[ rss / options / help ]
post ]
[ b / iq / g / zoo ] [ e / news / lab ] [ v / nom / pol / eco / emo / 101 / shed ]
[ art / A / beat / boo / com / fat / job / lit / map / mph / poof / £$€¥ / spo / uhu / uni / x / y ] [ * | sfw | o ]
logo
literature

Return ] Entire Thread ] First 100 posts ] Last 50 posts ]

Posting mode: Reply
Reply ]
Subject   (reply to 5761)
Message
File  []
close
quentinblake15_2107428i.jpg
576157615761
>> No. 5761 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:35 pm
5761 spacer
Evening, Mumsnet lads.

I'm running low on ideas of what to read to my son [7]. We're working our way through the Mr Gum books and if I can't think of something when we're finished my other half will probably subject him to Enid Blyton. We've read The Hobbit and all of Ronald Dahl's books for children but I don't know where to go next, possibly Harry Potter (although I've never read them so I don't know what they're like) or maybe something by Terry Deary as he's obsessed with ancient Egypt. Goosebumps?

I'd be grateful for any tips. Any books you were particularly fond of from your childhood?
Expand all images.
>> No. 5762 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:42 pm
5762 spacer
The Bartimaeus Trilogy will be beyond him at the minute but one day he'll fucking love it. Same (perhaps) for Pratchett's Diggers, Truckers and Wings.
>> No. 5763 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:45 pm
5763 spacer
>>5761

I suggest the Artemis Fowl series, I still enjoy them. Lord of the Rings isn't too far away either, I read it myself as a 10 year old.

Harry Potter books are all right, they wont make you want to blow your brains out at least.

The King's Blades series by Dave Duncan are maybe a bit mature, but I loved them as a kid. It has a bit of shagging here and there and copious amounts of awesome knights doing awesome stuff, which I loved.

Have you considered His Dark Materials series? Northern Lights, etc.
>> No. 5764 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:47 pm
5764 spacer

200px-SalamandastronUK[1].gif
576457645764
>>5761
It's like the Iliad but with woodland creatures.
>> No. 5765 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:49 pm
5765 spacer
>>5761

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enchanted_Wood_%28novel%29

These were magical for me, no pun intended. I don't know why you're against are Enid. I've heard bad things about Terry Deary on .gs, but I always enjoyed the Horrible Histories books.

I'd suggest these, I really enjoyed them. You might want to check them out before you start reading them with your son though, some of the themes are violent. That's according to wikipedia, I don't remember anything too bad in them. There might have been one where the protagonists were nearly burned at the stake as witches or summat, but that's about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooksville
>> No. 5766 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:51 pm
5766 spacer

7190-M.jpg
576657665766
Harry Potter is good, and you'll likely find yourself getting interested in the story after the second or third book. I might hold off on hitting the end of the series until your child is older, but by the time you've gotten through to Goblet Of Fire they should be able to cope.

You should definitely, definitely read him Horrible Histories and related series (there's some science and technology ones done in the same vein). They're not stories but it's always good to try and capture their imagination with these otherwise "dry" subjects before they hit them at secondary school.

You may also enjoy the Artemis Fowl series, they're quite pithy. Others by Eoin Colfer might be a bit above your kid (they're more 10+ years kinds of books) but I don't doubt your child is smart and would still enjoy that kind of adventure story. There's also the Alex Rider books - they're a bit like watered down James Bond adventures for the modern child.

The Lemony Snicket/A Series Of Unfortunate Events I also remember enjoying around that age, and until I was about 13/14 too. I tended to read quite above my age as a child (I was onto YA fiction and LOTR by my tweens) so you might need to adjust based on your son's development.

He will almost certainly be entranced by the Lynne Reid Banks series The Indian In The Cupboard. They're fantastic. A must-read for kids that age.

I similarly remember enjoying going through my dad's copies of Just William stories. They're a bit antiquated and you might need to explain this to your lad but they're good fun too.

I'll update more as I think of them, I hope this starts you off. If I had to pick one in my list the begin with, it'd be the Indian In The Cupboard. It's just a glorious, glorious series. Anyone who didn't experience it in their childhoods has missed out on something beautiful in the pantheon of classic children's literature. Please expose him to it while he's still young enough to truly be lost in the fantastical.
>> No. 5767 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:52 pm
5767 spacer

ThePhantomTollbooth.jpg
576757675767
Is he too old for The Phantom Tollbooth? The answer to that is probably no. If he liked The Hobbit you might try Phantastes by George MacDonald. It's preferable to C.S. Lewis, at least. Some things by H.G. Wells are on a similar level to The Hobbit, as is The Tripod Trilogy and even the HHGTTG, if you don't mind him hearing about drinking. Stig of The Dump? Swallows and Amazons?
>> No. 5768 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:54 pm
5768 spacer
>>5764
Definitely, then when OP has finished reading that to him, he could help him create his first fursona as a father-son project.
>> No. 5769 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:54 pm
5769 spacer

Picture-7-300x284.png
576957695769
The Phantom Tollbooth remains one of my favourite ever books.
>> No. 5770 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 9:54 pm
5770 spacer
>>5763
Oh christ, I can't believe I left Pullman off the list. It's a great introduction into why to not trust organised religion. It should be required reading for all schoolchildren imo. +1 on that suggestion.

On that vein, it's never too early to read them Lord Of The Flies. Animal Farm too. Well, maybe wait until he's 10 or so. I read them around that age and Animal Farm especially made a distinct impression on me.
>> No. 5771 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 10:04 pm
5771 spacer

295181.jpg
577157715771
This series is also worth a crack. It might be a bit confusing and high-brow for a 7 year old (it's basically a fantasy re-imagining of 1984) but it's quite absorbing. Mudnuts!
>> No. 5772 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 10:06 pm
5772 spacer
>>5762
>Same (perhaps) for Pratchett's Diggers, Truckers and Wings.

We had Diggers somewhere, but I can't say that I've seen it since we moved house. I was planning on giving him my Discworld novels when he's a bit older.

>>5763
Thanks, lad. I have the His Dark Materials trilogy, but I was planning on holding them back for a few years. However I've got most of the Sally Lockhart books so he may be ready for them.

>>5764
Thanks, lad.

>>5765
I can't comment on The Faraway Tree series but the Famous Five, Secret Seven, etc. books we've got are dire (actually, the
Five Find-Outers books are alright); always the same dull opening chapters about meeting up for the school holidays, a few chapters where they call each other asses and idiots, the odd chapter where she's forgotten the name of the cook or one of the other characters and starts calling them something else and a chapter or two about suspicious looking foreigners. At least they're not as bad as Horrid Henry.
>> No. 5773 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 10:11 pm
5773 spacer
>>5763
Oh fuck Artemis Fowl is great.

>>5772
Can I please stress the Bartimaeus trilogy for later, it was easily my favourite book as a child. I might reread it actually.

>>5771
Never liked them.
>> No. 5774 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 10:13 pm
5774 spacer
There was a book I read as a child about a few dogs stranded on an island having come off a fishing boat. I can't for the life of me find what it is.
>> No. 5775 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 10:39 pm
5775 spacer
>>5772
I'd disagree with the lad who suggested LOTR since he's seven, but he might be ready for The Hobbit and Tolkein's other shorter bits like Farmer Giles of Ham.
>> No. 5776 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 11:12 pm
5776 spacer
>>5775

OP said he had already read him The Hobbit.
>> No. 5777 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 11:14 pm
5777 spacer
Read him the nightly ramblings of .gs of course!

I can't really offer any good advice because I was basically illiterate until year 6.

>>5774

I know what you mean. The first "proper" book I read was about a millipede and his mum getting smoked out of his home, but I can't remember the name at all.
>> No. 5778 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 11:18 pm
5778 spacer
>>5776
Ah, sorry, had beers this evening. What about Charlotte's Web, Watership Down (though don't let him watch the cartoon) or Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series? I remember enjoying those around OP's lad's age, and I think they're all still in print.
>> No. 5779 Anonymous
8th October 2014
Wednesday 11:54 pm
5779 spacer
>>5766

>The Lemony Snicket/A Series Of Unfortunate Events I also remember enjoying around that age, and until I was about 13/14 too.

I didn't discover the series until my late twenties and I thought it was very witty.

>>5767

>Is he too old for The Phantom Tollbooth? The answer to that is probably no.

Heck no. Some of those puns would go way over kids' heads.

The above are my two biggest recommendations.

A Boy and a Bear and a Boat is pretty decent and there's a lot of issue fiction like My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece, When I Was Joe and R.J. Palacio's Wonder. The latter two are great but might be a little old for him.

I enjoyed Arthur C. Clarke's Dolphin Island as a kid but I had to skip the first couple of chapters. There's this peculiar thing where he drastically changed his prose style after those, like he's just remembered what age bracket he's meant to be writing for.

I liked The Class That Went Wild, A Cat Called Amnesia and Aliens In The Family.

The London Eye Mystery is good too. So are Louis Sachar's.
>> No. 5780 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 12:40 am
5780 spacer

HowIEscaped.jpg
578057805780

>> No. 5781 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 3:05 am
5781 spacer
Excuse my ignorance but is seven not old enough to begin solo reading? I know I was devouring Horrible Histories at that age, though I was perhaps advanced.
>> No. 5782 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 6:11 am
5782 spacer
>>5781

Any book is appropriate for anyone of any age to read. I was reading geology and astronomy books on my own by the time I was seven and could program in basic BASIC using the Amstrad CPC 464 manual. Children are smarter than adults. Don't hold them back.
>> No. 5783 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 6:24 am
5783 spacer
>>5782

>Any book is appropriate for anyone of any age to read.

I don't know. He might be a bit bemused if you read him Story of the Eye.
>> No. 5784 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 7:48 am
5784 spacer
>>5781
He will devour a book if it's something he's interested in (Ancient Egypt, space, dragons, nature, etc.) but during the week the usual routine is that he'll read his school book to me and then I'll read him a few chapters. I've read authors say that too many parents punish their children for learning to read by stopping reading to them altogether, plus I like reading to him.

I might have a look at the Ronald Dahl Funny Prize, although I'm sure David Williams has won it and I didn't think much of Mr Stink and Gangsta Granny when we read those.
>> No. 5785 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 9:34 am
5785 spacer

HTTYD.jpg
578557855785
>>5761

Try the How To Train Your Dragon series of books. They are pretty much nothing to do with the films and have a wit and charm lacking in the Hollywood version.

My boy is just turned 7 and he loves them. You can pick up a dozen of them in a box set for about £35.
>> No. 5786 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 12:42 pm
5786 spacer
>>5781
You seem to be forgetting the important bonding time that exists when parents and children read together. Perhaps you missed out on it in your childhood, but I can still recall every line of Cops and Robbers thanks to my father tirelessly reading it to me what felt like every night when I was a youngun. It's one of my most distinct memories from that age, and my dad still - when prompted - can start reciting the verses with me, and I can tell he enjoys doing so as for a brief moment he remembers me as his 2 year old rapscallion and not the young adult with voting privileges and council tax that I now am.

These things are important, trust me.
>> No. 5787 Anonymous
9th October 2014
Thursday 3:49 pm
5787 spacer
>>5770
> I read them around that age and Animal Farm especially made a distinct impression on me.
Eh, you too?
>>5782
I remember stumbling upon the book about child upbringing. Opened my fucking eyes regarding all those adult trickery.
>> No. 5937 Anonymous
29th January 2015
Thursday 8:56 pm
5937 spacer
OP here, I've picked up Artemis Fowl today so I'll let you know what I he thinks of it after he's finished reading The Story of Matthew Buzzington to me.
>> No. 5938 Anonymous
29th January 2015
Thursday 10:19 pm
5938 spacer
>>5937
Great shit.
>> No. 5939 Anonymous
30th January 2015
Friday 12:22 am
5939 spacer
>>5786
Can't agree more, although it brings up sad memories as well as it reminds me of a time when my father wasn't such a cynical, work orientated selfish prick.

I don't want to bang on about the internet and so on, but it has driven a massive wedge between families. If I ever have kids I'll make reading to them paramount.

Sage for emo tripe
>> No. 5940 Anonymous
30th January 2015
Friday 8:10 pm
5940 spacer
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing et al. are good to read to kids because putting on a small child's voice when reading Fudge's dialogue is fun.
>> No. 5984 Anonymous
26th May 2015
Tuesday 9:52 pm
5984 spacer
>>5937
>so I'll let you know what he thinks of it after he's finished reading The Story of Matthew Buzzington to me.

We've read a few of them, they're brilliant. Sorry, lads, a bit late with an update here. We've just finished Alex, the Dog and the Unopenable Door and now we're working through Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom.
>> No. 5985 Anonymous
27th May 2015
Wednesday 4:22 pm
5985 spacer
War Horse - Michael Morpurgo
>> No. 5987 Anonymous
27th May 2015
Wednesday 4:51 pm
5987 spacer
Please, let him work through the Goosebumps when he gets slightly older.

I'm still damaged from that TV episode where the protagonist went all "IF YOU CAN'T BEAT EM, JOIN EM".
>> No. 5988 Anonymous
27th May 2015
Wednesday 10:47 pm
5988 spacer
>>5761
When I read this I expected to find a reference to your son labelled 7...
>> No. 5989 Anonymous
3rd June 2015
Wednesday 2:45 am
5989 spacer
>>5761 Try the edge chronicles, rarely see them mentioned but they have pirates alchemy, airships, goblins, an odd world on the edge of the world, definitely worth reading if he's into action and some fairly magestic fantasy stories it's worth reading, also inkspell, inkheart. and the boy in striped pyjamas (although the modification to fuhrer and Auschwitz piss me off a bit)
>> No. 5990 Anonymous
3rd June 2015
Wednesday 11:58 pm
5990 spacer
>>5989 also the adrien mole books are fairly fun, not sure how well they translate for the modern generation but great books anyway...

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 6185 Anonymous
18th October 2015
Sunday 8:46 am
6185 spacer

SpecialAttraction56.jpg
618561856185
I'd forgotten how sinister the Thomas the Tank Engine series was until I read Bulstrode to my daughter last night. Bulstrode was complaining at the docks while waiting go get loaded up and when Percy finally arrives the trucks are cheeky little shits whom end up falling off the docks into Bulstrode. They decide to make an example of Bulstrode by leaving him stranded on a beach to get covered in bird shit.
>> No. 6186 Anonymous
18th October 2015
Sunday 10:57 am
6186 spacer
>>5990
It seems ever so slightly cruel to ban someone for poor grammar in a thread about children's books.
>> No. 6187 Anonymous
18th October 2015
Sunday 11:14 am
6187 spacer
>>5761
You're doing your child a great disservice if you don't try something from The Edge Chronicles.

It's what got me started on reading as a kid and I'll never forget how great the book was in opening up my mind and giving me a creative freedom like no other book had.

It has scattered illustrations to help create a picture, but not too many so you can keep your mind solely focused upon the books.

I didn't read them all, but I read The Last of the Sky Pirates, which is part of a trilogy in the series, as they are all broken down into sets of three.

Start on Last of the Sky Pirates man, it is something I'll forever be fond of and remember.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_the_Sky_Pirates
>> No. 6188 Anonymous
18th October 2015
Sunday 12:18 pm
6188 spacer
>>6186
Sometimes you've got to be cruel to be kind.
>> No. 6189 Anonymous
19th October 2015
Monday 3:17 am
6189 spacer

51MDTWAW3ML.jpg
618961896189
>>6185

My nephew got this for Christmas in about 2003 when train crashes had been in the news a lot. It contained this video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klsbzC9V0Yg

which seemed rather dark, especially the bloodbath at 00:30.
>> No. 6190 Anonymous
19th October 2015
Monday 12:22 pm
6190 spacer

2z5YAn920KtoVAvyF1rcKIzGQzj.jpg
619061906190
The crashes are fairly tame, apart from perhaps the train drivers having mental breakdowns due to having to work with engines that have minds of their own and not infrequently come off the rails.

