13 books and just decided after Ladder of Years in the mid-90s that I had read enough Anne Tyler, and I read no more (though I was tempted). I have done this with other authors, too. But, I just read a novel by favorite author Abdulrazak Gurnah thinking I'd be all caught up, but alas, he's got a new one out!

I think it's unrealistic to think all of an author's work is going to bring one joy or enlightenment. Have I liked everything my favorite authors have written? No. There's a kind of continuum with some authors that allow them to disappoint me occasionally, and for me there is also an unstated (I'm stating it now!) sense—and perhaps age has something to do with that— that life is short and I will not be able to read all. the. books.

134Deleted
jun 2, 2021, 3:36 pm

Just riffing on what >133 avaland: said, I think that some authors gain or lose charm as we age. I hated Little Women until I was about 35. I loved Jane Eyre until I was 50. Lately I have gone off Jane Austen, Alice Walker, and Willa Cather. It's not that I don't like them, but I think I have wrung everything I can from them. But I might like them again in five years.

135avaland
jun 2, 2021, 4:45 pm

>134 nohrt4me2: Yes, that's it!

136cindydavid4
jun 2, 2021, 5:49 pm

>33 tonikat: I read her first 13 books and just decided after Ladder of Years in the mid-90s that I had read enough Anne Tyler, and I read no more (though I was tempted).

Hee thats funny, thats exactly where I stopped as well!!!

137LolaWalser
jun 2, 2021, 9:44 pm

>126 SassyLassy:

I tend to completism of various sorts; this is sometimes a plus, sometimes minus. If I like an author's voice, I'll incline to reading whatever of theirs I can find. Also, if I'm interested in some author's world of ideas (whether or not I exactly like the author, the style etc.), I may feel I need to read as much as possible to get a proper grasp on it.

Regarding things like crime (or genre) series, it's usually enough for me to read just the one (preferably the first volume, if that matters) to know if I want to pursue it. There are multiple cases where I "tasted" one and left, but only one series comes to mind as abandoned sort of mid-way--Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey & Maturin saga. But that was due primarily to external circumstances. If memory serves, I had read the first nine or ten, as I was preparing to move continents again. My interest did flag after the romantic contest between the two ended (not so much because that plotline was over but that the writing started to feel a little tired), but if it hadn't been for the move I've no doubt I'd have gone on to read the whole series.

138cindydavid4
Redigeret: jun 3, 2021, 11:04 am

Just thought of another Guy Gabriel Kay - loved his two mosaic books about the Byzantian Empire, and enjoyed all of his others until. Under Heaven. The actual story of the Tang dynasty is well known to me so I struggeled through it. But it seemed that the characters and plots all looked the same and I got bored. Might just read those earlier ones for the Changing Time Theme this month. But won't be reading his newer ones any time soon

139SassyLassy
jun 8, 2021, 5:17 pm

>133 avaland: There's a kind of continuum with some authors that allow them to disappoint me occasionally...

Thinking of my favourite authors, I think this explains it really well. Like >137 LolaWalser: I too tend to be a completist with my favourite authors, at least as far as availability of their books allows (many of them are no longer published), so yes, there will be occasional bombs.

Thinking of some of the authors mentioned above (JCO, Philip Roth, Patrick O'Brien, Anne Tyler, John Irving, and many others not named, makes me wonder if there is a sort of time span to a writer's work. How long can a writer maintain a link with a reader before the work becomes repetitive, or the writer becomes someone you like to read when you just want a book without surprises, but that you know will feel comfortable for the duration. By that time the writer is well past whatever struck you as worth following when s/he was first encountered.

140AnnieMod
jun 8, 2021, 6:04 pm

>126 SassyLassy:

Q21: Breaks with Authors

It's complicated. The answer is technically "never" but with some authors I may put them so far down my priority list that it is as if I had kicked them out. But they need to have gone downhill so badly that I cannot even face the idea of another book by them. Happens occasionally with random authors I pick up just because they looked interesting. Once I am 2-3 books into an author, I am more likely to stick around no matter what...

And I love working through author's life works in order - it allows to see a progression in both themes and style and usually quality that cannot be appreciated otherwise. Even when a later book is weaker, there is a growth in it somewhere - it may be something small as better descriptions or something big such as finally finding how to write women voices but there is always something.

Now... there are a few cases where authors write in more than one genre or under more than one name and I only follow them under one genre/name (although I had been known to sample the others...). These don't count for me as abandoned - I just threat them as separate authors.

Second and third chances are another weird thing with me. Contemporary novelist that left me cold with their first novel? I will need everyone in Club Read to gush about a later book and even then, I will probably think twice. The genre writers get a pass because I am much more open to not-so-great novels there - as long as there is something in it to keep my interest... But even there, if the style really did not work for me, they are low on my list to revisit...

141AlisonY
Redigeret: jun 8, 2021, 6:27 pm

There are some authors I have a relationship with which I liken to childbirth and where I definitely require some kind of literary birth control. I convince myself that I've forgotten the pain of their last few reads and jump back in there before I realise I'm deluding myself and the pain's still there. But, I repeat the cycle because I fell in love with the first few books of theirs I read. So I really need to pop the spend control pill where anything new by Ian McEwan is concerned, and anything post John Updike's Rabbit series, for instance.

I admire the gutsiness of these type of authors, however, and with McEwan in particular it has always been his unpredictability that's drawn me to his writing - you're never quite sure what you're going to get. Ultimately, I therefore probably hold this type of writer in higher esteem than the John Irvings or Anne Tyler's who consistently stay in their safe place. Familiarity breeds contempt.

I will give an author a second chance after a lukewarm first encounter as most writers hit their strides at different points and with a level of inconsistency, but two strikes and they're probably out for me.

142tonikat
Redigeret: jun 9, 2021, 5:59 am

Deleted duplicate post

143tonikat
jun 9, 2021, 5:58 am

Départ

Assez vu. La vision s’est rencontrée à tous les airs.
Assez eu. Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil, et toujours.
Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. – O Rumeurs et Visions !
Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs !

(Source: Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations)
found here with a translation (that led me to do my own, I don't like skies for airs for a start) https://sites.psu.edu/caradorercl1314/2013/10/02/depart-rimbaud/

Your enoughs made me think of it.

I don't know if it becomes a conscious choice, maybe in fact not a decision at all for an author (most, Dan Brown maybe). But with individual books I just seem to drift away from them and then after that it will take me being reinterested in them, something kindled, or in another by the author, an excitement, but I don't often decide never again, I just need to be reinterested and may not look for that as much with some -- but as they are all proper authors like I have to think maybe they have something i do not that i may like or learn from. But fresh affection and fresh noise.

144lisapeet
jun 9, 2021, 8:51 am

>143 tonikat: fresh affection and fresh noise
What a good way to put it.

I haven't broken from many authors I've liked as a full-blown reading adult, but then I'm also not much of a completist so I'm not sure I've had the experience of having a writer I liked get tired for me. Some authors I liked when I was younger, in my teens or early 20s have lost their allure as we both aged—Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver, John Irving. I'd be hard pressed to say what percentage was me and what was them, though I do think the last Irving book I read was seriously under-edited and I wonder how many folks who were super successful early in their career tend to get the light-touch editorial treatment (or demand it? who knows), which will put me right off a book if it's that obvious.

145Deleted
jun 9, 2021, 10:39 am

>144 lisapeet: Yes, what you said re editing! I think under-editing begins to look self-indulgent and something we have less tolerance for as we get older. (Are you reading this, George RR Martin and JK Rowling?) Stephen King's book "On Writing," which I quoted a lot in my comp classes, noted that you write your first draft for yourself and subsequent drafts for the reader. Good advice!

146SassyLassy
jun 11, 2021, 6:32 pm

>143 tonikat: Lovely to see Rimbaud here.

147SassyLassy
jun 11, 2021, 6:46 pm



QUESTION 22 Serious Topics in Graphic Format

Art Spiegelman has said Reality is just too complex. I find that it's possible to deal with some of that complexity by the rigours of what comics offers as a medium, which is that the drawing has to be rather stripped down in order to fit in little boxes.*

Is the format of the comic/graphic novel useful for explaining social issues and truamatic events. Does it have more impact for the viewer than a photograph? Does it engage the reader more than text?
____________
* The idea for this question came from listening to this radio programme:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15848019-drawing-disaster

148cindydavid4
jun 11, 2021, 7:22 pm

I don't know. I tried to read Sandman coz I love Gaiman, and just didn't take to it. I get why its perfect for some people, but its not for me.

149NanaCC
jun 11, 2021, 7:35 pm

I can’t say that I’ve ever read a graphic novel, but I can see where it could have some impact. A couple of my older grandchildren are fans of the Manga genre. I’m not sure if that would be the same.

150AnnieMod
Redigeret: jun 11, 2021, 8:06 pm

>147 SassyLassy: Q22. You can write about serious topics in prose or verse or as a play or in graphic format (or even in non-verbal graphic context - see The Arrival by Shaun Tan for example). Stories can be told in a lot of different ways.

What is more engaging really depends on the artist/writer collaboration and on the reader. I am usually not visual (most art leaves me cold) but there are some artists who make me stop and actually appreciate the art (sometimes more than the story). And in some cases artists may add a layer to a story that would require hundreds of pages to express in words.

