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What 📔book are you reading right now?

Somehow that doesn't surprise me.
But, as always, it's a matter of opinion. 😉
 
Piranesi by Susana Clark. I'm only 30ish pages in but already intrigued by her world building.
 
I've started a re-read of the Harry Potter series, in the midst of my other readings.
I'm doing this because I see the series still seems to get some rather high acclaim.

I confess, when I first read it starting 26 years ago, I rather enjoyed it.
But today, I'm finding the leading pages to be a bit - juvenile.

Now.. I know it's intended for 12-15 year age group... but still... the Hobbit starts far better to me.
I know comparatively, the Potter series is a rather flat, linear work without the interweavd depths of others...
I do hope it gets a little better.

Having only read it once before, I must also confess my memory is a bit tainted by the movies in this case. Perhaps this alone justifies continuing the read. Release myself from the cinematic divergences a bitsy for a more 'critical' evaluation.
 
First off, Pax to JK Rowling... anything that gets kids to read is a plus.
But Rowling wrote for children (as you observed in saying " I know it's intended for 12-15 year age group).
The reason 'the Hobbit starts far better" is that Tolkien did not write "for children" .

It is usually assumed that children are the natural or the specially appropriate audience for fairy-stories. In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: “this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty.” But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that began thus: “this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy”; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate. Is there any essential connexion between children and fairy-stories? Is there any call for comment, if an adult reads them for himself? Reads them as tales, that is, not studies them as curios. Adults are allowed to collect and study anything, even old theatre programmes or paper bags.
[…]
Among those who still have enough wisdom not to think fairy-stories pernicious, the common opinion seems to be that there is a natural connexion between the minds of children and fairy-stories, of the same order as the connexion between children’s bodies and milk. I think this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large.
--- JRRT , “On Fairy-Stories”







 
Deimos said:
is that Tolkien did not write "for children" .
Click to expand...
debatable, in that it started as a story for his own children, and was published as a book for the younger audiences.
'tis also why LoTR is so much more for 'mature augiences' than TH is.

What Tolkien says in the two paragraphs you cite does not refer to the age group the language and concepts are targeted for, but the grasp of the mind upon whiich the words are acting and interacting.

So we are referring to two entirely different realms of thought here.
 
Last edited:
The 1974 German translation of Thor Heyerdahl's book "Fatu Hiva", about the year (1937) that he mostly spent on that island of the Marquesas group in French Polynesia with his first wife (he was 22, she 20 at the beginning of their "flight from modernity"). Heyerdahl had published a book in Norway in 1938 upon the couple's return, but WW II prevented any translations. The 1974 book is expanded and revised, as Heyerdahl had led several more expeditions to Polynesia by then, probably the most famous being the 1947 "Kon Tiki" crossing of a part of the Pacific Ocean in a balsa-wood raft from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in eastern Polynesia.
Heyerdahl sure seems to have shared some of JRRT's skepticism-to-hostility to aspects of modernity - including machines.
 
The 2011 German translation of Bill Bryson's 2010 book "At Home: A Short History of Private Life".
 
Elthir said:
I think I might read The Wizard of Oz next.
Click to expand...
An interesting thing to do with the book The Wizard of Oz itself, is to go through it and find out how many days Dorothy was actually in Oz, vs. the number of days we see her there in the 1939 classic film.

At some points, the counting needs to be done 'backward' from a later event...rather than forward from a current event. But it's all there.

Many years ago, before some of you were born, I did a website on Wiz of Oz, it was seen by an author in New York, whose book I ended up editing as he came asking me questions about it. Those were fun days.

I've read all the L. Frank Baum Oz works... and have them digitally to return to in the ephemeral "some day" for some possible further work.

(I'll need to re-work the days to be sure my memory is accurate... I've subsequently lost track of the paperback version I marked all up in doing my calculations. One party chose to disagree with my count on the website... I invited him to demonstrate where my error was, as I was all ears to get to the truth. He never responded however... so a review on my own is still justified anyway, to make sure my former count was accurate.)
 
Ent said:
An interesting thing to do with the book The Wizard of Oz itself, is to go through it and find out how many days Dorothy was actually in Oz, vs. the number of days we see her there in the 1939 classic film.
Click to expand...

Wait! There's a film?

I couldn't resist

Anyway, interesting Ent! I'll try and take note of the daze involved, even though (as you might know by now) I tend to avoid things that seem like math!

🐾
 
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