What do you do just for yourself?

[Stormchild Guesting]

Thanks 2cents! Will look these folks up too.

[Stormchild Guesting Again]

Oops, I mean this person.    

[sleepyhead]

Yes! Ursula le Guin! Got me into sci-fi. (Yes Muddy, I'm a female, but I'm a geek and I'm proud!) Ray Bradbury is wonderful, sci-fi, but really all about human relationships. Has anyone read Madeleine L'Engle? Canadian, writes sci-fi/children's book, but well worth a read even for grown-ups (if that's what we are), "A Wrinkle in Time" is a book I keep reading over and over. Anyone else find that children's books are helpful? I don't mean books for five year olds, but for older kids. I have favourites that I keep coming back to because I guess they help me with feelings I had trouble processing as a kid. Anyone read "A solitary blue" by Cynthia Voigt? Very interesting for children of N's.

[mum]

Sleepyhead: is that book "A Solitary Blue" one of the ones you'd recommend for a 13 year old girl? My daughter reads voraciously and is definately the child of an N.   She does enjoy the "Sisterhood of the Pants" series. (there are three now). I tend to read some of her choices as well.  I think a lot of it is well written and more honest than some of the usual novels out there.  Lots have to deal with emotions, growing up and the raw stuff that figuring life out is all about.
She wants to read "A Child Called IT" and I am hesitating...haven't read it but I understand it is pretty explicit about this man's true childhood abuse.
Are you familiar with it?

[Anonymous]

Sleepy,

Yes Muddy, I'm a female, but I'm a geek and I'm proud!)

I never thought of SF as male/female. Is it? I never really cared whether it was geeky or not either, is it? I know guys who do the Vulcan greeting thing and wear pointy ears are geeky, but is 'real' SF?
Anyway, Sleepy, I'm sure you are one cool geek.

Ray Bradbury is wonderful, sci-fi, but really all about human relationships.

Thats whats great about Jack Vance. Its all language, alien cultures and character. Very little "Star Wars" gimcrackery.

Anyone else find that children's books are helpful?

I must confess to reading a few of my daughters "Baby Sitters Club" books. They're pretty entertaining. And we just read the "Secret Garden" together. I even read a couple of Hardy Boys mysteries that my nephew gave me as a White Elephant gift for Christmas. Not bad. Those guys are real sleuths. And so clean cut.
 I'm afraid those probably aren't what you had in mind.

mudpup

[sleepyhead]

Sorry mudpup, got you confused with Longtire who wrote

Wow, I thought only geeky guys like me like Terry Pratchett and HitchHiker's Guide and similar. Its good to know some geeky girls like it too!

There are so many men on this board that I'm having trouble telling them apart. It's a problem that you can't scroll back through the whole thread when you're posting (or is that a blessing?). Not sure about the books you mentioned, except for Secret Garden, that is an excellent book for children with a less than perfect family.

mum: Yes, I would definitely recommend A Solitary Blue for your 13 year old, in fact it is part of a series and all the books are good for children with a lot of questions about human behaviour, but that one deals specifically with having an N parent (and you don't have to read the other books to enjoy it).I have read A Child Called IT, and I would not let a thirteen year old read it, very scary and violent, plus it may make her fall into that old trap of "this is having a bad parent, I guess I am not allowed to complain about mine".

[Portia]

Mum:
I haven’t read "A Child Called IT" yet, not sure I will. I read Dave’s follow-up book, ‘Help Yourself’ I think and that was enough. Too much graphic detail I would fear: I know bad things happen, I don’t need to know all the details all the time, I don’t need to see pictures of more bodies, I know what dead bodies look like, sort of thing. Show me something that instructs and helps…..

“the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time."

This is a feeling I’ve struggled so hard to describe since my teens! Especially the tenderness. Amazing. I think of it as a moment when I was about 22, with a soft night wind blowing on my cheek and a sense of ‘now’ and nothing else, except the utter melancholy and beauty and yes pointlessness of the ‘now’.

Hey, I still struggle with time.  And space. Memory is an interesting function that makes me nuts sometimes (memory or premonition?) Thank you lots for that quote. I shall look for the book.

Thanks for the kind words Stormchild and Sleepyhead. Music and marmite do help ! P

[dogbit]

I would not let a child or even young adult read "A Child Called It".  While I was glad for the author"s eventual  recovery from what happened to him, The story is itself is overwhelming and I found myself depressed and even less energized to get beyond my own conflicts.  And I was in my 40's when I read it.  My recollection is that the story was mostly about the horrific episodes his Mother inflicted on him but how he survived in spite of her.  I think he kept going back to make things "right" with her but never succeeded.  I think my goal is to make things right with me and just leave the past behind.  It was not his fault but I don't think the author was assured of that when he wrote the book.  Maybe I am wrong.  I didn't find it uplifting.

[2cents]

Another one sci-fi types might enjoy is "Imajica" by Clive Barker.
Happy Easter,

2cents