And sometimes, not needing to write the words and letting a picture tell a story has a lot more power and stays with you. Some of Spiegelman's imaginary is like that. I remember the art in Marjane Satrapi's books more than I remember the stories - not because it was special but because it was so easy-looking that it drove home the story. In other cases (Alison Bechdel for example), the art is almost forgettable and I am there for the story. I seem to alternate between the two in memoirs - there is always one leading element and there are rarely authors who manage to balance things.

Then there are the graphic format journalism Joe Sacco, Guy Delisle for example) - which used to confuse me a bit. But then you cannot always find the best picture and photograph; being able to draw it helps show the emotion you need.

All those are the literal hard stories. But there is a lot of that in the "non-serious" (ha!) parts of the medium - the "everyday" cartoonists - (Adrian Tomine for example), the storytellers (Seth, Jason, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes and so on). And the much laughed at world of Speculative fiction and Superheroes in comics format -- which half the people consider to be only for children and most of the rest believe to be shallow entertainment. Some stories are just stories but a lot of them have as much depth as a contemporary novel.

The short version - it is a medium - as much as prose and poetry and drama are. And it can be used the same way. Or misused.

151thorold
Redigeret: jun 12, 2021, 1:58 am

Q22 Graphic novels

Pretty much what >150 AnnieMod: said: Art Spiegelman could obviously do things with pictures in boxes that Shakespeare couldn’t do with actors on a stage, and vice-versa. Part of that must be individual insight and genius, and part is a matter of technique that fits into a cultural tradition that grows up between producers and consumers of cultural artefacts in a given time and place.

I find that a whole book of pictures has much less impact on me than an individual painting or poster or a whole book of text, but I’m sure that’s mostly because of social conditioning. I find it hard to stop myself turning the page as soon as I’ve deciphered the captions, and end up reading a whole graphic novel in about ten minutes. If graphic novels fifty years ago had been treated with the kind of seriousness that they are now, I’d probably find it easier to read them, and engage more with them while I’m doing it.

152lisapeet
jun 12, 2021, 12:37 pm

Ditto, basically. Graphic novels and nonfiction are formats like anything else, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't and there's a whole spectrum of good efforts in between those two. Maus is a really notable example, but most of the serious graphic treatments I've read have had at least one moment of really strong connection through the combination of imagery and text. It's a format that I like and am comfortable with, and am willing to take some time with the art, so that helps, I'm sure.

>150 AnnieMod: Glad you mentioned Joe Sacco—his Paying the Land has been high up on my list since I read an excerpt in Best American Comics 2019. I really like how his art and storytelling styles have evolved together.

153LadyoftheLodge
jun 12, 2021, 8:42 pm

I do not generally read graphic novels, although they were required reading when I was in library school. I have read several Jane Austen novels in graphic format. They are fun, but I like reading Austen for the prose, and something gets lost in the graphic format. I also enjoyed Anne of Green Gables in graphic, but I had read the book many times before reading the graphic novel. I also read all the Diary of a Wimpy Kid novels.

My fave graphic novel is Japan Ai: A Tall Girl's Adventures in Japan. That is the only one I have read more than once.

My biggest problem with graphic novels is the size of the type, and how busy the pages are. My eyesight is not what it used to be, and these aspects of graphic novels make them tiring to read. (I was a big fan of comic books as a kid! We read them until they fell apart!)

154Deleted
jun 13, 2021, 8:24 am

George Takei's They Called Us Enemy is a good example of how a terrible thing can be presented to children (and adults) in the way that Art Spiegelman describes.

I hate illustrated books (a print every 10 or 20 pages), but a graphic novel is different. Generally, i think if you enjoyed the MAD Magazine movie parodies of the 1960s and 70s, you can enjoy the text and illustrations in a graphic novel. Shaun Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia was wonderful.

I think there is a real trick to being able to write text that won't overshadow the pictures, and to draw pictures that provide visual nuance that amplify the text. I read a graphic novel treatment of Alan Ginsberg's Howl one time. The illustrations were really good, but you just can't break up that poem like that without losing pace and rhythm. Maybe if someone had read the poem aloud with the illustrations in the background it would have worked better.

155LolaWalser
jun 14, 2021, 5:28 pm

>147 SassyLassy: q22

This reader used to be comics-mad well into my early twenties and had I stayed in Europe I expect I'd have continued to read the revues for a long while yet, but the move to the US changed my habits. Superhero comics had lost their appeal long before and other types of comics just weren't that easy (nor cheap) to procure. I did subscribe to "Heavy Metal" but that was it for regular consumption. Huge reduction from my teens. (And, curiously, I'd stop drawing too.)

I've liked a number of so-called graphic novels but also disliked many; it's not necessarily a winning format for me. In general, I have to feel that the combination of word and text does something extra, manages a synergy otherwise missing from the story. The best example--and rather extreme--I've recently come across would be Kuniko Tsurita's work collected in The sky is blue with a single cloud.

The impact of the image alone, its power of narration, is best judged in "wordless novels" of, say, Frans Masereel, or Lynd Ward.

156SassyLassy
jun 21, 2021, 12:48 pm



image from BookRiot

QUESTION 23 Keeping Track

LT provides us all with lots of ways to track books and reading. However, many have other ways to track, and other features which are important to them.

Do you track your reading in another format besides LT (spreadsheets, database, journal, other websites, etc)? What is important to you to record?

157Limelite
jun 21, 2021, 1:58 pm

The best "comic" book I ever read was Aristophanes' Lysistrata in French. A souvenir I bought for my mother in Greece. Subject matter and illustrative story telling united in harmony to provide great laugh out load reading pleasure.

I prefer textural reading because I have an affinity for books about the inner lives of characters and their contemplations, and descriptive passages about landscapes and atmospheres, literary pleasures that either can't be rendered sataisfactorally (or at all) with drawings. I'm not a heavy consumer of action, thriller, murder, romance, or war stories that actually lend themselves to being drawn panel by panel.

Give me the book version of a novel or of nonfiction rather than the storyboard version every time: unless it's a play that is meant to be acted out and is heavily visual in the first place. "Comic" books just aren't as rich an experience for me. And reading for that feeling of richness and intimacy that great writing provides has nearly always surpassed the book-into-movie experience for me. After all, graphic novels are really nothing more than movies made up of a sequence of stills. Flip the pages fast enough and there's your movie version.

158Deleted
jun 21, 2021, 2:22 pm

>156 SassyLassy: I have a 3x5 journal that I keep in an an old make-up case with my Kindle, a pen, and a charger. It makes a nice, flat, and compact "reading kit." I usually review the journal at the end of the year. When i was still teaching, I would cull it for academic paper ideas. Now I just use it to form the next year's reading program and then pitch it.

159japaul22
jun 21, 2021, 2:29 pm

I have an excel spreadsheet where I've tracked all of my reading since 2008. It's simple info - just title, author, year read, and star rating.

I also keep all of my reviews for each year in a word document. I have those for as long as I've been on LT, so since 2009 I think.

I also use Goodreads, but that's just because more of my real life reading friends use it and I like to see what they are reading. I enter every book I read and do a star rating, but I don't use it to catalogue.

160thorold
jun 21, 2021, 2:39 pm

Q23 Keeping track

LT tracks most of the data I need, but I’ve got into the habit of keeping a parallel record of current reading in a spreadsheet, just because it makes it a bit quicker to dig out data about what I’ve read over a given period rather than what books I own. And I can track a few things that aren’t so easy to get out of LT, like author gender, original publication date, and author dates and countries.

I usually do a dump of my LT data into a spreadsheet every three months and spend a few hours messing around with filters and pivot tables and things as well, in the hope of finding out interesting things about things like how many books I’ve bought, borrowed, or given away, how long books stay on the TBR pile, and so on. Sometimes it tells me something interesting, often it doesn’t, but that’s data for you…

>157 Limelite: textural reading — I know that was just autocorrect being overzealous again, but it’s an interesting idea. I’m sure there must be someone out there who makes textured books (apart from Braille, of course). When the pages change from 400-grit to silk, you know that you’re moving indoors for a love-scene…

161jjmcgaffey
jun 22, 2021, 5:50 am

Q23 - LT is my primary tracker, but it's not always easy to pop on and update stuff. So I have several other (digital) tracking methods, but they're all designed to feed into LT.

One strong tracker is Calibre Companion - I record when I start an ebook there (unfortunately it doesn't track finishing dates). This has saved my skin many many times.

When I finish a book - actually, it's supposed to be when I start a book, especially if it's a paper one - I note title, reading dates, and a review in Google Keep - that's excellent for quick notes. Theoretically I enter the title and start date when I start, then the end date and review when I'm finished. And when I've transferred the review to LT, I delete it from Keep.

The big tracker is a spreadsheet - I started with Roni's reading tracker, but I've fiddled it a _lot_ since then. I have a page of Currently Reading, a page of Read This Year (that's finished this year), then two different stats pages that draw from the Read This Year page. One lists the books by month (though I still have to do that manually - when the month ends, I set up the next month and set it to copy from Read This Year starting with the start of the new month). The other summarizes by month. Read This Year (and therefore the stats page) has title, author, pages, rating, whether it's a new book or a reread, where I got it, whether it's an ebook or paper, what genre it is, author gender (which is sometimes difficult!), and year originally published (I don't care when my copy was published). The summary counts the books and sums up the info - new vs reread, paper vs ebook, genre, etc. Then there's a page for LT Posts - it also draws from Read This Year, with author, title, and rating, then a few empty fields for a short review, the link to my LT review, and a place for the symbols that mark what the book was (e or paper, new, reread, or BOMB, borrowed). Then two fields that concatenate those fields, so I can just copy the concatenated fields and post it in my Club Read thread. It makes it a lot easier, because I can do the info and the quick review whenever, and it's ready for me to post. I used to miss posting books frequently, now it's much simpler. And it's a permanent record of my reading - I have one spreadsheet per year, for the last several years (though the older ones have much less info than the latest).

