Comments for Joy Kim

Comment on Cross that off my to-watch list by Brian

Brian — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:47:57 +0000

That is ridiculous and disappointing. Luckily live-action adaptations tend to be poor anyway, so it’s not a major loss — but still!

Comment on Young at heart by admin

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:36:47 +0000

@skg046: I think that’s an important distinction. It’s not enough to recognize that certain features may be problematic, which is usually what adults fixate on when trying to identify books which are age-appropriate for various groups; it’s also important to be able to judge what features will be appealing to certain readers.

I’ve turned off the emoticon converter, largely because I am too lazy to find the css that needs to be fixed. Thanks for the heads up on that!

Comment on Young at heart by skg046

skg046 — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:27:05 +0000

Privilege is comparable tone-wise, yes. I think it’d read well for a slightly younger reader than Swordspoint, however, or for one of any age who wanted less darkness. Not sure how to phrase this—Privilege balances emotion and passion less rawly, though it’s still very present.

Yes! I often have a sense of “x book lacks a, b, and c possibly problematic features,” but that’s about absence and not helpful for how well the positive features—the ones actually in the book—might play.

Comment on Young at heart by Joy

Joy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:30:26 +0000

@skg046: I am not rational about my love of Howl's Moving Castle, but I know I have a lot of company in this. I never finished reading The House of the Scorpion and haven't ever touched The Privilege of the Sword. From what I've read of the former, I think it's probably a teen book; it felt a bit too dark for the tween set, though that would depend a lot on the individual reader. Is The Privilege of the Sword comparable to Swordspoint as far as tone? I see Swordspoint as an adult novel that happens to be teen-compatible. My own experience of reading books when I was much younger than their probable target audience frequently gives me trouble when I'm trying to calibrate my sense of what books I can recommend to what age groups.

Comment on Young at heart by skg046

skg046 — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:46:57 +0000

There is a small bug in the emoticon converter vis à vis this theme’s CSS. That smiley is supposed to fall between “reading it.” and the parenthetical in the first graf….

Comment on Young at heart by skg046

skg046 — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:45:23 +0000

I keep meaning to read Howl, and every time it slips off the radar, someone mentions it favorably. The last time someone named it, I bought a copy. Maybe this ref will prod me into reading it. :) (Not sure why it’s emulating teflon; I’ve enjoyed several of DWJ’s standalone novels.)

Hmm. I didn’t meet Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising set till college and probably would’ve loved it even more at a younger age. Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion also rates, for me, but I don’t have a clear sense of where the squiggly line between children’s and YA falls. (I’d put Scorpion in the children’s section because it keeps its political concerns mostly offstage; a teen reader would pick up on more of them, but some children would comprehend the novel before their teen years, though they might find it long. Or, at least, I was reading things that dark aged eight through ten….)

For that matter, would you consider Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword YA, or merely teen-compatible fantasy?

Comment on CLA and books for younger teens by kricket

kricket — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:51:39 +0000

The order of odd-fish by James Kennedy!! yayyy!

Comment on Mother knows best by Joy

Joy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:19:02 +0000

@skg046 - Thanks for the book rec. I definitely had it easy growing up in a reader-friendly household. I also had the benefit of my older siblings’ books: there’s was always something to read at the next reading level above mine. (I regularly read the books that my older brother was assigned in class, which meant I was very familiar with them when I was given the same assignments two years later.)

Comment on Mother knows best by skg046

skg046 — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:03:40 +0000

I’m slightly jealous. My mother reads mainstream fiction and mysteries but owns hardly any books; my father doesn’t read. (He can, but he doesn’t.) When my parents grounded me as a kid, they forbade my reading anything, usually for a day or two. I became very good at sneaking books into the occasional longer dry spells.

This is yet another reason (albeit idiosyncratic) why public libraries are awesome, since my tiny allowance was nearly enough for one mass-market paperback per month. heh.

The only Hardy I’ve enjoyed (or finished) is Desperate Remedies. Re: Le Carré, you might like Tim Powers’s Declare.

Comment on Novel series-in-progress by One more Lion Hunters book! :: Joy Kim

One more Lion Hunters book! :: Joy Kim — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:41:32 +0000

[...] Best of all, there’s an excerpt from the next book in her Lion Hunters series. I’ve raved about Wein’s series on this blog before, and I’m very excited to here another story is on the [...]