It's nothing compared to the tyranny of Sodor. Henry getting bricked up in a tunnel for not wanting to go out in the rain. Smudger getting turned into a generator for demonstrating independent thought and nonconformity. Stepney nearly getting murdered by a pair of diesels just for being a steamy. If you don't prove yourself to be a Really Useful Engine then you are in for it.
>> No. 6191 Anonymous
19th October 2015
Monday 3:48 pm
6191 spacer
>>6190

This picture reminds me, better let the cat out of Cat Jail. Half and hour is long enough.
>> No. 6192 Anonymous
20th October 2015
Tuesday 11:21 pm
6192 spacer
>Not reading your children British Empire history

Why not? Educational, fun, interesting, related to life. He will be a mile ahead of all his class mates in history and understanding the world

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 6233 Anonymous
6th December 2015
Sunday 11:31 am
6233 spacer
OP here, we're working our way through Narnia. I'd forgotten how much casual sexism is in them.

>>5777
>The first "proper" book I read was about a millipede and his mum getting smoked out of his home, but I can't remember the name at all.

Harry the Poisonous Centipede? We read that a few months back, although I only get about half the story because he'll read a few chapters himself each night.
>> No. 6234 Anonymous
7th December 2015
Monday 3:24 am
6234 spacer
>>6233
Brace yourself for more dolphin rape than you remember when the Calormenes start popping up.
>> No. 6265 Anonymous
4th January 2016
Monday 8:32 pm
6265 spacer
>>6234
We've just finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Does Aslan turn out to be Jesus? The ending of the book suggests that religion is going to be laid on rather thickly at some point during the final two novels.
>> No. 6266 Anonymous
4th January 2016
Monday 8:54 pm
6266 spacer
>>6265
Aslan is obv. a Christian analogue but as far as I recall there is no direct reference to religion.
>> No. 6267 Anonymous
4th January 2016
Monday 10:34 pm
6267 spacer
>>6265
>>6266
Aslan is Jesus, there are various Christian themes and parallells in most of them, and later books introduce Tash, the Calormene god. Since the Calormenes are obvious Arab stereotypes, it's ambiguous if Tash is an analogue for Allah or simply a pagan deity; The Last Battle makes it fairly clear that Tash is Satan as I recall, so make of that what you will.
>> No. 6268 Anonymous
4th January 2016
Monday 11:28 pm
6268 spacer
Well done, OP. You've read your kid the Narnia novels, and thus brought a wee little ARE SI into the world.

Thanks for reminding me about Harry the Poisonous Centipede though, I missed that post the first time around so thanks whoever bumped the thread too.
>> No. 6269 Anonymous
5th January 2016
Tuesday 7:09 am
6269 spacer
>>6268
>You've read your kid the Narnia novels, and thus brought a wee little ARE SI into the world.

It wouldn't actually surprise me if there was a link between reading Enid Blyton as a child and supporting UKIP. Blooming suspicious looking foreigners, always up to no good.
>> No. 6278 Anonymous
19th January 2016
Tuesday 9:15 pm
6278 spacer
Most of the way through The Last Battle, although I'm only getting half the story as he'll read a chapter or two to himself after I've read to him. In the last chapter I read the dwarfs started calling the Calormenes darkies.
>> No. 6613 Anonymous
11th July 2017
Tuesday 8:55 pm
6613 spacer
OP here again, lads.

Laddo is now 10 and still obsessed with ancient mythology, particularly Greek. He's just finished reading the Percy Jackson pentalogy, which he managed in around a fortnight. Are there any books in a similar vein that you'd recommend? I've got the Penguin Little Black Classic of The Fall of Icarus so I may see what he thinks of that; the prose seems fairly accessible.
>> No. 6615 Anonymous
11th July 2017
Tuesday 9:06 pm
6615 spacer
>>6613
For Greek stuff, Robert Graves is pretty great. If he's still into it in 8 years, you can move him onto Roberto Calasso. For want of anything else to add, the Gaiman book of Norse mythology is pretty decent.

Further moving away from the Greeks, maybe the Alex Rider series by Horowitz or Bloodtide and Bloodsong by Burgess.
>> No. 6616 Anonymous
11th July 2017
Tuesday 10:39 pm
6616 spacer
>>6613
10 eh? You gonna start him on Animal Farm and all that stuff mentioned above?

If not, at least give him Boris the Tomato. I love reading it even as an adult, both because it's actually quite hilarious and a great satire of totalitarian fascism.
>> No. 6617 Anonymous
12th July 2017
Wednesday 1:45 pm
6617 spacer
>>6613
You might try "Wolf Brother" and the series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver.
>> No. 6618 Anonymous
12th July 2017
Wednesday 5:41 pm
6618 spacer
Thanks, lads.

>>6616
>You gonna start him on Animal Farm and all that stuff mentioned above?

I tried him with Animal Farm a year or so ago but he wasn't interested. It's been a long time since I've read it, but I think the first couple of chapters are a little on the dry side.

We've read a few of the books suggested in this thread, with Artemis Fowl being the clear favourite.
>> No. 6619 Anonymous
12th July 2017
Wednesday 6:15 pm
6619 spacer
>>6618
Fair enough, that's Orwell for you. Boris the Tomato may have similar themes - talking vegetables in a Kent greenhouse with plans of world domination - but it's a lot more accessible. I love it.
>> No. 6642 Anonymous
10th September 2017
Sunday 3:45 pm
6642 spacer
>>5761 can fully recommend
"His dark materials" by Phillip Pullman.

"His Dark Materials is an epic trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass"

So so good. Nothing like the film.
>> No. 6648 Anonymous
10th September 2017
Sunday 10:12 pm
6648 spacer
>>6642
Fucking Golden Compass bullshit. IT'S NOT A COMPASS HOLLYWOOD, DID YOU EVEN READ THE BOOK
>> No. 6650 Anonymous
10th September 2017
Sunday 10:24 pm
6650 spacer
Since this is up top again, I'm going to repeat my support for the Bartimaeus trilogy (>>5762) because they were so much fun when I was young, its about a young twatty kid in a pseudo-alternative reality where the British empire is still on the go, and a certain class of people (aristocracy types) can summon different levels of imps, genies, etc. It's about this kid who gives it a shot at a young age and his adventures with this sassy Djinn called Bartimaeus and how they end up getting involved in higher level politics (that makes it sound dull but it's really not).

Please give it a shot, I might buy the first again since I've lost it. It's not that well known a series but it was my favourite series at the time. I think I read it when I was about 12.

Also, Artemis Fowl. Rich supervillain child gets involved with a (literally) underground civilisation of super technologically advanced 'fairies' who have kept themselves secret from humanity for millenia. He runs into a fairy who is a newbie officer for the L.E.P. Recon unit.

Great stuff.
>> No. 6652 Anonymous
11th September 2017
Monday 12:38 am
6652 spacer
>>6650
Didn't realise this is the third time I've wanked over this series, sorry. Whinge.
>> No. 6656 Anonymous
11th September 2017
Monday 7:19 pm
6656 spacer
>>6648
To be fair to hollywood, the religious messages in the book were so offensive to most of America (and enough of the rest of the world) that the only options they had were to massively deviate from the book, or not make it at all.
The correct decision would have been to not make the film at all.
>> No. 6667 Anonymous
22nd September 2017
Friday 4:52 pm
6667 spacer

IMG_20170922_165115393_HDR.jpg
666766676667
>>6642>>6648
OP here again. Laddo came home with one of those book fair flyers. Apparently they're making a His Dark Materials TV series.
>> No. 6668 Anonymous
22nd September 2017
Friday 10:06 pm
6668 spacer
>>6667
Let's hope they don't fuck it up.
>> No. 6670 Anonymous
22nd September 2017
Friday 10:19 pm
6670 spacer
>>6668
Don't be silly, of course they will.
>> No. 6671 Anonymous
27th September 2017
Wednesday 9:25 pm
6671 spacer

Wiki-background.jpg
667166716671
>>5761

I really enjoyed the Hungry Cities Chronicles (I.e. Mortal Engines + about five sequels)- All about a basically steampunk dystopian future where cities are jacked up on a giant sets of tracks and engaged in 'municipal darwinism'. I thought it was wicked sick when I was about 10.

I'll support the Wind Singer series, and you should definately go with His Dark Materials before year 5/6 as they offer a pretty solid critique and/or narrative regarding religion at a time when those ideas count (I say that from experience).

On Harry Potter - I think you need to start those at a bit of a later date, purely because they pretty rapidly mature from kids on an adventure to moody teens being moody - something I actually found to be pretty awkward/dull by the final tomes, and I was reading these as they came out, at pretty much a similar age to the characters.
>> No. 6672 Anonymous
27th September 2017
Wednesday 9:29 pm
6672 spacer
>>6671
>I really enjoyed the Hungry Cities Chronicles (I.e. Mortal Engines + about five sequels)- All about a basically steampunk dystopian future where cities are jacked up on a giant sets of tracks and engaged in 'municipal darwinism'. I thought it was wicked sick when I was about 10.
I loved the first book when I was younger. For years I've been meaning to get round to reading the rest of the series.
>> No. 6673 Anonymous
27th September 2017
Wednesday 9:39 pm
6673 spacer
>>6672

Go for it - it meanders for a bit but from what I remember (I re-read it about 4 years ago) it ends a satisfying distance from where it begins.

Oh also, they've just wrapped up shooting for a film of the first book, due out 2018.
>> No. 6674 Anonymous
28th September 2017
Thursday 3:34 am
6674 spacer
>>6671
It's Mortal Engines, not 'Hungry Cities'. It'll be bloody sorcerers stones next.

They're making an Artemis Fowl film too. I have absolutely no idea how that will work, I'd put money on it being a disaster.
>> No. 6675 Anonymous
28th September 2017
Thursday 2:43 pm
6675 spacer
>>6671
Part of the reason I didn't carry on reading the series when I was younger is because of how despondent I was at the end of the first book that London was destroyed.
>> No. 6676 Anonymous
28th September 2017
Thursday 7:13 pm
6676 spacer
Going off on the horns of a furious tangent...
Anyone else ever get the thing where reminiscing about one thing automatically ties to a different thing because of two things happening at the same time in the past?
I first read mortal engines at the same time as listening to 40ft by Franz Ferdinand, now those two memories are stuck together in my head and a mention of the book always makes me think of that song.
>> No. 6677 Anonymous
28th September 2017
Thursday 7:13 pm
6677 spacer
>>6675
At least it's a happy ending.
>> No. 6678 Anonymous
29th September 2017
Friday 8:15 pm
6678 spacer
>>6674

Sorry slightly tilt this towards a cunt-off, but I was referring to the series, which is titled as such, cunt.

Upon further inspection of the Wiki, the series appears to be known to the Author as the 'Mortal Engines Quartet'. Cuntoff averted.
>> No. 6744 Anonymous
26th March 2018
Monday 8:51 pm
6744 spacer

Bdc6ed348f60262a2bb15fd34ea.jpg
674467446744
OP here again.

I've decided it's time to introduce Laddo to Discworld via their "young adult" books, so I'll let you know what he thinks of it.
>> No. 6745 Anonymous
26th March 2018
Monday 9:00 pm
6745 spacer
>>6744
Tiffany Aching is one of Terry's best characters, if you're looking for a meatier segue after you're finished. The Wee Free Men will introduce him to Granny Weatherwax at the end, and you can jump off into her books from there, returning to Tiffany Aching for the heart breaking finale.
>> No. 6746 Anonymous
26th March 2018
Monday 9:12 pm
6746 spacer
>>6744
I loved that book when I were a lad.
>> No. 6747 Anonymous
26th March 2018
Monday 11:19 pm
6747 spacer
>>6746
Yeah but Maurice himself is a bit obnoxious if I recall. It's the rats who are all interesting characters in their own right.
>> No. 6748 Anonymous
26th March 2018
Monday 11:45 pm
6748 spacer
>>6747
Yep.
>> No. 6749 Anonymous
27th March 2018
Tuesday 1:55 pm
6749 spacer
>>6745

> Tiffany Aching is one of Terry's best characters

I'm not a Young Adult so my opinion probably doesn't count for much, but imo he Mary-Sued the hell out of her in a way that made the rapid and largely inexplicable social rises of Vimes and Von Lipwig to seem almost rational. The only book in the that sub-series I liked was Wintersmith, plot, characterisation, character growth, good stuff.


> , if you're looking for a meatier segue after you're finished. The Wee Free Men will introduce him to Granny Weatherwax at the end, and you can jump off into her books from there, returning to Tiffany Aching

You'd probably be better off working from Wee Free Men up to I shall wear Midnight or at least Wintersmith if you want to keep the city watch and Esk and so on out of the picture at first, then go back to the earlier witches books and work your way forward.

Jumping straight from a Mary Sue with an iron saucepan fairy tale like the wee free men back into books as early in the series as Equal Rites or even Wyrd Sisters would, imo, be too jarring.
>> No. 6750 Anonymous
27th March 2018
Tuesday 4:30 pm
6750 spacer
>>6749
The Nac Mac Feegle are to blame for her having major plot armour though, Rob Anybody is sworn to protect her with his afterlife.
>> No. 6751 Anonymous
12th April 2018
Thursday 9:06 pm
6751 spacer
Success, lads. He's asked if I'll buy him more Terry Pratchett books.
>> No. 6752 Anonymous
13th April 2018
Friday 12:15 am
6752 spacer
>>6751

Top lad that kid, then. We'll be here to quibble over what you read next although I'll probably cede to the other lad as I haven't read Pratchett to anyone but myself GNU Terry Pratchett.
>> No. 6753 Anonymous
13th April 2018
Friday 12:50 am
6753 spacer
>>6750

While I'm here:


I never really considered the NMF as plot armour for T because her plot armour comes directly from being the impossible heroine in a series of children's' novels.

We see this very early on when the queen of the elves, who would have defeated Granny Weatherwax herself in Lords and Ladies if sly old Nanny Ogg hadn't gone down the long mound and done a malcolm tucker on the King. You have to remember that whatever borrowing Granny did with the bees wasn't offensive in nature, it was purely to survive the Queen's attack while everything only went back to normal when the King turned up and said "c'mon lads, nough ching the night la les get haem for wuz forget wuz fukkin uber is fur".

Anyway, this basically undefeatable elven queen who had to be disposed of by way of subterfuge by two of the Ramtops' most powerful witches is then done away with by a 9yo with a frying pan.

Suspension of disbelief and all that, but they could have at least built her up over the books rather than having basically giving her powers beyond all the other witches right off the bat - he might have well slapped Glasses and a birthmark in the shape of her dead gran's old dead sheepdogs and called her Harriot Puking ("I'm puking when I go to bed and I'm puking when I wake up" - the dad was an alkie).

For what little it's worth, I think that T becoming the kelda, briefly, in the first book is more of a deus ex to keep the NMH around to provide comic relief between Pratchett's increasingly nonsensical multi-threaded plots with rushed and unsatisfactory conclusions (because hey Terry it's, like, October and we've got to go print 20 million copies of whatever you have sort of half ready before Christmas) and some of the worst pseudo-sexual innuendo that I've ever seen in a young adult series.

