You should think about reading the 6 Frank Herbert Dune books.

I am trying to rate them as good as possible based on their quality. Readers who are looking for books are not interested if i loved them. They want to know if the books fit them.

Same - except 1 is I can't believe I wasted my time and energy reading that book, I absolutely hated everything about it. And yes, that happens to me (my boyfriend is like - why do you make yourself finish them)?. I'm a glutton, I guess.

I think you are in an area with a lot more resources. We are a title 1 school and I’m pretty sure a lot of the parents aren’t actually literate.

My school in a different state was like then when I was growing up. I actually “failed” reading because I read everything in the library and they didn’t have anything else. Reading at home didn’t count. My spouse went to several schools in multiple states and they all had rules about which books you could check out when.

I’m actually surprised this is so surprising to so many people. These smaller school districts just don’t have the resources to keep track of which kid is reading at which level.

To be very fair to our staff, I have one child who is way, way above their expected reading level and the staff occasionally helps them “sneak” books. They are doing the best they can, and I’m in a situation to supplement reading at home.

But in all the areas I’ve lived in, there have been massive hoops to get through with reading. These are our current struggles, but some have been kind of insurmountable. I had one library that kept charging us for ruining books we had never even laid eyes on. Like we wouldn’t go for a month and get a fine for ruining a kids book when we didn’t have kids. Mostly I just wanted to highlight that sometimes just getting something to read can be really hard.

Yeah, this is pretty common. I used to work for a major K12 vendor (in over 1/3 of all schools in the US) and I heard about this practice all the time from different customers (e.g., schools and districts). Sometimes it's locked by grade level (concern about kids reading material with themes that are "too mature") and sometimes it's locked by reading level (poor understanding of how leveled reading works). It shouldn't be implemented this way, but that doesn't stop plenty of schools from doing exactly that.

I think you can see the flaws in something and still appreciate it. With Hunger Games it’s simple writing (but for YA so that’s kind of understandable) and Katniss is a bit too conveniently good at everything and has the whole “not like other girls” thing going on which is very out of vogue nowadays. But it does have some interesting themes and does a good job of subverting certain tropes in a way that is interesting and actually has something to say.

Eragon doesn’t have a whole lot of depth to it and is largely Star Wars in a high fantasy setting (like I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually started out as a fanfic with that premise), but I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. I can’t really speak for Ready Player One since I’ve only seen the movie, but I’m guessing it’s kind of similar in that way. And ultimately one could argue that being entertained is largely the purpose of reading.

My brother and I—both middle-aged people who have read widely and have fancy educations—love The Hinger Games.

My brother talked to me about a hard-to-define quality that some books and movies have that he calls “heart.” The Hunger Games had a lot of heart. There are many other good things you could say about it, but that’s it’s finest quality IMHO.

Is this why certain branches such as Broward Count Library and Las Vegas public library have cards available to anyone? That it allows them to have higher check out rates?

I agree, I have a flip-phone, sorta boring, but definitely useful. also, snake is entertaining

Let’s assume I really live in the middle of nowhere haha. The “big” libraries near me are super uptight about it.

Not every kid doesn't read, tween here, my best friend and I both love reading, and my bookshelf is completely filled to the brim. I'm currently reading The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and waiting to get Ruin And Rising from the Shadow And Bone trilogy. Have a lovely day/evening/night!

There is stuff in books not delivered in the same way in any other format. I’ll teach my kids to love yo read to the extent I can influence them.

I couldn’t imagine reading and not hearing the words in my head tbh

Circulation plays a huge part.

Hunger Games gets lumped in with all the other (mostly lacking in substance) dystopian novels that came out during that era, but what what people forget is that Hunger Games is really what kicked off that whole craze because it was actually pretty good. There’s this interesting phenomenon where when something is good enough it will kick off a bunch of bad to mediocre copycats until everyone is sick of that thing and decides that it’s a tired cliche. And with Hunger Games I think the copycats came out so quickly and got enough traction that people forget or don’t realize that Hunger Games was actually the original.

Currently I’m noticing this with the whole “humanizing the villain” trope. It was cool for a while, but now it’s tired and everyone wants to have a villain who’s just an actual bad guy again.

China Mieville's Bas-Lag books in the "New Weird" genre always bent my brain weird - Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council, his three Bas-Lag novels, are something else.

So you can’t just fuck around thinking you know stuff, got it. 😁 Thank you!

I’m definitely not and I enjoyed it. There’s a lot of Escher drawings that are fascinating and the concept linking the three is real interesting. And the alternating chapters should make it alright. There will be some chapters where it’s just over your head most likely but that’ll happen with most anyone I think. Still worth reading in my opinion.

you make a good point. i dnf'd alseep in a sea of stars last year. it wasn't bad it was just so long and so cliche that i couldn't handle 400 more pages of it.

honestly i don't feel super good about giving a dnf a rating at all in a way. beyond what it being a dnf implies. i didn't read the whole thing, after all

This is what surrealism does for me and why I love it so much.

Kids aren’t reading because they’re addicted to TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. They’re right where the globalists and the American Left want them: pliant, subservient and stupefied. Amen.

It's very philosophical in the strict sense of the word, not the casual sense that just means thought provoking.

Circulation plays a HUGE part.

Correct.

I just walked downstairs to my computer from telling my kid to turn off the flashlight and put his book away... some things never change.