= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Dorikka comments on [Book Suggestions] Summer Reading for Younglings. - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (78)
Seconded Circle of Magic, His Dark Materials, and Enchanted Forest Chronicles.
Do you generally dislike Piers Anthony, or do you specifically anti-recommend him in this situation? I enjoyed Incarnations of Immortality and the first few Xanth books, but I don't really think they would be age-appropriate.
I generally dislike Piers Anthony and particularly disrecommend him in the case of an elementary school girl. He has some interesting content. I own some of his books, and have read many more. But he wraps up his worldbuilding concepts and his plot notions in repulsive sexism (against both sexes) and barely passable writing/characterization and gratuitous Author Appeal gimmicks.
I would go even further. I don't think that he has any interesting content, either. What he has is a lot of puns. That's enough for a stand-up comic routine, but not enough for a book.
His content is not well presented, but that doesn't mean that telepathic horses and all the myriad Xanth talents and amoeba people etc. etc. are intrinsically uninteresting. (Please mind you are talking to the person who wrote more than 500,000 words of Twilight fanfiction without changing any established worldbuilding. Salvageability of ideas is so different from quality of packaging.)
I know, I'd read your fanfiction and I enjoyed it :-)
I think you and I just have different definitions of "content". As far as I can tell, you use the word to mean "interesting ideas that could be used as building blocks for a compelling narrative", whereas I use the word to mean "the finished narrative". I could agree that Piers Anthony has some interesting ideas, though not all of his ideas are interesting, IMO.
Having read Piers Anthony as an elementary school girl, I can attest that he may screw kids up.