So when I've read a book, I (try to) review in Keep. When I get some time, I update my Book Stats spreadsheet and LT (usually together), and copy the reviews from Keep and write the ones I missed. When I've got a few books entered, I copy and paste the fields into my CR thread. And at the end of the month, I copy the summary stats to a post too - and at the end of the year, the full set of stats. LT is my primary tracker, but I use a lot of tools to keep track before I put the info on LT.

162stretch
jun 22, 2021, 11:53 am

Q23 - I have an ever growing in complication google spreadsheet full of pivot tables and graphs to track my reading and stats that goes back to 2009. It's formatted differently than most trackers out there. I like spreadsheets that keeps all my current reading stats on one sheet and I can flow some data to a large accumulative sheet to track trends.

Every year I build on it and becomes a little more and more detailed. Last year I figured out the formulas to automate large chunks of it to make the counting easier and less cumbersome. I now spend way too much time analyzing it, but it's useful for setting better goals.

>161 jjmcgaffey: I need to check out Calibre Companion, I have trouble tracking start dates. I try to keep in my Bujo but that only goes so far if I can't fine the right page.

163dchaikin
Redigeret: jun 22, 2021, 1:34 pm

Q 22 : graphic novels - interesting question and I don’t think I have much to add. I think Maus is a kind of gold standard and has been since the 1980’s…which I think it too long and indirectly a heavy criticism of graphic novels. Maus was created in a vacuum, with inspiration fron Japanese manga varieties (Speigleman’s introduction to Barefoot Gen acknowledges its influence on him). But he put years into these two volumes. Today graphic novels are created too quickly and seem to hope for, or rely on accidental synchronicity of art, story and meaning. So sometimes they work really well. But the ones that match up with Maus are, arguably, much more sparse than the demand that is out there. I mean - there is no more vacuum. Today there is a market for them.

- I do agree the graphic format is especially good for managing trauma

>151 thorold: “If graphic novels fifty years ago had been treated with the kind of seriousness that they are now, I’d probably find it easier to read them, and engage more with them while I’m doing it.” - Barefoot Gen is 1973, 48 yrs ago. : )

>157 Limelite: “ After all, graphic novels are really nothing more than movies made up of a sequence of stills.” - interesting comment. Deserves its own discussion. They are and aren’t, I think.

164dchaikin
Redigeret: jun 22, 2021, 1:44 pm

Q 23 : ok, personal tmi warning. LT is merely the tip of the iceberg for me. Everything i have read is here, backtracking to when I started keeping track (December 1990) and whatever I think I remember before then. But…

So somewhere during 1991 i noticed I was actually reading books, pulled out a piece of lined notebook paper and wrote down the titles. I kept doing this till maybe 2001 or so when I switched to a to a spreadsheet. Then came LT then i kinda went crazy. My paper list is packed somewhere, but i do have:

- My books on LT
- My spreadsheet, and all its associated data (dates read, pages, time read, a short list of subjects, author nationality, publication date… and …
- My word document of just dates, titles and authors. (Because the excel sheet is unwieldy.)
- My CR threads
- Goodreads
- my stat summary word document
- my new spreadsheet predicting and tracking hours and tracking TBR numbers
- Litsy
- every year a word document notebook
- my iPhone notes - which include…too much to list here. : )



165thorold
jun 22, 2021, 3:17 pm

>163 dchaikin: Sorry Dan, I didn’t mean to suggest no-one was creating serious graphic novels then, just that no-one around me was reading them or talking about them. All I knew was Astérix and Tintin, and they were (mis-)represented to us as childish vices only allowable for the purpose of learning French...

166Deleted
jun 22, 2021, 3:21 pm

I guess a more interesting question for me is *why* people keep records of what they read. To impress themselves with a growing list of things they've read? To prevent duplicate purchases? To compete in some way with the lists of other people? To track their own changing reading trends? To leave something for posterity? Just because keeping records can be kind of fun?

I don't mean for this to sound judgmental. All of the above are valid ways to have fun, but documenting things has become less important to me as I get older.

167thorold
jun 22, 2021, 4:32 pm

>166 nohrt4me2: *why*?

That is the interesting question! The really important thing I get out of LT is what other members tell me about books I haven’t read, but should, and I record my own experiences with books partly to organise my thoughts and partly in the hope that they will be useful to others in the same way. And managing duplicates and wishlists and things is kind of useful too. But the rest is mainly just for fun.

I suspect that in my case it’s a mixture of professional deformation (what is life without daily contact with the Excel VLOOKUP function?) and a long-standing compulsion to have my bears arranged on the bed in just the right order. I’m certainly not competing with other readers and I don’t have quantitative reading targets. But I am mildly curious to know whether I’m reading more or less than last year, a greater or lesser proportion of non-English books, more different authors, more ebooks or library books, and similar things.

168dchaikin
jun 22, 2021, 4:44 pm

>165 thorold: I understand, just couldn’t resist. : )

>166 nohrt4me2: huh. I don’t know. I will say, I finish a book and that ask myself, what can i do with this information/experience/massive-time-commitment/forest-of-information-and-emotional-brain-associations? I’m done, so now what? I think I make lists partially to pander to these uncomfortable question. Also maybe they are an excuse to prolong the sense of the experience, to stay within the book and outside the real world.

169cindydavid4
jun 22, 2021, 5:04 pm

>166 nohrt4me2: the only thing I do is use a book journal where I list me reads, give them a rating, and go on to the next. I keep this so I am not confused if I have read something, and to let me know how many books Ive read for my one interest. No bragging, competition or judging. I do use the list to answer 'fav books of the year' kinda things., I used to write a review to myself, but thats not what I want to do now.

170Deleted
jun 22, 2021, 6:01 pm

Interesting responses! I like this one, especially: "I finish a book and that ask myself, what can i do with this information/experience/massive-time-commitment/forest-of-information-and-emotional-brain-associations? I’m done, so now what? I think I make lists partially to pander to these uncomfortable questions."

I always figure that reading a book cracks open something in our brains that we could not encounter in our real lives, and that the experience kind of gets incorporated into the experience-memory fabric that makes us up as individuals.

In fact, I can often define periods in my life by the books I was reading at the time. The summer before I started junior high was the Jane Eyre summer. I read those Aubrey and Maturin and Horatio Hornblower books the entire 9 months of my pregnancy. I went through my first vampire novel phase shortly after I got married. I went through my second vampire novel phase after I got blood cancer.

And like that.

171lisapeet
jun 22, 2021, 8:37 pm

I keep track of what I read because my memory is terrible. Periodically I want to go back and get a bit of an idea why I liked something or didn't, what was special about it, and some of the finer plot points that will probably fade. Sometimes I want to recommend a book to someone, or have a conversation with them about it that goes beyond "I read it, yeah."

I list the books I've read, along with a pocket review and a super broad rating, on both LT and Goodreads. I'm not sure why both... most of my longer-term reading friends are still on Goodreads and I like to see what they're reading. So both platforms serve my purpose, though I don't do the conversational thing on Goodreads other than some chatter with friends.

I also have a couple of notebooks (upstairs/downstairs) where I write stuff down longhand, especially if it's a book I'm reviewing or writing about, or for book club—but even if it's just one that has striking writing—passages I want to quote and Deep Thoughts about the book. And I grab quotes off of ebooks and paste them into Notes on my phone or iPad if the copy/paste function works—a lot of library books don't let you grab chunks of text, though I don't know if it's a security feature or a buggy interface. So if I'm reviewing/writing on a book I'll end up having to cobble together my Goodreads/Librarything reviews and conversations, my handwritten notes in at least two notebooks, and the Notes page in my browser. Kinda scattered, but it works for me. The main idea is to be able to write/save something the second it occurs to me, because I'll just forget it otherwise.

172LolaWalser
jun 23, 2021, 4:21 pm

>157 Limelite:

I beg to differ, there are numerous examples of comics and illustrated books where the medium is important and does something specific and unique that could not be conveyed, or be best conveyed, in text alone.

>163 dchaikin:

Maus was created in a vacuum, with inspiration fron Japanese manga varieties

Sorry, this is incorrect--the bit about a "vacuum" egregiously so. There were graphic novels long before Maus--even in the US, and much more so outside the US. The American/Anglo sphere is simply parochial in outlook. As for Spiegelman's influences, they certainly include foreign adult comics and francophone BD which he and his French wife not only promoted and published but emulated in their own publication which serialised Maus. Rest assured that the Spiegelman who wrote Maus knew a LOT more about the international comic scene than the average American fan.

Outside the US there was not only a much greater overlap between mass adult and fan audience, but works that definitely belong to the "graphic novel" genre were being published already in the 1950s and 1960s--various Latin American authors, Hugo Pratt, Osamu Tezuka and some other Japanese artists, various francophone BD (since the West in general ignores Eastern European production, I'll ignore it too--but it existed too, and since the 1920s).

Even in the States there were earlier authors making "serious" comics--Will Eisner created graphic novels, so did various underground artists. The perception that something "special" happened recently mistakes commercial breakout and subsequent aggressive marketing--in particular in the US--for artistic firsts.

173LolaWalser
jun 23, 2021, 4:28 pm

>156 SassyLassy: q23

I started keeping track of what I read in my late teens, in paper journals. I still do and this is a far more extensive record than what's on LT as I also note what I started and abandoned or skimmed or used only in part. It's a habit I got into as a way of organising references but which is increasingly important as a refresher of memory.

174Limelite
Redigeret: jun 23, 2021, 4:36 pm

>166 nohrt4me2: I started keeping lists because I found myself checking books out of the library that I'd read already. This was frustrating because we moved every three years and libraries ARE different. Covers change, editions change, and brains change -- for the worse in most every case. (heh heh) For me, I guess listing my reading became a mental health aid.

Reviewing my reads became important after grad school. Like a lot of us, grad school turned me into a literary critic/snob. I began to think more about what I read rather than reading solely for the diversion and entertainment. I began to wonder what made me like one book better than another. And I began to appreciate the art, technique, and talent of the creator a lot more than years before. Ultimately, though, I agree, reviewing and listing what I read is probably an egotistical exhibition, but it has become the way that I find out what it is I think.

175LadyoftheLodge
jun 23, 2021, 7:10 pm

I started keeping track of my reading in 1977 in a blank book. I am still using it to keep a list of what I read, and start over numbering them each year. Sometimes I go back into the book looking for a specific title. I also can sort of recall what was going on in my life when I look back (the year I got divorced I only read a few books, and my handwriting was really messy.) Seeing what I was interested in reading at different times also is fun to review. I went through a time period of reading only Regency romances; another of reading all the Barbara Cartland novels ("summertime and the living is easy"--especially for a middle school teacher). Sometimes I look at the titles and cannot recall what the books were about!

176Nickelini
jun 24, 2021, 2:11 am

>156 SassyLassy: Q 23 Keeping Track

I do enjoy keeping track of my reading. I've done it off and on all my life, but really started keeping a reading journal around 2001. I like to look back at what I've read. It's not that I have a bad memory, but more that it sparks a memory of past good and bad reads. I track a lot on LT, but my main favourite place these days is my yearly physical book journal. This past year, with COVID, I got more into making my journal artistic and fun, and borrowed much from bullet journaling (google that, if you aren't familiar . . . it's a whole different world). At the end of 2021, I'll upload some pictures of my spreads. It's a fun mash of stats with a little art. My reading journal, somehow, has always included the weather report (I come from a family who tracked this, so maybe it's genetic), and since 2020, I've also tracked pandemic stats. That's what my journal has morphed into. Looking back, the journals I most like to reread are the ones that have great quotations copied from my books, and I'm doing less of that. Hmmm, need to remember to add that too.

BTW the cool kids are all over at Storygraph ( https://app.thestorygraph.com/_) . I like it, and the graphs are lots of fun, but it seems super beta and needs work

177bragan
Redigeret: jun 24, 2021, 12:19 pm

>156 SassyLassy: I read an article once that recommended the "one-in/two out" system for controlling one's out-of-control TBR. I'm sure some folks here have heard me talking about it at some point. The idea is that you're supposed to buy no more than one new book for each two you read, and the article recommended keeping a log that would have a bunch of entries that sort of look like:

OUT:
OUT:
IN:

Every time you get a new book, you put it down as an "in" entry, and every time you read one off the TBR, you register it as an "out," and you can look down the list and see which "outs" have paid for which "ins" and so on.

So I have been keeping a notebook in that format, and for a while it worked pretty well, but then the pandemic hit and I panicked and bought a ridiculous numbers of books, and so now I have pages and pages and pages where full of an "IN" line filled in under two blank "OUT" lines. I am now questioning whether it even makes sense to keep going with the thing, but I want to believe I will catch up eventually, and I can't seem to make myself stop. Plus, I kind of like the notebook.

Other than that, though, I only use LT as a reading tracker these days.

178bragan
Redigeret: jun 24, 2021, 12:31 pm

Oh, and by the way, since people have been talking about reasons for tracking their reading and wanting to keep records because they have bad memories and such... I track mine for all kinds of reasons, some of which is just sheer, weird, obsessiveness. But I thought I'd share one particularly amusing (and surprisingly useful) side benefit it gives me.

Namely, I have a really, really bad memory for dates and times and what happened when, including for events in my own life. Maybe especially for events in my own life, and it just gets worse as I get older. So I might not for the life of me be able to remember what year I took that trip to Hawaii, say. But I have a very good memory for what I was reading during particular experiences, and I can absolutely tell you which book I had in my hands while lying in the hammock at that Hawaiian beach resort. And, hey, since I keep track of all my reading dates, I can actually look it up and answer the question! (It was 2011, apparently, and Michael Crichton's Timeline, which I did not enjoy nearly as much as I enjoyed the hammock.)

179thorold
jun 24, 2021, 12:44 pm

>177 bragan: That sounds like a good idea! I try to put moral pressure on myself by having my TBR shelves arranged in chronological order, so that the latest acquisitions are out of reach on the top shelf while the long-stay offenders are close at hand lower down. The only noticeable effect was that I bought myself a kick-stool…

180bragan
jun 24, 2021, 12:52 pm

>179 thorold: In theory, that does sound like a clever idea! Even without some of them being hard to reach, being able to look at the end of the shelving and see all the poor long-neglected books moldering there in one place might seem like a nice little incentive to finally get to them, as well as a tidy visual reminder of which ones they are. In practice, though, I'm pretty sure that would only lead to me being annoyed at not being able to find the one book I wanted to read just then because I couldn't remember off the top of my head when I bought it. (I keep mine in alphabetical order (fiction) or grouped by subject (non-fiction), because there are too many for me to ever be able to find anything on the TBR shelves otherwise.)

181dchaikin
jun 24, 2021, 1:07 pm

>177 bragan: interesting to me because this year I’m trying a read one/buy one system. The idea is partially that it prevents me from buying dusk collectors. And it’s the natural way i do audiobooks. I finish one, then hunt the next one. So far I’m balanced and so maybe it’s working. (I calculated my average pace in December - which, over the last 20 years, was read one/buy two. So this is better.)

A big problem is that i plan my reading without much consideration for what’s already on the shelves. So this year I’m buying a lot of Nabokov, Shakespeare and Booker related stuff.

182SassyLassy
jun 25, 2021, 11:21 am

QUESTION 23

Recognizing a lot of my own reasons for tracking here: a certain obsessiveness and a need for documentation among them. Like many others, I associate books with the places I have read them, or what was going on around me. I know I will never finish The Pickwick Papers based on events at the time, even though I tend to be a completist and am a huge Dickens fan.

I do record the date a book was finished on the back flyleaf, and if it is a reread, I will have a list of dates. I also record where/whom the book was from and the date I got it on the front flyleaf. I like to have yearly lists, kept in a paper journal, and like others, like to look back at them, although lately this is becoming somewhat depressing as my reading slides. Although I am poor at keeping up, I like to record my thoughts on LT, and am upset with myself when I want to look back at a particular book, and find I read it toward the end of a year and so it was never noted. Books read at the beginning of a year have a definite advantage that way!

>177 bragan: Great idea, but it would take a truly disciplined person to maintain it. First of all, I would have to define "out of control", and I'm sure I could rationalize just about any number!

183SassyLassy
jun 29, 2021, 4:35 pm

This question comes from thorold, after his recent reading of the essay Comme un roman, discussed here



QUESTION 24 "Rights of the Reader"

In Comme un roman, Daniel Pennac discusses why adolescents lose their interest in reading. Pennac suggests a set of "rights of the reader", which, if respected by educators and others, would make reading more enjoyable and rewarding for students. His suggested rights are:

- the right to not read
- the right to skip pages
- the right not to finish a particular book
- the right to reread
- the right to read anything
- the right to 'bovarysme' (to escape with all senses into a book, perhaps even be a character)
- the right to read anywhere
- the right to flit through shelves of books, or pages, alighting on a particular book or passage by serendipity
- the right to read aloud
- the right to not discuss a reading - to stay silent about it

Would you consider these inalienable reading rights? Would they have made a difference in your school years?
What other ones would you add?

184dchaikin
Redigeret: jun 29, 2021, 4:51 pm

I like these, but my daughter would probably roll her eyes at that. For myself, when my tenth-grade teacher offered extra credit for reading a certain number of pages from selected books, with the only requirement being that we prove we read them somehow, it led me as a non-reader to read a lot…until I completed the extra-credit requirements. I suppose every person is different and some flexibility and experimentation might be of value…and a lack if standardized testing.

(Good timing as I just read Mark’s review about 5 minutes ago)

185LadyoftheLodge
jun 29, 2021, 5:02 pm

I like the list, but they would have made no difference to me at all in my school years. I was and still am an avid reader. I would read just about anything I could get my hands on during adolescence. However, I think they would have made a difference for some of my middle school students as readers. For me as a senior citizen, I have learned to be less structured and demanding of myself when reading. I have embraced some of the ideas in the list, such as being able to skip pages or not finish a book, and to read anything I want to read.

186thorold
jun 30, 2021, 4:28 am

Q24

Like >184 dchaikin: and >185 LadyoftheLodge:, I can’t really remember any period when I needed encouragement to read, but it did strike me when I came across that list that I may have been lucky to have had parents and teachers who worked in the spirit of the the Code Pennac long before it was ever drafted. None of the schools I went to ever set us quantitative or qualitative targets for reading until we got to the point where we were studying specific texts, but they did give us lots of opportunities to read and books to choose from (both edifying and non-edifying, but — with hindsight — probably mostly the latter). And no-one ever said “don’t read that rubbish,” although they must have wanted to say it sometimes.

