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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1232 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Sure enough, I finished reading The Hobbit to my daughter again this week. My wife has moved onto reading her Charlotte's Web, but the kid brings up questions about The Hobbit constantly all the same. Why did Bilbo take the arkenstone from Thorin? Or the ring from Gollum? Why was the Dragon so curious about Bilbo's riddles instead of eating him? Why was Thorin mad at Bilbo? Why are the goblins so mean? Why did the Elf King imprison the dwarves?

Broadly she's been exposed to facets of the human condition none of the other children's books she's read have exposed her to, and it's wonderful to see her mulling over the scenarios in her head days, even weeks after we read it. It really makes me appreciate Tolkien even more as a writer. I mean, it's not the first longer form chapter book we've read her. We read her an abridged version of Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz and another illustrated book called Brambly Hedge. And those have all be fine stories with good and evil, and characters with flaws. But in that simplistic way where friends broadly stay friends, characters with a flaw display that flaw in every scene, and things are just more simplistic and black and white.

I suspect I'll be reading The Hobbit for a third time soon. She's also been begging to start The Lord of the Rings, but she's almost certainly too young for that. I should probably refresh my memory about it too.

I finished reading The Illiad and loved the shit out of it. It was a slower read for me, and I tried to get through a chapter a day. I also grabbed a book about the fragments we have from the rest of the Greek Epic Cycle, but it was underwhelming. I think I want to grab some of the Greek Tragedies that derive from the epic cycle though. At some point. I'll probably read The Odyssey next.

Currently reading The Mote in God's Eye, and it's a page turner like I haven't picked up in a long while. I'm about halfway through with 200 pages left, and I expect I'll finish it this weekend. It was written by a pair of conservative authors in 1974, was nominated for all the awards, and damned if it didn't deserve them. It's a phenomenal first contact story that evolves into a mystery/intrigue thriller. Highly recommend it. I plan on getting around to the sequel some day.

Regarding Lord of the Rings: if she's expecting it to be more hobbit, she will be surprised, what with it being slower and more epic (grander, more serious) in feel.

Neat coincidence - I recently finished reading The Hobbit to my own kids, aged 5 and 8. We also watched the old 70's animated movie version, since it happens to be available on HBO, and I got to explain how minor characters and plot points often get cut in the transition from book to film, so that the film doesn't end up too long.

I have an Iliad and Odyssey pair illustrated by Alan Lee and perfect for my precocious 7-8 year old who's reading them over and over again now. The Iliad book is called Black Ships Before Troy.

We're enjoying The Hobbit too but right now she prefers The Odyssey. Had a good conversation on lotuses as they appear in modern life.

How old is she?

Meanwhile my parents let me buy It in middle school and I dipped half-way out because I got bored only to then eat the rest of his works like a bag of chips.

Have you read Beren and Luthien, The Children of Hurin and The Fall of Gondolin? I absolutely adore them. They read like real fairytales.

If you like fantasy similar to the Lord of the Rings, I cannot recommend the list from this website enough. I’ve read them all and The Broken Sword, Conan the Barbarian and Gormenghast were absolutely delicious. Especially The Broken Sword.

http://starsbeetlesandfools.blogspot.com/2012/06/suggested-readings-in-fantasy.html?m=1

The Lord of the Rings is more accessible to children than I'd thought it would be; IIRC I waited until my youngest was 8 or 9, but probably didn't need to. The biggest limitation for me was that I wanted to let my kids all watch the movies shortly after we finished with the books, but I wanted to start with the Hobbit movies (because that way you get LotR second as a climax rather than the Hobbit trilogy second as a disappointment), and aside from quality concerns, those movies are more graphic and gory about the violence than I'm happy with. But if you just stick with the books, the main issue with LotR for kids is that it demands a level of attention and patience that younger kids might not have yet, especially if yours just got to the point where the Hobbit wasn't too much for her. IIRC my youngest was fine with the meat of the books, but perhaps just barely, because both she and her (then 10 or 11) brother decided to skip most of the history/sociology/geography prologue. Maybe that's a good touchstone? If your daughter is so interested in hobbits that she can make it past "Concerning Pipeweed" then the rest of the books should be a breeze.

