readallthenewberys | Entries tagged with your input please

Okay, here's a question for my readers (loyal and, uh, anyone who happens to drop by *dry grin*):

Would you keep reading if I switched from a strict G rating on language to a loose R (i.e. dropping f-bombs and so forth whenever I go on a rant like yesterday's about Vaino)?

See, I feel like I can't be as scathing as I want in a G rating; I suspect this would be a much more entertaining blog, of the sort I'd like to read, if I didn't have to censor myself every time a Newbery book descended into the truly bad. But I don't want to make a major change like that without asking y'all whether you'd mind.

So. I'd put up a poll, but I don't have a paid Dreamwidth account. Please answer in comments (you can say as little as "yes" or "no", but I'd really appreciate hearing from all you lurkers who never comment, if you have any opinion):

"Would you keep reading if I switch from G-rated to R-rated language in my posts here?"

(Anon commenting is on. Anon comments will be screened, but if you're not an obvious spammer/troll I'll happily unscreen.)

justice_turtle

I AM DONE WITH THE 1920s FOREVER. *whew*

...and for the first time ever, I've given five stars each to two books from the same year. Cool!

( 1929 )

I honestly can't decide which of those last two books I'd award the Newbery Medal for 1929, if it were my choice! On the one hand, Millions of Cats is a perfect choice to win the medal named after the man who created The Little Pretty Pocket Book. On the other hand, Tod of the Fens should absolutely be up there with Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler among Newbery Medal winners everyone's heard of. I... I may have to give these a shared Mock Newbery Medal.

Anyone out there have any votes on the matter? :D (You can read Tod of the Fens online for free, and any library in the US should have Millions of Cats, though I can't speak to other countries. Canadians, Brits, Australians - I'm curious now, do your local libraries stock Millions of Cats?)

justice_turtle

Hello, faithful readers! ;-)

On creating all the year and author tags I may need (at least until next year), I find there are fewer than 400 tags total on this comm so far. That means I have room for... hmm, quite a few more tags before I need to worry about the 1000-tag limit.

So I'm thinking: what sort of category tags would YOU like to see here? Genre tags? Male/female protagonist? Location of setting? Temporal era? Male/female author? What, in short, would help you browse for what you want to find - either right now, or when (fate willing) I'm all caught up to the present day and the comm's functioning as a database more than a blog?

Anyone have any opinions, or am I talking to myself here? ;P

justice_turtle

All right, over half these Newberys are a slog, and I'd like this blog to be a bit more interesting for me to do. So! Introducing:

THE MOCK NEWBERYS OF THE PAST.

Which is to say: I am adding things to the list! I started with the other Little House and Dark is Rising books, because I am informed that "Dark is Rising" will make more sense if I read them all, and if I'm going to re-read the Little House books I am jolly well going to have Mr Edwards in there. ^_^ (I first read those books when I was actually four, so I am well fond of them from a nostalgic viewpoint.)

But then I thought: why not add lots of good books to whatever year they're eligible for? So - please, recommend me some books! This post will focus especially on books from 1925 (where I have reached) to 1940, but if you have something more recent, feel free to throw it in. I'll be doing another rec-me-stuff-please post at the beginning of every decade.

Criteria: book must have been published first in the US (or in US/UK concurrently) - or if you can't find that out they must have a US-based author or lead character - and must appeal to some age level included in "fourteen or under". And you must think it's awesome. That's it. :D

Lay on, Macduff! ;-)

justice_turtle

Um, I'm not dead! It's just that The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon is the next book up, and it's 482 pages of nonfiction history from ninety years ago. So I keep having to google things to find out whether Mr van Loon is wrong, or whether my own inadequate history education is wrong, or whether we're both right but the generation gap makes us contradict each other.

It's very exciting, really: it's a time-capsule of a history book! From a year when four different important expeditions that were to change our knowledge of prehistory hadn't come back yet. :D It's just amazingly slow, because I do most of my book-reviewing on the bus, sans Internet.

So. I have about half a dozen readers subscribed here, and maybe some lurkers: please to tell me in comments, would you rather I post the first quarter of the liveblog now and add sections as I go along, or wait till I finish liveblogging the whole book (or get exhausted and decide not to finish it?¹)

1: I would really like to finish it, because the next two on the list are Dr Doolittle and the other entry by that master of what on earth did I just read, Charles Boardman Hawes. And it would be sad to partially-liveblog so many books in a row.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Read ALL the Newberys!

(and honor books and probably some other stuff...)

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