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Boys don't read unless it is gory?
taeric
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
So.... I just found this article in today's WSJ.
Was it really necessary to add gore to get any of you guys to read when you were younger? I don't recall this.
And if they are having to cater towards boys now, is this because they have been catering to girls before? Or are we just going to ignore them for a while? (Separate reading lists?)
Was it really necessary to add gore to get any of you guys to read when you were younger? I don't recall this.
And if they are having to cater towards boys now, is this because they have been catering to girls before? Or are we just going to ignore them for a while? (Separate reading lists?)
taeric on
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Man, really almost none of my favorites from any time period are gory, even the fucked-up stuff is more like "I have no mouth but I must scream" and not like 'Saw'.
I love this Cracked article: The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses.
- John Stuart Mill
On the other hand, Little House on the Prairie. Wow. I mean, who can blame a kid for not wanting to read that snoozefest?
i guess the first real book would have been those illustrated classics books like 2000 leagues under the sea and journey to the center of the earth. they have tons of em.
u know the ones where every page has a picture on one side and text on the other which makes the book twice as big as it really is.
It made me actually interested in reading the rest of those books as soon as possible, rather than seeing reading as a chore that adults forced me to do.
That, and comic books totally help. Early runs of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and X-Men are really easy to read and entertaining and don't look "kiddie" like a big ol' picture book.
The Stand had it's moments.
I do recall Where the Sidewalk Ends. I liked a lot of quick poetry as a child.
Okay, admittedly II Kings 2:23-24 is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. Sometimes, when I share with Christians, they think I've made it up.
It's like that one guy's avatar:
"Hey smelly old dude! Got a weather forecast in loser-town?"
"Why, yes! It is cloudy, with a chance of BEAR!"
/Farnsworth
The stuff that really got me interested in reading as a kid was sci-fi stuff like Dune and Ender's Game. I was also big into Terry Pratchett, I had a lot of the Discworld books (So. Many. BOOKS).
Neither of them could really be classed as "gory". I can't really remember much of anything that thrived on viscera for its own sake.
Choose your own adventure and Hardy Boys were staples of my youth.
This reminds me of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes comic. My brief google-fu couldn't find it, but it has him reading a very violent comic, puts it down and goes over to the tv all googly-eyed. His mom turns the TV off and says "it's too violent, why don't you go read something?".
And I will cut any bitch that talks shit about Laura Ingalls Wilder.
The only challenge to getting little boys (or girls) to enjoy reading is to have them read/read with them enjoyable books. This shouldn't be so difficult to understand. Hell, I can't wait until I become a dad/have to babysit my cousins in a couple years. I haven't read The Wind in the Willows in decades, and I've never read Rutabaga Stories. The first time I get to introduce a certain Hobbit to my future kid is going to be so awesome.
That is, you want your kids to read? Why don't you try picking up a book?
I remember the books I read from third grade through high school and the common element in them was that there was a great deal of activity and action. Ender's Game and The Hobbit were two of my favorite books. I also remember a book about baseball. I think it was about a Russian immigrant who really wanted to play little league or Babe Ruth. It's all pretty fuzzy since it was almost 20 years ago. I read a lot of Tom Clancy in junior high since they were pretty easy to read and they'd last a while. Books about war were always interesting. Red Badge of Courage and The Things They Carried were great.
Of course those had the trites, which scared the hell out of me. But the spaceship was the appeal.
I did read Fear Street as a kid, too (Stine's work before Goosebumps for the kiddies here).
The first time I actually enjoyed something I had to read for school was 1984, and that was when I was a senior.
Has Cracked always been hilarious?
My favorite book before kindergarten was The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe. In grade school it was The Hatchet, and my favorite book since high school is still The Lord of the Rings.
Not only that, wasn't the biggest book getting kids (boys and girls) to read recently Harry Potter? Magic, check. Action, check, adventure, check. Sadness and death, check. Gore, well even the nastiest curses in the book keep it all nice and clean (Ava Kadavra leaves just an intact dead body and while the Creciahootawhatsit curse may result in madness, but it doesn't exactly tear people limb from limb).
I was wondering the same. I think this is the first time I've had to send a link to all my friends over IM. I was close to tears on some of it.
. . . just sounds odd.
Yes. Very much so. The 5 Most Badass Presidents of All-Time had me on stitches.
I can't comment on the reading issue though, nobody ever had to force me on reading. My mom was a librarian, she made me read everything as soon as I was able to comprehend stuff...I think I learned to read around the age of three or something. Reading is the most awesome thing in the world, honestly, and all the TV in the world can't beat an excellent book in my opinion.
I know people who haven't read more then one or two books, though...and only when forced to do so in school.
Man, I read "Animal Farm" for my schoolwork, and let me tell you, the overanalysis of absolutely everything completely sucked up any enjoyment I could've gotten out of the book, I ended up hating it.
Now I feel differently, but largely because I don't have to troll through every sentence pointing out the obvious and seeking meaningful "connections" throughout the story (especially when I thought those connections were really, really tenuous).
If English Lit taught me anything, it's that there's usually only ever one valid and acceptable interpretation that the examiners are looking for, so you better freaking well learn it!
I HATE the analysis of literature. A lot of this stems from the fact that I'm not particularly good at it, but mostly because it seems like a bunch of stupid, meaningless fluff.
I remember a class I had before, the teacher asked "What's the point of writing literature?" We got 7-8 answers deep with shit like "to make social commentary" and I got infuriated because, to me, the main point of writing a piece of literature should always be to tell a fucking story.
I understand that writing can be used for social commentary and the like, but fuck. Can't I just read something to immerse myself in a fictional world?
Which, ironically, is likely far more accurate.
Knots, edible plants, wilderness survival, not to sass my Aunt Gretrude, etc. etc.
Best growing up books ever.
I think they picked up the funny that Mad dropped back in the 90s.
I love all the books people are posting about, I've read many of them, Redwall, Hardy boys, LoTR, Narnia, hitch hickers guide, Foundation,shanara, endar's game....
I was also into some Dragonlance, forgotten realms.
I got into some tom clancy and similar books, wheel of time, man I've forgotten half the books I've read!
I appreciate a page or two of violence and/or sex in my books but it is hardly a determining factor, most of the books I've read don't really have anything I'd call gory in them.