Anyway, yeah. Not a fan. But then I'm also not nine any more. Who knows, I might not find Narnia, the bible, and that tantric sex book of my mum's so interesting now as I did at nine years old either.



Sage definitely ticked for a old an getting stuck into the failings of a kids book series. Boo me.
>> No. 6757 Anonymous
4th May 2018
Friday 8:26 pm
6757 spacer

DbkbFBhUQAAd0j0.jpg
675767576757
Disney have announced they are releasing an Artemis Fowl film next year, based on the first two books.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089630/

I'm really not sure about the casting. Judi Dench as Root, with Butler and Juliet both black.
>> No. 6758 Anonymous
4th May 2018
Friday 11:14 pm
6758 spacer
>>6757
Isn't Juliet the elf? Hmm. I don't mind the bodyguard being a burly black bloke, but elves are usually white. When you say black, do you actually mean exotic mystery meat that appeals to the global market?

Either way, it'll probably be watchable but I'm not holding out any hopes for it being Harry Potter tier wish fulfilment.
>> No. 6759 Anonymous
4th May 2018
Friday 11:29 pm
6759 spacer

Nonso_Anozie_at_the_Pan_Premiere_(cropped) (1).jpg
675967596759
>>6757

I can see Dench being a good Root, though I struggle to see why they felt the need to gender swap him, it's not like there aren't enough women/girls in the story or anything, with Holly and Juliet being co-leads, basically.

I'm not particularly bothered what colour Butler is but they chap they've gone with just doesn't look right. He's supposed to be an elite operative and described essentially Agent 47 but even more effective. This fella looks like a fat teddy bear.
>> No. 6761 Anonymous
5th May 2018
Saturday 1:00 am
6761 spacer
>>6759

>I can see Dench being a good Root

I just saw that out of context while scrolling and thought you meant root as in Australian slang.
>> No. 6762 Anonymous
5th May 2018
Saturday 2:46 am
6762 spacer
>>6757
It's Artemis that'll break it. Far too complicated a character for 99.999% of child actors.

Holly has been cast as a child actor which is bizarre, I always imagined her to be mid 20s, just an elf.
>> No. 6763 Anonymous
5th May 2018
Saturday 4:05 am
6763 spacer
>>6762

>Holly has been cast as a child actor which is bizarre, I always imagined her to be mid 20s, just an elf

From what I remember that was a huge part of her character, being older than Artemis and not putting up with his shit. She's a militarised police captain for fucks sake.
>> No. 6765 Anonymous
5th May 2018
Saturday 6:29 am
6765 spacer
>>6759
>I can see Dench being a good Root

It's been a while since I've read Artemis Fowl, but I'm fairly certain that a major part of Holly's character and her development was how she was the first female to make Captain in the LEPrecon and constantly feeling like she had to prove herself. Make the Commander female and you're pretty much having to rewrite Holly from scratch.

Also, it appears that they've cast the only person of Indian extraction playing a main role in the film as Foaly, i.e. the tech support. It seems bizarre to change the ethnicity and gender of other major characters and then to go and pander to a massive stereotype like that.
>> No. 6766 Anonymous
5th May 2018
Saturday 9:57 am
6766 spacer
>>6765
Everyone seems to have been horribly miscast. It's an exceedingly difficult film to make and nothing I've heard about it so far sounds right.

Let's talk about something else.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fupYIggOq38
>> No. 6767 Anonymous
6th May 2018
Sunday 6:08 am
6767 spacer
>>6766
Looks shit.
>> No. 6768 Anonymous
6th May 2018
Sunday 1:18 pm
6768 spacer
>>6766
Why... why was there the five second YouTube ad mini-trailer included at the start of the actual posted video? Such lazy fucks.
>> No. 6769 Anonymous
8th May 2018
Tuesday 10:11 pm
6769 spacer
>>6759
I'm working with some very hazy recollections of the Artemis Fowl series, but wasn't Domovoi/Butler (and by extent Juliet) heavily implied to be of Balkan-to-Middle-East ish extraction? Y'know, somewhere that used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, full of olive skin and dark hair. Fucking Georgia or Armenia or somewhere. A country with an appropriately violent and tragic backstory to produce someone as gruff as Butler.

Weirdly the only casting I can think of that fulfils my mental image of Butler is Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson but only because he's meant to be an elite operative mountain with a deeply hidden fudgy heart. I realise I'm shit at casting for ethnicity.

Zero fucking idea on Holly or Artemis either. This film is going to be a fucking $130million disappointment from start to finish.
>> No. 6770 Anonymous
8th May 2018
Tuesday 10:23 pm
6770 spacer

dave-bautista-interview-1097793-TwoByOne.jpg
677067706770
>>6769
>Weirdly the only casting I can think of that fulfils my mental image of Butler is Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson but only because he's meant to be an elite operative mountain with a deeply hidden fudgy heart. I realise I'm shit at casting for ethnicity

Dave Bautista would fit the bill, off the top of my head.l
>> No. 6771 Anonymous
8th May 2018
Tuesday 10:34 pm
6771 spacer
>>6770
Yes.
>> No. 6772 Anonymous
8th May 2018
Tuesday 11:05 pm
6772 spacer
>>6770

He is also Puerto Rican and can act, fitting both diversity quotas and the basic expectations of an audience. Butler is a nuanced character and Dave used to work for a security firm and was a night club bouncer, he is actually perfect.
>> No. 6773 Anonymous
9th May 2018
Wednesday 12:48 am
6773 spacer

MV5BOWRmZGEzNjktYjc0YS00ZjlmLWI3MmMtYWJiMTViMmIwYm.jpg
677367736773
>>6769
I always thought of Butler as Pierluigi Collina.
>> No. 6780 Anonymous
4th August 2018
Saturday 8:27 pm
6780 spacer
OP here again. I've slacked a bit on the Pratchett front, he's mainly been reading Horrible Histories and other history books recently, but I picked up The Bromeliad for 50p today so he's having a read of that at the minute.
>> No. 6781 Anonymous
5th August 2018
Sunday 12:01 am
6781 spacer
>>6780
He's a voracious little sod isn't he. Makes me feel ashamed for not reading anything.
>> No. 6782 Anonymous
5th August 2018
Sunday 12:26 am
6782 spacer
>>5761

> Evening, Mumsnet lads.


HAS PURPS DIED WTF
>> No. 6783 Anonymous
5th August 2018
Sunday 11:12 am
6783 spacer
>>6782

Not many people knew, but purps was actually non other than Barry Chuckle.

Truly a sad day for us all.
>> No. 6784 Anonymous
5th August 2018
Sunday 4:36 pm
6784 spacer
>>6781
Yeah. It's mainly at night time, so I'll usually have to go up a few times to tell him to stop sneakily reading when he should be asleep. His sister is older now than he was when I started this thread and she's the opposite; she'll read but, other than Roald Dahl, she only wants to read relatively simplistic stuff.

I'm off to my local curryhouse tonight, The Giant Peach. Their speciality is rolled dal.
>> No. 6849 Anonymous
27th November 2018
Tuesday 7:33 pm
6849 spacer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXlBep9uFjI

Hmmm.
>> No. 6850 Anonymous
27th November 2018
Tuesday 7:47 pm
6850 spacer
>>6849
Hmmm? Don't be a coward, lad. Tell us what you think. Looks alright, standard Disney fair.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 6851 Anonymous
27th November 2018
Tuesday 7:58 pm
6851 spacer
>>6849

Butler just looks wrong, as discussed. Radiohead is an odd choice for the soundtrack.

I was never going to see the film anyway, because I'm thirty, but hopefully it gets some kids to read the books.
>> No. 6852 Anonymous
27th November 2018
Tuesday 8:02 pm
6852 spacer
>>6850
I know there's artistic licence to deviate from the books, but it suggests to me that a fair few of the main characters are only going to vaguely resemble how they were written. They're going to make it into a mindless action adventure film.

Butler should not me fazed by the fairy transforming in front of him. Fuck knows what that fairy even did that as she's meant to be decrepit from being corrupted by the human world. They've given Butler a bow and arrow because Disney are going to shy away from him having a gun, so it wouldn't surprise me if they've decided to cut out the troll fight. At this stage Butler should also be completely bald.
>> No. 6854 Anonymous
27th November 2018
Tuesday 8:06 pm
6854 spacer
>>6852


Someone linked to this casting call in the comments of that video : https://www.backstage.com/casting/artemis-fowl-183830/

>most importantly, Artemis is warm-hearted and has a great sense of humour; he has fun in whatever situation he is in and loves life.

Hmm indeed.

I also agree there's almost certainly going to be no troll fight, or if there is, there won't be any tension as Disney can't do him bleeding and having a collapsed lung and all that, and him having hair is odd at this stage, and sort of ruins the reason he has hair later being a heavy handed but effective way to explore that particular event.

And now that I think about it, there's definitely going no Mulch shooting dirt out of his arse as a weapon. What's the fucking point?!
>> No. 6855 Anonymous
27th November 2018
Tuesday 9:36 pm
6855 spacer
>>6851

Radiohead was the most fitting bit of artistic license of it all, IMO. I'm just afraid they're going to dumb down just how much of a petulant little shit Fowl actually is in favour of it being some magical Narnia-esque romp through unseen magical worlds.
>> No. 6856 Anonymous
28th November 2018
Wednesday 1:30 am
6856 spacer
>>6855

>I'm just afraid they're going to dumb down just how much of a petulant little shit Fowl actually is

They absolutely are, see >>6854. He's going to 'love life' and have a sense of humour, instead of being mardy and darkly focused on his father's absence.

It's Disney, though, not sure what else we should have expected.
>> No. 6857 Anonymous
28th November 2018
Wednesday 1:31 am
6857 spacer
>>6850

I don't really understand why this bloke was banned.
>> No. 6858 Anonymous
28th November 2018
Wednesday 1:38 am
6858 spacer
>>6857
Mixing up fair and fare, I would assume.
>> No. 6860 Anonymous
28th November 2018
Wednesday 2:37 am
6860 spacer
>>6858

Fuck I didn't even notice. I'm losing my touch.

Please permaban me immediately

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 6862 Anonymous
25th December 2018
Tuesday 7:23 pm
6862 spacer
Yesterday was Laddo's birthday. Christmas tradition is that the kids wake up and there's a stocking at the end of their beds full of little presents and sweets. I went upstairs at almost 1am to place the stockings and the little bugger's got his bedroom light on; he was still up reading. He'd got the Alex Rider books as a present and was already well into the second book. Then his youngest sister came into our bedroom about an hour and a half later to let us know she needed a wee, before spending at least an hour regularly telling us she was listening out for jingling bells. Nothing like Christmas Day on a lack of sleep.
>> No. 6863 Anonymous
25th December 2018
Tuesday 9:04 pm
6863 spacer
>>6862
Should've given them a bit of Christmas hot toddy to send them off.
>> No. 6864 Anonymous
25th December 2018
Tuesday 9:05 pm
6864 spacer
>>6862
That's good to hear.
>> No. 6865 Anonymous
27th December 2018
Thursday 9:00 am
6865 spacer
>>6862

Thats lovely.

My mate's kid is now the age yours was when you started the thread - and shares the same birthday, apparently. For Christmas this year he got an xbone and a TV to go in his room, so instead of staying up to sneak in some reading it'll be staying up to play Fortnite and send abusive messages over xbox live.
>> No. 6867 Anonymous
27th December 2018
Thursday 1:55 pm
6867 spacer
>>6865

In my day, late night secret TV viewing entailed Eurotrash and pervy Channel 4 programs like "Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns."
>> No. 6869 Anonymous
27th December 2018
Thursday 6:10 pm
6869 spacer
>>6867

I remember It took me the longest time to realise the one with long hair was a guy and the one with short hair was a girl, although looking at it now, he has a little goatee.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBpW7w4FgHA
>> No. 6870 Anonymous
30th December 2018
Sunday 6:52 pm
6870 spacer
>>6865
Laddo's spent a few nights away at his grandparents. His bedroom there has a TV in and he's been sneakily watching it until 3am, i.e. when the channels he was watching went to teleshopping. He said he's primarily been watching Impossible Engineering on Yesterday, which he complained about because the engineering in it was actually possible, but he's also watched a few true crime shows about murder. I know when he's stayed before he's stayed up late watching Red Dwarf or BBC4 documentaries on ancient Egypt.

That's why he doesn't have a TV in his bedroom yet.
>> No. 6871 Anonymous
30th December 2018
Sunday 6:55 pm
6871 spacer
>>6870
> watching Impossible Engineering
That's probably one of the early indicators of autism
>> No. 6872 Anonymous
30th December 2018
Sunday 11:44 pm
6872 spacer
>>6870

Corrigan juniot
>> No. 6873 Anonymous
30th December 2018
Sunday 11:45 pm
6873 spacer

p01lc1y3.jpg
687368736873
>>6871
I think if he was on the spectrum we'd know about it by now or at least have suspicions; he has no real issues socialising and has a good circle of friends. Lots of children enjoy programmes along the lines of Impossible Engineering, How It's Made, Inside the Factory and everyone's favourite Auntie Mabel.
>> No. 6874 Anonymous
31st December 2018
Monday 10:19 am
6874 spacer
>>6870
I got a TV / VHS combi in my room when I was about 13 and recorded Monkey Dust on a whim one night. That was probably the beginning of the end for me if I'm being honest, lads.

Back on topic, have you thought about seeing how your lad fares with something like Ender's Game?
>> No. 6875 Anonymous
31st December 2018
Monday 2:11 pm
6875 spacer
>>6870

He sounds like he's got a bright future ahead of him, or at the very least a strong career in britfa cuntoffs.

I don't know if nerds still get bullied at school or not, but make sure he has a cool haircut and at least a baseline level of how football works. He'll thank you for it later.
>> No. 6876 Anonymous
31st December 2018
Monday 6:30 pm
6876 spacer
>>6875
> at the very least a strong career in britfa cuntoffs.
That's what life is all about after all.
>> No. 6877 Anonymous
31st December 2018
Monday 7:14 pm
6877 spacer
>>6874
>have you thought about seeing how your lad fares with something like Ender's Game?

To be honest, I've largely taken a backseat with his reading choices as he's got a library card and I was choosing what I was reading myself when I was his age. I chose a few mythology books for him for his birthday/Christmas but apart from that he mainly received Magnus Chase/Kane Chronicles books because he's really into Rick Riordan at the moment. His mum chose the Alex Rider books which he's been devouring.

>>6875
>at the very least a strong career in britfa cuntoffs

He'd be banned after his first post. Considering how much he reads his spelling and grammar is fairly atrocious. I don't think he enjoys English at school and he does that typical boy thing where he likes to give as short an answer as possible to questions. Maths has always been his strong point.

He hasn't been picked on, to my knowledge, although his best friend was pinned down the other week and someone threatened to stab him in the eye with a compass.
>> No. 6924 Anonymous
27th January 2019
Sunday 7:20 pm
6924 spacer
His sister's borrowed a couple of books by David Baddiel from the library. Fucking hell, what an absolute crock of shite they are.
>> No. 6925 Anonymous
27th January 2019
Sunday 8:05 pm
6925 spacer
I'm starting to get self-conscious from this thread. Your lad has probably now read more books in the last five years than I have in my life. Including during my undergraduate.
>> No. 6926 Anonymous
27th January 2019
Sunday 11:28 pm
6926 spacer
>>6925

Read more then lad.

