Got a reasonable amount of reading done over the break. Apart from the official, serious stuff, I indulged myself with four novels written with a somewhat younger readership in mind than that represented by myself. In the order in which I read them these were: Dick King-Smith's Harry's Mad; Betsy Byars's The Summer of the Swans and Goodbye, Chicken Little; and Julius Lester's The Basketball Game. This sequence also happens to follow the increasing maturity of the specific age-groups the writers seemed to have in mind for their work. I can't see a teenager hugely enjoying Harry's Mad, whilst the average eight-year-old would be clueless regarding the romance in The Basketball Game. Since various bits of me range in age and maturity I enjoyed both, and, indeed, the Betsy Byars as well.
There was a sequence in Goodbye, Chicken Little, when the protagonist's elderly uncle expounds on the idiocy of claiming that life has no meaning, which made me laugh out loud. It should be included as an appendix to every novel and play by Sam Beckett.
And speaking of the great man, I also read Waiting For Godot (officially serious, and wonderful) and fell in love with it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment