#sir lancelet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dawnlstott · 7 years

Text

Reading List for a 15-year-old Girl

This weekend, a friend asked me for book recommendations for her niece who is about to turn 15. I don’t consider myself a reader, and thought I was not up to the task. Four hours later, I had this:

Bibliography for your niece. I put this in the order I would read it, or assign it as a syllubus to my high school Literary Overview course.

0. If she has not read Norton Juster’s, The Phantom Tollbooth - this is a must! Start here.

1. Lewis Carroll - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

2. P. L Travers - Begin the Mary Poppins series (excellent!!)

3. L. Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

4. Ursula K. Le Guin - The ‘young adult novels’, The Earthsea Trilogy: The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore. (If she likes them, she can continue on her own with the next 3 in the series. Or move-up to, The Compass Rose: A collection of short stories, and novels with a bit more science fiction/existential/anthropoligical themes: The Lathe of Heaven, and The Word for World is Forest.)

5. C. S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (For ‘extra credit’, begin *The Bible: Old Testament - Genesis, Adam and Eve, and, New Testament: The Gospel. These are all you ‘need’ as a literary reference.)

6. Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (Extra credit: His short stories, Extracts From Adam’s Diary and The Private Life of Adam and Eve, are good accompaniments with, The Bible’s Book of Genesis. Then, his posthumously published essays, Letters from the Earth, is an excellent expression of his disdain for Christianity).

7. Carson McCullers - The Member of the Wedding, and/or The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (short story).

8. Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Extra credit: Alice Walker, The Color Purple.)

9. Amy Tan - The Hundred Secret Senses, and/or Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife.

10. Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon. Or anything of the King Arthur Legend (a necessary literary reference for just about everything that is written) of Merlin the Magician, Sir Lancelet, Excaliber, and the Quest for the Holy Grail. (If she likes this, there is also a science fiction/fantasy series by M. Z. Bradley about a planet called, Darkover, which is great summer reading.)

11. A. S. Byatt - Possession: A Romance (well-written literary mystery revolving around a series of romantic letters).

12. Begin One Thousand and One Nights (also known as, Arabian Nights). An excellent lifelong Persian adventure tome that cannot be begun early enough. A mad Shah who fears infidelity, keeps executing new wives before they can betray him. When he runs out of prospects, Scheherazade (shara-zawd) agrees to marry him. For 1,001 nights she weaves stories that are ‘to be continued’. At the end, he pardons her. Some of the stories she tells are familiar adventures about Alladin and the Magic Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor. The book can be read from beginning to end, picked up in the middle, just a few parts here and there, it jumps around, some tales never resolve, some refer back to others, it twists and turns, and can always be re-read many times with new understanding. Better than the Bible and the Iliad, put together!!

13. Homer - Odyssey, (if they only give her Greek Tragedies in school or just the Iliad).

If she is not assigned these for writing essays and papers, make sure she knows about them:

Strunk & White’s - Elements of Style, free online here, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style (ESSENTIAL for writing Engllish).

Peter Farb - Wordplay: What Happens When People Talk

Natalie Goldberg - Writing Down the Bones

*The Bible as literature, especially Genesis and the Gospel. The Old Testament first poem, The Book of Job - teaches us to always question ‘the guru’, especially the one who claims to be ‘God’. The Sibylline Oracles - the roots of almost all modern ‘fairy tales’. Then the stories of Enoch, within which is housed much wisdom of the ‘ancients’ who did not write their stuff down before they were ethnically cleansed. So many literary references throughout the Old Testament make it an essential reference guide, as well a ridiculously hilarious romp throgh speculative human histories.

The New Testament is mostly about Jesus, and can be enjoyed purely for its many poetic interpretations of what he was about, which is love. While Jesus was possibly a real person, or group of real persons, the one in the Bible is a concept: Love yourself as you would have others love you, others as you would love you, those from whom you must walk away, and those you want to keep around. But love you and take care of you most of all, because then you have more to give to others. Love is Jesus, Jesus is love, don’t listen to what anyone else has to say about that. The new testament is, overall, a romantic poem dedicated to our humanity: Basically advisng that we hit the reset button every day by turning the OS off and then on again. One can easily replace the word ‘God’ with ‘water’ or ‘oxygen’ and still get the same value from this prose.

Each thing above is a great launch-pad into all sorts of places she might like to ride her rocket.

Summer reading during high school:

Age 15

Rudyard Kipling - Everything.

Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and everything else.

Shakespeare - A Midsumer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Merchant of Venice

J. D. Salinger - Nine Stories, (better than, Catcher in Rye, which they cram in us at U.S. schools).

Begin, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Ages 16-17

Jonathan Samuel Carroll - The Land of Laughs, Outside the Dog Museum, his Weblog is also quite compelling https://jonathancarroll.com/tagged/short-story.

Kurt Vonnegut - Slapstick, Welcome to the Monkey House, and Breakfast of Champions <— which might be assigned at school—{{{.

Begin, Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales

Toni Morrison - Beloved

Age 18 and up

George Sand

Colette

Sappho - Though much of her work was destroyed, what little that remains is a good introduction to greek poetry and philosophy. She was assigned the homo-erotic labelling, but she was more ‘platonic’ in reality, loving educating the minds of young women and men. She is also the first documented female writer in ‘modern’ history. Maybe good to introduce her when your niece begins learning about Greek tragedy and Shakespeare.

Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Jack Karouac - Anything/Everything

Suggestions: If and/or when she wants to take-on Proust, it can be completed in precisely one year of 10 pages per day. (Another great literary reference which is way better than James Joyce.)

If she wants to read comic books, start her on X-Men. (Excellent characters, great for coping with ’teen angst’ and that ‘misfit’ phase. Also wonderful female characters that promote a healthy sense of self and personal empowerment.)

If she absolutely must get on-board the vampire craze, begin with Anne Rice’s, Interview with the Vampire, which takes place in an apartment on Divisadero in SF.!!

DO NOT LET HER READ ANYTHING BY STEPHEN KING UNTIL SHE IS 25, IF EVER. And, I don’t care what anyone says about Neil Gaiman, he’s a Scientologist hack full of crap. !!

3 notes · View notes