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.)
Fantastical Beginnings Read More »
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.
Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
(Via Darice … or should I say NICOLA TESLA!)
There’s an interesting (if sometimes depressing) conversation going on about who reads science fiction and whether the trappings of the genre itself discourages girls from reading it over in the comments of the Aetiology post I linked to about hot girls supposedly not reading SF. Several women have said they felt that reading SF growing up was something they had to keep quiet.
The stigma from other kids I noticed growing up was just associated with being a reader, period. Being a reader was odd. I never cared, so I read what I wanted, and honestly never felt like a title from a certain genre was any less okay than another in social terms. Was I just oblivious?
At any rate, I’d think that, along with a thousand other things, Harry Potter finally put the nail in this stigma’s coffin. (Not to mention the LOTR movies.) Am I still being oblivious?
to forgive Amy Sherman-Palladino if this is as good as it sounds:
Ausiello: Well, it sounds like you’re headed back to work. Tell me about the new show.
AS-P: It’s called The Return of Jezebel James, and it’s basically a sister buddy comedy. It’s about a very successful, very driven, very problem-solving kind of woman who’s a young-adult book publisher. She has her own imprint. And she decides to have a baby on her own, and the doctor says, "Whoops, you’re not going to be able to do that by yourself. Sorry, sweetheart!" And she winds up tracking down her younger, much-less-focused sister, who’s the polar opposite of her. And she says to her, "I will cut you a deal and pay you to carry my baby for me. But you have to move in with me, so that I can watch you and make sure it doesn’t come out with three heads." And the younger sister, having very limited options, agrees, and that’s where our series takes off. But the pilot is these two women reconnecting and cutting a deal.
I Might Be Convinced… Read More »
