Grand unified books thread

[Syt]

From the list I read LotR, The Hobbit, and (in school) When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.

I've seen movies or series (live action or otherwise) of:
2          Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
3          Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, 1945)
4          The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943)
8          Winnie-the-Pooh (AA Milne and EH Shepard, 1926)
10        Matilda (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1988)
11        Anne of Green Gables (LM Montgomery, 1908)
12        Fairy Tales (Hans Christian Andersen, 1827)
17        Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, 1868)
19        Heidi (Johanna Spyri, 1880)
21        The Adventures of Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi, 1883)
27        The Brothers Lionheart (Astrid Lindgren, 1973)
30        The Three Robbers (Tomi Ungerer, 1961)
35        Watership Down (Richard Adams, 1972)
37        Grimm's Fairy Tales (Brothers Grimm, 1812)
43        Momo (Michael Ende, 1973)
47        Ronia, the Robber's Daughter (Astrid Lindgren, 1981)
48        The Neverending Story (Michael Ende, 1979)
51        Mary Poppins (PL Travers, 1934)
62        A Bear Called Paddington (Michael Bond, 1958)
65        Karlsson-on-the-Roof (Astrid Lindgren, 1955)
70        One Thousand and One Nights (Anonymous / folk)

I didn't care much for kids books as a child; though I did read comic books and listened to audio plays a lot.

[grumbler]

Strange that the list has Alan Garner's The Owl Service but not his superior The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  The former was made into a TV series, so maybe that explains it.

Also, some of these works do not seem to me to be children's literature.  LOTR, for instance, uses vocabulary that few children will have yet mastered.

[Jacob]

I count 9 Swedish-language children's books on the top 100. Not bad.

Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson

[Savonarola]

Strange that the list has Alan Garner's The Owl Service but not his superior The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  The former was made into a TV series, so maybe that explains it.

Also, some of these works do not seem to me to be children's literature.  LOTR, for instance, uses vocabulary that few children will have yet mastered.

At least they didn't have anything by Charles Dickens; Oliver Twist is wasted on the young

I was going to call out LoTR; but I first read it when I was a tween, (and I doubt I'm the only one on the forum who did so), so maybe.  I did skip over the poetry, though, so maybe not. 

[Barrister]

Strange that the list has Alan Garner's The Owl Service but not his superior The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  The former was made into a TV series, so maybe that explains it.

Also, some of these works do not seem to me to be children's literature.  LOTR, for instance, uses vocabulary that few children will have yet mastered.

At least they didn't have anything by Charles Dickens; Oliver Twist is wasted on the young

I was going to call out LoTR; but I first read it when I was a tween, (and I doubt I'm the only one on the forum who did so), so maybe.  I did skip over the poetry, though, so maybe not. 

Definitely not - I read it when I was 10-12 or so.

And I skipped the songs/poetry also.

[Josquius]

Yes. Same. It was in primary school for sure.
Though I do remember Sauron /Sarumon confusing the shit out of me.

[mongers]

Yes. Same. It was in primary school for sure.
Though I do remember Sauron /Sarumon confusing the shit out of me.

Josq, Wasn't she from your neck of the woods and also married to Sarudad? 

[grumbler]

You'd really have to work at it to convince me that JRRT wrote the Lord of the Rings books for children. Being written for children is one of the defining characteristics of children's literature.  The Hobbit was written for children, which is why it has a very different vocabulary than LOTR and a much more simple structure.

[Admiral Yi]

No Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?  No Narnia books?

[Savonarola]

No Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?  No Narnia books?

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is number 7.

My first thought when seeing the list was: How can Alice in Wonderland be #2 and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There not even chart?  (There are two Harry Potter books in there, but it looks like they tried to avoid sequels.)

[Jacob]

Got another three books from Oxbow:

The Viking Way: Magic & Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia by Neil Price

Heimskringla: An Interpretation by Birgit Sawyer

Kaupang in Skiringssal Vol 1 - Dagfinn Skre (Editor)

I am: pretty excited

[Josquius]

Yes. Same. It was in primary school for sure.
Though I do remember Sauron /Sarumon confusing the shit out of me.

Josq, Wasn't she from your neck of the woods and also married to Sarudad? 

You're thinking of Sarumam.

[Jacob]

Yes. Same. It was in primary school for sure.
Though I do remember Sauron /Sarumon confusing the shit out of me.

Josq, Wasn't she from your neck of the woods and also married to Sarudad? 

You're thinking of Sarumam.

Pretty sure it's Suriname...

[crazy canuck]

'The Anglo-Saxons' by Marc Morris, really should have been subtitled a political-dynastic history, as it has far to little to say about the economic and social developments during the period. So great if you want to read about the late Anglo-Saxon penchant for poisoning rival. 

I don't think that is fair.  He has a whole chapter on Dunstan and the importance of the monastic reform movement, both culturally and economically.  If anything, I think he went a bit overboard there.  Reading listings of areas where the economic elite developed a feudal type economy was a bit like reading Leviticus.

[Savonarola]

I finally got around to reading The Silmarillion; it was fun, the unornamented prose reminded me of the prose Eddas.  (Which probably was the point.)

Question for the Tolkien scholars; why do the elves feel compelled to leave Middle Earth before the One Ring is destroyed (and therefore the three rings still are able to preserve beauty in the world)?  Also why isn't the Akallabêth the end of an age?