I've only read the first one, but I do remember it being pretty witty, and there's some neat worldbuilding and character interaction. One of my good friends (whom I consider a pretty good judge of literary character) loves them and praises them for their fine sense of storytelling, which seems like a pretty good endorsement.
But I can't speak from much experience myself.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaI loved "Wringer." Jerry Spinelli's a great writer, he writes mostly for kids/YA, but his books are also great for adults too. Maniac Magee is my favorite, definitely a tearjerker, though. Stargirl has an interesting Cloudcukoolander type character.
I'm also fond of the Series of Unfortunate Events series, it has you questioning your idea of morality and it's such an entertaining read. In middle school I really started to get into the classic Winnie the Pooh and Little Bear books, great stuff.
I love classic Winnie-the-Pooh stories. I've always liked Milne because he was witty, and I'm a sucker for wit.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaJust finished A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge and... Jesus that was weird.
First there's the setting, which is a giant sprawling city beneath a mountain where, for some reason, people do not have naturally occurring facial expressions and have to be taught by Facesmiths. Except for our intrepid, and slightly mad, young Cheesemaker's apprentice. And then it goes from Cheese to court intrigue to Wine, takes a hard left into cosmic horror, does a u-turn back into court intrigue...
I loved every page and even if I hadn't I couldn't ever hate a book where people run screaming in fright from Cartographers.
edited 26th Aug '12 9:15:44 PM by Bur
I don't know what it's like in Hardiges' imagination, but she's a hell of a drug.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaI started with Harry Potter, but I guess that doesn't count because of sheer awesomemness. I later read Percy Jacksonandthe Olympians and found it very funny and enjoyable.
And then I read my personal favorite explicitly-for-children's book, [1]. It was a LOT better than I would have ever expected. For once, the hero is someone just like anyone you'd meet on the street, who in this case just wants to save her son. I remember loving the rats' backstory, and all of the characters. The movie shames the book and I was appalled that so little of its fanbase had read the source material. Worst Animated Adaptation I have ever seen, and I don't care if it's Don Bluth!
I am also a fan of the [2] series and Redwall.
edited 27th Aug '12 2:25:45 PM by QuarterDollar
Do the Discworld books about Tiffany Aching count as children's books?
Because they're awesome. And I Shall Wear Midnight is pretty dark.
Bewitching EyesI've been reading Darke while grinding in a video game. A novel way to pass the time, I suppose.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaReread Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix, and it was actually a good deal better than I remembered it. One of the things I remembered vividly was that it referred to Nazis as "bad", but as a rushed explanation by an adult acquaintance who was talking about something else to a girl who'd spent almost all her life thinking it was 1840, that makes sense.
Tried Warriors, and my god, it has the thickest protagonist I've ever seen in my life. So, Firepaw, now that you've had the fact that this character is the sole witness to a horrible crime dropped into your lap after a lot of really obvious hints you didn't grasp, still none of the rest is falling into place? Like, the fact that the perp has constantly been putting the witness into needless mortal peril? Including in front of the main person you need to convince? And you keep forgetting and deciding not to mention any of this at critical points for no good reason? Oh, and why not fail to notice your own name, just to top it off. (I started the second book in hopes it would get better - the worldbuilding is swank enough that I was willing to give it a chance - but no, turns out he starts forgetting even the meager bits he picked up on the last time. If the villain's shelf-life needs to be extended this artificially, that doesn't exactly sell the villain.)
edited 1st Sep '12 4:35:05 AM by DomaDoma
Hail Martin Septim!I bought something interesting recently: A proof copy of a novel! The local chain of bookstores sometimes gets in proofs, and I thought it might be fun to buy one. (You know, in flagrant of defiance of that "PROOF COPY - NOT FOR SALE" ribbon they have at the top of them.) Plus, it means I got to own a fairly new book for quite cheap!
I bring it up here, because it's a kid's book and it's actually not bad at all! It's called The False Prince, apparently part of something called The Ascention Trilogy, and it's a pretty decent bit of Low Fantasy. It has a nicely despicable villain, and the main character is very nicely characterized, though he's a total smart-aleck and that's a bit grating at times. It's not perfect, but the characterization on the whole is pretty strong, and I always approve of that. Plus, it has an intriguing plot: The bad guy picks out a bunch of orphans from the country in order to train them in impersonating the Prince, so he can allegedly stop a civil war, but of course the main character knows he probably wants the throne and is just looking for a puppet.
The main character, Sage, is refreshing in that he's the sort of protagonist who actually asks a lot of questions and doesn't just blindly go along with friends. He goes, "Hey, what about XYZ" at about the same time the audience does, which makes him a good vehicle for both the plot and character development. And although his cheekiness is sometimes annoying, it can be quite satisfying when he goes up to a character, says "No, I will not deal with your crap," and means it. Almost a more active and angry Audience Surrogate, but with believable flaws.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaThe Avi book (Keep Your Eye on Amanda) was pretty good. There were some funny moments, and a decent plot (a female raccoon hooks up with a human thief and becomes his accomplice, and her brother tries to stop him). I thought it was kind of interesting how the animals and humans actually interacted, instead of being separate entities.
Another kids' book thrown at me was The Wainscott Weasel. It was a favorite of a friend's, and she said she thought it still held up in adulthood, so I'm starting to check it out.
You know, that post made me think of something.
What books from the past do you guys think held up well in adulthood, and what books did you love as a kid that simply didn't stand the test of time?
For me, My Teacher Is An Alien is one that I loved as a kid, that just didn't work so well when I reread it as an adult. The base premise, that a sixth grade teacher is actually a space alien who plans to abduct 5 students (the smartest, the dumbest, and 3 most average) to take back to space with him for study, and the main characters have to expose it, is perfectly sound. Indeed, it resulted in some great suspense and there's fun moments with trying to get proof, trying to get help from other kids, and so on. I love the idea of a terrifying threat being right there in the school, where you have to face it every single day. And I remember being very tense at one particular moment when I read it as a kid.
But sadly, MANY aspects just don't work when reread more critically:
- How does a kid follow a teacher right to his house? Simple, the teacher walks home rather than driving. WHY does the teacher walk home? That doesn't make sense and is not explained.
- Why does a kid follow the teacher right to his house before learning he is an alien, especially when she is a kid who never gets in trouble? Because she wrote a nasty note about him and hid it under a test, which he collected, and she's so afraid of getting in trouble, that she decides to follow him and steal it back. Excuse me? Somehow, that made sense to me at the time, but I see it now for the contrivance that it is.
- "Maybe aliens see how much we fight all the time and wouldn't want to invade Earth." As a kid I thought this line made sense (so much war on Earth that aliens decide it's risky to invade such a planet), but now I just think it's dumb.
- One REALLY stupid plot element, later on, is that the other kids in the school start to believe that Mr. Smith is an alien. I mean, we're talking sixth graders (and below, which at least makes more sense) here. The reason why though? It's dumb, so let me try to explain. The two main characters, a boy and girl, are hanging out together to try to solve this mystery, spurring rumors that they're dating. The boy is asked why the two are spending so much time together, and he tells the truth. Not believing him, the kid who asked that asks the girl if she really was sick the one day she called out sick to try to sneak into the teacher's home, and she jokingly said that no, of course she wasn't. That, combined with the fact that the two kids weren't going out of their way to try to convince the rest of the school that Mr. Smith is an alien, causes them to believe that he really is one after all.
Even if you're willing to forgive that one dumb line, the dumb plot elements/scenes just don't work the way they did when I had more tolerance for such implausibility. Sadly, one of my favorite books as a kid did not age well.

I started on Super Zombie Juice Mega Bomb. As the title would suggest, it doesn't take itself seriously. Cheesy dialog and cheesy humor from a First Person Snarker who snarks in a cheesy way with cheesy analogies ("this is worse the time that ______", "that reminded me of the time when ______").
But I'll give it credit for this: you see your first zombie on page 4. It doesn't waste time setting up the premise that the town was evacuated and our two main characters are the only ones living in it. Brief flashbacks set up how they got there, and that's it. Not that all books should use such breakneck pacing, as there's something to be said for setting up characters ahead of time in a way that makes you care about them when things go wrong, something that might not happen in this comedy. But still, I'm gonna read the whole book and see what it's like.
edited 7th Jun '12 7:22:14 AM by BonsaiForest