Maybe we should have a .gs goodreads or summat
>> No. 6927 Anonymous
28th January 2019
Monday 1:23 pm
6927 spacer
>>6926
>Maybe we should have a .gs goodreads or summat

I think that's more-or-less covered by >>5456. I'm presently reading What Am I Doing Here thanks to that thread.
>> No. 6928 Anonymous
29th January 2019
Tuesday 12:38 am
6928 spacer

yidcopz.jpg
692869286928
>>6927
I recommended The Yiddish Policeman's Union aaaages ago to some lad here. On the offchance you're around, did you enjoy it as much as I did?
>> No. 6929 Anonymous
29th January 2019
Tuesday 8:22 pm
6929 spacer
>>6928
I'd take that as a no.
>> No. 6930 Anonymous
29th January 2019
Tuesday 9:48 pm
6930 spacer
>>6929
Well, not everyone posts here every single day. I hear some users actually have the attention span for books!
>> No. 6931 Anonymous
30th January 2019
Wednesday 1:11 pm
6931 spacer
>>6928
Cheeky title lad. What's it about?
>> No. 6932 Anonymous
30th January 2019
Wednesday 4:51 pm
6932 spacer
>>6931
It's about a cynical, alcoholic Jewish detective trying to solve the execution-style murder of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy in a halfway house. It takes place in an alternate reality where Israel lost the 1948 war with the Arabs and the Jews were resettled in Sitka, Alaska (this was an actual proposition for their relocation post-WWII). Our murder takes place decades later when 'reclamation' is about to happen, reverting the land back to full American status since the settlement was only supposed to be temporary. Our grizzled detective has precious little time to clear out the list of unsolved murders before this date, as ordered by his boss who is, of course, his ex-wife. The death of this strange young man soon takes on a conspiratorial bent as he looks into it, finding himself in more danger than he would ever have expected. The language is peppered with Yiddish slang, as Hebrew never took off as their new tongue, and it's got a great sense of humour among the general Jewish fatalism. A cracking read overall.
>> No. 6933 Anonymous
31st January 2019
Thursday 8:46 am
6933 spacer
>>6932
It was delightful to read this synopsis ladm8.
>> No. 6934 Anonymous
31st January 2019
Thursday 1:01 pm
6934 spacer

ManualDetectionNovelCover.jpg
693469346934
>>6928
I'm >>6925 and your recommendation has reminded me that probably the last novel I read cover to cover was on holiday the summer before last, The Manual of Detection. It was an interesting Kafkaesque detective fiction. After a detective goes missing, his administrative handler is promoted to find him and has to follow a 'how to be a detective' book, with hilarious consequences. There's also some Gothic fantasy in there.
>> No. 6935 Anonymous
31st January 2019
Thursday 6:49 pm
6935 spacer
>>6934
Go on, lad. Read a book. I'm almost halfway through Catch-22 at the minute.
>> No. 6936 Anonymous
31st January 2019
Thursday 7:21 pm
6936 spacer
>>6935
If you're exactly halfway through, doesn't that make it Fumble-11?
>> No. 6937 Anonymous
1st February 2019
Friday 10:49 am
6937 spacer
>>6936
No because two fumbles don't equal a catch.
>> No. 6939 Anonymous
1st February 2019
Friday 6:59 pm
6939 spacer
>>6934
>Kafkaesque

Where's the best place to start with Kafka?
>> No. 6940 Anonymous
1st February 2019
Friday 8:31 pm
6940 spacer
>>6939
Page 1, left to right, can't go wrong.*

*Unless you got the Hebrew or Arabic translation.
>> No. 6941 Anonymous
1st February 2019
Friday 9:22 pm
6941 spacer
>>6939
Illiteratus here; the only Kafka I ever read all the way through was Metamorphosis and, compared to The Trial which I got bored with, it's a straightforward tale. All the way through I was like "no, stop it, why is this happening", which I think is probably the quintessential reaction to Kafka.
>> No. 6942 Anonymous
1st February 2019
Friday 10:01 pm
6942 spacer
>>6939

Why? The Metamorphosis is well enough known that you can think enough about a lot of its potential interpretations to the point you needn't really read it unless you especially want to, in which case there's your answer.
As >>6941 points out, The Trial is an exercise in bureaucracy that's not a whole barrel of laughs to read through, it's sort of like those bits in Family Guy where Peter's fighting that chicken or hurts his knee and it just keeps going and going and you just want it to end which arguably is the point.
If you want to get anything else out of him, reading something you haven't already heard umpteen different perspectives on then just get a collection of his short stories. Most of them will likely leave you nonplussed but you'll probably get more out of it than just reading the most well known ones.
>> No. 6954 Anonymous
11th February 2019
Monday 8:28 pm
6954 spacer
Success, lads. He's just finished The Colour of Magic and has started cracking on with The Light Fantastic.
>> No. 6955 Anonymous
11th February 2019
Monday 10:08 pm
6955 spacer
>>6954
You already had this success. >>6751
>> No. 6956 Anonymous
12th February 2019
Tuesday 4:23 am
6956 spacer
>>6955
He's actually reading them now, though.
>> No. 6957 Anonymous
12th February 2019
Tuesday 8:17 pm
6957 spacer
>>6927
>I'm presently reading What Am I Doing Here thanks to that thread.

I enjoyed the parts on China the most, particularly the section on Emperor Wu-ti and the Heavenly Horses. It's piqued my interest; do you lads have any recommendations for further reading on Ancient China?
>> No. 6960 Anonymous
24th February 2019
Sunday 10:25 pm
6960 spacer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eudsYr0iER0

It didn't fill me with trepidation, unlike the Artemis Fowl trailer, so I guess that's a plus.
>> No. 6961 Anonymous
7th March 2019
Thursday 11:07 am
6961 spacer
World Book Day: Parents spend more on outfits than they do on novels

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/world-book-day-parents-outfits-14097200

That doesn't surprise me. Most of the kids I've seen going to school this morning seemed to be dressed as superheroes or Disney princesses.
>> No. 6962 Anonymous
7th March 2019
Thursday 11:10 am
6962 spacer
>>6961
Carpet-bagger.
>> No. 6977 Anonymous
27th April 2019
Saturday 2:23 pm
6977 spacer
https://fairytale.ink/book/grimms-fairy-tales
>> No. 6978 Anonymous
27th April 2019
Saturday 3:20 pm
6978 spacer
>>6961
>Parents spend more on outfits than they do on novels
That's not really surprising. Clothes are expensive, books are not.
>> No. 6986 Anonymous
25th May 2019
Saturday 9:13 am
6986 spacer
A quarter of parents are using digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri to read bedtime stories to their children, a survey suggests. Two thirds said that they gave their children time on smartphones, tablets or television before they went sleep instead of a bedtime story

Some parenting websites extol the use of Alexa at bedtime. They say that, as well as allowing it to read a story to your child, you can ask it to sing to them, dim the lights, create white noise and respond to them from another room if they wake.

The survey showed that half of parents aimed to share a story with their child every night but barely more than a quarter did. Nearly a third said that work or commuting stopped them getting home in time and a fifth said they were too busy. For parents who did read stories with their child at night more than half said that they would choose to use an app or YouTube for the task. More than two fifths of children younger than 11 own a tablet and one in eight owns a tablet and a smartphone.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/busy-parents-rely-on-alexa-for-bedtime-stories-dtrm2xmhp
>> No. 7017 Anonymous
26th June 2019
Wednesday 8:33 pm
7017 spacer

Capture.png
701770177017
Are there any decent British comics these days? I'm going to trial The Phoenix for my daughter, but I can't think of any others. The Beano seems to have gone to shit and almost everything else is magazines for about a fiver with a load of tat attached to it.
>> No. 7018 Anonymous
26th June 2019
Wednesday 8:50 pm
7018 spacer
>>7017
Get down the jumble sale and get some old annuals.
>> No. 7029 Anonymous
20th August 2019
Tuesday 1:56 pm
7029 spacer
>>6784
>His sister is older now than he was when I started this thread and she's the opposite; she'll read but, other than Roald Dahl, she only wants to read relatively simplistic stuff

She's now obsessed with Jacqueline Wilson books. I swear at least 90% of them must be about a kid whose parents are going through a divorce. Either that or they've already divorced and the kid now has to look after their younger siblings because their mum has fucked off to Benidorm with her new fella and there's no telling when she'll be back.
>> No. 7030 Anonymous
20th August 2019
Tuesday 2:03 pm
7030 spacer
>>7029
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Smart kid.
>> No. 7031 Anonymous
20th August 2019
Tuesday 2:11 pm
7031 spacer
>>7030
It might just be that these are the main themes she's decided to follow in her books aimed at 9 to 11 year olds. That and bullying.

She does have books aimed at older girls, but I know they cover things like sex and periods so obviously we aren't going to let her read them yet. Who knows what the themes in these books will be? Backstreet abortions and the time dad held mum's head over the hob for burning dinner?
>> No. 7032 Anonymous
20th August 2019
Tuesday 5:13 pm
7032 spacer
>>7031
I read James Herbert's The Fog when I was 12 and it never did me any harm. No, watching If.... when I was 11 ruined my life.
>> No. 7065 Anonymous
1st November 2019
Friday 10:47 pm
7065 spacer

MV5BN2RjNWQzNTQtMmY4Yi00Yzk5LWFiODItY2EyZjBmNjZmYm.jpg
706570657065
>>6667
>Apparently they're making a His Dark Materials TV series.

It starts on Sunday. I'm not sure on the casting; the film was shite but it was at least well cast. I can't see James McAvoy pulling off Lord Asriel.
>> No. 7066 Anonymous
6th November 2019
Wednesday 9:31 am
7066 spacer
>>7065

There's not a fucking chance the BBC of all producers is going to effectively depict a child-maiming aristocracy and a full frontal assault on Catholicism.

Likely it'll just be a bit of an adult Harry Potter cum generic steampunk fantasy.
>> No. 7067 Anonymous
6th November 2019
Wednesday 9:44 am
7067 spacer
>>7066
The first episode was alright, albeit I don't think they've got the pacing right yet and it could have benefited from something like the mud wars between Lyra and the gyptian children as no real relationship was established between the two in Oxford. I'm not entirely convinced by Mrs Coulter, either.

I'll see how it goes.
>> No. 7068 Anonymous
7th November 2019
Thursday 4:12 pm
7068 spacer
>>7065
>>7067
I'm watching it and it seems decent but I paused it a while ago and can't be bothered to start it again. I don't like the use of CGI, it makes everything feel like the sets are tiny dioramas with no actual world around them.
>> No. 7069 Anonymous
16th December 2019
Monday 10:38 pm
7069 spacer
Laddo's apparently ran out of books to read so I've given him The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm guessing he's into it because he didn't want to turn his light off when I went through a few minutes ago. I only really need to tide him over for a week or so until his birthday/Christmas but I'm unsure what to suggest to him next; I might try Orwell on him again.
>> No. 7070 Anonymous
17th December 2019
Tuesday 12:30 am
7070 spacer
>>7069
He's 12 now right? Yeah that's a good age for Hitchhiker's, most of my school mates had read it by then.
>> No. 7071 Anonymous
17th December 2019
Tuesday 10:31 am
7071 spacer
>>7069
Dirk Gently seems an obvious choice. Pratchett too.
>> No. 7072 Anonymous
17th December 2019
Tuesday 1:57 pm
7072 spacer
>>7070
Yeah. A week today and he's a teenager.

>>7071
I'm not actually sure if I've got any Dirk Gently books, I've certainly got other ones by Adams but I have a feeling they're others in the Hitchhiker's series. He's got around 15 Discworld books plus a few others by Pratchett, such as Dodger and the Nome Trilogy; I'm looking to get more but you see surprisingly few Pratchett books in second-hand and charity shops considering his volume of output.
>> No. 7073 Anonymous
18th December 2019
Wednesday 4:06 am
7073 spacer
>>7071

Seconding Pratchett here. I read his truckers/diggers/wings trilogy in primary and loved it and started into discworld at 15 although I'd say an intelligent kid could definitely get it much younger than that.

>>7071

Dirk Gently always felt a bit more adult, even if I did read them as a Young Adult. Likewise I first read HHGTTG at 14-16 and probably didn't really appreciate them properly.

Sigh because my lad's just hit four and while he loves story time he has the attention span of a goldfish and I suppose I'll be here in a couple of years asking what you can read to an ADHD 6 year old.

I mean I would sit and listen to whole chapters of the Alice, Narnia, and Wind in the Willows when I was 3, I knew I never should have spaffed in his mum. Sage.
>> No. 7075 Anonymous
8th January 2020
Wednesday 7:41 pm
7075 spacer
Did anyone actually watch all of His Dark Materials? It's been a couple of months and I'm still struggling to find the motivation to get around to the second episode.
>> No. 7087 Anonymous
2nd March 2020
Monday 7:29 pm
7087 spacer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl2r3Fwxz_o

Welp.
>> No. 7132 Anonymous
7th May 2020
Thursday 6:55 pm
7132 spacer
>>7071
I've just read the first Dirk Gently book. Can you lads recommend some authors similar to Adams and Pratchett? Not sure how alike they are, but the next books I'm planning to read are A Confederacy of Dunces and The Antipope.
>> No. 7133 Anonymous
7th May 2020
Thursday 8:54 pm
7133 spacer
>>7087
I tried reading artemis fowl back when I was a teenager, I never get far into the book because it just didn't appeal to me as you have a main character who is meant to be a super-intelligent kid, but mostly just came across to me as a massive bellend.
>> No. 7134 Anonymous
7th May 2020
Thursday 9:21 pm
7134 spacer
>>7133

I enjoyed them but agree with your sentiment. It's been a while since I read them but he's only supposed to be a knob cos his dad's missing, which didn't resonate with me at all since I was very pleased my dad was missing.
>> No. 7135 Anonymous
7th May 2020
Thursday 9:40 pm
7135 spacer
>>7133
A lot of 'book smart' people are educated fools who lack common sense and emotional intelligence. As a swot in school I can safely say that a lot of us were twats.
>> No. 7147 Anonymous
7th July 2020
Tuesday 11:02 pm
7147 spacer
Laddo didn't wake up until about 3:15 this afternoon. Bought him a few Garth Nix books to keep him going and evidently he decided to read a couple of them last night/into the early hours of the morning.

He's watched the Artemis Fowl film on Disney+ and he said it was terrible.
>> No. 7148 Anonymous
8th July 2020
Wednesday 1:05 pm
7148 spacer
>>7147
I'm still punishing myself by trying to finish the Keys to the Kingdom series. Currently in the middle of having stopped reading Sir Thursday about six months ago.
>> No. 7149 Anonymous
8th July 2020
Wednesday 3:33 pm
7149 spacer
>>7148
He's read the first four Old Kingdom books this week so far, plus a fair chunk of the Nome trilogy. I picked up Mister Monday in a second-hand bookshop a few years back and now he's suddenly into Garth Nix again he's asking for all of the Keys to the Kingdom books.
>> No. 7349 Anonymous
25th October 2021
Monday 10:57 pm
7349 spacer
He's not reading as much as he used to but he's just finished the Mistborn trilogy, which he's rated 7/10.
>> No. 7350 Anonymous
26th October 2021
Tuesday 3:46 am
7350 spacer
>>7349
It's a good intro to Mr Sanderson's writing style and 7/10 hits the nail on its head. Mr Sanderson is consistent and prolific if nothing else and has written other books in the same style or even the same universe. Maybe stay clear of the Wax & Wayne books, they depart from fantasy and instead move into something between noir and slapstick in a Mistborn Spaghetti Western trope style.

May I recommend Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy? I enjoyed both author's work immensly, yet Robin Hobb's style is more focussed on how characters interact, while Sanderson is more about how the world works. Maybe supply Assassins Apprentice and see.

