Jeff Bryant has masterminded the Underrated Writers 2006, the second annual collection of writers some litbloggers have recommended as deserving more love. I sent mine in under the wire, or no doubt I’d have gushed even more. My picks this year were: Joyce Ballou Gregorian (dead), Jeff VanderMeer (alive), Caitlin Kiernan (alive), and Elizabeth Hand (alive). Three out of four living ain’t bad.

Ursula Le Guin has a truly phenomenal essay about fantasy and children’s literature in the New Statesman. I highly encourage you to read the entire piece. The conclusion:

The Harry Potter phenomenon, a fantasy aimed at sub-teenagers becoming a great best-seller among adults, confirmed that fantasy builds a two-way bridge across the generation gaps. Adults trying to explain their enthusiasm told me: "I haven’t read anything like that since I was ten!" And I think this was simply true. Discouraged by critical prejudice, rigid segregation of books by age and genre, and unconscious maturismo, many people literally hadn’t read any imaginative literature since childhood. Rapid, immense success made this book respectable, indeed obligatory, reading. So they read it, and rediscovered the pleasure of reading fantasy – which may be inferior only to the pleasure of rereading it.

(Via Maud.)

I’ve been thinking about this question of things you’d have been embarrassed to be noticed reading as a kid or a teenager from another direction. Are there any books I read/loved/obsessed over back then that I am embarrassed for my younger self for reading looking back? And I find that there are.*

I would have to say that the two Jim Morrison poetry collections LEAP immediately to mind, toted proudly for several months.** I have a strong memory of falling asleep on the bus to a basketball game with Wilderness in my lap.

In general, I’m still okay with my taste in high school. It being mainly Latin American fiction and Jeanette Winterson and Salmon Rushdie. But I also read a lot of questionable serialized novels when I was younger; Sweet Valley High, anyone?

You guys have any of these?

(Mr. Rowe, we all know about your novelization problem, so ‘fess up.)

*Not that I would take any of them back, because they’re now part of my readerly and writerly DNA, which I’m pretty much happy with.
**I feel positively cleansed by this admission. And yet also shamed.