16 December 2008

Literary Question of the Month - December

I volunteered for this month's literary question, and to give people something to chew on, I asked what books you would recommend to your children (or grandchildren or nieces/nephews or cousins or godchildren or whatever young people you have in your life) to read at least once in their lifetime. This question was met with a bit of controversy, as many of our members were literarily rebellious in their youth (imagine that!). However, taking the situation as a hypothetical, and not as an invitation to bully our youngsters into reading anything they don't want to read, here are some of the recommendations that our members came up with:


The Bible: the Bible was overwhelmingly on the list, for many reasons--not only is a great majority of Western culture firmly entrenched in Christianity, but there are great morals and life lessons to learn from the Bible, even if you are not a Christian.

Greek Mythology: Also highly influential in Western culture.

Grimm's Fairy Tales (and other fairy tales): Ditto the influence. Also fun to read!

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Shakespeare
(Tinky voted for the entire works of Shakespeare, but even just hitting a few would be fine, I think ;)

In Search of Time (Proust) (probably for when they are a bit older, eh?!)

The Stuff of Thought (Stephen Pinker)


What about you--what books would you look back on as having been invaluable to your literary life, and recommend to a young person (should they attempt to beat it out of you)?

Follow the whole convo by clicking the post title OR click here to check it out.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The best experts on how to raise children are supposed to be those who don't have any. I certainly qualify :-)

Here goes some additions to your excellent list. I have in mind a 12 year old kid and it is a bit dumbed down. I don't think a 12 year old will understand shakespear or a harper lee :-)

Here goes.

'One Thousand and one nights'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_One_Thousand_and_One_Nights

Amar Chitra Katha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amar_Chitra_Katha

Stuff by Enid Blyton

...
I think the most important thing is - DON'T ALLOW THEM TO WATCH TV TOO MUCH.