Either way, good job on you and your lad, good stories deserve to be told.
>> No. 7365 Anonymous
27th December 2021
Monday 4:00 pm
7365 spacer
Quick festive laddo update.

>>7147
>Laddo didn't wake up until about 3:15 this afternoon. Bought him a few Garth Nix books to keep him going and evidently he decided to read a couple of them last night/into the early hours of the morning.

He got Terciel and Elinor by Nix for Christmas. He didn't wake up until early afternoon today because he was up until the small hours reading the entire thing.
>> No. 7417 Anonymous
1st September 2022
Thursday 6:08 pm
7417 spacer
I was looking at a children's books selection earlier and what caught my eye was that pretty much all of the authors being heavily promoted were celebrities.

David Walliams is pretty ubiquitous as he tries to style himself as a modern Roald Dahl, but there were also a number by David Baddiel, Tom Fletcher, Ben Miller, Marcus Rashford and even Stephen bloody Mangan. I bet Lenny Henry has a range of kids books as well but they weren't being promoted so they must be really shit.

If you want to be a successful author for children do you have to be famous for doing something else first these days? I bet they're largely shit, like Chris Pratt playing Mario because they wanted a big name rather than an actual voice actor.
>> No. 7419 Anonymous
2nd September 2022
Friday 8:56 am
7419 spacer

fart.jpg
741974197419
>>7417
There's a Stephen Mangan that was recently bought for young lad and I was looking at the cover. His wife even crow-barred her way in to do illustrations for it and they're awful.
>> No. 7420 Anonymous
2nd September 2022
Friday 10:15 am
7420 spacer
>>7417

>If you want to be a successful author for children do you have to be famous for doing something else first these days?

That very much depends on whether you want to make a living writing books or you want your name on a book. The boom in celebrity books brought an equally large boom in ghostwriting.
>> No. 7421 Anonymous
2nd September 2022
Friday 4:23 pm
7421 spacer
>>7419
Is that definitely his wife and not his sister? She looks like Stephen Mangan with a wig on.
>> No. 7422 Anonymous
2nd September 2022
Friday 5:42 pm
7422 spacer
>>7421

Just looked it up, she is his sister.

I'd still like to see them fuck, even/especially if they're utterly disgusted and traumatised by it. The problem with incest-themed pornography is that there's never any hint of the consequences. I just can't get into it if there's no suggestion that it's an ungodly act of desperate perversion that will inevitably destroy the whole family. Why yes, I do subscribe to Sydney Harwin's OnlyFans.

https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/things-to-do/stephen-mangan-first-childrens-book-escape-the-rooms-8058094
>> No. 7452 Anonymous
12th December 2022
Monday 4:30 pm
7452 spacer
I was looking at cinema listings, as I'm considering going to see Violent Night, when I noticed this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fotvV-Ty9rU

Hmmmmmmm.
>> No. 7453 Anonymous
12th December 2022
Monday 4:36 pm
7453 spacer

740full.jpg
745374537453
>>7452
If the kids enjoy it then eh whatever.
>> No. 7454 Anonymous
12th December 2022
Monday 5:45 pm
7454 spacer
>>7452

Is there supposed to be something particularly offensive about this?

The only thing I can see to get annoyed about is the "woman is brilliant at everything and the bloke is a useless idiot" trope, which always pisses me off with today's supposed equality and such.
>> No. 7455 Anonymous
12th December 2022
Monday 6:04 pm
7455 spacer
>>7454
It's a Terry Pratchett adapation, and one of his YA novels to boot. Personally I'm more of a fan of Tiffany Aching when it comes to YA, but there's nothihng wrong with Maurice or any of the rats that die. And die they do, it's really rather human that way. No idea about that movie, but if its true to he novel, there's nothing to worry about.
>> No. 7456 Anonymous
12th December 2022
Monday 11:41 pm
7456 spacer
>>7453

I still hate Pixar for killing Unirally on the SNES. Imagine being so enraged about someone doing an idea better than you that you force them to stop doing it. I think this was actually when Steve Jobs was in charge, so it's actually very typical of his poppy-seed-bollocked approach to anyone doing anything that he was also doing at any time. It's a shame that DMA Design hadn't unleashed Grand Theft Auto until a few years later, otherwise they could have just grown infinitely bigger bollocks from the prestige and told him to fuck right off.
>> No. 7457 Anonymous
13th December 2022
Tuesday 6:15 pm
7457 spacer
>>7452
Eurgh.

>>7455
How is this true to the novel? Maurice was a cynical dry wit and the rats were all complex individual characters with oveearching intercultural strife. Turning it into what looks like a tediously generic, optimistic adventure cartoon for kiddies is pretty cruel.

Pity because I've heard (but not seen) that the other Sky Discworld adaptations have been half-decent.
>> No. 7458 Anonymous
13th December 2022
Tuesday 6:40 pm
7458 spacer
>>7457

You heard wrong. They're bloody dreadful. The casting is awful, like they just hired whoever was cheapest and selected roles at random.
>> No. 7459 Anonymous
13th December 2022
Tuesday 7:33 pm
7459 spacer
>>7458
Apart from David Jason as Rincewind is the casting really that bad?
>> No. 7460 Anonymous
13th December 2022
Tuesday 7:43 pm
7460 spacer
>>7459
The casting in the other two is fine.
>> No. 7461 Anonymous
13th December 2022
Tuesday 8:54 pm
7461 spacer
>>7459
>>7460

I mean if you just consider random Emmerdale and Corrie-calibre actors as good casting, then fair enough, I suppose.

For me I think it's just because Pratchett's characters are always so vivid and strongly painted in my imagination that I consider it a let down if you don't cast just the right person, because they are very strong characters, and it would be very easy to cast someone who can pull them off just right if you put five minutes of thought in. You can't just have any old cunt.

My missus at the time made an excellent suggestion that Gustavo Fring would be a fantastic Vetinari, for example. Might not be the first person you think of but a perfect fit. Instead we have, who, that bloke off Shameless? I don't even know but you get the point I hope.
>> No. 7462 Anonymous
13th December 2022
Tuesday 9:13 pm
7462 spacer
>>7461

Vetinari was played by Charles Dance in Going Postal, which also had Richard Coyle, Steve Pemberton and Tamsin Grieg. The Colour of Magic had Timothy Irons, Sam Gamgee, Tim Curry, Brian Cox and Christopher Lee. Call them random Emmerdale and Corrie-calibre if you like but I don't know how many people will agree. You touched on the problem though, all Pratchett's characters - the entire Discworld - is so vivid in people's imaginations that I don't think it's possible to transliterate it to film. It's too idiosyncratic, they're incredibly vivid in very specific ways that are different to everyone who's a fan. So it's fine. They did a decent job. Could have been so much worse. Could have been The Watch.
>> No. 7463 Anonymous
13th December 2022
Tuesday 9:18 pm
7463 spacer
>>7462

In fairness I hadn't seen Going Postal, I've only seen Hogfather and the Rincewind one. I thought they were both shit, so if they've improved since then fair enough.

Charles Dance is a pretty good shout I'll grant you. Who did Christopher Lee play? The rest of them... Well...
>> No. 7474 Anonymous
18th January 2023
Wednesday 7:46 pm
7474 spacer

WBD23_Homepage_carousel_2023_1_books_line-up_mobil.jpg
747474747474
>>7417
>I bet Lenny Henry has a range of kids books as well but they weren't being promoted so they must be really shit.

Lenny Henry's one of the World Book Day authors this year. It'll be really shit.
>> No. 7475 Anonymous
19th January 2023
Thursday 8:13 pm
7475 spacer
>>7474
Pretty uninspiring selection.
The only 'celeb turned kids author' that the kids and I have not found total rubbish is Tom Fletcher, and he's still pretty poor.
There are so many fantastic kids books right now, but it must be pretty disheartening to be fighting for shelf space against all the aging comedians/popstars with their committees of ghost writers.
>> No. 7476 Anonymous
20th January 2023
Friday 9:35 am
7476 spacer
>>7475
I can't believe you don't want to be magically transported to an enchanting fantasy land that you will remember forever, with a patronising book of exercises from Joe Wicks, Billy's Bravery in which his bravery appears to be dressing as Princess Elsa from Frozen, or the frankly nauseating-sounding "Being An Ally". I think the CIA are publishing these books to put children off reading forever and manufacture a more easily manipulated populace.
>> No. 7486 Anonymous
18th February 2023
Saturday 7:12 pm
7486 spacer
>Augustus Gloop is no longer fat, Mrs Twit is no longer fearfully ugly, and the Oompa-Loompas have gone gender-neutral in new editions of Roald Dahl’s beloved stories.

>The publisher, Puffin, has made hundreds of changes to the original text, removing many of Dahl’s colourful descriptions and making his characters less grotesque. The review of Dahl’s language was undertaken to ensure that the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, Puffin said.

>References to physical appearance have been heavily edited. The word “fat” has been removed from every book - Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory may still look like a ball of dough, but can now only be described as “enormous”. In the same story, the Oompa-Loompas are no longer “tiny”, “titchy” or “no higher than my knee” but merely small. And where once they were “small men”, they are now “small people”.

>Passages not written by Dahl have also been added. In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

>In previous editions of James and the Giant Peach, the Centipede sings: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat/And tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire/And dry as a bone, only drier.” Both verses have been removed, and in their place are the underwhelming rhymes: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute/And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same/And deserves half of the blame.”

>References to “female” characters have disappeared - Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a “most formidable female”, is now a “most formidable woman”. “Boys and girls” has been turned into “children”. The Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach have become Cloud-People and Fantastic Mr Fox’s three sons have become daughters.

>Matilda reads Jane Austen rather than Rudyard Kipling, and a witch posing as “a cashier in a supermarket” now works as “a top scientist”. Mrs Twit’s “fearful ugliness” is reduced to “ugliness”, while Mrs Hoppy in Esio Trot is not an “attractive middle-aged lady” but a “kind middle-aged lady”.

>One of Dahl’s most popular lines from The Twits is: “You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams.” It has been edited to take out the “double chin”.

>An emphasis on mental health has led to the removal of “crazy” and “mad”, which Dahl used frequently in comic fashion. A mention in Esio Trot of tortoises being “backward” - the joke behind the book’s title - has been excised. The words “black” and “white” have been removed: characters no longer turn “white with fear” and the Big Friendly Giant in The BFG cannot wear a black cloak.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/17/roald-dahl-woke-overhaul-offensive-words-removed/

I didn't realise bowdlerism was still going.
>> No. 7487 Anonymous
18th February 2023
Saturday 8:25 pm
7487 spacer
>>7486
I wonder if the publisher's done this in the full knowledge it's daft, no one cared and it was obviously going catch the attention of the press and "the press". Given the last publicity Roald Dahl got was the fact he believed basically every antisemetic conspiracy since blood libel reached critical mass, it would not suprise me. Because now, of course, every mug's rushing out to buy the original stories and the publishers can quietly roll this back after the fuss has blown over. But perhaps I'm being as much of a conspiracy theorist as Dahl himself now.
>> No. 7488 Anonymous
18th February 2023
Saturday 8:39 pm
7488 spacer
>>7487
That sounds plausible to me, but Netflix bought out the Roald Dahl Story Company in 2021 so it could also quite easily be brainworms.
>> No. 7489 Anonymous
19th February 2023
Sunday 1:48 pm
7489 spacer
>>7486
Surprised they didn't nuke all the use of the gypsy terms in Danny Champion of the World.

As a dad I quite appreciated having some older editions of Dahl and Blyton - they helped me explain to my eldest that people used to think certain words were acceptable, rather than pretending that all the gollywogs etc were never there.
God help me if she ever pulls out one of my Lovecraft books mind.
>> No. 7490 Anonymous
19th February 2023
Sunday 11:34 pm
7490 spacer
>>7489
>God help me if she ever pulls out one of my Lovecraft books mind.

HE CALLED HIS CAT NIGGER
>> No. 7491 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 8:59 am
7491 spacer
>>7490
yeh lad had top banter innit
>> No. 7492 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 9:04 am
7492 spacer
>>7489
I think we've all got books like that in our collections. Off the top of my head I have something by H. G. Wells which gets extremely racist towards the end.
>> No. 7493 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 9:43 am
7493 spacer
The copy of Enid Blyton's Three Golliwogs I bought on spec has gone from about £10 when I got it in 2012 to £77 now. Not a bad ROI but nothing compared to Inside UFO 54-40 which I picked up for a penny in 2014.
>> No. 7494 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 10:43 am
7494 spacer
>>7490
I'm pretty sure Lovecraft's cat was Nigger-Man, just to confirm to his peers that yes, he meant to be racist, and no, he wasn't just thinking of the colour.
>> No. 7495 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 10:47 am
7495 spacer
>>7493
Why is that so expensive?
Are all those 'choose your own adventure' books so valuable?
I can't wait to find out that a copy of 'The Forest of Doom' is worth more than my fucking pension plan.
>> No. 7496 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 11:00 am
7496 spacer
>>7495

I bet on UFO-54 because it's uniquely unwinnable, but there are others going for a lot more and I don't know why.
>> No. 7497 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 12:48 pm
7497 spacer
>>7492
I remember reading a book by Enid Blyton and I can't remember which one it was, sadly, but at some point the girl is out walking and she meets "a negro" hiding in a tree. He talks in an accent and says the word I don't want to type on my work WiFi, and he gives her clues to find the baddie. I had no idea what was going on, but then I was quite a dopey child. It was just so out of place, though, like that bit in The Wind in the Willows where all the main characters disappear and some magical fairy goes on a psychedelic voyage with the forest gods or whatever.
>> No. 7498 Anonymous
20th February 2023
Monday 1:20 pm
7498 spacer
>>7497
Mountain of Adventure.
>> No. 7499 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 6:41 pm
7499 spacer
How about the fact that Rohl dahl having Willy Wonka enslave employ a tribe of African pygmies was considered so unpolitically correct even for the 60's that he begrudgingly made up oompaloompaland.
>> No. 7500 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 6:49 pm
7500 spacer
I went to my favourite curry house the other day, The Giant Peach. Their speciality is the

>>7499
>Rohl dahl
>> No. 7501 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 7:02 pm
7501 spacer
>>7499

Switch Bitch (1974) is a book of adult short stories by British writer Roald Dahl. Four stories, originally published in Playboy between 1965 and 1974, are collected. They are linked by themes of rape by deception: in each one some major act of cunning, cruelty, or hedonism underpins the sexuality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_Bitch
>> No. 7502 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 7:06 pm
7502 spacer

bigfunwords.png
750275027502
https://twitter.com/john_self/status/1627654462599753731

"Btw Dahl's books haven't just been revised in the text; the page layouts have been what we might call Walliamised with BIG FUN WORDS, which you don't really need if you're a decent writer who can engage kids with the words themselves. Comparison of 2016 and 2022 editions:"
>> No. 7503 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 7:26 pm
7503 spacer
>>7501
He wrote a lot of short stories for adults before realising in Danny The Champion of The World that he was better at kid's stories. Some of them are very good.
>> No. 7504 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 7:41 pm
7504 spacer
>>7502
That's even worse than the Horrid Henry early readers books that my daughter has and she's seven.

