Comments | sub_divided: Welcome to Finals Season: Frantic Efforts at Distraction Overtake Livejournaland

sub_divided

Welcome to Finals Season: Frantic Efforts at Distraction Overtake Livejournaland

Dec 02, 2006 01:45

Today I was overtaken by an irresistable urge to reread the classic SF I am sending to petronia, followed by an equally irresistible urge to compile themed booklists for reading-mix.

SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!!! These lists are from memory -- like last time, I'm at college, with no access to my bookshelves.

The Psychology of ScienceBooks with nuanced depictions of the ( Read more... )

books:readinglist

Comments 22

petronia December 2 2006, 06:52:01 UTC

Well, I'd certainly have put the Boxcar Children in the same category as the rest when I was a kid. *g* Man, good ol' Scholastic.

sub_divided December 2 2006, 06:55:07 UTC

For all that the kids are orphans (and squatters!) it does sort of have that clubhouse atmosphere. XD

apintrix December 2 2006, 07:13:54 UTC

Looping Stories: Louise Erdrich, "Love Medicine"
Amy Bloom, "Come To Me"

I'm not sure Catch-22 really fits, as it's a novel told unsequentially rather than short stories...

sub_divided December 2 2006, 07:19:19 UTC

Yeah, I'm sort of iffy on it. Though the chapters are told from varying viewpoints, not all of them are self-contained.

Oooh, thanks!

apintrix December 2 2006, 07:24:58 UTC

Oh, uh, descriptions ( ... )

murinae December 2 2006, 08:10:29 UTC

For puzzle stories:

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Kids building their World:

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatly Snider

Looping Stories:

I want to suggest The Poisonwood Bible -- Barbara Kinsolver but I don't think it counts as short stories even if the narratives loop. I do have some collections of shorts that do loop, it's just escaping my memory right now.

Does this help? I'll think of more when I'm not so sleepy.

-muri

sub_divided December 2 2006, 08:41:43 UTC

It helps a lot, thanks! I really want to read The Westing Game now.

angrybabble December 2 2006, 08:27:59 UTC

looping story: it's a Shadowrun novel!! XD But it's really good I swear!!!!! (If you like the Shadowrun universe, which I do.) But crap I forgot the title. I'll look it up later. It's a bunch of short stories by different authors which are all about the events of the same action-filled night. XD (I think the old Thieves World story compilations are similar? I could be wrong.)

THE WESTING GAME, SO AWESOME

Kids building their own worlds: I used to LOVE this shit. Uhhhh lessee. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen is the classic (although I always liked "Canyons" much better). "My Side of the Mountain" on the same theme (kid builds himself a home inside a tree).

Actually I've been downloading digital book versions of YA books lately! Like the first 4 MacDonald Hall books by Gordon Korman and stuff. XD (I'm thinking of OCRing more books I have that I can't seem to find scanned yer... xD) If you would like these files lemme know. XD

sub_divided December 2 2006, 08:44:30 UTC

Thank yooooouuuu!

If you would like these files

...so...tempting...must not...give in...

Next year, maybe. Oh wait -- next year is less than a month away. Better make that next decade -_-; I swear, I am so behind in everything.

biggersandwich December 2 2006, 14:30:48 UTC

YA Clubhouse books: A lot of the Enid Byton books have kids with secret groups (the Secret Seven, the Famous Five, her rip-off of her own Secret Seven: the Sturdy Six XD) have clubhouses, but I don't know if you'd count them because it's not really their own world, it's usually a garden shed or similar. The Swallows and Amazons books by Arthur Ransome would probably fit too: it's a whole series of books (the first is called Swallows and Amazons)about several families of kids who go camping and sail boats during the holidays, it's usually not so much clubhouses as tents, but the tents usually do represent camps of explorers or prospectors or pirates. :D

The Psychology of Science books: Bellwether by Connie Willis is about a scientist studying fads and how they spread and it has a lot of interaction between scientists and between scientists and funding committees and the "real world" and that sort of thing. It's about how interactions between people (mostly scientists) affects science and it's really really good.

edit, missing words sub_divided December 2 2006, 19:10:29 UTC

I wanted to add Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, but then I realized that although there is a clubhouse, and it is awesome, the books are not about building the clubhouse. So it's not on the list, and I think this might apply to the books you suggested although they do sound good.

Bellwether sounds really, really good. Thank you!

Re: edit, missing words lacewood December 3 2006, 01:52:11 UTC

Enid Blyton definitely had a couple of series/books about kids running away from home and building themselves their own temporary camps/homes. I just, uh, can't recall their names now. The Three Adventurers? Or something like that.

(SHE WROTE A SECRET SEVEN RIP OFF CALLED THE STURDY SIX? @$^*@$*^ HAHAHAHA WHY DID I NEVER KNOW THIS BEFORE?)

Re: edit, missing words biggersandwich December 3 2006, 12:51:12 UTC

I vaguely remember those! They built a house out of trees or something, didn't they?

(I think it was only one or two stories and I've only seen them in this giant Enid Blyton collection I have, but it was a pretty blatant rip off. XD XD XD The characters were all "the Secret Seven inspired us to start our own club! shall we call it the Secret Six and be exactly like them?" SO BAD. HAHAHAHA.)