I’ve been —voluntarily — posting reviews of just about everything I read for fourteen years now, so “the right to remain silent” has faded a bit from my experience, and of course I’ve developed a lot of strategies for writing about a book while steering clear of things I don’t want to talk about right now, but it does strike me as an important one. Sometimes a book leaves such a powerful impression that we feel anything we could say about it would be ludicrously inadequate; at other times the book falls flat for no obvious reason and we just don’t have anything useful to say.

The right to read aloud is perhaps an unexpected one in the list: Pennac put it there partly because he doesn’t like the way primary schools insist we should read without our lips moving, but mostly because he thinks we should be free to take pleasure in reading aloud to others and in hearing books read aloud to us. He doesn’t talk about audiobooks, but I think they come into it as well: we should accept that there are some books that really gain from being performed by a skilled actor (or even an ensemble of actors, like Lost children archive). I never really saw the point of audiobooks until fairly recently, but I’ve come to feel that they are an important part of the reading experience. For me, at least, reading aloud is a crucial part of writing, too: I can’t put something down on paper without at least “listening to it in my head” to make sure it sounds right.

187AlisonY
Redigeret: jun 30, 2021, 1:54 pm

As a parent I probably struggle most with the first one - the right to not read. It gives me great delight to see my daughter powering through book after book, but my teenage son seems to have drifted away from it. I definitely struggle to stop encouraging him to read (aka nagging to his ears), especially when I know not long ago he was loving a series he was very much into. Now he seems reluctant to bother trying anything else (even though he's a number of new books untouched on his shelf). I do agree with the right to read anything, though, and with my son I'm happy at least to see him pick up a book on tanks or something instead.

I'd probably add one to the list - the right not to analyse a book (think this is slightly different to the right to not discuss a reading). My English Lit. A Level class put me off a few authors for a long while after we'd combed through them at length to find every random piece of symbolism we could (although obviously I appreciate that this is the point of an English Lit. class).

I agree with others, though, that adolescents are so head strong I'm not sure these rights would make the slightest bit of difference in practice. My son's school has library time as part of their English class which I think is terrific - very different to my day when everything you read in English was chosen by the teacher.

188avaland
jun 30, 2021, 10:38 am

>183 SassyLassy: Like Dan's daughter, I would roll my eyes at that.

189LolaWalser
jun 30, 2021, 12:34 pm

>183 SassyLassy:

I tend to think readers are mostly born, not made. People susceptible to the joys of reading will find their way to books no matter what. The opposite will never take to books, no matter what. In the past this was masked somewhat due to the different media situation but nowadays it's pretty plain.

190dchaikin
Redigeret: jun 30, 2021, 12:48 pm

>189 LolaWalser: I don’t believe that and also I hope it’s not true. I think reading is a variation of storytelling, which interests about everyone. Readers just have a way to read, by preference or other way, verse other mediums. It’s something that about anyone can enjoy in some kinds of contexts, but not all.

191Limelite
Redigeret: jun 30, 2021, 5:48 pm

My eyes are rolling. Haven't we all learned that people behave that way naturally?

I have two questions. . .do "free" readers as children and adolescents perform better in college courses where reading requirements are in place? And how can all students be led to behaviors that will be advantageous habits for college years and later as informed adults?

192cindydavid4
Redigeret: jun 30, 2021, 7:30 pm

>183 SassyLassy: Yup! I would add the right to not to agree with other readers about the same book.

also the right to eat at the dinner table or any place that is comfortable.

Then there is a right to go bakck to then end of the book to see what happens, When Harry Met Sally Billy Chrystal gets a phone call'Oh nothing much just finshing a book ."

I do the same - if Im unhappy with the book, reading in the back ofter encourages me to read more. Or if it with a crappy ending, realizing that its put into the the save or trade packs.

193cindydavid4
Redigeret: jun 30, 2021, 7:20 pm

>189 LolaWalser: Totally disagree. John Stienbeck recalled never reading when he was yound , but an aunt handed to him Mort d Artor, and he was hook. Plus Ive seen kids not interesting at reading till he reaches a teacher who opens up his mind.

194AnnieMod
jun 30, 2021, 7:41 pm

>183 SassyLassy: I had been thinking about this question and keep getting to the same thing...

While free reading is all great, children (and young adults) need some... structure. There are geniuses who can get things on their own but having a progression (earlier in age-appropriate and later in historical writing) is needed. As much as I disliked some of the mandatory reading, it served its purpose - introduced me to styles, concepts and influences that made later reading more enjoyable. I also believe that part of why I enjoy that many genres and styles is exactly because I had to meet them (and learn about them).

So there are really two types of reading while one is growing - the free reading (for which all of the above are great) and the foundational reading (where not finishing and not talking and skipping pages actually is not very helpful). Do most mandatory reading programs need an overhaul? Sure. But still... I am thankful to the teachers that made sure I read those books. Even in high school when all I wanted to read was SF and Mysteries :)

Reading some of the responses, I wonder how much my opinion would have differed if I was in the US school system. It seems like the norm seems to be to discuss 1-5? books per semester (correct me if I am wrong?), while it was a book or 2 per week back home (you were expected to have done most of the reading in the summer before the school year).

195LolaWalser
jun 30, 2021, 8:53 pm

>193 cindydavid4:

John Stienbeck recalled never reading when he was yound , but an aunt handed to him Mort d Artor, and he was hook. Plus Ive seen kids not interesting at reading till he reaches a teacher who opens up his mind.

That's actually not at all in opposition to what I meant. Setting someone off on a lifetime of reading by giving them a book speaks more to tapping an already present sympathy, tendency, in that person--as does a teacher influencing individual pupils. But it's curious how it's always just individual pupils, no one seems to have experienced an entire class turning into passionate readers, or bookworms as we may say. Except, why are we wondering at this, when we are not surprised that obligatory art education, say, doesn't turn out masses of art lovers, to say nothing of artists?

It simply can't be true, if readers are predominantly "made in school", that education has failed so badly everywhere, and for many generations now. Because readers have always been a minority and I don't know of any signs that they'll stop being a minority--do you?

However, I'm more interested in whether the relative proportion of passionate readers to the general population changes, but that's hard to assess. If I had to guess... I'd say, probably not?--although I admit I have little besides wishful thinking to fall back on.

196Deleted
jun 30, 2021, 10:07 pm

I guess I'm confused: Does Pennac's list imply some draconian classroom rules that are ruining the young readers of France?

As an American, I cannot name any lit majors I knew in college (including me), who didn't skip, skim, read the ending, refuse to finish, or decline to discuss at least some of the assigned readings. You found a plot summary somewhere, or you got another student who had already had the course to lend you his annotated copy or give you the 10-minute run-down of the book, or you found a PMLA article about the work you were ignoring, and then you wrote your term paper on a book you did like. Didn't everyone learn these skills in junior high and high school? All to free up more time to wander around the stacks looking for things we actually wanted to read and become the characters we wanted?

Maybe things are different in France, but I just don't think most kids slavishly pay that much attention to "the rules" Pennac wants to free them from. And I think he is underestimating the ability of young people to read subversively.

Are there things that need to be changed in the lit curriculae in secondary schools? Yes, of course. And, again unless things are different in France, Pennac is underestimating the ability of teachers to teach subversively.

197thorold
jul 1, 2021, 2:30 am

>195 LolaWalser: no one seems to have experienced an entire class turning into passionate readers

Pennac describes motivating most of a class of “difficult” high school students to start reading independently by spending time reading aloud to them from off-syllabus books, but he doesn’t claim 100% success. And he talks a lot in Chagrin d’Ecole about how it’s the time and effort invested by teachers in individual students that counts in the end. And how a few students are likely to have such difficult things going on in their lives that teachers are never going to get through to them.

>196 nohrt4me2: Judging by what I’ve been told by contemporaries, the French system was always much more structured and regulated than the British or American ones, and there’s a pretty heavy syllabus of classic French literature you have to get through for the Bac. I’m always impressed by how much better-read French (and Italian) engineers and scientists are than British ones, who will have stopped learning about language and literature at the latest by the age of 16 and never cared much about it even then.

(I don’t know if that still applies, I don’t have much contact with anyone who’s been through the school system less than about 20 years ago!)

198Deleted
Redigeret: jul 1, 2021, 9:26 am

>179 thorold: Thanx for the explanation.

Pennac describes motivating most of a class of “difficult” high school students to start reading independently by spending time reading aloud to them from off-syllabus books.

I stumbled onto something similar teaching a 200-level poetry class. I played Johnny Cash reading "The Cremation of Sam McGee" on YouTube. This went over big, so I started every class with a poem read aloud. Also read short stories. Most of my students had never been read to by parents.

I think parental encouragement to read is probably more imp than school in shaping readers. But I have no data to back it up.

199LadyoftheLodge
jul 1, 2021, 2:31 pm

>196 nohrt4me2: Cliff Notes!

200cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 1, 2021, 3:02 pm

>198 nohrt4me2: think parental encouragement to read is probably more imp than school in shaping readers. But I have no data to back it up.

yep, esp now when there are so many distractions' social media and peer pressure. , And if the parents, for whatever reason, are not involed it would take a good teacher who can help him.

