This is not how I imagined my first post, but something needed to go on the board, so I've cut and pasted from an email to a relative.
I'm focusing on secular fiction, but reviewing through a Catholic lens. Anyway, the impetus behind this is Chris Paolini's Eldest. His first book, Eragon, was ok, not great literature, but ok adventure reading, but his second book, Eldest is filled with anti-religion, subjective morality propaganda, and a little smut thrown in too. My 10 year old son wanted to read it, but I threw it away. Now, I have checked it out of the library to finish the last few chapters myself, just to make certain that our "hero" doesn't redeem himself in the end. Though in my opinion, this action would not redeem the book.
For, 10 year old girls, I'd recommend Gail Carson Levine, she wrote Ella Enchanted and a lot more similar themed books, and of course all the classics, Betsy and Tacy, Anne of Green Gables, Caddie Woodlawn, etc. My daughter is nine, and she has been reading all of these, along with the Shiloh books, by Phyllis Naylor Reynolds. Shiloh books are about a boy, but both my kids like them. I also recommend Richard Peck's books, A Year Down Yonder, and A Long Way from Chicago. We listen to these on tape, and they are hilarious.
I've been reading a lot of Ellis Peters mysteries (I prefer the ones with Det. Felse and his son, Dominic), and Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey), and I just finished Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander. It was all right, definitely for mature readers, not sure if I'm going to read the next dozen or so.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
First Post
This is not how I imagined my first post, but something needed to go on the board, so I've cut and pasted from an email to a relative.
I'm focusing on secular fiction, but reviewing through a Catholic lens. Anyway, the impetus behind this is Chris Paolini's Eldest. His first book, Eragon, was ok, not great literature, but ok adventure reading, but his second book, Eldest is filled with anti-religion, subjective morality propaganda, and a little smut thrown in too. My 10 year old son wanted to read it, but I threw it away. Now, I have checked it out of the library to finish the last few chapters myself, just to make certain that our "hero" doesn't redeem himself in the end. Though in my opinion, this action would not redeem the book.
For, 10 year old girls, I'd recommend Gail Carson Levine, she wrote Ella Enchanted and a lot more similar themed books, and of course all the classics, Betsy and Tacy, Anne of Green Gables, Caddie Woodlawn, etc. My daughter is nine, and she has been reading all of these, along with the Shiloh books, by Phyllis Naylor Reynolds. Shiloh books are about a boy, but both my kids like them. I also recommend Richard Peck's books, A Year Down Yonder, and A Long Way from Chicago. We listen to these on tape, and they are hilarious.
I've been reading a lot of Ellis Peters mysteries (I prefer the ones with Det. Felse and his son, Dominic), and Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey), and I just finished Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander. It was all right, definitely for mature readers, not sure if I'm going to read the next dozen or so.
I'm focusing on secular fiction, but reviewing through a Catholic lens. Anyway, the impetus behind this is Chris Paolini's Eldest. His first book, Eragon, was ok, not great literature, but ok adventure reading, but his second book, Eldest is filled with anti-religion, subjective morality propaganda, and a little smut thrown in too. My 10 year old son wanted to read it, but I threw it away. Now, I have checked it out of the library to finish the last few chapters myself, just to make certain that our "hero" doesn't redeem himself in the end. Though in my opinion, this action would not redeem the book.
For, 10 year old girls, I'd recommend Gail Carson Levine, she wrote Ella Enchanted and a lot more similar themed books, and of course all the classics, Betsy and Tacy, Anne of Green Gables, Caddie Woodlawn, etc. My daughter is nine, and she has been reading all of these, along with the Shiloh books, by Phyllis Naylor Reynolds. Shiloh books are about a boy, but both my kids like them. I also recommend Richard Peck's books, A Year Down Yonder, and A Long Way from Chicago. We listen to these on tape, and they are hilarious.
I've been reading a lot of Ellis Peters mysteries (I prefer the ones with Det. Felse and his son, Dominic), and Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey), and I just finished Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander. It was all right, definitely for mature readers, not sure if I'm going to read the next dozen or so.
