#64: In fact it's very important to BtVS that Buffy herself is often, as you put it, an asshole.

Of course she's an asshole. She's been put in an impossible situation. She's never had even a fighting chance to be a reasonable grownup human being. Instead she's a horribly self-absorbed narcissist. She's grossly unfair and horrible to the people who love her the most. Spike in particular, but Willow too. Xander too. On a regular basis.

BtVS is in so many ways a tragedy. That's one of the many things that's great about it.

Mind you, I'm one of that crazy minority of people whose favorite season is #6.

Posted March 10, 2007 11:36 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I'm overwhelmed by the number of wonderful suggestions--thank you all so much! I can tell I'm going to have a lot of fun winnowing these down to pass along to my mom. This kid will become a reader yet!

Posted March 10, 2007 11:47 PM by mimi

One of the things that I really like about the later seasons of Buffy is how they explore just what it means to be The Slayer for so long. After all, until Buffy came along, Slayers seldom reached their 18th birthday. Heck, Buffy got killed her second year in and only got to keep going on through a Plot Device.

Slayers aren't supposed to stick around that long. They aren't supposed to last for years, to gather friends and obligations, they aren't supposed to survive long enough to deal with all the trials of getting through highschool, collage, and into the adult world while still dusting vampires and battling demons.

Slayers are the hand-grenade in the arsenal of the Forces of Good. Small, compact, and they do a whole lot of damage when they go off, but they're a one shot. Until Buffy.

And they way they explored that in the final seasons worked for me in a weird twisted way.

Posted March 10, 2007 11:53 PM by JamesK

Thena, if you've discovered a cure for Second Sock Syndrome, out with it! Tell us how you did it.

Mimi and all, I'll apologize in advance for recommending one of my own titles, but once he's gotten through all the Tintin books, you might want to try him on Tim Eldred's Grease Monkey.

In re Buffy: I staved it off for years. Then Anna Genoese got tired of waiting and tossed all of Season One on to Patrick's desk, with orders to watch it. And then, Buffy ate my brain.

My head is still full of Buffy. There's a map in my head of the automobile-oriented suburban ring around the older Sunnydale town grid. I can't discuss the universality of law, and the corruption that invariably grows up when the protection of the law is not universal, without thinking about the treatment of Spike. I have elaborate theories about the history and bad practices of the Council of Watchers, and how their social roles dovetail with Wolfram & Hart's. Strange things bloom in my imagination, like the localized Linux distribution used in the vicinity of the Hellmouth, the sneeze reflexes of Fyarls, and the universal role of proximate redundancy in prophecies. I wonder about the strange confluences of privileged information that would occur if Drusilla entranced Files & Records. For some time now, a part of my brain has been chewing on the question of why magical tomes are so scarce and expensive.

Nobody warned me before I uploaded it that the Matter of Buffy isn't inert.

Posted March 10, 2007 11:54 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Not to break the Buffy theme going here, but I saw "300" tonight. Not great, but... decent. Probably give it a matinee rating, because you'll probably want to see it on the big screen if you're going to see it at all.

Posted March 10, 2007 11:55 PM by Greg London

I staved it off for years.

I'm still staving it off, I guess. I'd watch an episode here or there, but maybe the lack of continuity kept me from really getting into it. There were lines like "fire bad, trees pretty" that stick with me to this day, though.

then, Buffy ate my brain. ... For some time now, a part of my brain has been chewing on the question of why magical tomes are so scarce and expensive.

Hm. I still haven't caught up on BSG, and now I have this feeling I may need to add another series to the DVD stack.

Posted March 11, 2007 12:02 AM by Greg London

Tom Swift is a good idea -- the text isn't challenging. Good for intro material. Tintin -- jeez, they're going to try another movie. Give me strength. Who would we cast? I'll just say Daniel Radcliffe in a wig. It's hard to know what to say for the purposes of someone who reads at a low level.

But what did I love? Ah... Half Magic and Seven-Day Magic by Edward Eager (I only read his other five books in recent years). It broke my heart to pick up the latter title for a quarter at my library here. They discarded it! To make shelf space for more ghost-and-booger series fiction, no doubt. Grumble, grumble.

Freddy the Pig. The Mad Scientist's Club! Homer Price! The Mrs. Coverlet books. Alice in Wonderland, repeatedly. I'd say Marvel comics, but they've changed beyond recognition. I have a hard enough time just scanning recent comics. Lord help me, I'm o-o-o-o-old!

Also, I find I can't go wrong with anything by Beverly Cleary. She wrote adaptations of "Leave it to Beaver" stories that take us right into Beaver's head. Dunno how they go over with the younger set, though -- you know, people 40 and under.

Posted March 11, 2007 12:05 AM by Kip W

PNH #80: You're certainly far from alone - Season 6 is my wife's favorite too. (Me, I'm in that rare made tribe of Season 7 supporters, though my personal all-around favorite is 4.)

We were also late converts (I actually, ahem, brought the first season home after it started coming regularly into the conversation around here). I wonder if coming to Buffy on DVD has any impact on being able to appreciate the later seasons that were unpopular when they aired, the same way some comics only really hold together once they're collected into trades.

Posted March 11, 2007 12:30 AM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

Just got back from a sneak preview of The Last Mimsey, which is loosely based on the Lewis Padgett short story, "Mimsey were the Borogroves," about kids who find a sliding-bead toy from the future that teaches them how to think in four dimensions. That story has a tragic ending (at least from the point of view of the parents); I was really curious how the film makers would let things play out.

I was kind of worried at first; the theater was packed with parents and little kids. What little I saw of the publicity suggested that it was more of a thriller. I imagined hordes of scared kids, or me bored by what turned out to be a kiddie movie.

Anyway . . . . this was a hoot! Maybe a hoot and a half. It takes the central notion of the Padgett story (toy from the future found by kids, who learn to Think Differently) and embeds it in a movie very much like E.T. in feel. The toys the kids find are really freaky and futuristic in a mineralo-organic way. The "Mimzey" of the title is a stuffed rabbit / supercomputer teaching tool.

Rainn Wilson, who plays the arrogant dweeb assistant manager on "The Office," is great as a space cadet science teacher.

There's some borderline new-agey stuff, but you can forgive it as technology indistinguishable from magic.

As I bonus, I got two miniature Mimzey dolls. I'm not sure whether I'll give these to my nieces or save them for ten years and then sell them on eBay.

Posted March 11, 2007 12:42 AM by Stefan Jones

Stefan's mention of The Last Mimzy reminds me that we also went to a preview showing of a movie this week, Starter For Ten. As the title implies, University Challenge is a central part of the movie.

My short description: it's a British version of the 1980s John Hughes movies, with a protagonist who'd be right at home in Making Light comment threads. Recommended.

Posted March 11, 2007 1:04 AM by Christopher Davis

Thena @70, Fragano @78, me neither. Not out of snobbery; just never heard of it when it began and I don't watch much episodic television anyway. I'm beginning to regret getting into "Lost" since I have other things I'd (almost) rather do for the last hour before the late local news on Wednesdays.

Posted March 11, 2007 1:29 AM by Linkmeister

#70: No, I've also never seen any of it. Enjoyed the original Buffy movie with Kristy Swansen, and enjoyed Firefly (another tv series by the same guy who made Buffy), though. Don't want to give up n days of my life to watch all of Buffy, though; maybe irrational.

Also, the only cure I know for Second Sock Syndrome is just to knit two in tandem. Have two sets of needles of the base size; two skeins of yarn. Cast on and knit cuff #1, then set it aside and cast on and knit cuff #2. Knit down to heel turning #1, knit down to hell turning #2; and so on.

Posted March 11, 2007 1:37 AM by Anne

(notice how I snuck in that "hell turning"? I thought you might like that.)

Seriously, though -- parallel sock knitting is the only way. I do all my socks this way. Learned the lesson on my first sock, which was a pain, and I finished it, and have never even managed to cast on for the mate. The only way for me to finish a pair is for #2 to never be more than one section behind. That way when I finish #1, there's only a couple of hours of work left.

Posted March 11, 2007 1:40 AM by Anne

I avoided Buffy at first because it sounded silly. The movie was good, but where could they go from there?

But then, when I heard it was a smart and rich show, I avoided it because it sounded like too much of a monkey puzzle. Too much brain-share required to follow it. This is why I avoid Lost and why I feel bad, sometimes, about following the new BSG.

Posted March 11, 2007 1:41 AM by Stefan Jones

meredith #38: You had to upstage me, didn't you? Though I see no one's answered you yet...

Emily H #77: I love musical theatre on odd subjects.
Have you seen Jeanne and the Perfect Guy? French musical about AIDS; one of the very best movies I've ever seen.

PNH #80: Mind you, I'm one of that crazy minority of people whose favorite season is #6.
Oooh! Oooh! Me too! Although my favorite villain is the Mayor, I'm still season 6 all the way.

Actually, ooh ooh me too to just about everything everyone's been saying about Buffy. Especially the stuff about her being an asshole. She doesn't get to not deal with things just because she's the main character of a TV show. One of my favorite things about that show is that it seemed like every season (and, on a miniature level, almost every episode) stripped away another layer of comfortable illusion about the universe it took place in. You think vampires are all bad? Nope. You think watchers are all good? Nope. You think slayers are all good? Nope. You think the system of slayerdom is good? HELL no. Genius show.

Now I'm all pissed off, again, that Whedon's no longer on the Wonder Woman movie.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:02 AM by ethan

I can remember being in fifth grade or so and wandering through the stacks of my public library looking for a particular kind of book. Title and author didn't matter. It had to have a rocket ship on the sticker on the spine and the jacket had to be obviously old: sketchy cover art in two or three colors at most, dust jacket scratched and dulled by years of handling, pages thick and speckled with bits of fiber. The ones that had a blank cover, usually some color seen only on institutional furniture, with the title and author stamped on the spine were also worth a look.

I had no idea that I was immersing myself in the heroic age of science fiction. I just knew the stuff was good. A similar hunt in your public library might yield some gems as well.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:26 AM by Jenny Islander

Can't add anything to the recommendations except Hugh Lofting's Dr. Dolittle books, and to enthusiastically second Edward Eager and John Bellairs. And Narnia, especially "Prince Caspian," which a 10-year-old boy ought to appreciate, what with all the kids camping out on their own in the woods and the big swordfight between Peter and the evil King Miraz. As for Andre Norton, I've always felt that some of her books were wonderful and the rest terrible -- no in-betweens. I loved "Star Gate" and read it dozens of times when I was about 12 -- read it again recently, in fact -- but the Witch World books left me absolutely cold.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:33 AM by Tehanu

JamesK, it's only in the last couple of centuries that a teenager would have been considered non-adult for so long. OK, there's a lot of cultural variations, and being a woman complicates things enormously.

But it occurs to me that the death rate is a partial answer to the problem of how just one Slayer can cover the whole world. The Watchers are still a problem--how can they organise--but maybe if the Slayer isn't within reach of the most threatening place, she has to die.

And, until Buffy, nobody has ever been able to finally finish off a Hellmouth because, sooner or later, another becomes more threatening.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:46 AM by Dave Bell

Patrick's initial quote recalls an earlier cinematic moment that may have inspired Buffy's and Giles's exchange, or that anyway hits a similar note. Though more compressed.

In Luc Besson's 1994 cult thriller/comedy THE PROFESSIONAL, Jean Reno portrays Leon, a reclusive, somewhat childlike European hit man living in NYC. Down the hall lives a tough kid named Mathilda, played by the 12-year-old Natalie Portman. Leon zealously ignores his neighbors, but he's seen Mathilda around.

One day he encounters her in the hall, smoking and gazing darkly into the stairwell. She sits so as to conceal her eye, blackened for no good reason by her worthless drug dealer dad.

After a pause, Mathilda asks, "Is life always this hard, or is it just when you're a kid?"

Leon considers a moment, then decides to tell her the truth. "Always. Always like dis."

Like Whedon and his writers, Besson expertly interweaves light notes and dark, tragedy and pathos and asskicking all shot through with humor ...

You know. It all definitely helps with the delightenment.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:47 AM by Bob Devney

Happy Birthday,Marilee!

Posted March 11, 2007 4:22 AM by Nina Armstrong

Season 6 of Buffy is not by any means my favorite, but I didn't dislike it the way so many other fans of the series did. (S4 was my least favorite, hands down.) I just think they could've expressed the same storyline in, say, half the episodes they chose to use, and been far less heavy-handed with the 'magic as a drug' thing. But it also contains a couple of my favorite episodes (the musical and Tabula Rasa come to mind), and while it may have not done it in the smoothest way possible, it was inevitable that they'd have to do at least one good arc on the downside of non-Slayer power.

Though frankly, I've yet to forget ME for the way they chose to set off that final storyline, as obvious a choice as it was.

I avoided Buffy for two seasons because I generally greatly dislike series spun off from movies. However, I was talked into watching it, and the first episodes I saw were the closing episodes of S2 and the first episode, then new, of S3. That hooked me, in a way I honestly think S1 would not have -- S1 is not by any means bad, but it suffered the usual growing pains of a new show and that probably would've lost me, at least for a while.

Posted March 11, 2007 4:27 AM by Tina

Dan Layman-Kennedy:

PNH #80: You're certainly far from alone - Season 6 is my wife's favorite too. (Me, I'm in that rare made tribe of Season 7 supporters, though my personal all-around favorite is 4.)

At the moment, my ranking is 3,2,1,5,4,7,6 but we're currently rewatching and this may change.

We were also late converts (I actually, ahem, brought the first season home after it started coming regularly into the conversation around here). I wonder if coming to Buffy on DVD has any impact on being able to appreciate the later seasons that were unpopular when they aired, the same way some comics only really hold together once they're collected into trades.

I suspect that's certainly true of 7. Fortunately, the first time I saw it was as bundles of bootlegs, months ahead of UK transmission. I gather it was shown in the US just a couple of new eps at a time, interspersed with gaps and repeats, which given the nature of that episode in particular would have just killed it as a viewing experience. We're also interleaving the Buffy episodes with contemporary Angel episodes and so picking up continuity we missed first time around since the two shows were shown months out of phase and not even on the same TV channels over here. Great, great TV.

Posted March 11, 2007 4:34 AM by Rob Hansen

which given the nature of that episode in particular

Season, damnit, given the nature of that season.

Posted March 11, 2007 4:39 AM by Rob Hansen

Out of the books I read as a kid, I remember the Asimov robot books especially well: they were one of the few things I read as a kid that didn't seem radically different when I reread them as an adult.

I'm fond of Garth Nix, especially his Sabriel series, though it is a bit dark. Shade's Children, a stand-alone novel, is amazing. He also has a new series targeted even younger, which is nonetheless shockingly readable for adults.

(It's worth mentioning again that Dianna Wynne Jones can do no wrong.)

Posted March 11, 2007 4:44 AM by Heresiarch

Biggles, if you can get it. Perfect for boys who are not sure if they like to read. Biff! Zoom! Watch out for ejaculating natives!

Seriously, a couple of the early wartime short story Biggles books might be perfect. Biplanes on the Western Front would no doubt seem alternate universe to him, rather than historical fiction.

Posted March 11, 2007 4:44 AM by Andrew Brown

#70: Am I the only person on the InnerTubes who has never seen an episode of Buffy or any of the spin-offs?

[sticks up an embarrassed hand]

Owing to general hearing difficulties I somehow lost the habit of TV. 2006 was an unusually indulgent year, when I watched subtitled DVDs of both Howl's Moving Castle and The Incredibles. I'm still recovering from this excess....

Posted March 11, 2007 5:03 AM by Dave Langford

#87 Dan Layman-Kennedy: "I wonder if coming to Buffy on DVD has any impact on being able to appreciate the later seasons that were unpopular when they aired, the same way some comics only really hold together once they're collected into trades."

Well, I watched all of Buffy on DVD, in less than a year, and I love the hell out of seasons six and seven*. The friends of mine from whom I borrowed the DVDs, who had seen Buffy as it was aired, didn't like the later seasons at all.

#94 ethan: "Now I'm all pissed off, again, that Whedon's no longer on the Wonder Woman movie."

Joss Whedon was on the--*sigh* I hate it when I hear good news in the context of "Hey, did you hear about awesome thing X? Yeah, it's not happening anymore."

*Excepting the part where Joss Whedon KILLED MY FAVORITE CHARACTER, THAT JERK.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:10 AM by Heresiarch

This thread confirms my suspicion that some of you are too intelligent for your own good. Mimi asked for recs for a kid who reads at a fairly low level, and people are suggesting Andre Norton and CS Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle and E Nesbit. Seriously, people! I can believe that no-one here ever struggled with reading, but have you never come into contact with anyone who doesn't devour highly complicated intellectual books effortlessly and with glee?

For a kid who is vastly intelligent but has a specific problem with reading, such as dyslexia, a sophisticated book can work for reading aloud or reading with a lot of support. But there's more to reading than just deciphering the words.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:30 AM by Individ-ewe-al

Apropos of practically nothing else in this thread, the "50 States in 10 Minutes" test (linked in Particles) is made much easier when one was made to memorize the song "Fifty Nifty United States" in grade school. I clocked in at 8:05 to spare without trying particularly hard, which almost made it feel like using the song was cheating. (Incidentally, Google informs me that the song was actually a Ray Charles song! I had no idea my teachers played me Ray Charles songs in school.)

Silly tests of memory recall.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:50 AM by Kevin Riggle

JamesK wrote:

Slayers are the hand-grenade in the arsenal of the Forces of Good. Small, compact, and they do a whole lot of damage when they go off, but they're a one shot. Until Buffy. And they way they explored that in the final seasons worked for me in a weird twisted way

Okay, comment coming up with major spoiler for those who haven't yet seen season 7, which is why I've hidden it behind ROT-13:

V ybirq gur jnl gur frevrf raqrq, jvgu Ohssl ernyvmvat gur bayl ernfba gurer jnf bayl bar Fynlre ng nal gvzr jnf orpnhfr n ybat gvzr ntb n ohapu bs thlf unq qrpvqrq gung jnf ubj vg jnf tbvat gb or naq gung abj, jvgu n jvgpu nf cbjreshy nf Jvyybj ba ure grnz, gurl pbhyq punatr gung ehyr. Vg znqr cresrpg frafr va gur pbagrkg bs gur srznyr rzcbjrezrag gung jnf bar bs gur gurzrf bs gur fubj gung gurl qb guvf, naq jnf whfg fb *evtug* n abgr gb raq gur frevrf ba.

Posted March 11, 2007 6:18 AM by Rob Hansen

Just to satisfy my inner Trickster, I'll point out to all the people out there who have to yet to get serious about Buffy that after you've finished watching that show (or better yet, in parallel with it), you should really see Angel.

The themes aren't quite the same: Buffy is, at least partly, about growing up Slayer, and Angel is a bit older than Buffy (maybe a couple of centuries), although he's still not really comfortable with his true nature. But there's that same mix of comedy, tragedy, drama, and general geekiness that makes up anything that Whedon does.

Oh, and I just looked at the timestamps on the last few posts; I'm not the only one who's up talking about old TV shows at 4 in the morning. That helps a little when I get into arguments with the little voice in my head that tells me respectable people don't do things like that, you know, the voice that was implanted in early childhood by the Ministry of Social Conformance. It's nice to have something to say other than, "I've known for decades I wasn't respectable."

Posted March 11, 2007 7:23 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Teresa @83
For some time now, a part of my brain has been chewing on the question of why magical tomes are so scarce and expensive.

Because some things can't be printed on paper with moveable type and perfect bound. Magical tomes have to be hand-written on vellum*, hand sewn and bound.

-----
* Or parchment. Or whatever you call it when it's made, not of sheep or cow, but of some other beastie (human vellum for the black-covered tomes on the left-hand side of the shop, demon** vellum for the white-covered tomes to the right.)

** The vampire vellum books, written in fluorescent ink, are in the windowless back room. If you buy one of them, do it at night, or we can wrap it in blackout cloth for you.

Posted March 11, 2007 7:25 AM by abi

I knew a severely dyslexic* kid in school who got very deeply into reading with graphic novels. He was big into ElfQuest, but there's a lot out there to choose from.

-----
* he never noticed when I decorated a birthday cake in mirror-writing.

Posted March 11, 2007 7:32 AM by abi

#111: no, grimoires are expensive for the same reason that university textbooks and scientific journals are. They're produced for a small and highly fragmented market - there aren't that many wizards around, after all, and with the exception of some of the most basic compendia (Huskbinder & Matterstraw, for example, or Kipvern & Tercell), each grimoire will only appeal to a small fraction of them. Also, wizardry is a fast-moving discipline; a grimoire rarely goes into a second printing before it becomes obsolete. So publishers have to break even on a small number of hardback sales. And then there's the hassle of peer review...

Posted March 11, 2007 7:45 AM by ajay

Rob Hanson @ 101
I wonder if coming to Buffy on DVD has any impact on being able to appreciate the later seasons that were unpopular when they aired, the same way some comics only really hold together once they're collected into trades.

Probably so. My wife and I started watching Buffy somewhere into season 3, and Angel in the middle of season 1. We caught up with Buffy because the local schlock TV station was showing it as 3 different series: one in season 1, one in season 2, and one in season 3. Juggling who knew what and when was a job worthy of a Presidential assistant. But we picked up the thread of Angel on DVD much later, and the two experiences were very different.

I think I prefer to do it in massive loads if I can afford the time. In the case of Buffy I was recovering simultaneously from surgery and the dotbomb implosion and had a lot of time on my hands. And that's also how I read Sandman: after all the collections had come out, one huge, mind-boogying (stet) lump of Mythos every few weeks. I think I may have fried a few neurons in the process, but it was well worth it.

It also makes a difference if you see or read a series in the expected order or not. With Sandman, I started with "A Game Of You" which is somewhere in the middle of the 10 collections, but I think it burned out all my evaluation circuits, and I was hooked immediately.

Posted March 11, 2007 7:49 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

ajay and abi

All true for your mass market grimoires and such (holy crap, I'm seeing recently published books in some of the scientific fields I track at over $180!), but there's another consideration for the books of great power. Any book containing power beyond your basic spells for sex, drugs, and violence requires infusion from a distilled source of the power. This usually means putting a human sacrifice in the juicer (sorry, that image popped into my head and it won't go away). As you can imagine, just paying protection to the local witchfinder ups the cost of production considerably, and sacrifice has a lot of other costs (the soprano chorus runs over $400 an hour at scale).

Now in the words of the bard (no, the other bard): "And now I hie me off to bed, to sleep off all the nonsense that I've said."

Posted March 11, 2007 8:01 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

mimi @#4: For what it's worth, the first book that popped into my head when I read your question was Martyn Godfrey's The Vandarian Incident.

Posted March 11, 2007 8:02 AM by eliddell

From the comments we have perused we do not judge the largely ignorant audience from this site to be our customers. Our clients are mostly high net worth magicians or magical firms that are well-versed with grimoire production. They recognize quality materials and workmanship and are knowledgeable about costs. This is wholly unlike many readers here who are bent on propagating sweat-scriptorium facilities, especially in less developed dimensions.

If you're willing to settle for machinery-sewn poor quality spellbooks or inferior grade typography passed off as Mystic Runes, etc, I suppose that's your choice. But that is book publication, not provision of magical tomes. You pay top grimoire publishers for accuracy, illumination, spells that don't require you to turn a page at the wrong moment, pronunciation guides in the International Phonetic Alphabet*, and quality materials meant to last no matter how much candle wax you drop on it. That's what differentiates our works from the rest.

Our customers are not just high net-worth magicians with a degree of refinement but also, more importantly, well- and broadly-educated. From long habit, they buy good quality and are not averse to paying fairly for it.

This may seem high-handed, but it is necessary to be so when dealing with riff raff. You may "have magical talent" - anyone can claim that nowadays - but you obviously don't know how to use it wisely.

Regards, CEO, Tome Home Enterprises
------
* so that your Southern accent doesn't summon a demon when all you wanted was a nice cup of Earl Grey, black, no sugar

Posted March 11, 2007 8:13 AM by CEO Tome Home

My big problem with season 6 of Buffy is that it wasn't any fun. I watched the show for witty banter and cool magic and character interaction, not to see people working in fast food restaurants. Maybe that's escapism; if so, I'll make the most of it.

My season ranking is 2135764, although the first three are quite close and I can easily deal with people of other tastes ranking them differently.

I got into Buffy in the middle of Season 2, owing to all the buzz about it on RASFF, much the same way that I later wound up getting into Veronica Mars. I didn't have BitTorrent back then, but luckily I did happen to know someone who had most of the episodes on tape. (Also Buffy was a bit more new-viewer-friendly than Veronica -- which I admit is setting the bar rather low.) I remember that the first new episode I saw ("Phases") had a scene with evil Angel attacking a girl, and I could tell that even though of course I didn't recognize him, I was supposed to.

(I almost never watch new shows, I wait for the buzz to mount. This leaves me with more time for reading books and Usenet and Making Light. I'm toying with the idea of getting into Heroes.)

Posted March 11, 2007 8:23 AM by David Goldfarb

I note that -- for thems that have it -- Fox Movie Channel is broadcasting Buffy tVS (the movie) at 4pm Eastern Stand-- er, I mean, Daylight Time today.

Posted March 11, 2007 8:26 AM by Michael Weholt

Incidentally, at Worldcon last year they had a showing of the musical episode with audience singalong. I was afraid it was going to be excruciating, but actually nearly everybody was quite good, and it was a lot of fun. It was obvious that a lot of audience members owned the album. (Including me.) Perhaps the coolest bit was the audience spontaneously self-organizing by sex for Xander and Anya's duet.

Posted March 11, 2007 8:28 AM by David Goldfarb

#107: I didn't know any English when I entered first grade. I read below grade level until 4th grade. So I could knock this question out of the park... if I could better remember what I was reading then.

I was definitely reading Madeleine L'Engle. I remember skipping the first three chapters of _A Wrinkle in Time_ and reading them later. Even then, I had a thing for wordplay. So I kept reading stuff like Norton Juster's Phantom Tollbooth or anything by Ellen Raskin.

Other than that, I think I read more short story anthologies than novels. I was up for anything as long as I knew that, even if I was way over my head, it would be over soon. It's frustrating, but there's something to be said for getting over your head occasionally, as long as you're not left to drown. I may owe my ability to read to the SF anthologies that were in the library in the early '80s. However, even now, I favor short stories over novels. I think the reason I sped [heh] through Accelerando is because it's structured as a set of novellas.

I read LotR by 7th grade. So it's possible to catch up. (OTOH, I'm also not dyslexic.)

Posted March 11, 2007 9:13 AM by JC

#119:That reminds me, I noticed that NPR has been exceptional about referring to the shifted time as "Daylight Saving Time" (singular, not "Savings"). Have they always been this diligent about this?

I don't mind the time shift now. I don't know I'll feel the same way in November. Does anyone else find it weird that we spend more of the year in DST than we do in standard time? (Then again, I also worry that, one day, the gov't will define sunrise at the middle of a time zone as 7am.)

Posted March 11, 2007 9:25 AM by JC

I saw the movie "300" last night. It was worse than I expected, but better than the time I slammed my car's door on my finger tip. And better than Highlander 2.

Posted March 11, 2007 9:32 AM by Serge

Yes, yes, sigh, the Buffy season 6 where she didn't waitress [which she KNEW HOW TO DO] and worked in fast food instead. Some of the absolute best moments of the show, stuck into a whole lot of jngpuvat n sevraq fperj hc gurve yvsr ubeevoyl, bar jrrx ng n gvzr... naq vg qbrfa'g trg nal orggre.

It was either season 5 or 6 where a friend [who didn't watch] came up to visit on Buffy night. Every commercial break I was like, "And that's Anya, Xander's ex-fiancee who's a [long story], and that's Dawn, who's a [nother long story]"... Buffy was the exact opposite of a soap opera, where you can start watching after six years off and be caught up in a day.

Posted March 11, 2007 9:39 AM by Sandy B.

Individ-ewe-al@107: We are, perhaps, not so clueless as you think. My sister teaches learning-disabled elementary-school kids. She regularly gets them to read several grade levels above their "ability" by giving them something they're really interested in. They rise to the challenge. One of her favorite things to do is to give her kids a particular Charles de Lint story, and once they've finished it, tell these LD 5th-grade kids that they just read a story on an 8th-grade level. The impact of that on kids who've been told they're dumb all thir lives is significant.

Back to Buffy: If Season 1 had been the first I saw, I wouldn't have bothered watching the rest. Season 6 is my favorite, although I have not forgiven ME for wimping out and going for the stupid, heavy-handed "magic as a drug" metaphor, and that completely lame reason for Buffy's sudden reinterest in life. Puh-leeze. It would have been more believable for Buffy to turn to Dawn and say, "I feel so much better now, because there are six minutes left in this season and we need to set up my emotional state for next year." (Barb of Sleeping Jaguars does a much better Season 6 arc-ending than ME did.)

That season is why I can't listen to Michelle Branch's "Goodbye to You" without bursting into tears, which is so wussy of me that I can't stand myself.

Posted March 11, 2007 9:46 AM by Aconite

Re: Second Sock Syndrome -

I'm not sure if it's a cure as such, but what got me knitting the second sock of the first pair was that I'd *bought more sock yarn* and only had one set of #3 double points, so I had to finish the second sock to get it off the darn needles so I could use them for something else.

This obviously won't work for experienced knitters who have multiple sets of each size needles.

(As it stands I now have 1.6 socks and the heels have somehow turned out to be very different sizes even though I used the same yarn, same needles, same pattern, and same stitch count, so I can only conclude I've done something weird with the tension, and will have to just figure out which of my feet is smaller so I can put the smaller sock on it because I'm not undoing all that work.)

Posted March 11, 2007 9:59 AM by Thena

At that age - or what I'm guessing is that age, I'm not up on the grade system - I was reading juveniles by Asimov (Heinlein's came later, when I was old enough to look through second-hand bookshops on my own - until then, I was restricted to my local library and my family's collection), anything by Harry Harrison (I spent years looking for another copy of The Men from P.I.G. and R.O.B.O.T.), and anything by Monica Hughes.

I also have very fond memories of anything issued under the Dragon Books imprint - the dragons on the spine were almost as good a guarantee of quality for me as the name 'Kay Webb' inside a Puffin paperback. Speaking of which, one of the books I fell most in love with at that age was James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks & The Wonderful O. It's a pair of funny, magical, poetic fairy tales, and for me it deserves to sit up there in the same golden-light-and-silver-bells category as Diana Wynne Jones.

I've never met anyone else who was brought up on it, though, and only ever seen three copies, two of which I own. Reassure me that others have encountered this book too?

Posted March 11, 2007 10:16 AM by Sam Kelly

I was once required to write a story for reluctant readers. It had to be action-packed, fast, exciting, SFNal (because that was what I was picked to provide) and short, because that was the name of the series. Ten thousand words, restricted vocabulary.

I did my level best, and, oddly, I'm quite proud of the result. Gave it the ol' elementary school try. But the thing is, I doubt that it hit its target audience. Kids that don't read, don't read. The problem is far larger than giving them something that they might read, if they read. They come from places, cultures, homes, backgrounds, where people don't read. So they don't read.

Beats me what the answer is. I seem to be saying that a lot, these days.

Posted March 11, 2007 10:45 AM by Dave Luckett

Ah, Buffy. I didn't start watching it for years (lack of TV always puts me behind on these things) - not until a friend decided to run a Buffycon and drafted me to help. At that point I figured I should find out what the fuss was about. The first concom meeting was utter confusion for me - discussing actor guests, shifting back and forth between actor names and character names, while I sat in a corner and went "what? who? huh?" and my friend tried to give me two-line character summaries by way of orientation.

I watched the first season over a few weeks right before Buffycon and enjoyed it. Then I started the second and spent most of the convention by myself in the green room with a laptop watching it episode by episode (not as antisocial as it sounds; I was running the green room and was supposed to be there. When feeling out of place at a con, find people and feed them.) When I left the room I wandered confused around the convention trying to stay unspoilered. The third season I watched a week or so later. The fourth nearly turned me off - least favorite so far. The fifth, I watched in one completely mad marathon over about 36 hours two years ago January, eating in front of the nonTV and barely stopping to sleep. And then I stopped dead. I've never gone on. And while I've watched the first four seasons a couple more times, I've never managed to re-watch five. It just hit so hard.

I've been thoroughly spoiled for seasons 6 and 7 at this point and I, um, downloaded some clips of what I consider the juicy bits of season 6. But I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the actual episodes. I did read some post-5 fanfic, which was mostly bad but occasionally excellent.

I had an amusing moment at the last show I sold at, when a customer wandered into my booth, pointed at a rather expensive piece, and said "See. Want. Buy." I added 50% to the price on the spot and he paid it and bought several other items without a quibble. I love customers like that.

I'd be curious to hear what other Buffy fans thought about Fray. I really liked it.

Posted March 11, 2007 10:47 AM by Susan

#88 ::: Stefan Jones

"Mimsy" was indeed horrific, and not just for the parents. So the kids jaunt off to another dimension, presumably a one-way trip. They may be time-distant from anyone else that will be there, marooned alone.

It's bothered me for decades. Did anyone else have this reaction?

Posted March 11, 2007 11:04 AM by Carol Kimball

Re: suggested reading for children - I have no idea if he's still in print, or whether his books made it across the Atlantic, but Nicholas Fisk's worth checking out. Cracking Good SF Reads which I devoured with great glee when I was a young'un.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:15 AM by James E

Another non-Buffy viewer here, sigh. I'm putting it in the Netflix queue, along with various others recommended in this thread.

Thena, after the ML Blue Moon post, which prompted reading through the Yarn Harlot archives, I got back into knitting and am on my second pair of socks. The deal with myself was,
1) ONLY socks, and
2) finish each pair before starting another, and
3) not to buy more sock yarn until finished.

The excellent yarn store in Boulder and ebay have blown #3. I do find myself regularly, absent-mindedly, adding "another set of Addi Turbo circs and DPNS" to my shopping list. I will go cross them off again.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:16 AM by Carol Kimball

Andrew Brown #104: A couple of the 'Biggles' books might be less than perfectly suitable if the young man in question is not white (Biggles in the West Indies comes to mind). I say this as a man of colour who adored Biggles as a lad.

(They're also not easy to find in the United States.)

Posted March 11, 2007 11:25 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Abi #111: But where do you keep the books on elf vellum? The ones with the spells that will take one to any place in Middle Earth or Aman that one desires?

Posted March 11, 2007 11:29 AM by Fragano Ledgister

CEO Tome Home #117: That's all very well, but if your grimoires are only written in languages like Indian, with limited spell-casting capacity, then they're not going to be much use. A cheap grimoire, with spells in a language with real spell-casting capacity, like Fbcubzber or Yrrgfcrnx or Erchoyvpna or even Jungrire vg vf gung Ohfu fcrnxf, works as well or better as a well-bound grimoire in Indian or 54|35p17(h.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:38 AM by Fragano Ledgister

And, of course, Fbcubzber should have been Fbcubzbevp. Silly me!

Posted March 11, 2007 11:40 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @134
Long answer:
Elves don't seem to die quite like humans and demons. Some sentience seems to remain in them until long past the point where it's possible to make vellum out of their skins. Combining that residual consciousness with a teleportation spell is...problematic, because the book itself can invoke the spells*.

Short answer:
Go off in the woods and catch the damned things yourself. I'm done trying.

-----
* yes, even the ones with a spoken element. Page vibrations can make sounds, you know. Or sometimes they simply coerce the weak-willed** who come into their proximity to say certain things.

** student wizards, Elf Liberation Front*** activists, cleaning staff

*** yes, ELF activists; they're weak-willed and have bad taste in acronyms. We use them for the sinister-side books.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:40 AM by abi

Karen #75: even better than the Oz books is Baum's Queen Zixi of Ix, available from Dover. It's more tightly focused than Oz, with less random stuff and a smaller cast; more like a traditional fairy tale in themes and setting, but with Baum's wackiness (and puns) in full force. Also it could be regarded as a precursor of the X-Men, as there is a group of characters with weird and very limited powers who learn to use them to best effect.

Kevin @ #108: I "cheated" by using Rockapella's "Capital Song" and got done with about a minute to spare.

Dave Luckett @ #128: I don't disagree with your assessment, but I feel compelled to point out that many people of my acquaintance are "the only person in the family who reads". That had to start somewhere.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:41 AM by Lila

I think everyone agrees that the magic-as-drugs thread of Season 6 was badly-conceived. Also unnecessary. Vg jnf nyernql jryy-rfgnoyvfurq gung Jvyybj'f jrnxarff jnf n gnfgr sbe cbjre, sbe pbagebyyvat bgure crbcyr; vg jnfa'g arprffnel gb pbagevir na Rivy Pnpxyvat Chfure fgenvtug bhg bs n 1971 qeht-jneavat svyz va beqre gb znxr vg oryvrinoyr gung fur pbhyq tb bire gur yvar. That said, I think the strengths of the season survive its weaknesses.

I certainly agree that if I'd been watching it on a week-by-week basis, it would have been a miserable slog, because Season 6 is all about everything falling apart. Inhaling whole seasons of episodic TV at a time, via DVD or coughdownloadingcough, really is a different experience. I think I've made this observation before.

Ethan, #94: "One of my favorite things about that show is that it seemed like every season (and, on a miniature level, almost every episode) stripped away another layer of comfortable illusion about the universe it took place in. You think vampires are all bad? Nope. You think watchers are all good? Nope. You think slayers are all good? Nope. You think the system of slayerdom is good? HELL no. Genius show." That's as concise and perfect an expression of what I like about it as I've read anywhere.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:43 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Abi #137: Unfortunately, the state legislature has shortened the hunting season (usual nonsense about endangered species), so it's rather hard for me to track one down (though I do have convenient woods).

On the other hand, I am in the market for a grimoire written on unicorn vellum. There's a lot of demand for that kind of spell these days.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:46 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @140
Unfortunately, the state legislature has shortened the hunting season (usual nonsense about endangered species)

That only applies to sport elf book hunting. You can hunt them year round for scientific purposes.

On the other hand, I am in the market for a grimoire written on unicorn vellum. There's a lot of demand for that kind of spell these days.

Those have a long pre-order list.

Material supply has been a problem lately, because our prime unicorn vellum source (K Haggard & Son, t/a Red Bull Enterprises) appears to have gone out of business. We've been forced to fall back on exotica suppliers (Fortuna's, in particular), but the quality of their wares are uneven at best.

Posted March 11, 2007 11:59 AM by abi

Happy birthday, marilee!

Posted March 11, 2007 12:10 PM by Serge

Recommendations for a kid... Yes, Tim Eldred's Grease Monkey. (More coming, Teresa?)

And Girl Genius... The later stories are available on the net so you can decide if they're appropriate for the kid.

Posted March 11, 2007 12:12 PM by Serge

CEO Tome Home... pronunciation guides in the International Phonetic Alphabet so that your Southern accent doesn't summon a demon when all you wanted was a nice cup of Earl Grey, black, no sugar

"I asked for a chtonic menace, not a tuna sandwich."

Posted March 11, 2007 12:15 PM by Serge

#130:

I always figured that the kids went off to the future to play. They couldn't understand their parents anymore, and vice-versa, so for them it might not have been a bad move. Your Mileage May Vary. Still, a gut-punch of a story.

The movie depicts some of the scary-alienation stuff, but has a happy ending.

Neat film.

Posted March 11, 2007 12:27 PM by Stefan Jones

Thena (70): No. I haven't either. In my case, it's because I can't handle vampires. At all.

Posted March 11, 2007 1:26 PM by Mary Aileen

#139
One thing I've become very conscious of ever since I watched the first 5 seasons of the Sopranos, one per week, is how the pacing of broadcast TV shows is so much different than it is for non-commercial TV. This was greatly emphasized by watching a few seasons of Buffy, Firefly and NYPD Blue where there isn't any commercials. So you really notice all the mini-climaxes, which now seem to have no real purpose. I've come to greatly prefer the uninterrupted block of TV as the pacing seems much more natural. Now I'm wondering how something like Buffy or Firefly could have been improved if they'd have been able to use the same format. (Not that there really can ever be an answer in this sector of the Multi-verse). But still.

Posted March 11, 2007 1:43 PM by Jason

Thena (70) and Mary Eileen (146): Vampires? Fine with me. Buffy? No.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:02 PM by Faren Miller

Sam Kelly (127): I haven't seen that particular edition, but I adore both of those books. Look for Thurber's The White Deer, which is equally wonderful.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:21 PM by Mary Aileen

Carol Kimball @130

I first read "Mimsy were the Borogoves" at the age of 11, and it bothered me then. I've reread it several times since then, and it bothers me every time. Just because those kids learned more than Alice doesn't mean they've learned enough to survive either physically or psychically in what's clearly a most alien evironment.

It's supposed to bother you; however light the tone of the story, it is, deeply and most sincerely a horror story. That's what "Lewis Padget" did best, whatever pseudonyms they happened to be using. Read "Two-Handed Engine", or "The Devil You Know" or especially "The Twonky"; if they don't scare you, you're probably related to the boy who left home to learn about the shivers.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:22 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

CEO Tome Home @ 117

I assume by "Southern accents" you mean London accents like Cockney and suchlike?

Posted March 11, 2007 2:26 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Abi #141: Unfortunately, it's been ruled that travel to Middle Earth and Aman is not a scientific purpose. I was advised to seek a scientific porpoise, but that might be a problem of accent.

You might want to consider J. Fallwell Enterprises as a source of mythological supplies. I gather they now have a surplus of eye of newt.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:26 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Patrick @ 139

While I agree with everything you say about season 6, I'm forced to admit 2 guilty pleasures in watching that arc: V ybir jngpuvat Wrss Xbore purj gur fprarel, naq V unir n pehfu ba Rivy Jvyybj. Fur'f fb zhpu zber sha guna Jvzcl Jvyybj, rkprcg jura fur'f va Cebgrpgvir Zbgure zbqr qrsraqvat ure ybire.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:36 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

I was advised to seek a scientific porpoise

Ay Aay iye iye brgrgrgr klik.

Ok, that's not really the weird part. The weird part is that "porpoise" and "wookie" are actually the same language. The only difference that you might hear is really an outcome of the acoustic differences of water versus air.

How it evolved in this manner is a mystery.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:52 PM by Greg London

PNH #139: Thanks! Also, re: Inhaling whole seasons of episodic TV at a time, via DVD or coughdownloadingcough, really is a different experience. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but TV shows on DVD is the greatest invention of the new millennium. (Thanks, spelling reference.) The only show I'm watching as it airs currently is Veronica Mars, and as each season ends I'll buy the DVDs and rewatch it all as quickly as possible. Even aside from the fact that I'm rewatching a mystery knowing its conclusion, it's an entirely different (and in some ways even better) experience.

Jason #147: So you really notice all the mini-climaxes, which now seem to have no real purpose. I've come to greatly prefer the uninterrupted block of TV as the pacing seems much more natural. Now I'm wondering how something like Buffy or Firefly could have been improved if they'd have been able to use the same format.

Whedon's said (er...somewhere) that the five-acts-broken-up-by-commercials format was a great help in teaching him how to pace a story. I think I agree; just about any truly great hour of television I can think of (right now the two that come to me strongest are the first season finale of Veronica Mars and the episode of Buffy that dealt with Joyce's death) are particularly strong in the way they took advantage of the act structure and commercial breaks.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:55 PM by ethan

Bruce 150: "The Twonky" gave me nightmares. And if there's one thing I hate more than horror movies, it's movies with happy endings based on stories without. If the movie of MWTB has a happy ending...that would suck.

I saw that story as a metaphor for the sentiments expressed in this poem. I've certainly moved on to places where my parents can't follow. They can understand what I do for a living, but little or none of what I do for enjoyment.

Posted March 11, 2007 2:59 PM by Xopher

To chime in with the two (?) people upstream: no, I've never watched Buffy the TV show.

I've been thinking about renting the DVDs lately, on the grounds that anything which this many smart people adore this much can't be all bad.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:05 PM by Clifton Royston

re: SF for young readers

The first book that came to mind is the truly wonderful Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH , because I was the age your reader is when I first encountered it. Then I thought "but is it SF?" which is patently silly...I have somehow never thought of it in that context before, but of course it is! I remember how excited I was a few years later when I realized what those letters stood for and that NIMH was a real place.

It so happens I work for mental health agency these days, and have had to learn to spell the letters out, because I was clearly annoying my colleagues by referring to our major grant-giving resource as "Nim".

As far as the other major theme in this thread, I just want to say that, as someone who came way late to the party, I'm enjoying all the Buffy talk...after refusing to be drawn in for years, my wife and I devoured all 7 seasons in about 6 months (yay, Netflix).

Posted March 11, 2007 3:05 PM by Lisa Spadafora

I stopped watching TV two years ago, and have only recently come to realize that I can watch TV series on DVD. I loved watching Firefly on DVD. I enjoyed the hell out of Buffy when I did have a TV, and wouldn';t at all mind buying the DVDs. I never saw Rome or The Sopranos, and probably won't because the level of violence in those shows is so high, but if I want to, I can. This is cool. This also means that I need to get a larger TV set; the 13" TV I do have is simply too small for the lean-back-in-recliner-eat-popcorn kind of viewing that I anticipate. Oh dear. Is there a cheap flat panel TV in my future?

Posted March 11, 2007 3:24 PM by Lizzy L

Xopher @ 156
Gotta agree with Gibran's sentiments. Especially after having my own kids grow up and take up lives I wouldn't have wanted, but which seem to suit them well. I "sort of" understand what they do, but then I was never well anchored to my own generation's norms, so I'm probably doing better than average.

There was a movie made of "The Twonky" in the 1950s; I haven't seen it, out of fear that the director, Arch Oboler, made his usual dogs' breakfast out of it.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:25 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

#156: RE movies saddled with inappropriate happy endings:

If Kubrick had directed "A.I.", I believe it would have turned out much as Speilberg's version but vg jbhyq unir raqrq haqre gur frn, jvgu gur yvggyr obl ebobg'f onggrevrf ehaavat bhg juvyr jvfuvat, jvfuvat, jvfuvat gung ur pbhyq orpbzr n Erny Obl.

Gur gnpxrq ba sne-shgher jvfu-shysvyyvat ebobg raqvat jnf na njshy orgenlny.

* * *

I can forgive "The Last Mimzy" for its happy ending because it is such a different story. There's no real pretense of adaptation or hommage.

* * *

"The Twonky" . . . that was way creepy.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:35 PM by Stefan Jones

RedMolly:

If your local used bookstores don't have Incredible Comparisons in stock, abebooks.com has several copies, just fyi.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:37 PM by Leslie in CA

Xopher @156 - Wow, thanks for that poem link. I know Sweet Honey in the Rock's a cappella setting of it, but the song leaves out the last five lines, which give the parents some credit and also some hope, I think. The truncated version always seemed a little harsh to me, though it was a great song for both orientation weekend and graduation at college, getting parents to let go of their precious kids.

As for Buffy, I've watched on and off - I saw all of seasons 2 and 3 in real time, but only bits and pieces of the rest. I'm too interested in everything to have remained unspoiled, but when I get free time (hah!) I'm planning on going back and watching the whole thing straight through. I'm not much for horror, though (even with levity), so I may have to do it in measured doses.

Posted March 11, 2007 3:38 PM by JillC

SpeakerToManagers @ #114:

It also makes a difference if you see or read a series in the expected order or not. With Sandman, I started with "A Game Of You" which is somewhere in the middle of the 10 collections, but I think it burned out all my evaluation circuits, and I was hooked immediately.

Hell yes. I actually bought The Kindly Ones (volume 9) first. A few pages in I knew I had to go back and read the beginning. So the next day I bought and read the first book, but then there was that copy of The Kindly Ones sitting at home which wouldn't let me not read it. After that, I filled in the ones in between in order, rationing them out over a period of about a year. The effect was rather odd, because I thought there were things that had to happen before The Kindly Ones that never appeared (e.g. more stories about Thessaly, more stories about Rose) and as I read each book and didn't find them, I kept expecting them to be in the next one. In the end I was confident that they would all be in Worlds' End, but then Worlds' End was mostly about brand new characters. The impression I got, in the end, was that I had read only a tiny subset of the stories that were there to be told. Which was entirely in keeping with the philosophy of the series, and part of what I love about it.

Oh, something else I love, related to some of the Buffy comments, is that Dream is a complete and utter idiot, especially early in the series. The fact that, as the hero, I expected him to be entitled to my automatic approval, and the amount of suffering he causes for himself and the people who are supposedly under his protection, makes his idiocy even more stunning.

Posted March 11, 2007 4:34 PM by Eleanor

Another book recommendation: the Beaver Towers series by Nigel Hinton.

Posted March 11, 2007 4:57 PM by Eleanor

#134: But where do you keep the books on elf vellum? The ones with the spells that will take one to any place in Middle Earth or Aman that one desires?

Well, for a start, elfskin can be both very fragile and very flammable. So keep it away from naked flames, cigarettes, burning pipeweed and so on. Smoking can seriously damage your elf.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:00 PM by ajay

Leslie, thanks for the tip. I recently unloaded a bunch of clutter on eBay and invested the proceeds in a Powell's gift card (in anticipation of being very poor after our upcoming move and having no book money), so I was hoping to be able to buy it through them... but abebooks will work just fine. It's really a fascinating book.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:05 PM by RedMolly

All: Yes, the John Bellairs books are fantastic. I love the way the stories are built on the real surviving American folkloric magic of the "Powwow Books", hexcraft, the pseudo-Agrippa grimoires, etc., vs. the wholly synthetic fantasy-story pmagic.

Eleanor @ #164:

I was fortunate enough to get introduced to Sandman right after The Doll's House collection came out, and was able to find (most of) the missing issues between then and when the storyline had got to, and keep up with it monthly, so I got to see most of the storyline as it unfolded. (That's the only comic book I've ever done that with.) Anyway yes, Thessaly just srung into the story fully developed in A Game of You. When you're following along, it doesn't seem so disconcerting.

If you've been missing her, there have been some other light but enjoyable storylines involving Thessaly, done in the Thessaly: Witch for Hire series. They really play up the contrast between Thessaly as one of the most powerful human beings in the world and she presents herself - mousy looking college student.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:10 PM by Clifton Royston

Stefan Jones @ 161 on A. I.: I hated the ending too, but for a different reason.

Gung jnf abg n unccl raqvat. Gur yvggyr obl tbg uvf zbgure onpx sbe bar qnl - fb jung? (Naq jul qvq vg unir gb or bayl bar qnl?) Ur'f n ebobg jub srryf yvxr n uhzna, naq ol guvf cbvag ur'f frireny gubhfnaq lrnef byq naq unf fcrag gur infg znwbevgl bs uvf rkvfgrapr va pbaqvgvbaf gung whfg qba'g dhnyvsl nf uhzna yvsr. Naq abj ur'f tbvat gb yvir sbe rire va n jbeyq jurer ur'f gur bayl uhzna yrsg. (Hayrff, jung unccrarq gb gur bgure ebobgf?) Hayrff Fcvryoret'f cbvag jnf gb fubj ubj vauhzna gur obl jnf nsgre nyy, juvpu V qvqa'g guvax vg jnf, vg jnf na hggreyl fghcvq raqvat.

V frr n pbaarpgvba gb vffhr bar bs Fnaqzna urer, ohg gurer, V gnxr vg gung qrzbafgengvat Qernz'f ynpx bs uhznavgl jnf Arvy Tnvzna'f cbvag.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:10 PM by Eleanor

Clifton @ 168: my introduction to Thessaly was when she turned up in The Kindly Ones calling herself Larissa and looking for Lyta. Since she was angry with Lyta by the end, I'm still not sure what her motivation was, so I was hoping there would be some explanation earlier in the series. Did I miss something?

Posted March 11, 2007 5:17 PM by Eleanor

The Google ads aren't sure what to make of this thread. Three out of five ads are Buffy-related, but the other two are for textbooks - in one case, medical textbooks.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:19 PM by Eleanor

ajay @166
The flammability of elf vellum is another reason we don't spend a lot of time trying to keep it in stock.

There are magical booksellers who try, but the logical place to keep them is a locked room*. Unfortunately the only locked room in most such establishments is in the rear of the dexter side. You know, the lightproof one.

It's a little-known fact that the premises next to Thomas Farynor in Pudding Lane, London was a magical bookseller's. September 1666 saw the employment of a new apprentice, who didn't know why the recto rear door was always locked, and left it open in the late autumn sunlight**. The light hit the vampire vellum - WHUMP - which ignited the elf vellum - KABOOM!

The baker got the blame. It was the cow in Chicago, but the story was much the same.

-----
* Mind control, spoken spells, yadda, yadda

** Elf vellum misses sunlight. And sometimes it gets suicidal.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:20 PM by abi

Individ-ewe-al (107):

"Seriously, people! I can believe that no-one here ever struggled with reading, but have you never come into contact with anyone who doesn't devour highly complicated intellectual books effortlessly and with glee?

For a kid who is vastly intelligent but has a specific problem with reading, such as dyslexia, a sophisticated book can work for reading aloud or reading with a lot of support. But there's more to reading than just deciphering the words."

You're right that I've never sorted books into easy to read and hard to read. If I sorted them at all, it was into boring and not-boring; and boring always came with the proviso that they might turn interesting later. I have a few vague memories of having to work at stringing together what had come before in the book, and relating it to what I was reading at that moment. I have clearer memories of looking at what had previously been incomprehensible marks on the page, and having them visibly melt and re-form into a readable word.

I know that early on I read some novels that were only partly within range of my reading comprehension (and thank goodness for that; one of them was by Frank Yerby), and what I remember about them is that they took place in a strangely flat, undetailed universe. What I didn't understand was simply not there for me. I understood enough of the story for it to drag me forward through the pages.

Sometimes I think the single biggest thing I had going for me was my faith that I would be able to read and understand. That's why I get so angry at pedagogy that goes out of its way to tell kids that they're dumb.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:34 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

#107 Individ,
As some one who was pegged as learning disabled in elementary school I can tell you Fantastic Mr.Fox and James And The Giant Peach are not out of reach of poor readers nor is the first half of Narnia. Add to that Wind In The willows, Jacob Two Two and The Hooded Fang, and Lewis Carol. Unlike everything thrown at me for my 'level', which were duller than dirt and patronising, they engaged my attention. The stories engulfed me. I read them just a touch slower and more carefully but still read them and got hook on speculative fiction in general enough to want to take on the challenge of meatier work. Don't sell poor readers short. If it grabs their attention enough they will find their way through it. I've got one really bad young reader hooked on Kit Williams cause it's surreal enough to get out of him a "weird cool" response.
Some of the big comic characters like Batman and Superman have hardcover anthologies in libraries of specific decades so if you chose the golden age 40s & 50s it will be kid safe.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:37 PM by T.W

ajay #166: That's why you keep it in a dark, cool place such as a cellar. A salt-cellar is not an adequate substitute.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:46 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Greg London #154: Wise you are, but from even the wise hidden are such things. Well said it is that one should meddle in the affairs of Jedi not, for subtle and quick to anger they are.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:49 PM by Fragano Ledgister

@#84, Re: 300, & Buffy

I think the movie is potentially germane to Buffy, and might even take place in the Buffyverse.

The producers appear to have decided that in addition to having overwhelming numerical superiority, the Persian army included demonic forces, and perhaps King Xerxes was a demon of some sort.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:52 PM by Owlmirror

Also Individ(107), once I was into stories I liked and enjoyed to be worth the struggle I caught up, then exceeded my grade/age levels by the hard sf phase and went on to hounors courses with the English teachers telling me to consider writing as a future as much as the math/science teachers wanted me to get the Nobel Prize. Were it not for the beatings by school thugs taking it all away in the final years I just might have.

Posted March 11, 2007 5:59 PM by T.W

Perhaps related to Teresa's response to Individ-ewe-al, or perhaps just piggybacking: My first introduction to Madeline L'Engle was A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I was determined to read it because there was a unicorn on the cover. But probably what kept me slogging through the first chapter (which, at age seven, I found profoundly boring with its politics and its absence of unicorn) was Mom's comment: "Are you sure you want to start with that book? A Wrinkle In Time is probably closer to your reading level." At that point I would have chewed ground glass sooner than put the book down. I had to finish it just to show her.

(If Mom had said, "A Wrinkle In Time is the first book in that series, you know," I probably would have dropped Planet immediately and taken her advice. I suspect Mom knew exactly what she was doing.)

Re: Second Sock Syndrome: I learned that the surest cure is knitting two socks at once, but not as Anne describes it above, but rather one inside the other alternating stitches. (Teresa posted a link to an excellent article on that some time ago. It mentioned chocolate a lot.) I'm fairly good at it from a "don't cross the streams" standpoint, and it saved my butt when I started late on a pair of sock-moccasins for a wedding present... but I find that the inside sock tends to wind up an entire shoe size larger than the other. I just can't seem to keep the inside sock's gauge from coming up much looser.

Does anyone have a cure for that? Is my problem that I knit left-handed, and carry the second sock's thread over the left middle finger? Does it work better if you carry it on the other hand and resign yourself to throwing thread?

Carol @132: Shuttles Spindles & Skeins would be the death of my "no new yarn" resolve, too, if it weren't that I live at the northeast end of Boulder and my husband always seems to have the car. We have an excellent bus system, but still, the BOUND/SKIP trip down there with its unnecessarily pain-in-the-butt change at Broadway & 27th means it's more of an undertaking than a walk to the nearest coffee shop. I try to go to Shuttles for third Tuesday's community knitting, but by the time I'm there, the shop part of the shop is closed and product-buying at that point is restricted to "Damn! You mean I needed a sixteen-inch circular for this? Not a twenty-four? *Sigh* Roxanna, sorry, would you open up the resgister and sell me one pretty please?"

(We should probably meet up sometime for in-tandem tandem sock knitting, btw. I mean, if you're still in the area.)

I am honor-bound via friendship with its owner's son to mention Mew Mew's Yarn Shop in Louisville. I mean, as long as we're talking about Shuttles.

Posted March 11, 2007 6:19 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

All this talk about Madeline L'Engle is forcing me to add her to my already-too-long reading list, because while I remember loving those books as a child I don't remember a single thing about them. Not a one. Except maybe there was something about tesseracts?

Posted March 11, 2007 6:27 PM by ethan

#159: Is there a cheap flat panel TV in my future?

Lizzy, you may want to consider a projector and a good, grey screen. A friend of mind is a media-holic and has the latest, greatest everything, and was going to get a massive plasma to upgrade his LCD TV, but got a projector instead. He says it's a high def projector, amazing quality, and with the right screen (apparently the grey ones work better in situations where you have the lights on than white screens) it's like a movie theater, without the gum on the bottom of the seats.

He projects onto a 8x4 foot screen (10 foot/120 inch diagonal), and I gotta say, I'm fairly impressed.

Also, if you own stock in theater companies, I'd recommend you sell.

Posted March 11, 2007 6:49 PM by Greg London

#176: Fragano: For you are crunchy and barbeque nicely with a light saber?

Posted March 11, 2007 6:53 PM by Greg London

Aconite (125) completely lame reason for Buffy's sudden reinterest in life

It wasn't sudden. The recovery process took most of the season with multiple advances and reverses. And it was basically completed in "Normal Again" with the episodes from Seeing Red through Grave testing the solidity of the recovery.

Serge (143) And Girl Genius... The later stories are available on the net so you can decide if they're appropriate for the kid.

Also the earlier stories. The "Girl Genius 101" section contains the pages from the beginning of the story through (as of 3/9) Volume 4 page 25.

Posted March 11, 2007 7:09 PM by Michael I

Greg London #182: Possibly. Or I might have tarried in Arvernién.

Posted March 11, 2007 7:14 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Greg, thanks for the suggestion, but no way. I don't want anything larger than a 26" screen, and will probably be most comfortable with 20". I have a small house, and more books than I know what to do with, even though I cull regularly, and I truly have no room for something that large -- and also, I would hate it.

Um, I usually see maybe one movie a year at a movie theater, and very few on DVD. By thinking that I might actually watch Buffy on DVD I am taking my first hesitant, tentative steps towards technology that you have all been wallowing in for years.

On the other hand, I've been using a computer for 26 years. Gotta be some points in that.

Posted March 11, 2007 7:14 PM by Lizzy L

#97 Tehanu: I loved Dr. Dolittle as a kid, and my local library had all of them. When my kids were the same age, I looked for them, but all that was in print was heavily edited versions with (blasphemy!) new illustrations.

Posted March 11, 2007 7:20 PM by DaveL

Eleanor #171:

That's odd, for me they're about knitting, ringtones and Buffy (and the last two in combination).

Posted March 11, 2007 7:47 PM by joann