12 Books for young people

[fabrisse]

Slate online magazine has a fascinating segment called "The Vault" where it pulls documents or artifacts from the past. Sometimes, they have a direct bearing on today's politics or ideas. Sometimes, they're just interesting pieces of a vanished world.

Today's article has a list of book recommendations for young people by Samuel Clemens. He was

Comments

[eanja]

This is mildly embarrasing, but I'm pretty sure I've never actually read any Jules Verne, though I know all the storylines from movies and references.

Re Winter's Tale- I keep picking that up every few years, reading just a bit more, and then putting it back down because I keep going I will have finished it and I don't want to not be able to not look forward to reading it. (This does mean I will need to be careful to avoid any spoilers now that it's been made into a movie, but I wasn't much planning on seeing the movie anyway.) This is not a common reaction with me- I've been doing it with the very last Diana Wynne Jones book, and the very last unwatched episode of Sarah Jane Adventures. I suppose Helprin could go back and write something else still, but I it seems pretty unlikely from the limited amount I know about him.

[fabrisse]

No Jules Verne? Heretic. *G*

I know what you mean about certain experiences you just want to continue to be in the present tense rather than the past.

[eanja]

Fortunately the Verne part is fixable. I'm really kind of surprised I haven't read them- they seem like stuff I would have loved as a kid so I'm not sure why not; maybe the local library just didn't have a copy in the kid's section?

[siderea]

Apparently, it was okay for boys, but girls ended up reading the poetry of Tennyson.

Maybe Twain liked girls better?

[fabrisse]

As someone who prefers Defoe to Tennyson, I'd reverse that. *G*

Boys need adventure? Girls should stick to romance?

[siderea]

Girls should stick to romance?

Absolutely. For the right definition of romance.

Half a league, half a league

[fabrisse]

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre. -- Bosquet

I've read the Idylls and Maude, but, frankly, Tennyson just bored me. And Charge of the Light Brigade angers me. He made heroes of the officers that sent those men into a battle that should never have been fought. It was Kipling who wrote the Last of the Light Brigade to call attention to the poverty of Crimean veterans.

Later Kipling, most Browning (Robert or Elizabeth), are not bad. Love Keats and Wordsworth and Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyatt, but I'm generally not much for 19th century poetry.

[undauntra]

What's your goal with the list? It seems rather heavily slanted towards Western fiction written in English, and particularly the sort of books traditionally taught in school

[fabrisse]

I was thinking mostly of English-language literature. I was also thinking of books that could either illuminate history, show stylistic differences in speech, and could grab imaginations. How could I have omitted Kipling?!?

Now I think I may do a post on what non-fiction books everyone should be exposed to by age 20. I certainly like your suggestions.

Possibly, there should be a separate world literature one as well.