The sequel to Mote is probably worth reading, but "worth reading" is a big letdown from "one of the best science fiction books in history", so go into it with tempered expectations if you don't want to be disappointed. There are no other Niven/Pournelle collaborations as good as "Mote"; IMHO the only ones that are close in limited ways are "Footfall" (first contact, with a psychological gulf), "Lucifer's Hammer" (civilization as a character), "Inferno" (wild plot), and "Legacy of Heorot" (page turning suspense+action), but they're all more flawed in other ways.

I was given LotR (in a Russian translation) around age 5 or so, and seemingly read the whole thing, though it's hard to say how much of it I understood or whether I skipped around, especially since the movies and finally rereading it in English could have implanted any number of false memories. I did remember the maps, the copperplate etchings of barrels that the particular print version used as chapter separators, and being mildly irritated when the movies came out much later because I seemed to have had formed a very particular mental image of one segment (the rocky area that Frodo and Sam traversed before the swamp with the dead elves) and it looked different in the film, so it was probably not zero (and whatever I was doing with it, I am told that I was so absorbed that my parents got to enjoy many months of relative peace).

(We also had a comic book version of the Hobbit, which I probably was given earlier, but couldn't get into because I found the pictures confusing. I still struggle with comics/manga visual storytelling now.)

"one of the best science fiction books in history"

So, I hit the 200 page mark where things take a pretty hard turn, and I've been incapable of stopping until my eyes no longer want to focus tonight. 180 pages later, 80 pages left, and I think I have to put it down for the night. But I know what I'm doing ASAP tomorrow morning.

I don't think I've read a novel this compelling in a long, long time. I'm not sure "reads it nearly cover to cover in one sitting compulsively" is the utmost criteria for a science fiction novel. But it's not nothing.

Good idea putting it down for the night. You probably will have enjoyed the extended denouement more over breakfast coffee than you would have last night.

Yeah, I wrapped up the last 80 pages over coffee this morning. Currently basking in the post-book glow. Definitely ranks among my favorites, and I can't recall the last time a book pulled me through the last 300 pages whether I wanted to or not. With 50 pages left it almost feels like an obligation to finish it that night. Last 100 can be a stretch, and there is often a good enough lull where you can save the rest for later. Don't know that I've ever had a book put a figurative gun against my head and gone "READ MOTHER FUCKER!" before even the halfway mark before.

Any idea what caused the issues with their writing collabs? I read mote as a kid, and even in that it was obvious they had weird conflicts with each other's... OCs, I guess we'd call it now.

Honestly, in my opinion their collaborations were purely win-win. If you look at the novels Pournelle wrote on his own, they were relatively dry and often a little hard to maintain interest in. If you look at the novels Niven wrote on his own, they were relatively fantastical and (except for the fantasies, where you know what you're getting into) sometimes a little hard to take seriously. Their collaborations don't all thread the needle between those SFF extremes perfectly, but they do better than either alone. There was definitely always conflict between their characters, or between their characters and the worlds/universes they built, but that's a good thing. "Inferno" in particular worked well for me solely because (spoiler alert, albeit such an extremely vague spoiler it's probably fine) they took a clash between one of Niven's major styles vs one of Pournelle's influences and really leaned into it and wrapped the whole book around it.

how old is your daughter? Been wondering when it is time for the hobbit.

She's 5. I have no clue what is typical for The Hobbit. I know another Mottizen said he read The Hobbit to his kids around 6 I think? I might be misremembering. A friend of mine tried reading to her son when he was 4 with an illustrated version. She acts like it went great, but her husband intimated to me that it went nowhere. So there's that. Was the idea behind me buying a companion artbook through.

