The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
Yes, I started reading the article about dystopian novels just because it was by her.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on June 02, 2017, 11:16:21 am ---Me neither. I thought maybe just because I'm a boy it's never been on my reading list, but maybe not.
--- End quote ---
I don't think those are incompatible possibilities. It probably hasn't ever been on your reading list because you're a boy. However, not every book about a girl is read by every girl.
Have you read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books? Pippi Longstocking? Little Women? Maude Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books? No? Then you're a boy -- and sexist! ;D
I've read all of those books, but no Nancy Drew, no Ramona, no Harriet the Spy.
I have, however, read a series of books about this family going on adventures in other parts of the world, and they're all boys. Amazon Adventure was my favorite.
I think it's been pretty well documented in the publishing and entertainment industries that many boys won't watch/read stuff about girls but the opposite is not as true. That's one reason so many kid heroes are boys. Some entertainment producers, like Disney, have made an effort to change that. I'm not sure how successful it's been.
And apparently that tendency continues all the way on into so-called adulthood, as illustrated by the reaction by so many sexist morons to an all-woman Ghostbusters. Or, more recently, this hilarious exchange between some idiot and the mayor of Austin:
http://www.mayoradler.com/letter-wonder-woman/
In fairness, it's probably similar to the phenomenon that gay people are more likely to see straight movies than the other way around.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 03, 2017, 10:16:15 am ---Have you read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books?
--- End quote ---
Actually, I have read all the Little House books, but rather late, and there's kind of a funny story about that.
When I was a little boy, somehow I came into possession of Little House in the Big Woods, but I didn't like it because it utterly mystified me. The Ingalls were living in what were clearly pioneer conditions (log cabin, etc.), yet somewhere near the beginning of the book, there is mention of the story happening "80 years ago," or something like that. Even in the mid-1960s I could subtract, and I just didn't get how the Ingalls were living as primitively as Daniel Boone. I don't think I even finished the book.
Then I was in my first years of high school when the pilot for the TV series aired, and my whole family watched it, and suddenly it made sense to me. (I guess when Mrs. Wilder wrote her books, the events she described were "80 years ago.") The whole family watched the pilot, and then I got interested in the stories, and so did my mother and my grandmother, so we all read all of them. So there I was, a 16-year-old boy, reading the Little House books. :laugh: I found it interesting to read about what life was like for an ordinary family in the time and places where Laura Ingalls grew up. I guess that was the burgeoning historian in me; the books were like historical documents.
I've never read Pippi Longstocking, or Little Women (though I've thought I ought to read Louisa May Alcott because I think she's an important figure in literature, and, again, Little Women takes place in the 1860s). I've never even heard of Maude Hart Lovelace.
I think we read Harriet the Spy in school. I know I've read it, but not on my own.
I've never read any Nancy Drew, but I've also never read any Hardy Boys.
Edit to Add: On second thought, it was probably "60 years ago" rather than "80" for the Little House books. The memory comes back to me now that I was thinking in, say, 1965, that "60 years ago" there were already automobiles, and telephones, and so forth, yet the Ingalls were living in a log cabin in pioneer conditions? It made no sense to me, so I gave up. If Mrs. Wilder wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, and I guess she did, then the 1860s and 1870s were "60 years ago," and the stories made sense. As I said, by the time I read them, they were like historical documents of life in the time and place where the stories were set because they were based on Mrs. Wilder's memories.
Of course, there is a controversy over whether the books were actually written by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter (you should look her up; she was quite an interesting character). In high school I read a book by Lane called Let the Hurricane Roar, and it could have been a condensed version of the Little House books. The main characters are a young couple named Charles and Caroline (sound familiar?) who settle on the plains. It seems to me there were other things in the story that reminded me of the Little House books. The title seems to come from what I guess was a popular hymn of the period that is mentioned in the Little House books.
Front-Ranger:
That's very interesting, friend Jeff!
--- Quote from: serious crayons on June 03, 2017, 10:16:15 am ---Have you read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books? Pippi Longstocking? Little Women? Maude Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books?
I've read all of those books, but no Nancy Drew, no Ramona, no Harriet the Spy.
--- End quote ---
I read about a dozen Nancy Drew books and Little Women, but not the others. As an adult I read Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton-Porter, and also My Ántonia by Willa Cather when my son had to read it for school. My children's reading was dominated by Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, so was rather masculine dominated.
Jeff Wrangler:
Just finished an interesting article about Sally Yates, the Deputy Attorney General who said the Department of Justice would not defend the Orange Fascist's travel ban in court. (May 29 issue)
The only thing I have left in that issue now is the article about sand. I can't wait to read it!
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