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What are some your favorite books? Children's books? (first readers to teen), "classic literature", fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction?
I don't think, for various reasons I'll comment to much on the last couple of categories, but I'll say that the books I've recommended to others don't always fall into the field of favorite, although I obviously don't hate them.
And what books do you think are good for introducing people to the SF/F spectrum? Some people are of the opinion that its the "classics" like Tolkien and Heinlein, I'm not so sure. The world view of some of the writers of their era is entirely alien to many today. And for the science fiction of the day some of the science was, well let's just say i hold it in the same esteem I do the pop psychology of the last decade or two.
A couple great kids books: Tony's Hardwork Day, The Boxcar Kids series, The Dark is Rising series, Madeline L'Engle's books, and of course My side of the Mountain. There's also a couple wonderful books that I can't recall that featured a kid (probably a girl) and a flying crocodile. My rather deplorable memory suggests the first book (iirc there were two) starts with the kid arriving at a summer cabin with their family.
(odd note, apparently the spell checker knows how to spell both Heinlein and Tolkien)
I don't think, for various reasons I'll comment to much on the last couple of categories, but I'll say that the books I've recommended to others don't always fall into the field of favorite, although I obviously don't hate them.
And what books do you think are good for introducing people to the SF/F spectrum? Some people are of the opinion that its the "classics" like Tolkien and Heinlein, I'm not so sure. The world view of some of the writers of their era is entirely alien to many today. And for the science fiction of the day some of the science was, well let's just say i hold it in the same esteem I do the pop psychology of the last decade or two.
A couple great kids books: Tony's Hardwork Day, The Boxcar Kids series, The Dark is Rising series, Madeline L'Engle's books, and of course My side of the Mountain. There's also a couple wonderful books that I can't recall that featured a kid (probably a girl) and a flying crocodile. My rather deplorable memory suggests the first book (iirc there were two) starts with the kid arriving at a summer cabin with their family.
(odd note, apparently the spell checker knows how to spell both Heinlein and Tolkien)
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On intro books (though some are favorites, too)
For early readers there was (and is) a great series of three books by Ruth Stiles Gannett; the first book is titled My Father's Dragon. I haven't seen them for years, but I think they'd age pretty well.
I think, for sf, many of the classics still work well as intros to the field--better than much recent stuff, which can be off-putting. Heinlein (from before the preaching bug bites him), classic Asimov that first saw light in the 40s/50s, Clarke from the same era, Pohl/Kornbluth, Niven's "Known Space" books etc.-- my son and some of his friends plowed enthusiastically through this stuff in their teenage years, even though some of it was written generations before. Some recent stuff by John Scalzi ("Old Man's War" etc.) seems to have the same readability-without-prerequisites. I don't think he's as imaginative as the older writers (his aliens, for instance, seem to me rather weakly thought-out). But that clearly hasn't kept him from hooking a lot of readers.
On the fantasy side, I'd recommend Zelazny's original 5 Amber books (though he can be off-putting about women) and Norton's earlier Witch World books (though her somber steady tone can wear thin after a while). My kids really liked Susan Cooper's "Dark is Rising" sequence; it seems to have, not just readability but rereadability (essential for literary addiction, I think).
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Re: On intro books (though some are favorites, too)
From:
Re: On intro books (though some are favorites, too)