201Deleted
jul 1, 2021, 3:37 pm

>199 LadyoftheLodge: I never used Cliff Notes because the teachers all bought copies and could spot something cribbed from that source real quick. I was more inclined to use Jeff's Notes, my downstairs neighbor who was a year ahead of me and could talk me through the books I wasn't inclined to read.

202dchaikin
jul 1, 2021, 3:37 pm

Parents can do some things, but can’t change the surrounding culture. (And can only fight/manage unwanted aspects of it so much…and at some other cost.)

203Deleted
jul 1, 2021, 3:44 pm

>202 dchaikin: That's probably true. A kid has to have the inclination to read or at least listen to a story. I was the one who volunteered to do dishes after holiday dinners because that's when Gramma and the aunties would dish the unexpurgated family stories: divorce, domestic violence, preventable death, miscarriage, feuds, fraud, addiction, and grift. My cousins and sib were never interested in getting a load of that. But, then, they were content to sit at the "kid's table" and drink fruit punch.

204LolaWalser
jul 1, 2021, 3:59 pm

I'd claim a weird coincidence if I didn't have bookmarks stuck in hundreds of books, but it's still somewhat fun to note how well the last chapter of the latest book I finished just this morning jibes with the discussion...

The child and the book by Nicholas Tucker, OPD 1981

I had mostly skimmed the first six chapters that go into the details of child psychology and corresponding reading material suitable to different ages. No idea how dated that may be. The seventh chapter on selection and censorship I read in full because it was very interesting to compare to the current debates and see just how old some were (about sexism and what Tucker datedly calls "racialism", specific problems with Enid Blyton etc.) And the last chapter "Who reads children's books?" just begs to be quoted.

It starts noting that social factors, class and gender, seem to play a certain role in that working class kids (remember this is 1981 and an Anglo-centric view) and boys in general are less likely to be what Tucker calls "avid readers" (and I called "passionate readers" or "bookworms").

However, he goes on to write

It is, of course, quite true that avid readers may still come from backgrounds where there has never been any encouragement for books, while nearly one-third of fourteen-year-old boys with good intelligence and from middle-class homes never read any books for pleasure at all.


True enough, no? I think we could all contribute anecdotes about one or other type.

Then he discusses the "sexual imbalance", in terms of gender roles, the behaviour boys see as desirable for "real men" etc. Dated phraseology but the argument as far as I have seen is pretty much the same forty years later. Follows an interesting discussion on class etc.

Then a discussion on why children lose interest in reading (all old hat to teachers I'm sure). The point Dan brought in here (irrelevant to what I had said), about the perennial charms of storytelling, is expanded on and addressed. My emphasis:

But even if these handicaps were overcome, and bright, well-stocked children's bookshops appeared in every area, this would still not affect all the factors that lead some children away from fiction. The fascination most human beings seem to find, in some form or other, with stories can be satisfied without opening a book at all -- through accounts of football matches or murder trials in newspapers, for example, or from jokes swapped in convivial surroundings. Interest in longer stories can also be easily satisfied by watching television, which spends at least half of its available time on broadcasting plays and serials which usually appear at peak-viewing times. (..)

In Canada, for example, it has been estimated that an average student about to enter college may now have seen more than 500 full-length films, and viewed some 15,000 hours of television but read perhaps only fifty books on his or her own initiative. (...)

Popular television, then, is fulfilling a need that popular fiction once satisfied, and it is now unlikely that fiction will ever regain its former ascendancy.


That's what I meant when I mentioned different media situation--it's not that previously we knew better how to turn people into readers, it's that the media for "storytelling" were more limited. People may indeed always be hungry for stories but it doesn't follow everyone (or even the majority) is going to prefer to consume stories in book/print form.

Tucker goes on to say more interesting things about reading as a technique, that is as a skill beyond mere deciphering of print, why it's not equally easy for everyone to master, and also about psychological differences (putative) that may make someone an avid reader and someone else not--being "thing-oriented" vs. "person-oriented" and so on.

Again, no idea how the notions held up, but I'd note that it's less important that the theoretical concepts survived than that there is an observable difference they are trying to explain.

So, forty years on little seems to have changed qualitatively, and quantitatively the trends Tucker mentions have only accelerated--at least in his time television was still limited to a few channels, and let's not even go into the whole pre-Internet, pre-screen thing.

And yet avid readers persist.

205thorold
jul 1, 2021, 5:24 pm

>204 LolaWalser: Interesting! Your comments on “media situation” fit with the essay I read a few months ago about the DDR as “a nation of readers” who very rapidly sank back to the same low book-consumption rate as the West as soon as they had the same breadth of cultural choices available to them. The author (a publisher) ruefully concluded that people read a lot of books when they have nothing else interesting to do with their spare time.

206Deleted
Redigeret: jul 1, 2021, 6:01 pm

Appropos of nothing really: McLuhan had his hot and cool media, each requiring the reader to supply more or less of the info from his imagination to make sense of the story. A book is a hot medium. A movie is a cool medium.

A lot of teachers jump from that to the assumption that cool media is the favorite of "lazy" (or even stupid) kids because they are less mentally engaged. And that leads to a bias in favor of books over other story media. I don't think it's a fair assumption. I've known kids who watch movies who are clearly thinking very creatively about camera angles, costumes, dialogue, regional accents, or the themes of the story.

Nevertheless, every generation bemoans the lack of book readers among the young, starting with Why Johnny Can't Read in 1955.

Sort of funny to remember that one of the ancient Greeks lamented the advent of written text because it was ruining the ability of youth to memorize things.

207cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 1, 2021, 7:57 pm

>197 thorold: ennac describes motivating most of a class of “difficult” high school students to start reading independently by spending time reading aloud to them from off-syllabus books, but he doesn’t claim 100% success

ah thats the story then. I remember in HS teaching us how research is done and how it should be read. and lesson number one - check the sources for any study, thesis, even article

208cindydavid4
jul 1, 2021, 7:55 pm

>204 LolaWalser: Tucker goes on to say more interesting things about reading as a technique, that is as a skill beyond mere deciphering of print, why it's not equally easy for everyone to master, and also about psychological differences (putative) that may make someone an avid reader and someone else not--being "thing-oriented" vs. "person-oriented" and so on.

can I just say, I do not believe Tucker knows much about teaching or how kids work.


209LolaWalser
jul 1, 2021, 8:14 pm

>208 cindydavid4:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Tucker

A former teacher and then an educational psychologist, he has had a long association with the Sussex University, having lectured in educational psychology and cultural studies and children's literature at the institution. He was a Senior Lecturer in several of these disciplines.

>206 nohrt4me2:

Too right!--and funny, re: the everlasting moan

I have to admit that as a book person (or "-worm"), a lack of interest in reading never fails to alarm me at least a little, but I had to acknowledge, watching my niece and nephew who certainly wanted for nothing in life that "ought" to have turned them into readers, that other forms of media and its consumption and creation presumably compensate for whatever it is books do for us.

>205 thorold:

It's not surprising, is it? Although I recall dimly (but hopefully not wrongly) that e.g. Russians still read relatively more than in the West. And aren't the Chinese on top? But I'd need to look around for data again.

210Deleted
jul 1, 2021, 10:59 pm

>209 LolaWalser: I have to admit that as a book person (or "-worm"), a lack of interest in reading never fails to alarm me at least a little, but I had to acknowledge, watching my niece and nephew who certainly wanted for nothing in life that "ought" to have turned them into readers, that other forms of media and its consumption and creation presumably compensate for whatever it is books do for us.

There is some rule of thumb that babies need to hear X number of words per day in order to become adept at language. My husband did a bunch of reading about it before our son was born. So I hate to see babies and preschoolers kids in a home or stuck in day care situations where there isn't much verbal interaction, and lack of books might be a symptom of that.

A kid with no interest in reading books? I'm probably not going to click with that kid. But I guess not liking to read wouldn't actually alarm me unless it was part of a larger tendency to be interested in nothing other than passive entertainment and to complain about being bored all the time.

211cindydavid4
jul 1, 2021, 11:31 pm

>209 LolaWalser: thanks for that info; just based on the quotes I saw above, seemed suspect.

212cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 1, 2021, 11:41 pm

>210So I hate to see babies and preschoolers kids in a home or stuck in day care situations where there isn't much verbal interaction, and lack of books might be a symptom of that.

well depending on the day care. What bothers me more is this generations focus on media prevents them from engaging with their kids. My job is to help children comminact. As a preschool teacher they are only in school 10 hours ber week..so they go back home to not just litereature deprived but language deprived as well. just makes me cring and worry what this new generation will be like.

>201A kid with no interest in reading books? I'm probably not going to click with that kid. But I guess not liking to read wouldn't actually alarm me unless it was part of a larger tendency to be interested in nothing other than passive entertainment and to complain about being bored all the time

kid with no interest hasnt had anyone to help her get interested just takes the right adult to mentor them I may not click with said child, but i will never give up on them

213LolaWalser
jul 1, 2021, 11:50 pm

>210 nohrt4me2:

Oh yes, I agree. One would certainly hope that at least the youngest ones get exposure to books, reading etc. in short the opportunity to develop a liking for it. My niece and nephew were fine with books when they were small-ish but now at nineteen and seventeen it's become clear they simply aren't readers. I started noticing this some years before, of course, and I was very disappointed (didn't ever mention it to them tho'). On the other hand, they were making stop-motion cartoons when they were ten and eight and my niece won a European comics tournament at thirteen, so I truly don't know how could I (even if I wanted) argue that they are lacking somehow... I just can't know. I don't know what it's like to be them, born glued to the screens and not just used to but apparently craving that non-stop distraction of texts, news, pings, memes...

It's a new world. But, as Fran Lebowitz says in a great recent documentary, Booksellers, she sees young people reading paper books on the subway all the time, and that gives her hope--specifically that books and bookshops will endure, but I would also note it means simply what I was arguing, that there is some irreducible portion of the population that WILL be drawn to the printed word (on paper or e-paper), regardless of the temptation of other media, Zeitgeist, dominant habits etc.

214SassyLassy
jul 2, 2021, 10:30 am

>198 nohrt4me2: Most of my students had never been read to by parents.

I read that last night and it was so sad I went away, but woke up this morning still thinking about it. How do children learn language beyond the very basics if no one (it doesn't have to be just parents doing the reading) reads to them? There is also the question of how can they dwell on favourite images and return to them again and again, picking up all kinds of cues and knowledge along the way.

>183 SassyLassy: One of the things I might add to the list here would be "the right to be surrounded by books". There is quite a bit of research showing that children growing up in households with books and adult readers are readers themselves, versus children who grew up without.

>204 LolaWalser: Really interesting - miniseries as sagas.

>213 LolaWalser: Oh good - another Lebowitz documentary!

Other thoughts:

-One of the things I do wonder about is why it is a teacher's responsibility to teach children to read? Why do they need to be relied upon to pass on such an important skill?

-If there are differences between readers and nonreaders, how do the differences among passionate readers of say fiction versus nonfiction arise?

215cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 2, 2021, 11:30 am

>214 SassyLassy: How do children learn language beyond the very basics if no one (it doesn't have to be just parents doing the reading) reads to them?

Young children learn by playing, interacting with adults who actually pay attention and interact with their child.It doesn't have to be reading but that is a way in certainly Chompsky said that children have a mechanism in the brain that gets them to respond to language and react. the way parents and infants do all the time. After about the age of 5 (more or less) if they do not have a a firm grasp on language they will have a much harder time learning to read.well,

devils advocate here - before Gutenberg started the press, books were very rare and usually not at home. I suspect most children were not read to and yet they managed to survive (given of course that there were many more jobs back then for children sans literacy.) with technology taking over so much of what used to ge done by humans, if you are not literate, you really are in a world of hurt And so now its even more imparative that children are exposed to books and stories at a very young age.

216cindydavid4
jul 2, 2021, 11:20 am

>214 SassyLassy: One of the things I do wonder about is why it is a teacher's responsibility to teach children to read? Why do they need to be relied upon to pass on such an important skill?

So we don't need teachers? Back to the days of home schooling or church instruction? I don't think thats what you meant but that comment took me aback. And made me think.

Back in the days before public schools, children were taught by parents and the churcg, now tho with so many parents not reading, we need to have trained teachers to take up the flack. And all those parents who had to help their children with remote instruction (which is an oximoron but it was better than nothing) were screaming for teachers because they had no idea where to start. We wear many hats in our profession, and while we don't know kids the way parents do, we do now about strategies that can be set for each individual child.
Nowadays more and more children need the kind of teachers with skills as a part of his job as well as other duties as assigned (counselor, nutritionist, health specialist, the hats keep on coming_

Whats scary to me is how teachers and schools are disrespected (not sure it ever was, remember this problem when I first started in the field and now it has just gotten so muh worse. , with the new demands that were happening and changing every day we already have a teacher shortage. I suspect we will lose even more this year.

217cindydavid4
jul 2, 2021, 11:23 am

I do love this poem by ee cummings I don't think it is anti school or anti books - but reminds us that there are so many ways to learn. Trying to figure out what is best for the child, is our job and profession and our passion!

218lisapeet
jul 3, 2021, 10:00 am

This is a completely lame response to the original question, but I think you can't generalize but you can improve the odds for teachers having an impact harder-to-reach students, which is to say those who come from non-reading families, or in book desert communities, or who have been put off of reading for one reason or another. I'm not in education, but just anecdotally I know avid readers who run the gamut, from people whose parents just didn't read but who always had a thirst for books to those who grew up with books on the shelves and parents who read a lot and who just followed suit.

My own confirmation bubble means I don't have a lot of non-reading friends, but I do have friends and acquaintances who bemoan their kids' lack of interest. I think at least some of that has to do with the preponderance of screens—at the risk of sounding like a cranky old fart—but that some of it may just be taste, preference, or processing difficulties... kind of like the friends I have who are excellent cooks whose kids will only eat three things, all of them bland. You just don't know. And proclivities change as kids grow up and have more agency to find books that interest them. But I do think a good teacher or librarian who is sensitive to kids' needs can make a huge difference, and those are good improvements to teaching guidelines in places where there's still strict adherence to assigned book standards.

219LadyoftheLodge
jul 3, 2021, 10:49 am

>218 lisapeet: You mentioned the abundance of screens to entertain kids. I found that some non-readers (adults and kids) became avid readers once they discovered e-readers/Kindles/Nooks etc. I wonder if that had to do with the format, or the mindset of the individual? (Personally, I read both print and digital books. I have owned a Kindle since they first appeared on the reading scene, and still have my old one with the little keyboard, short-life battery, and weighs a ton.)

220dchaikin
jul 3, 2021, 12:02 pm

From a cultural perspective, kids are less likely to read if their friends in school (or wherever else) don’t read. Because they have no social feedback besides (annoying?) teachers and parents. I think we all know that…just felt a need to post it.

221Deleted
jul 3, 2021, 12:28 pm

I see reading as good to the extent that it connects people with their human-ness. For me it's also entertainment. A paper screen, if you will. Is it really superior to watching videos about ferrets on YouTube or talking about camp horror films like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane with my movie club online? I doubt it.

And as lolawalser points out, there are other creative things kids do that might mitigate their lack of interest in reading.

My kid still reads occasionally (age 26). But he was pretty obsessed with jazz and funk from the time he picked up a trumpet in fifth grade. He composes a lot of music for podcasts and videogames, and "the screens" make it possible for him to collaborate with people from Korea, South Africa, France, and California.

I don't care much for music, but I see the value in it for others and encouraged it. I felt we and his teachers gave him good language skills and exposure to the wider world of ideas so he can feel comfortable in the world.

222Deleted
jul 3, 2021, 12:36 pm

>212 cindydavid4: I see a difference between preschool, where you have teachers and aides who are there to actually teach kids stuff, and day care homes and centers that are often just child-proof holding tanks. We had a great preschool, but day care was always a major headache.

223rocketjk
Redigeret: jul 3, 2021, 2:41 pm

Popping back in here after time away on vacation:

Q23: I only list my reading here on LT and I do it because it's fun and because I enjoy going back and reading over my old threads to remind myself of books that might have slipped out of memory.

Q24: Great conversation! At this point I'll just add some assorted thoughts and personal experiences:

* I can't remember when I didn't love reading. My mother read to me from when I was 3 or so. My father wasn't quite as literary minded, but he did read for pleasure when I was young, so I had that behavior modeled for me in all sorts of ways. Lucky me! Starting in around 7th grade there were times when I was forced to read books I found uninteresting in school, but that never threatened to ruin my love of reading, only my enjoyment of English class. (Luckily, I had some great Lit teachers in high school.)

* Regarding the necessity of children hearing language, even if not via reading, early on, around here (the San Francisco Bay Area), TV stations run well produced PSA ads urging parents of young toddlers to remember to speak to their children, either via storytelling or just narrating what's going on around them at any given time, precisely for this reason. It always makes my head hurt to see a restless child sitting, say on a city bus, next to a parent who has his or her head plastered to their cell phone screen and ignoring the kid.

* I was extremely puzzled and somewhat saddened when my niece turned from an avid reader to someone who was essentially done with pleasure reading somewhere around her high school years. When she was younger, I would carefully work out in my memory when I'd read a particular favorite book from childhood, and when I was absolutely sure I was being age appropriate, I'd send it to her as a gift, only to find out she'd read it two years before! Somewhere along the line, she just stopped. I need to ask my sister if she remembers when that happened. At any rate, now my niece is a dentist (though at home with her kids {also her husband, an attorney, works from home} who reads with her 7-year-old twin boys all the time.

* Without having done any studying on the matter, I guess I always just assumed that reading was a talent that some people came by naturally, especially if encouraged productively early in life, but that it was also a skill and/or an enthusiasm that could be acquired.

* I also remember reading that even though some children were slower in learning to read, by a certain point (maybe age 8 or 9?) it all shakes out and most children are at or around the same level regardless of the speed at which they got there. (This is not counting children with specific reading disabilities, of course.)

* As for the original list, I think it's a fair set of rules of thumb, rather than strict rules, for parents and teachers to keep in mind. I would add, "The right to disagree with the teacher" for students of an age where critical readings of books begins. I was in too many classes where teachers didn't mind simply ignoring answers that weren't "right" and immediately calling on some other student instead who might give what the teacher considered the "correct" answer about some storyline or character.