>>7503
Royal Jelly is excellent. I also like the one about the man with the umbrellas.
>> No. 7505 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 7:43 pm
7505 spacer
>>7504

The rabbit mother and the landlady.
>> No. 7506 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 9:53 pm
7506 spacer

Urad Dahl.png.png.png.png
750675067506
>>7500
>Rohl dahl
>> No. 7507 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 7:14 pm
7507 spacer
They've decided to go ahead without the changes after all. Funny that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64759118
>> No. 7508 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 7:55 pm
7508 spacer
>>7507
I bloody knew it. Cynical bastards, the whole blasted industry needs liquidating.
>> No. 7509 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 8:23 pm
7509 spacer
>>7507

Never cared for Roald Dahl one way or another, but it's fucking appalling that somebody would want to edit classics just because people today are allegedly so faint hearted that they can't even deal with a different way of storytelling that was enjoyed by generations, usually well before those people taking offence (or thinking somebody will take offence) were even born.

Why stop there. The Bible is full of all manner of dolphin rape, sexism, xenophobia, genocide, militarism, you name it. I care even less about the Bible, but see how that'll go over.
>> No. 7510 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 8:32 pm
7510 spacer
>>7509
What are you, a fucking idiot? Get with the fucking programme, they were lying the whole time, you gullible, monkey-brained, twat.
>> No. 7511 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 8:34 pm
7511 spacer
>>7510
Do we have any proof of this? It sounds like a conspiracy theory. They even have sensitivity readers to go over and make the corrections.
>> No. 7512 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 9:46 pm
7512 spacer
>>7511

Sensitivity readers are actually a thing now. And opposing, or even questioning the wisdom of that idea is apparently "right wing":

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg7kn/sensitivity-reader-profession-explained-roald-dahl-edits

For shame.
>> No. 7513 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 10:05 pm
7513 spacer
>>7512

Roald Dahl censored himself. In the first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the oompa-loompas were African pygmies. Dahl changed them in subsequent editions at the request of the NAACP.
>> No. 7514 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 10:10 pm
7514 spacer
>>7513

Ok, but that sounds like an isolated incident. What we've got here now with sensitivity readers is a systemic problem, where books are subjected to a blanket approach to weed out anything and everything that the woke lot might find offensive.
>> No. 7515 Anonymous
24th February 2023
Friday 10:53 pm
7515 spacer
>>7513
Are you suggesting that first editions shouldn't be updated on the authors initiative or that you can take a crayon to any book and still have the original product? Just to make that fundamentally clear before we both spend all weekend on a cunt-off on the properties of objects and whether Roald Dahl could posthumously have his gender changed.

Anyway I think the consensus from all of this (outside of a culture war) is that the books shouldn't be updated because they represent a historical record of a time and place. A record that is being updated for a modern audience by big business to squeeze every penny from copyright that should have expired decades ago. This activity ultimately being at the expense of new stories of which some, I am told, are not complete drivel.
>> No. 7516 Anonymous
25th February 2023
Saturday 1:30 pm
7516 spacer
I still don't understand what exactly would have been offensive enough that it needed changing in a Raoul Daal book anyway.
>> No. 7517 Anonymous
25th February 2023
Saturday 1:47 pm
7517 spacer
>>7516
> a Raoul Daal book

When Mr Fox is having his standoff with Boggis, Bunce and Bean they took out where Gazza turns up with a fishing rod in an attempt to defuse the situation.
>> No. 7518 Anonymous
26th February 2023
Sunday 8:17 pm
7518 spacer
Well it's spreading:
>After the Roald Dahl text editing controversy that erupted in recent days, it is now the turn of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels to be rewritten.
>A commonly used pejorative term used for Black people by Fleming, whose Bond books were published between 1951 and 1966, has been removed almost entirely and replaced with “Black person” or “Black man.” In other instances, references have been edited. For example, in “Live and Let Die” (1954), Bond’s opinion of Africans in the gold and diamond trades as “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” has been altered to “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”
>Another scene in the book, set during a strip tease at a Harlem nightclub, was originally “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.” This has been revised to “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.” A segment in the book describing accented dialogue as “straight Harlem-Deep South with a lot of New York thrown in,” has been removed.
https://variety.com/2023/film/news/james-bond-novels-edited-dolphin rape-1235536164/

I have some questions about tidying up novels whose central plot point is a British secret agent with a 'licence to kill' battling shifty foreigners non-descript enemies of the crown in their seedy dens of villainy.
>> No. 7519 Anonymous
26th February 2023
Sunday 9:44 pm
7519 spacer
>>7518

What the actual fuck.

Never cared much for the novels, but it's clear now that we are dealing with a fast growing cancer sore.
>> No. 7520 Anonymous
26th February 2023
Sunday 10:00 pm
7520 spacer
>>7518
>>7519

The thing that always perplexes me about it is that they're making changes that will only appeal to the kind of people who would have zero interest in the work itself in the first place anyway, because it is already so at odds with what the kind of person who gives a fuck about any of this actually likes. If you're the type of person who would be offended by pronouns or the way ethnicities are named, you're generally not going to be super keen on old fashioned adventure stories about a rather chavinist agent of British imperialism. So why do they give a fuck?

Of course that's only if I try and take them in good faith, but I think we all know by now it isn't. If it isn't a straight corporate publicity stunt, it's just about clout.

You see it happen a lot already in nerd subculture stuff. Stuff like Magic and DnD has bent over backwards to appease these sorts of people, and they always reward the publishers for these accommodations by fucking off to the next thing or otherwise just shifting the goalposts, because it's not actually about inclusivity at all. It's just about wielding influence. It's like a social meta-level version of a kid who throws a tantrum at a party and demands to have a specific colour of hat or whatever, when they don't even like the hat, it was just about getting their way.

Nobody actually cares about female space marines. But there's a very vocal niche of online wankers who'll pretend they do to their last breath.
>> No. 7521 Anonymous
27th February 2023
Monday 11:44 am
7521 spacer
>>7520

The Bond movies will probably be next. The Connery Bonds in particular, if you apply those standards to them, are chock full of scenes that should have the woke lot apoplectically frothing at the mouth. I'm not saying that Connery's often applied method of forcing himself onto a woman until she likes it and wants it too should be ok by anybody's standards, back then or today, or all the other chauvinist mannerisms that apparently flew under most people's radar in the 60s and 70s, but the idea that we're letting this new generation of SJWs sanitise all of our media, books and movies and whatnot as they see fit makes me very uncomfortable. Trying to tell you what you watch or read and what you can't watch or read is generally one of the traits of a dictatorship, and not of a free society.
>> No. 7522 Anonymous
27th February 2023
Monday 12:13 pm
7522 spacer
>>7520
There is a more good-faith interpretation, that of the soulless suits, who see that they have already achieved peak market saturation among teenage boys for little plastic astronaut soldiers, but who need to keep growing the business. So they make a point to expand into appealing to new demographics. Girls won't want the Magic: The Gathering card with a bikini-clad prostitute warrior on it, but we can name our price if we can start selling them the hecking wholesome fat black fisherperson with a special castration sword of privilege-checking. This is also why football is so eager to promote women's football. Continued growth is a key requirement of capitalism, and they can't keep recruiting new fans for men's football any more.
>> No. 7523 Anonymous
27th February 2023
Monday 12:26 pm
7523 spacer
>>7522

> This is also why football is so eager to promote women's football

Except, not even women watch that.

And female heroines in movies or other media may appeal to women as a concept and in principle, not least to members of the fisheries, but average women don't go and watch those either. They want male protagonists that they can salivate over.

Womenfolk truly are a fickle lot.
>> No. 7524 Anonymous
27th February 2023
Monday 12:37 pm
7524 spacer
>>7523
>Except, not even women watch that.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I745Ajeq_B8
>> No. 7525 Anonymous
27th February 2023
Monday 1:14 pm
7525 spacer
>>7523

It's mostly the BBC that are pushing women's football, because they can actually afford the broadcast rights. That decision has been vindicated by attendances at WSL matches. Arsenal women are now averaging over 24,000 at home games and Chelsea, Man City and Man U women are all averaging over 10,000.

Attendances drop off further down the WSL table, but I think it's a settled argument at this point, especially in light of the viewing figures for the women's euros - women are willing to engage, we just weren't presenting the women's game properly. Sport is an entertainment product that needs to be marketed like anything else. It's worth bearing in mind that the FA banned women's football until 1971.

The women's game is different, but it has something meaningful to offer. I'd be much happier taking kids to a women's game, because we aren't going to end up sat next to a coked-up twat. I've got no time for fisherfolk nonsense, but my stepmum coaches girl's football and her girls aren't engaged in some kind of political stance, they're just playing a game that they love. Previous generations of girls didn't have that option, because of all sorts of practical and psychological barriers stopping them from playing. When I was a lad, girls just didn't have the chance to play - they didn't do football in PE, there weren't any girl's teams for them to join and if any of them wanted to join in a kickabout, the lads would have told them to piss off. It takes time to unravel that history.
>> No. 7526 Anonymous
27th February 2023
Monday 1:58 pm
7526 spacer
>>7525

>When I was a lad, girls just didn't have the chance to play - they didn't do football in PE

True enough; as teenlads at 14 or 15, we would often play football in PE, while the girls at the same time were doing gymnastics.

Something some of us did occasionally was that we'd fake some sort of injury during the football, so we could sit out and go watch the girls and their gymnastics in the other half of the gym instead. And then maybe go have a quick wank in the gym bathroom before the end of the class. The 90s were truly an age of innocence.
>> No. 7527 Anonymous
27th February 2023
Monday 3:39 pm
7527 spacer
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/27/rediscovered-terry-pratchett-stories-to-be-published
>> No. 7587 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 4:36 pm
7587 spacer
>Agatha Christie novels have been rewritten for modern sensitivities, The Telegraph can reveal. Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries have had original passages reworked or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins.

>The character of a British tourist venting her frustration at a group of children has been purged from a recent reissue, while a number of references to people smiling and comments on their teeth and physiques, have also been erased. It comes after books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming were edited by modern publishers.

>The new editions of Christie’s works are set to be released or have been released since 2020 by HarperCollins, which is said by insiders to use the services of sensitivity readers. It has created new editions of the entire run of Miss Marple mysteries and selected Poirot novels. Digital versions of new editions seen by The Telegraph include scores of changes to texts written from 1920 to 1976, stripping them of numerous passages containing descriptions, insults or references to ethnicity, particularly for characters Christie’s protagonists encounter outside the UK.

>The author’s own narration, often through the inner monologue of Miss Jane Marple or Hercule Poirot, has been altered in many instances. Sections of dialogue uttered by often unsympathetic characters within the mysteries have also been cut.

>In the 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that “they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”. This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children”.

>Vocabulary has also been altered, with the term “Oriental” removed. Other descriptions have been altered in some instances, with a black servant, originally described as grinning as he understands the need to stay silent about an incident, described as neither black nor smiling but simply as “nodding”.

>In a new edition of the 1964 Miss Marple novel A Caribbean Mystery, the amateur detective’s musing that a West Indian hotel worker smiling at her has “such lovely white teeth” has been removed, with similar references to “beautiful teeth” also taken out. The same book described a prominent female character as having “a torso of black marble such as a sculptor would have enjoyed”, a description absent from the edited version.

>References to the Nubian people – an ethnic group that has lived in Egypt for millennia – have been removed from Death on the Nile in many instances, resulting in “the Nubian boatman” becoming simply “the boatman”.

>Dialogue in Christie’s 1920 debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles has been altered, so where Poirot once noted that another character is “a Jew, of course”, he now makes no such comment. In the same book, a young woman described as being “of gypsy type” is now simply “a young woman”, and other references to gypsies have been removed from the text.

>The 1979 collection Miss Marple’s Final Cases and Two Other Stories includes the character of an Indian judge who grows angry demanding his breakfast in the original text with “his Indian temper”, a phrase now changed to say “his temper”. References to “natives” have also been removed or replaced with the word “local”.

>Across the revised books, racial descriptions have been altered or removed, including, in A Caribbean Mystery, an entire passage where a character fails to see a black woman in some bushes at night as he walks to his hotel room. The word “n-----” has been taken out of revised edition, both in Christie’s prose and the dialogue spoken by her characters.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/25/agatha-christie-classics-latest-rewritten-modern-sensitivities/
>> No. 7588 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 5:02 pm
7588 spacer
>>7587
Coming soon: Heart of Slightly-less-light-ness by Joseph Conrad, featuring such iconic scenes as the diplomatic talks on the riverboat by the Congolese people and the referral of Kurtz to the NHS mental health services.
>> No. 7589 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 7:12 pm
7589 spacer

Rto1UiePPxEuxbKAdu-6xsozixrU0vulwJr4U68tlzI~2.jpg
758975897589
>>7587

That's more than a bit worrying.
>> No. 7590 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 7:47 pm
7590 spacer

Supreme Patriarch.png
759075907590
>>7587
Dear mighty Outrage Clicks, I have seen what ye hath done for others, I beg of the, do like for mine own self!
>Publishing companies after they discover lying
>> No. 7591 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 7:59 pm
7591 spacer

s640.jpg
759175917591
>>7590
As far as I'm aware, the changes to the Roald Dahl books were never published. The revised editions of the Agatha Christie books started being released three years ago.

It sounds like money for old rope, being a sensitivity reader. If you pay someone to look for things which are problematic they are going to look for things which are problematic.
>> No. 7592 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 8:00 pm
7592 spacer

murdoch.jpg
759275927592
>>7589

>Agatha Christie novels have been rewritten for modern sensitivities, The Telegraph can reveal. Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries have had original passages reworked or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins.

Do you know who owns HarperCollins? I'll give you one guess.

P.T. Barnum couldn't have devised a better stunt.
>> No. 7593 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 8:18 pm
7593 spacer
>>7592
Is it Evgeniy Lebedev?
>> No. 7594 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 8:26 pm
7594 spacer
>>7592
Not the owner of the Telegraph?
>> No. 7595 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 8:41 pm
7595 spacer
>>7594

Is the censorship of Agatha Christie:

a) an attempt by a Murdoch-owned publisher to advance the woke agenda

or

b) an attempt to flog a load of books to gammons who didn't give a shit about Agatha Christie but will now rush out to buy the books just to trigger the snowflakes?
>> No. 7596 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 10:10 pm
7596 spacer
>>7595
I think c) just to keep people seething and engaging in the culture war as that's generally profitable.
>> No. 7597 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 10:42 pm
7597 spacer
>>7595
>>7596

From a pure business standpoint, it almost makes sense to wokewash your books so they will be palatable to a new audience. After all, if you want to keep selling your classics but tastes and sensibilities have changed so that printing new editions that are faithful to the originals would not find enough new young buyers, then yes, you will need to alter your product.

But then another way of looking at it is that those new generations will then never get out of their filter bubbles and echo chambers, and will never be exposed to different ways of thinking from their own. So why not grow a pair of fucking testicles as a publisher and stand by the mildly racist and sexist tripe of your classic authors.

And why stop at books. Pretty soon, a Connery James Bond repeat on ITV4 will probably have something at the beginning of it that'll read "This film has been edited for woke audiences".
>> No. 7607 Anonymous
16th April 2023
Sunday 8:04 pm
7607 spacer
Jeeves and Wooster stories censored to avoid offending modern readers

Jeeves and Wooster books have been rewritten to remove prose by PG Wodehouse deemed “unacceptable” by publishers, the Telegraph can reveal.

Original passages in the comic novels have been purged or reworked for new editions issued by Penguin Random House. Trigger warnings have also been added to revised editions telling would-be Wodehouse readers that his themes and characters may be “outdated”. One warning states that the writer’s prose has been altered because it was judged to be “unacceptable” by Penguin, a publishing house which enlists the services of sensitivity readers.

An examination of the revised Wodehouse novels reveals that racial terminology has been removed or replaced throughout. In the 1934 novel Right Ho, Jeeves, newly reissued by Penguin, a racial term used to describe a “minstrel of the old school” has been removed. In Thank You, Jeeves, whose plot hinges on the performance of a minstrel troupe, numerous racial terms have been removed or altered, both in dialogue spoken by the characters in the book, and from first-person narration in the voice of Bertie.