It was a little touch and go at first without lots of pictures on every page. We'd go weeks without reading it, and she'd just want to hear Brambly Hedge again. She did really enjoy tracing Bilbo's path and adventures along the map in the back of the book though, and was very excited to get to the dragon. Even so, that didn't always carry it. Then I got a sketch book of The Hobbit by Alan Lee, and my daughter looks through that while I read to her, and suddenly she wanted me to read more Hobbit to her morning, noon and night, and then start over as soon as we finished.

this sketchbook I assume?

Indeed.

That was the age I read it with my mom. Although I think we'd listened to the BBC audio drama first. That was brilliant.

Wow, The Hobbit really is good for kids, huh? I think the main problem with Lord of the Rings proper is that it's really boring a lot of the time, perhaps too boring and slow-moving and overall wordy and complex for a kid. The content itself is morally fine for them, not traumatizing or anything, but all those other things make it hard to start so early.

Turning this back to Culture War material, you'll probably never give them a new kids book, would you? There's something profound to me that we used to be so sure of ourselves that we were constantly churning out works that everyone could enjoy, and even now, everyone can still retroactively enjoy them, but at some point, the cultures diverged enough that nothing can be trusted anymore, writers cannot go with the old frameworks respected older works once used, and classic themes might appear corny and simple by now.

you'll probably never give them a new kids book, would you?

Kids media (books, movies, games) have, as a general rule, always been complete shit.

This is mostly because the stereotypical kid media isn't actually made for children- they're made for adults who think that's what children like (and they kind of have to be, considering that's who's buying the tickets).

Meanwhile, consider this kids' toy and the fact that the movie it's based on is in a rating category such that theaters would refuse to let the person who would [want to] own that see.

Now, consider that scene where Robocop shoots that guy's dick off. That's going to trigger alarm bells in the adults who see it, but not the children; for the adults, it's "yeah, they're trying to rape the woman", for the children, they're probably not going to get the full implications of "hair down there" (or kinda just roll their eyes a bit)... but "he got shot in the dick lol" still has universal appeal. That's true for most of the superfluous sex scenes in other movies, for that matter- the main downside is not that they'll get it and enjoy it a little too much, but that it degrades the movie to pander to an audience that isn't them. They see sex scenes [and sexuality] the way everyone else sees wokeshit; and ironically the only movies to point this out are themselves 'kids movies'. [Shrek is another one, but is far more explicit about shitting on it, a lot more literally, in the first scene of the movie.]

At best, it's integrated organically into the story- hard to take the sex scene out of Terminator because the entire story is built around it- but if you show a kid that movie I guarantee you he's mainly going to be stomping around the house making robot sounds and saying "I'll be back" way too much, not trying to act out movie sex.

Anyway, so Tolkien is like that. The "wokeshit"/moralizing that is there (which is... mainly bog-standard Christianity in a way that isn't quite as blatant as Lewis' is) isn't all that jarring, as there's a reason for it to be there and it's generally intended positively rather than "Remember Kids, Leave Room For Jesus"-style messaging (like "see, the race of rock people are all gay, remember that being gay is OK" in the middle of a mediocre-to-bad superhero movie).

It's not all that accurate to group "elements of media that adults like" as "adult" to then exclude "not adults" from it. It's OK for most things to be universal.

you'll probably never give them a new kids book, would you?

Yeah, that's been a problem. I'm actually working on a draft of an effort post about that. I'm gonna try really hard on it, and probably eat a month long ban for something I never saw coming if past is prologue.

Christian kid's books are still being produced, and generally not full of woke shit. They are mediocre, but kids eat that stuff up. Feed volume and keep room for the classics.

Start Lord of the Rings anyway -- I read it after the Hobbit and even my little kids liked it more and were even more engaged.

The Mote In God's Eye is indeed a fantastic book. I don't know how many other books end literally with an around-the-table conference that still delivers an absolute nail-biter of tension for the ending as you're just praying the main characters can piece together the information in time ... while still feeling lots of empathy for the antagonists (of a sort). On the gripping hand, .....

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