Backstory:
The whole reading thing--letters=sounds; sounds=letters; collections of sounds=words; hey that string of words on the page are words I know; LOOK A STORY!--gelled for me when I was about five. When I was about seven, my family drove up to Minnesota for Christmas; I remember sneaking away my mother's copy of The Rowan at a gas station and poring over the pages, wrapping my brain around this other world. Took Ma a good hour to realise her book wasn't where she'd left it; when she found it, she blinked a little and told me to ask her for clarification if I came across something I didn't get.
When we got home, I got the run of the family library. Anything I could reach, I could read.
So.
Dae's putting the pieces together. Sounds=letters, letters go together into printed words, which match words he knows... He's not reading yet, but he's getting closer. He's also growing more willing to listen to chapter-length blocks of story, whether there are pictures along or not. It's wild and cool to watch!
So I'm wondering-- Anyone have recommendations on good things to put within arm's reach of a newb? What was the first book--of any genre, although obviously, my first love is F/SF--that YOU put hands on and devoured?
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In other news...
My wanderings through Heinlein's catalogue continue. Remember the lecture I was missing in Beyond This Horizon? About what entitled an armed man to greater authority than an unarmed one? I think I got a little of it from Starship Troopers. The bottom line thought there is that authority should be equal to responsibility, and only those who've put their lives on the line in service to freedom should have a voice in making the laws that bound that freedom round. That a "moral compass" isn't something that's woven into a person's core being; it's a thing that's learnt, formed of the reshaping of a person's survival instincts to include OTHER people's survival in addition to that one's own.
You know.
I have very little to argue with, there.
The way the man writes (and writes of) women still makes me shake my head--sometimes he's patting them on their lovely heads, sometimes he's setting them on the highest, most comfortable pedestal he can find, but rarely have I seen him making a woman a character with flaws and splinters, like his men have.
But then, if he'd made women with idiosyncratic faults, would he still have had rocks thrown at him with the word "misogynist" wrapped round them? How does a person "win," there?
It reminds me of the sort of feeling I get when I consider Japanese culture as a whole--it's beautiful and intricate, and I don't understand all of it and sure couldn't function in it without the patient grace of strangers. I'm sure there are rough spots to it. I'm certain there'd be aspects that'd wring my Western neck. But I don't know exactly where those parts are. So I'm a tourist. Respectful, willing to shift my habits to accommodate, willing to be happy. But still a tourist. Home is still more comfortable.
And I wonder sometimes whether that through-a-glass-darkly kind of gloss doesn't apply to how individuals interact with each other, too.
How about it? What landmines of gender bias and race privilege have I walked into now?
And again with Starship Troopers, I want to peek round the corners of the story. It feels like one short peek at a vast, interesting place, and I want to be a tourist in it for a while. But no, you get one peek and that's that. You want more stories, kid, YOU dream 'em up.
Eh. ~grin~ It could be worse. ;D
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Also finally got round to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
~headshake, warm grin~ Nothing profound to say. I love Philip K. Dick's writing. I love how swiftly he builds a world, how easily he gets the reader on his wavelength and thinking with his world's logic. I love the sick feeling in the pit of my gut when he twists everything out from under his viewpoint character, and by extension, me. It's better than a tilt-a-whirl. Must find more...
Labels: books not mine, boyo