What are you reading right now? (possible RotE spoilers)

['thul]

That is true. Good/Evil is a point of view thing... Its still a fight of good vs. evil. Its just that they can't seem to agree who is taking what role. Hence the fight.

Too much heat leads to combustion and destruction, whereas too little heat, leads to stagnation and complete inactivity.
In any normal situation, there are none that view themselves as "evil". All sides view themselves as "good".

['thul]

These beings have rebooted the aSoIaF re-read... Unfortunately the bookmark in book 1 is missing, so it had to be started in a semi-random spot...

Now at page 495.6 out of 1606. (yes, that is a lot of pages, and yes, the page number has a decimal. Its digital)

[fool-ish]

'Fevre Dream' So far so good, but I'm only a few pages in as yet.

[Farseer]

Posted here this morning but must have missed clicking on something before I turned my attention to school!

So, I am about halfway through Inheritance and, after getting my 'big whinge' off my chest earlier, I find that I am able to now just enjoy the story for what it is and ignore the rest...not to mention that I no longer want to think about it all as much as I need/want to get back to Buck and Bingtown!

My whinge still stands but, on the positive side, I guess if Paolini gets younger readers into reading (be it fantasy or any genre) via his works, well, it can't be all bad...particularly if those readers then go on to later read the other works that seem to have inspired varying portions/aspects of the cycle. Apparently Paolini openly admits that he used his favourite books, movies etc as inspiration for his own story so it appears that the majority of it was intentional?

Of course, specifically expanding the fantasy readership is a plus too, for those who may pick up Paolini first and then jump into other fantasy works thereafter.

Off to get it finished...

['thul]

Getting people to read is the most important thing. Norwegian schools have long had a tendency towards demoting any interest in reading books through forcing the children to read heavy classics. If you're a child and you have to pick between reading a several 100-page books about some wacky subjects filled with childish humor released just a couple of years past, and reading a dry, 500-page-long famous work by a renowned writer from the start of the nineteenth century that is a personal favorite of the elderly teacher, what would you pick?
As a bonus for the case, the language is also old in the latter work.

Then think what the typical elderly teacher would pick...

An equivalent in English might be having a teacher in younger levels of school (maybe 4th-7th grade) forcing the entire class to read some obscure work by Shakespeare. Do you think that would get many of them to really want to read?

[Farseer]

I agree. Yes, indeedy. Though I believe that, for the most part, we have usually 'moved with the times' here in Australia, one of the best things about our heading into the New Curriculum appears to be the in-depth study of more recent works within younger year levels. As an example of the revamp, I was ecstatic to discover a Year Five Unit based on exploring The Forests of Silence, the first book of Emily Rodda's Deltora Quest series (yes, that same series that I rave on about all of the time and the one that you should encourage your young - 8 to 10yrs - readers to read if you want them to later love such ones as Robin Hobb and co! ) . Good stuff, and pure fantasy to boot...dragons, magic, quests, riddles, gems, blacksmiths...

Of course, such delvings are still being balanced out by studies of 'classics', be it in the younger or older age bracket...

['thul]

True. Classics should not be ignored, but they are not the right stuff for someone that has yet to grow into a true reader. A large number of the classics are for the specially interested, not for the average youngster. If they want to find books for children that are more than a few years old, they are better off going into the realms of fantasy, science fiction and authors writing specially for children. Roald Dahl is a nice example of a decent author on that last front. Another good idea is to get them started on the thinner first-books in fantasy series. Perhaps even tricking them with large print and illustrations...

[joost]

Continuing with I''s now, now that I have finished Drakenbloed. Finished part 7 last night, so 8 more to go. After that, a classic: Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's travels. Been years since I read that, so I'm looking forward to reading it again.

[fool-ish]

It's no better here in England regarding curriculum reading material. In fact, things haven't altered very much at all since I was at school. I wasn't remotely interested in the books I had to read at school. They were that good, I can't even remember what they were called! Truly, they need to 'get with the programme' as my kids would say and move with the times. Time enough for the classics later on in life.

['thul]

Exactly. The classics work well for those used to reading a lot, not for those new readers.