A number of Jeeves and Wooster books are being re-released by Penguin, despite previous editions being issued only slightly more than a decade ago. The previous editions were not censored.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/15/jeeves-and-wooster-censored-penguins-latest-sensitivity/

I don't think you can blame this one on Rupert Murdoch.
>> No. 7608 Anonymous
16th April 2023
Sunday 8:30 pm
7608 spacer

tumblr_99d347f07216c1a25fe3d48f5d8efffa_62d8ffa4_5.gif
760876087608
>>7607
>Trigger warnings have also been added to revised editions telling would-be Wodehouse readers that his themes and characters may be “outdated”.

Well I say, thank goodness that none shall be under any dispersions regarding the exploits of a professional man of leisure and his most tactful butler wot! But will the Guardian reading wets really prove such a ravenous audience for their exploits or is this just an excuse to flog off the old editions for thrice the price?
>> No. 7609 Anonymous
16th April 2023
Sunday 9:28 pm
7609 spacer

91169.jpg
760976097609
>>7607
>> No. 7610 Anonymous
16th April 2023
Sunday 10:31 pm
7610 spacer
>>7607
Why is it always the Daily Telegraph reporting these stories? Did I ask that last time?
>> No. 7612 Anonymous
17th April 2023
Monday 2:47 pm
7612 spacer
>>7610
I think they're all by the same journalist as well. He seems to be a bit of a culture warrior.

https://twitter.com/Craig_Simpson_
>> No. 7613 Anonymous
17th April 2023
Monday 3:42 pm
7613 spacer
>>7607

Of course I don't want to get caught up in such an obviously manufactured outrage, but this one is pretty amusing in the way the fundamental premise of class based servitude barely even registers on the radar of "things from old timey times that we are supposed to have moved past".

Because, of course, it's the only one we haven't.
>> No. 7614 Anonymous
17th April 2023
Monday 5:13 pm
7614 spacer
>>7613
What would you be left with if you edited that out of Jeeves and Wooster?
>> No. 7615 Anonymous
17th April 2023
Monday 5:41 pm
7615 spacer
>>7610
>>7612
Are you implying that he's in cahoots with the book publishers or that the press shouldn't report on this?

>>7614
I'm sure they can find a replacement.

>> No. 7634 Anonymous
1st July 2023
Saturday 12:26 pm
7634 spacer
Sensitivity warnings are being added to the earlier Discworld audiobooks.

>The first book in the Discworld series – The Colour of Magic – was published in 1983. Some elements of the Discworld universe may reflect this.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/30/terry-pratchett-discworld-content-warning-outdated-attitude/
>> No. 7675 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 11:26 am
7675 spacer
>>7634
Seems reasonable on the surface, but surely being published in ther 80s is enough of a hint that it'll reflect the prevailing attitudes of the time? Anyway.

Psalm of the Wild Built
A short (less than 200 pages) story set in an optimistic future, our ostensible protagonist is Sibling Dex, a tea monk. They travel around and offer tea breaks for all comers, an invitation to stay and dwell for an hour or more. One day, Dex decides to not travel to the next city and instead visit and abandoned monastery.
It's fantasy with some sci-fi trappings, like explicitly mentioning materials and technology, but a thoroughly enjoyable read none the less.
>> No. 7676 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 11:41 am
7676 spacer
>>7675
How does it compare with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet? That was essentially Sesame Street in space, where any potential for tension is quickly snuffed out through the power of friendship.
>> No. 7677 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 12:31 pm
7677 spacer
>>7676
I don't know that one, but The Power of Friendship™ is...

You know Robin Hobb and the Fitz and Nighteyes dynamic? This is much simpler. much less suffering. Much more comfortable.
>> No. 7678 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 2:07 pm
7678 spacer
>>7634
>a character called Twoflower in The Colour of Magic who was based on the stereotypical Japanese tourist.
Twoflower was coded Japanese? I assumed if anything it was American. I can't remember a single thing in that whole book that might be deemed even potentially offensive.
>> No. 7679 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 4:39 pm
7679 spacer
>>7678
>Twoflower was coded Japanese?
Yeah. He wears prominent glasses and obsessively photographs everyday mundane things like a stereotypical 80s Japanese tourist. He's also an actuary, the kind of job a salaryman would do.

>I assumed if anything it was American.
His homeland is a mishmash of China and Japan.

>I can't remember a single thing in that whole book that might be deemed even potentially offensive.
Definitely the part implying adult wizards prey on their young apprentices for gay sex.
>> No. 7680 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 4:43 pm
7680 spacer
>>7679

Are we being offended on behalf of fictional cultures now?
>> No. 7681 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 5:39 pm
7681 spacer
>>7680
In the second example, it's safe to say it'd be the "gay sex = predating on young men" part rather than the "wizard" part. But we're working in the dark here, since the Telegraph article doesn't transcribe the audiobook warning and their quote from the Penguin Putnam bloke lacks specific examples of what made them want to add the warning in the first place.
>> No. 7682 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 5:50 pm
7682 spacer
>>7681

None of the other gay characters are predatory, excepting the vampires but they're not sexual predators at least. The wizards abuse their students in all sorts of ways, it seems strange to imply their behaviour is meant to be reflective of all gay people and not just career academics.
>> No. 7683 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 6:16 pm
7683 spacer
>>7682
Article specifies the early books and we were talking about examples from TCOM, no?
>> No. 7684 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 6:46 pm
7684 spacer
>>7683

I suppose, but question the point of taking things out of their context before analysing them. I could just as well call you offensive because you said
>adult wizards prey on their young apprentices for gay sex.
and
>gay sex = predating on young men
>> No. 7685 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 7:13 pm
7685 spacer
Discworld was written in a time when people still knew how to take a joke.
>> No. 7686 Anonymous
21st January 2024
Sunday 7:27 pm
7686 spacer
>>7684
You could say that, sure, especially as it's only implicit in the book. Introducing Rincewind, it says you could look at him and see a "mere apprentice enchanter" who'd escaped his master partly out of a "lingering taste for heterosexuality". That seemingly suggests that (in TCOM only) some kind of adult/catamite relationship was common enough among wizards for people to make that assumption about escaped apprentices.

But this is just me using a theoretical example to guess at what the people at Penguin Putnam found objectionable, despite my initial strong use of the word "definitely". We simply don't know what specifically it is about TCOM that moved them to create the warning, with the apparent exception of Twoflower's portrayal.
>> No. 7687 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 1:14 am
7687 spacer
>>7685
Yup. Take a joke or at least see context. An obvious tongue in cheek joke like "women can't use computers", "men cannot cook or look after a toddler", it's not funny anymore, but fuck off trying to pretend it never was.
>> No. 7689 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 9:53 am
7689 spacer
>>7686
I think it's easier to overlook these things as Pratchett generally demonstrated that he was open to learning and changing despite the cultural attitudes of his youth. I find it more problematic that there's a dictator constantly portrayed in a positive light all the way through and that the favourite hero is a policeman who married into aristocracy and finds out some aristocrats are actually okay because look, this one donates to the police and likes animals.
>> No. 7690 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 12:26 pm
7690 spacer
>>7689
> I find it more problematic that there's a dictator constantly portrayed in a positive light
Is Vetinari protrayed in a positive light? He's shown as an effective ruler and uncannily gifted in all manner of ways, but to me he reads more like a chaotic neutral force of nature and less like a likeable character. Vimes is a different beast, boot theory or not, and yeah... it's a little too close to "that's just how it is" and perhaps lacking the otherwise razorsharp sarcasm which Pratchett used to tackle other aspects of life. If one were truly digging for offence, then maybe "Mr Shine! Him diamond!" offers all manner of opportunity.

Still, between the witches, Monstrous Regiment, and Tiffany Aching one would be hard pressed to not at least accept that the man was doing his best and trying his hardest to Get It. And that he did.
>> No. 7691 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 1:50 pm
7691 spacer
>>7689
>I think it's easier to overlook these things as Pratchett generally demonstrated that he was open to learning and changing despite the cultural attitudes of his youth.
Oh, absolutely. I don't think it's a coincidence that he dropped that particular idea after TCOM and never returned to it.
>> No. 7692 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 2:41 pm
7692 spacer
>>7690
I don't recall any situation where Vetinari did something that was clearly unjust or not in the best interests of the city. A despot can be an effective ruler without working for the good of the people, they can be effectively selfish.
>> No. 7693 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 5:33 pm
7693 spacer
>>7689

>the favourite hero is a policeman who married into aristocracy and finds out some aristocrats are actually okay because look, this one donates to the police and likes animals.

I always thought that's more just lampooning about how people will be bitter about wealth until they have some of it themselves, and then suddenly all that goes away. It's not really making a statement other than that's just generally how people are sometimes. It's basic observational humour.

I find the problem with all this is that in order to be offended by much of it, one has to be looking at it through a pretty specific modern, progressive mindset, and analyse in terms of whether or not, and how well, it attempts to sublimate that ideology.

It's like people want every single thing they read and watch to be a morality fable. It's just weird.
>> No. 7694 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 6:05 pm
7694 spacer
>>7693
To be fair, a number of the later Discworld books could be described as observational humour combined with morality fables that looked at social issues through the specific, progressive mindset of their time.
>> No. 7695 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 6:21 pm
7695 spacer
>>7693
>that's more just lampooning about how people will be bitter about wealth until they have some of it themselves, and then suddenly all that goes away.
What, the politics of envy? That everyone's secretly a Tory? I'm not sure how that makes it better. I don't know about morality fables but people rarely enjoy stories where people they find unethical or dislikeable come out on top. Protagonists have to be sympathetic somehow. Antiheroes exist but the audience are rooting for their comeuppance, or they're relatable in some way that the audience feel justifies their behaviour. That's inherent to storytelling.
>> No. 7696 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 6:39 pm
7696 spacer
>>7695

The joke here is not that "everyone's secretly a tory", it's that people largely act in their own self interest and that their convictions are often simply mental justifications of said interests, hence people can often do a complete about face on their previous convictions when their circumstances approve. It's dry and a little bit cynical, yes. But I think it's a fairly accurate observation. You sound like you just have a little bit of trouble grappling with cynicism.

As for the second half of your post, that's just flat out untrue and I don't know where to begin with it. Are you just doing a bit here? Are you the same lad who flipped your shit when we told you Warhammer isn't actually an endorsement of xenophobic theocracy? I think you are playing silly buggers, lad.
>> No. 7697 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 6:41 pm
7697 spacer
>>7695

Marxists are just temporarily embarrassed Tories.
>> No. 7698 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 6:51 pm
7698 spacer
>>7695
>Protagonists have to be sympathetic somehow.
Heroes, yes, but protagonists? Sometimes your protag is Richard III or Francis Urquhart, who are basically villains, and you're following them in part to see what bastard thing they'll do next.
>> No. 7699 Anonymous
22nd January 2024
Monday 7:03 pm
7699 spacer
>>7696
The subtleties of it may go over you three's heads but it's true. When it's done right, readers don't even notice and that's sort of the point.
>> No. 7703 Anonymous
24th January 2024
Wednesday 2:16 pm
7703 spacer
>>7695
>That's inherent to storytelling.

*Storytelling for modern Americans/basic normies who see media as a guide to how to live, rather than an exploration of ideas.

Storytelling that breaks that convention is great, useful, interesting, and there should be more of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore

The only counterpoint to my argument I can see is that, in an uneducated society, proliferation of such media might encourage these kinds of actions amongst idiots. But if you're pretty firmly on one side of fence about your convictions and your morals, you'd have to be mad to be bothered by protagonists who walk happily off into the sunset, despite acting like a pure bastard throughout.

>That everyone's secretly a Tory?

This is part of the problem, you think the story is trying to tell you something about the world, rather than just...viewing it. Take from it what you will - but don't blindly fumble for a succinct, precise message, because only the most boring, predictable media does that.
>> No. 7704 Anonymous
24th January 2024
Wednesday 3:00 pm
7704 spacer
>>7678
And Dibbler is coded as a cockney grifter stereotype. Surprised the Mac Nac Feegle didn't get a mention for stereotyping Scottish people, but I suppose they're not considered implicity inferior or 'weird' by us, so it just passes by.

It doesn't matter though, all these stereotypical origins lead to characters who exceed their stereotypes. Pointing out that Japanese tourists tended to be very excited by foreign western culture isn't offensive, it's just...something that happened.

Western tourists in Japan get excited over the most mundane shite too, it doesn't mean it's offensive to point that out. It's a thing that happens when cultures are radically different, and it's used effectively in the story.

>one would be hard pressed to not at least accept that the man was doing his best and trying his hardest to Get It.

Bit dismissive. This makes it sound like he never stood a chance, presumably because he was a man? Why do people think you need to actually experience something to empathise with it, or understand it? And one wonders how many women he spoke to regarding his work, and how much of their opinions and thoughts that he would have conveyed are being dismissed by you, because they happened to be conveyed by a man. It's absurd.

Female characters don't need to be seen as examples of typical, real women, and assuming each female character is an authors best shot at portraying a realistic woman is facile.

>Is Vetinari protrayed in a positive light?
Depends what you mean by 'good'. Lord Hong isn't 'good', but he's certainly right about the mastery of arts and has admirable drive. Vetinari is a pragmatist and an effective ruler, who doesn't display personal greed or selfishness, and appears fair and wise and just, especially considering the context of the literature - he's not ruling modern London, he's ruling a mess of a city where human life has little to no value. You wouldn't want him as your dad, but he's a Good Ruler and a fascinating character.

>It's like people want every single thing they read and watch to be a morality fable. It's just weird.
It really is, I don't get it. Why do people want the goodies to be happy and the baddies to get their comeuppance, when that's the plot of 99% of stories?

It's like you actually need to be *told* that someone is two-dimensionally bad, at least implicitly by the author eventually showing you they're 'punishing' the baddie for their evils, instead of watching how they live and coming to your own conclusions about fairly complex characters without needing them to be punished by the author.

>>7695 >>7690 why do you see media this way?
>> No. 7706 Anonymous
24th January 2024
Wednesday 3:29 pm
7706 spacer
>>7703
>you think the story is trying to tell you something about the world, rather than just...viewing it
Those are the same thing.
>> No. 7707 Anonymous
24th January 2024
Wednesday 4:29 pm
7707 spacer
>>7706
>Those are the same thing.
And when did this stupid trend of 'These two concepts have similarities, so therefore they are the same' migrate from twitter and reddit to here? Is it just the bad faith, or are you intellectually infertile? It doesn't make you incisive to say that blue and green are the same because they're both colours.

The other poster is literally reaching for messages to be drawn from the text, ie inferring they have been 'told' something like...
>That everyone's secretly a Tory?
...but they're likely not actually being 'told' that, or anything, they're just being given a 'view' into the life of a character. Not a diagnosis or a leading implication, but they're desperate to label it so they can understand it.

And I just think that's kind of silly, because it seems to hinge on some desire to be spoonfed a safe narrative that denies the fact that sometimes, the Iago lives happily ever after - and that's not mean to be an endorsement, as these dolts perceive.
>> No. 7708 Anonymous
24th January 2024
Wednesday 4:53 pm
7708 spacer
>>7707
They're not similar, they are the same thing. There's no such thing as an objective description of something, everything is written about from a perspective - never mind that the writer's perspective is baked in to the fact that they're writing about it in the first place. When a writer presents you with a view of the world it's their view of the world - or their view of someone else's view, in the case of things like satire, misinformation or stories told by characters. The medium remains a message, even when it's not the point.
>> No. 7711 Anonymous
24th January 2024
Wednesday 5:45 pm
7711 spacer
>>7708
'Trying to tell' is not 'viewing'. The latter is clearly more passive, while the former is very much active phrasing, premised on intent, and that's quite clear from what I wrote. There's nothing more to say there, I understand your misunderstanding.

