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Grand unified books thread

Started by Syt, March 16, 2009, 01:52:42 AM

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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.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

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.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Jacob

Quote from: The Brain on May 24, 2023, 12:25:09 AMI count 9 Swedish-language children's books on the top 100. Not bad.

Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson :wub:

Savonarola

Quote from: grumbler on May 24, 2023, 05:49:51 AMStrange 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. 
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Barrister

Quote from: Savonarola on May 24, 2023, 12:45:41 PM
Quote from: grumbler on May 24, 2023, 05:49:51 AMStrange 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. :hug:
Posts here are my own private opinions.  I do not speak for my employer.

Josquius

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

Quote from: Josquius on May 24, 2023, 01:38:24 PMYes. 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?  :bowler:
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

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.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Admiral Yi

No Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?  No Narnia books?

Savonarola

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 24, 2023, 08:14:00 PMNo 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.)

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

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 :nerd:

Josquius

Quote from: mongers on May 24, 2023, 05:22:23 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 24, 2023, 01:38:24 PMYes. 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?  :bowler:

You're thinking of Sarumam. ;)
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Jacob

Quote from: Josquius on May 25, 2023, 03:56:27 PM
Quote from: mongers on May 24, 2023, 05:22:23 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 24, 2023, 01:38:24 PMYes. 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?  :bowler:

You're thinking of Sarumam. ;)

Pretty sure it's Suriname...

crazy canuck

Quote from: mongers on May 23, 2023, 06:32:02 PM'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.  :bowler:

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?

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock