Skip to main content

Books I like: magic/science fiction

I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy when I was younger, so I was surprised when I was thinking about this list at how few books were on it. The other thing that is interesting is how many books I just remember a few details from, but not anything useful like a title or author.

Half Magic and the whole series, by Edward Eager: My favorite is Knight's Castle, although I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I had ever read Ivanhoe...

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald: I'm not sure when it happened, but I now identify with the parents rather than the kids.

The Seven Citadels by Geraldine Harris: I came back to the Jr. High library to check this out even after I moved on to the high school.

Girl with the Silver Eyes by Wilo Davis Roberts: I always wondered what would happen if I had ESP and other "special" abilities.

The OZ books, by L. Frank Baum: I read almost all of these (all the ones I could find in the library, rather). My favorite is Tik-Tok in Oz. I have actually never read the first one on which the movie was based. I have heard that reading them with political commentary about the time is actually very enlightening: the various characters represent philosophies and characters in politics from the time.

Giladen, by Emily Buchwald: A story of a rabbit who helps find his friend's true identity. Takes place in medieval Europe (not a specific country).

The Search For Delicious, by Natalie Babbit: One of those books I remembered the plot from, but thought I must have dreamed it.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and 6 more, by Roald Dahl: I like this one better than any of his other works, although my sister might put in a vote for "The Fantastic Mr. Fox".

The Pyradin Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander: A good "King Arthur" story. The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen is also very good, gives a taste of china.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White: The ultimate King Arthur story. I will also mention Taliesin by Stephen Lawhead---the first book in the series is my favorite, about Merlin's mother and father. There was also a series of 3 books written from Merlin's perspective---I can't seem to remember the title or author, though...

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster: It definitely expanded my idea of learning and the various types of knowledge in the world. See also The Dot and the Line: a romance in lower mathematics. One of the books that got me into mathematics, I think.

Tolkien: I received The Hobbit when I was about 10 from my uncle, but I didn't manage to read it for long after because it was too "scary". I was missing a lot.

The 13 clocks by James Thurber: This story is spooky, but also as funny as anything that Thurber has written. Well, maybe "Leave your mind alone" is funnier, but the 13 clocks is fun.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis: My favorite is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Michael likes (and can almost recite) The Horse and His Boy. Eleanor loved having these read to her, although I think our enjoyment of them contributed to her enjoyment.

Hmm, the list has expanded since I first started writing. Things jog my memory and one book lead to another... What a fun list to remember. There are other one's I'm not sure fit on this list: "the Moon is a Harsh Mistress," for example, or "Ring World".

There is one book I'm looking for: it is about a post-nuclear war underground city which is falling apart. Everything you need is rationed out in daily doses given by computer. The population is kept subdued by mind-numbing education and by illiteracy. Two kids, one from above and one from below, know how to read and use that skill to escape to the 20th level. I think it was something like "Tomorrow's Children?" "Escape to tomorrow?" The last name of the author was from the 2nd part of the alphabet (based on where I remember the book being located on the library shelves). Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Comments

Anonymous said…
I do like fantastic mr fox. But that's entirely because the school librarian, Mr. Falkner (?) read it to us using different, very funny, voices for all of the characters. I think he would have made any book a favorite.

FNDP
Anonymous said…
Yippee! I have been trying to find this book about the rabbit, Giladen..or I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong again...forever! I worked at an after school program for children at Caltech and had the kids riveted for many afternoons finishing this chapter book. Now that I have my own children, I've been searching for it but didn't know the authors name or correct spelling of the title. Very happy! Thanks. Kindergarten teacher in Germany now,

Tiffany Le Clercq
Anonymous said…
Yippee! I have been trying to find this book about the rabbit, Giladen..or I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong again...forever! I worked at an after school program for children at Caltech and had the kids riveted for many afternoons finishing this chapter book. Now that I have my own children, I've been searching for it but didn't know the authors name or correct spelling of the title. Very happy! Thanks. Kindergarten teacher in Germany now,

Tiffany Le Clercq
purplecat said…
The book was called This Time of Darkness
mathmom said…
Yes, this Present Darkness. Tiffany: so glad to have helped! Someone helped me find the Present Darkness books.

One of the best things about Amazon used books is that once you remember something, you can read it again (and give it to your kids to read). Sometimes they hold up, and some times they don't. =)

Popular posts from this blog

Things that are true

"Axial tilt is the reason for the season." (Picture a globe with the northern hemisphere tilted away from the sun...) I believe this is meant to be an anti-theist slogan, although I would point out that I believe there is a reason for the axial tilt. This is a runner up to my favorite true science picture, the "Gravity Forecast." I linked to this when I was a graduate student, but the site is long since down. Picture a weather forecast graphic, but instead of clouds and temperatures, the 5-day forecast predicts 9.8 m/s^2 down. Even the idea still makes me laugh, perhaps I will reproduce it someday. Luke cut his 4th tooth today (Finally!). So far they haven't caused us too much trouble. We'll see what happens when he gets his canines.

Science at home

We had a fun "experiment" yesterday. We took a 2 liter bottle of diet Coke and some Mentos, put 4 Mentos at the same time into the bottle, and shot a huge jet of soda into the air about 8 feet high! It was quite exciting, although I think the warnings that you might want to use eye protection were a bit overblown. I suppose that it was an experiment only in the loosest sense of the term, but Michael forsees lots of fun in the future: using other types of soda, other methods for adding the mentos to the soda, and so on. It did get us out of the house for a while, and had Eleanor and Amanda dropping mentos into the used soda bottle and watching to see what happened---so cute!

A day at the fair

Yesterday afternoon the whole family went to the NC state fair. We had a good enough time that I think we are going back next year, although perhaps we will leave Luke at home with a sitter. We went right after Eleanor's school. Michael picked up Eleanor, I drove Luke and Amanda. Through an amazing bit of timing, we met in the parking lot and walked to the fair together, about a 10 minute walk (not bad at all, really). I had meant to get to the fair much earlier and see the parts that Eleanor and Michael claimed not to be interested in (the animals and crafts, mostly) but I was running a little late. Our area has been in a serious drought for the past few months, so I am not complaining that it rained (hard) on us as we were getting to the gate. But it does seem a bit hard that we planned to go to the fair on the one day in the past 3 months that we had a rainstorm. Fortunately, the rain was scattered, and the clouds soon moved off to water another area. We took the opportun...