>When a writer presents you with a view of the world it's their view of the world - or their view of someone else's view
Yes. And neither are necessarily true windows into their beliefs, endorsements, or specific messages with any level of intention, as the other poster (Is it you? It is, isn't it? It must be you, because it isn't me) seems to be clinging on to, which is utterly ridiculous.

>The medium remains a message
...one that english lit teachers taught you that you can abstract from thin air, provided one can use some passages in the book to back it up. But that's not actually how literature works; that was just a tool to encourage kids to read books in detail and learn to make critical, evidence based arguments. If someone is actually 'insightful' enough to believe they can glean a message from any piece of literature, then...well done, so can a million other people, and they've all got something slightly, or vastly, different, with just as much evidence behind it. Maybe it's just confirmation bias in action, I don't know.

Anyway, you're backing up this idiocy:
>What, the politics of envy? That everyone's secretly a Tory? I'm not sure how that makes it better. Antiheroes exist but the audience are rooting for their comeuppance, or they're relatable in some way that the audience feel justifies their behaviour. That's inherent to storytelling.
If you want to actually have a discussion, can you start fresh with your viewpoint, instead of following on from that saccharine, boring drivel? Because it's an interesting topic, but the well is somewhat poisoned by your argument being preceded by trite tosh.
>> No. 7712 Anonymous
24th January 2024
Wednesday 6:10 pm
7712 spacer
>>7707

>when did this stupid trend of 'These two concepts have similarities, so therefore they are the same' migrate from twitter and reddit to here?

I strongly suspect it's one poster or one of you lot role playing on a new alt who has been at it for a while now. He's one of the most tragically advanced cases I've seen in a long time though, not just infected with the PMC liberal mindworms, but truly convinced of his love for The Party and Big Brother. Most likely untreatable.
>> No. 7721 Anonymous
27th January 2024
Saturday 1:00 am
7721 spacer
>>7704
> Bit dismissive. This makes it sound like he never stood a chance, presumably because he was a man?

Not at all what I was saying, on the contrary. It's just a development arc that elevates Pratchett in a way no other author writing in adjacent genres achieved. I've not seen any better since either, to be honest, but that's probably my failure to read widely enough. He stood a chance, stood up to it, and waltzed right past it to exceed all expectation.

> Female characters don't need to be seen as examples of typical, real women

Indeed, and that's no small part of why Pratchett's writing is so beloved. Witches, dwarfs, werewolves, dragon keepers, just fantasy folks, goblins... none of these are "examples" or "typical, real" women. They all exist on the Disc World, and it's not special.

I wonder if a new board would help here, like a dedicated "cunt off" board so we could take discussions like this elsewhere without polluting an otherwise lovely thread like this
>> No. 7722 Anonymous
27th January 2024
Saturday 1:49 am
7722 spacer
>>7711
Please go ahead and give an objective description of literally anything without resorting to what you think you know about it. View something without filtering it through your perceptions. Describe the noumena without reference to phenomena. It's like insisting you can film a scene without a camera angle. Genuine nonsense.
>can you start fresh with your viewpoint, instead of following on from that saccharine, boring drivel?
No, because it was a spur of the moment thought that I don't feel strongly about. I'm not as dogmatic as you, apparently. Or the poster who's so insecure he can't fathom the idea that two people might disagree with him on two separate, if interrelated, subjects. To be honest, it might have been me, I really don't remember. Apparently not important enough to remember, never mind start building conspiracy theories around. That's the dogmatism thing again, I think.
>> No. 7723 Anonymous
27th January 2024
Saturday 10:41 am
7723 spacer

awil.jpg
772377237723
>>7722

This is a very small board, the anonymity doesn't go as far as newcomers often think. You are being singled out because somebody, who you say isn't just you and I will take your word for it, but somebody keeps bringing up those Twitter using Guardian reading talking points about things being "problematic", that generally speaking the residents of .gs were already bored of when gamergate was still a hot controversy.
>> No. 7725 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 2:52 pm
7725 spacer
>>7723

I have a vague recollection of making the point that as some fascists demonstrably find Warhammer appealing, Warhammer appeals to fascists and being told I was wrong because the people behind Warhammer didn't intend to appeal to fascists. If that is a dogmatic position for me to take then woof woof. I assume whoever was disagreeing with me uses the same argument whenever they shit themselves in public. They didn't intend to, so the shit in their underwear doesn't mean there's shit in their underwear. I'm terribly sorry if the language I use offends, I'll try to do fewer thought crimes in future.

The people you're fantasising about being, the sort portrayed by those actors, would have kicked the shit out of you for being a posh poof who plays with toy soldiers and reads.
>> No. 7726 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 3:47 pm
7726 spacer
>>7725
>as some fascists demonstrably find Warhammer appealing, Warhammer appeals to fascists
Different anon, but you can write utterly blatant satire and it still won't be bigot-proof. Half the bigots will be too thick to get the satire. The other half'll get it, but deliberately ignore the point. There's no fixing that before it happens.
>> No. 7727 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 4:00 pm
7727 spacer
>>7726

Absolutely. The writer's intent isn't relevant.
>> No. 7728 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 4:15 pm
7728 spacer

been-seeing-a-lot-of-cognitive-dissonance-of-this-.png
772877287728
>Warhammer

Now you've done it.
>> No. 7729 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 4:25 pm
7729 spacer
>>7728
People still fanboy Cringe of Power and Hacky Troper?
>> No. 7730 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 4:26 pm
7730 spacer
>>7725
>The people you're fantasising about being, the sort portrayed by those actors, would have kicked the shit out of you for being a posh poof who plays with toy soldiers and reads.

Never mind that the few of them who survived lung cancer and heart attacks until now will be far too busy on Facebook organising protests against 15 minute cities and the NWO to post on here.
>> No. 7731 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 4:34 pm
7731 spacer
>>7727
>The writer's intent isn't relevant.
If you're just looking for wallpaper for your life, sure.
>> No. 7732 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 4:47 pm
7732 spacer
>>7731

I think you may have missed the context. The writer's intent isn't relevant to the fact that bigots find a work appealing, if bigots find a work appealing regardless of the writer's intent. This may seem like a tautology but the lad who thinks he's a character from a 1980's film has been having trouble grasping it.
>> No. 7733 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 4:52 pm
7733 spacer
>>7729
>Hacky Troper

JK Rowling is a modern martyr who sacrificed her career to force a certain demographic of women to get a personality. It is only when she dies and her accounts open that we will discover that she lived a double life a ftm Juche activist.
>> No. 7734 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 5:04 pm
7734 spacer
>>7733
>sacrificed her career

Did she have much of an active career before she started kicking the hornets nest? Harry Potter was rather poorly written but it was wildly successful because of how easy it is to insert yourself into the story and fantasise about studying at Hogwarts. Everything she's tried since, where she hasn't been able to rely on the self-insert trick, has failed miserably; nobody gave a shit about her Robert Galbraith books.
>> No. 7735 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 5:32 pm
7735 spacer
>>7725

Ahh so it was you and I was right.

You're also barking up the wrong tree completely, I posted that picture because much like that scene in the film, you are a tourist who doesn't realise how badly you stick out here.

How about you just calm it down a bit from here on in, alright?
>> No. 7737 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 5:38 pm
7737 spacer
>>7735

If you had an actual rebuttal you wouldn't be resorting to accusing people of being tourists or new like this is the other place's /b/ board in 2005.
>> No. 7738 Anonymous
28th January 2024
Sunday 5:59 pm
7738 spacer
>>7737

Had the nail on the head thought didn't I lad?

I'm not going to bother engaging with you on the arguments you're trying to have, because they are too deeply tedious. But I have confidence you'll snap out of it when you've had your fill of the intersectionalist academic bird you're trying to shag and we can put this all behind us.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 7740 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 6:25 pm
7740 spacer
Come in late to the thread and trying to catch up...

So the argument here appears to be. Reduction and projection that ignores all nuance is acceptable in order to push mean-world postmodernist morals.

I'm going to take a counter position to denying it's existance. What if two flower is a stereotype of a Japanese tourist. Why on earth should that be a problem? Is observing a real social phenomenon that existed racist?

I understand that (and for the exercise will take this to the logical extreme) portraying for example black people in the media of the 1940s and 50s in America as subservient and ignorant (due in reality to poor education but it is a TV show not a sociology lecture), is very uncomfortable to the people in that group, or people who have guilt over their treatment, but that isn't the same as dolphin rape, in many ways the most uncomfortable parts are the parts that are not mean spirited just a plain observations. I get it, watching ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ makes me wince.

And I guess that is what content warning are at their best about, disolving personal responsiblity from the media you are selling. The thing is writing a content warning is about appeasing and stroking the ego of the sensitive. And consequently people will humour them by telling them they are right, because what does it cost them? The danger is of course that the nod and a wink in subtext to others that you are pandering gets lost or the idiots gain power and start deciding since you said it was wrong anyway censorship is fine. Putting content warning on things becomes the thin end of the wedge for Fahrenheit 451 style bottom up censorship. Content warnings are fine, everything beyond it that it invites is not.

Why has this changed and is relevant now? the argument is usually a moral shift, which it is, but I think the biggest shift it technology, no one would have given a shit what these cunts thought before but now that they are on social media we get to listen to their every outrage till they get bored and move on, and companies listen.

Penguin house at some point decided at some point to weigh the economics of which group they wanted to appeal to more and decided that they were going to take less of a hit from the likes of people like me who consider this ego pandering, and question if it even was necessary, making a rant, but reading the book anyway anyway than they would take the hit from woke twitter. Ultimately they just want to sell some books they don't want controversy (apart from when it is good for promotion obviously). And most of the time it is a cheap win. The only and notable instance I can think of this having a backlash is with the Bud light boycott in the US. It will frame as being fuelled by transphobia. But I prefer to think of it as people not wanting their fucking food to tell them how to think and feel. They want to just do basic things without it being a political statement. And when your product is highly elastic like, being one of many choices of shitty beer, you can maintain a boycott indefinitely because you actually sacrifice nothing by doing it. Sadly one cannot buy a new copy of terry Pratchett without pre-injected guilt so it can hardly be boycotted. it is inelastic. But maybe the lesson from bud light losing billions will be repeated by marketing firms and we can return to guilt-free consumerism again. One can only hope that the transphobes win for the sake of the rest of us.
>> No. 7741 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 7:27 pm
7741 spacer
>>7740
I'm not reading all of that.
>> No. 7742 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 7:38 pm
7742 spacer
>>7740
>So the argument here appears to be. Reduction and projection that ignores all nuance is acceptable in order to push mean-world postmodernist morals.
I don't think anyone has said that.
>> No. 7743 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 9:12 pm
7743 spacer
>>7740

I broadly agree, it's just that culture has pivoted over the last decade or so and it's really a futile effort to argue against it nowadays. What used to be the preserve of the Christian moralist right wing has swung all the way across to being the mainstay of ironically puritan social liberals.

I don't think it will stay this way forever, but it is the current zeitgeist and it's more or less wasted energy trying to convince someone who thinks that way otherwise.
>> No. 7744 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 9:35 pm
7744 spacer
>>7740
>Reduction and projection that ignores all nuance is acceptable
No one has said or implied this.
>> No. 7745 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 9:44 pm
7745 spacer
>>7741

I'm sorry this isn't twitter with a 140 character count. Here sometimes the more mature children like to explore the premise of an argument fully then just make zinger for idiots to bark and clap like seals at.

>>7742

That is litterally the entire premise of arguing over author intent, about if a character is retrocatively [i]really[/it] racist or not. Even if you don't understand the quite part. That is the philosophy that leads to normalising this kind of content warning and defending it.
>> No. 7746 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 10:10 pm
7746 spacer
>>7745
>argument
It's a verbose rant.
>> No. 7747 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 10:24 pm
7747 spacer
>>7746

Welcome to britfa.gs newbie.
>> No. 7748 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 10:51 pm
7748 spacer
>>7745
>That is litterally the entire premise of arguing over author intent
Sometimes the more mature children like to explore premises of an argument for the sake of exploring it. To assume there's only one predetermined outcome or intent behind it is asinine. Why is it all these 'Reasonable Centrist" types see everything in such black and white? Rhetorical question.
>> No. 7749 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 11:51 pm
7749 spacer
>>7747
Don't know as I'd call this >>7740 typical of posting on this site (longish posts in other threads read as more considered). It is however familiar from early 00s forum culture, when every board had a local bore who imagined that the more he typed, the more he was saying.

But these asides are pulling the thread even further off-topic, so there's no point drawing them out further.
>> No. 7750 Anonymous
29th January 2024
Monday 11:55 pm
7750 spacer

1706561058497990.jpg
775077507750
Jesus Christ lads it's been 10 years just make a new thread already
>> No. 7751 Anonymous
30th January 2024
Tuesday 12:07 am
7751 spacer
>>7750
I tried working out how old OP's child would be now that we're recommending books for. By my calculations, probably 16. That's still young enough to be reading shitty books.
>> No. 7752 Anonymous
30th January 2024
Tuesday 2:16 am
7752 spacer
>>7751
Gatekeeping books now, are we?
>> No. 7753 Anonymous
30th January 2024
Tuesday 7:16 pm
7753 spacer
>>7751
He's 17 now. He doesn't read much these days, although he did get a couple of Garth Nix books for Christmas.

When I started this thread he was (if my maths is right) in Year 3. He's currently on course to fail his first year of sixth-form; we're waiting on an assessment for autism because he has not coped well at all with the transition from school to college.
>> No. 7754 Anonymous
31st January 2024
Wednesday 5:34 pm
7754 spacer
read the weirdstone of brisingamen. Good book from the Peak District.
>> No. 7761 Anonymous
14th February 2024
Wednesday 5:07 pm
7761 spacer

Updated-Hero-carousel-mobile-size-4.png
776177617761
For this year's World Book Day you can get a book about sossage rolls by LadBaby.
>> No. 7762 Anonymous
14th February 2024
Wednesday 5:59 pm
7762 spacer
>>7761
Something for thoughtless aunties to gift on Christmas.
>> No. 7763 Anonymous
14th February 2024
Wednesday 8:46 pm
7763 spacer
>>7761
I know it's just the way society is now, but that really is a disproportionate number of black children.

Of course, maybe these are books that won't sell at full price, and that would be sad rather than infuriating. See? I'm still a righteous dude and tolerant guy.
>> No. 7764 Anonymous
15th February 2024
Thursday 6:36 pm
7764 spacer
>>7761
At least when they included Joe Wicks last year most kids knew he was through his lockdown PE etc.
Someone bought my youngest the ladbaby Christmas book and it was genuinely awful. Reads like a first draft from an Apprentice task.
Honestly a much bigger cultural threat than drag queen story hour or whatever.
>> No. 7765 Anonymous
15th February 2024
Thursday 6:40 pm
7765 spacer
>>7763
Surprised Nadine Dorries hasn't done a kids book to get in on the grift
>> No. 7766 Anonymous
15th February 2024
Thursday 7:07 pm
7766 spacer
>>7764
Got to get the paupers interested in reading somehow I guess.

Return ] Entire Thread ] First 100 posts ] Last 50 posts ]
whiteline

Delete Post []
Password