* Finally, when I was in grad school, I took a course on how to teach remedial reading, and then I was hired (this is at San Francisco State University) to teach a remedial reading class to college freshman. (We didn't use the word "remedial," though. The class was called "Basic Reading," I think.) These young students had graduated from public high schools without being able to figure out what a word was on the written page by sounding it out. I was literally teaching phonics to college students. Needless to add, none of these students read much for pleasure. So I would add another "rule:" a child's right to healthy, fundamental reading lessons in their early years. I was a natural reader, but those early lessons on the fundamentals of written language--phonics and sentence structure and the like--still helped me enormously.

>221 nohrt4me2: "And as lolawalser points out, there are other creative things kids do that might mitigate their lack of interest in reading.

Yes! A really good point. If I were a parent, what I would care most about, I think, is whether my children were actively engaging with the world in a creative, constructive manner in some way, pleasure reading or otherwise. Anything that helps kids with critical reasoning skills will help them later in life, I'd think.

224cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 3, 2021, 6:06 pm

Denne meddelelse er blevet slettet af dens forfatter.

225cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 3, 2021, 6:24 pm

Denne meddelelse er blevet slettet af dens forfatter.

226cindydavid4
jul 3, 2021, 6:12 pm

227cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 3, 2021, 6:27 pm

" see a difference between preschool, where you have teachers and aides who are there to actually teach kids stuff, and day care homes and centers that are often just child-proof holding tanks. "

please dont call then holding tanks. Ive seen just about every day care preschool envirn there is. They all do actually 'teach stuff'. Children learn through play which is how they are taught. Ive seen wonderful day cares and omg what are they doing preschools, they run the gamit. they are usually trying their best given the budget etc. I wish people in power would realize how imporant is it to pay all of them for what they do, to provide budgets to allow them to hire the best, and to support them in geneal Ah well pigs may fly

228cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 3, 2021, 6:29 pm

sorry guys I was editing and lost my place. found it now :)

229Deleted
jul 3, 2021, 8:31 pm

>227 cindydavid4: Some day cares *are* holding tanks. Day care is not always preschool, and licensing of both day care facilities and preschools does not ensure that any quality care is going on, only that minimal safety and nutrition standards are being met. This varies by state.

I mean no disrespect to caregivers as a group.

230cindydavid4
jul 4, 2021, 8:50 am

ok I will give you that. Just don't like to generalize.

231SassyLassy
jul 4, 2021, 5:13 pm

>215 cindydavid4: Play is certainly a huge part of language development, but there is so much outside a child's usual environment that is just not introduced through play. As an easy example, I'm thinking of Where the Wild Things Are. While a child could certainly play act this story after having heard it, where would the idea of vines from the ceiling come from, or sailing
"...off through night and day
and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year..."?


I think Chomsky dealt mostly with syntactical language development.

>216 cindydavid4: As you say, I wasn't suggesting we revert to home schooling or religious instruction for reading development. I was musing about children learning from other sources. If a child is ready to read before the age of school, why should that child be held back by waiting until school, where the unfamiliar environment and tedious teaching methods of reading would put him/her right off the process?

>218 lisapeet: "confirmation bubble" - What a great expression!

>220 dchaikin: Sad but true.

>223 rocketjk: How did people get into university if they couldn't read?
What a great idea for PSAs, although I'm not sure the target audience will see them!

232cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 5, 2021, 6:49 am

Welll last night I had written several responses to this conversation and and apparently they have slipped the surly bonds of the WWW. (with apologies to High Flight) so lets try again

>231 SassyLassy: " Play is certainly a huge part of language development, but there is so much outside a child's usual environment that is just not introduced through play."

Of course there is . thats what the ee cummings poem above says. But if we are talking about how to build readers ( - I am thinking of early childhood, usuall birth-6. ) play gives them actual experience for them to learn the language and then as they get older they are using those skills to be able to learn much more.

I am curious tho - how. woudl you define as play? I wonder if I should use a different word - all children learn by doing, whether its play or not. does that help?

>231 SassyLassy:"While a child could certainly play act this story after having heard it, where would the idea of vines from the ceiling come from, or sailing
"...off through night and day
and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year..."?"

Well first of al the concept of time is a much later skill, I wouldn't expect young children to grasp this language, but introducing it through the book is a base for them to learn. And then there is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr8SqTH2Hso enjoy!

and it has been decades since I read chomsky and yes he was looking at syntax rather than semantic or pragmatic language. BUt I am not sure he would separate one from the others; so he probably was looking at them too.

233cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 5, 2021, 12:02 pm

>218 lisapeet:" ut that some of it may just be taste, preference, or processing difficulties... kind of like the friends I have who are excellent cooks whose kids will only eat three things, all of them bland. You just don't know. And proclivities change as kids grow up and have more agency to find books that interest them. But I do think a good teacher or librarian who is sensitive to kids' needs can make a huge difference,"

yes. this is why I really have trouble generalizing this process of learning language and learning from language/ So much anecdotal work shows that there cannot be generalzation about the how and when children learn. But they do learn, and they learn in many different ways

234cindydavid4
Redigeret: jul 5, 2021, 6:42 am

>229 nohrt4me2:
of course there is a wide range of variance within early childhood learning. Its frustrating because of how these programs are financed. You can do without a lot of materials that well funded programs have, but you need at least some basic materials that are lacking. And the people teaching in these programs need to be paid what they are worth. At the same time good day care becomes out of reach for families who aren't able to pay the very high fees. Much needs to be done for these families to make sure they do not fall through the cracks.

>231 SassyLassy:"If a child is ready to read before the age of school, why should that child be held back by waiting until school, where the unfamiliar environment and tedious teaching methods of reading would put him/her right off the process?"

I have never heard of anyone in education that would agree to this and am very sorry if it is happening. It makes no sense to do something like that. I do agree that children need a variety of enviornments and access to resources to learn, and grow . I know back in the 40s,50s, parents were told not to teach their children to read because they wont know how. Fortunately those days are over, hope so anywah

235rocketjk
Redigeret: jul 5, 2021, 12:02 pm

>231 SassyLassy:
" How did people get into university if they couldn't read?"
They could read, though not at university level. Many were probably graduated from high school with "social" promotions: not really good enough to pass but not really bad enough to be kept back, so given their diplomas because the schools are already overcrowded and there was another grade coming up behind them. How they got into university is a fair question, as well. San Francisco State University, where I was, is, obviously, a state school that has pretty open standards for California residents. They contain "catch up" programs for both reading and writing. (I taught classes in both, along with standard English composition and Creative Writing 101.) Basically, the California State University system felt that there's no use gnashing teeth over what the public schools can or can't accomplish, and they know that these young adults can strongly benefit by what the university has to offer, so they offer a helping hand to those who need one to succeed. I will say also that we got a lot of training beforehand on how to teach these classes.

"What a great idea for PSAs, although I'm not sure the target audience will see them!
They are spread throughout the TV broadcast day, airing during the sort of programs they think the target audience will see, I think.

Here is a longish (about 2 minutes) PSA explaining the Oakland-based "Talking is Teaching" initiative:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iks37cJPG0I

Here's the 30-second "Sing" PSA from their Talk Read Sing campaign:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnLfB39dMlg

236jjmcgaffey
jul 5, 2021, 10:43 pm

My parents were both readers, and the house(s) (we moved a lot) were always full of books. I remember being read to, and I remember reading, and I don't remember any junction point. I know I was reading before I went to school, and I don't remember any drama about it.

However, my almost-two-years-younger sister went to preschool able to read, and was firmly told that children that young couldn't read. She decided that what she had been doing (for fun!) wasn't really reading, and only the Dick and Jane stuff was real - and it was extremely boring so reading was boring. It took me a couple years of shoving every (good) book I read at her to re-hook her on reading - for kindergarten and most of first grade she only read what she was required to.

It didn't help that much later (actually, when her son was diagnosed) she discovered that she was dyslexic - she thought everyone dealt with the words running around the page, and dropping and rising between lines. But she does read for fun and has for years now, and in fact she's an author.

Lots of different experiences, and who you have as a teacher can make a _major_ difference.

237cindydavid4
jul 5, 2021, 11:15 pm

yikes, yeah make a difference in someway...just out of curiousitym what time period was that? that attitude was probably from the 40s-60s; I think, hope that people are much more reasonable about kids reading

238jjmcgaffey
jul 6, 2021, 6:12 am

Early 70s - admittedly, overseas, but it was an American school. I think - I _hope_ - it was just one teacher...but my sister didn't say anything about it for years afterward (she just went to school and then stopped reading), so my parents never got to point out the problem or determine if it was systematic or just the one.

239cindydavid4
jul 6, 2021, 11:05 am

>238 jjmcgaffey: well I am sorry that happened

240Deleted
Redigeret: jul 6, 2021, 3:59 pm

>236 jjmcgaffey: There was a strong "don't let them read too early" notion when I learned to read in the 1950s. The fear was that you would move your lips when you read or follow the lines with your finger or some other thing that was thought an impediment to retention.

I honestly think that whatever the educationists come up with in the way of instructional fads neither helps nor hurts because humans are hardwired to want to communicate, and you can't do that in the 21st century without reading and writing.

The distillation of what I learned as a teacher over the course of 30 years in the classroom is that students learn in spite of you as much as because of you. It's important for students to get exposure to a wide range of teachers and teaching styles. I think those who teach the teachers sometimes fetishize their pedagogy, and forget that people were reading and writing LONG before they dreamed up their latest method.

241cindydavid4
jul 6, 2021, 3:42 pm

>240 nohrt4me2: totally agree. wish others would get a clue
Denne tråd er fortsat i QUESTIONS for the AVID READER Part IV.