The Great Brain books screwed me up, because they were the first place I saw the word "gentiles," so I thought non-Mormon was the general meaning. Oops.

That element of those books totally confused me. Even though my best friend was Mormon, I'd never heard it used in that sense before.

My favorite Roald Dahl was Matilda. This probably surprises exactly nobody. As for Judy Blume's kids books, I loved both Sally J. Friedman and Sheila.

I was actually just talking with a friend today about about A Little Princess. She loves the movie (the new one, not the Shirley Temple one) but hadn't known it had been a book. I liked Secret Garden better than Little Princess -- more magical elements, and the creepiness of the moors was just cool, and I could relate a lot more to Mary than to Sara. Sara always seemed just a little bit too goody-goody to me.

I used to repeatedly borrow the LP of Secret Garden from the Swiss Cottage library.

I have no idea why I preferred hearing over reading that book more than any other.

That element of those books totally confused me. Even though my best friend was Mormon, I'd never heard it used in that sense before.

The church, I think, has been trying to downplay the use of the word "gentile" for non-LDS. It's still the term used in many standard church works, but you get a lot of "Oh, no, that's just an old usage, sorry for the confusion" these days when you bring it up.

When were The Great Brain books written?

When were The Great Brain books written?

Sometime in the fifties or sixties, I think, but they take place much earlier, maybe 1910 or so.

I'll have to check into those, find out who wrote them, if they're from Utah and such. It seems an unlikely milieu to appeal to the wider world at that time.

The guy who wrote them was from Utah. IIRC, the books are semi-autobiographical. (I just looked it up. They're by John D. Fitzgerald, who was born in 1907, and I think the first book takes place when he's about 8.)

Balzac wrote dozens of novels. I've read Zola, which was good.

That's what I was thinking of!

Or maybe I was thinking of the Emile Zola, who had something to do with Rousseau...

Contradicting that, one of the most famous steampunk work is The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk's most famous writer and most dedicated propagandist respectively, which is set in a 19th-century Britain undergoing an accelerated Industrial Revolution because Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace were able to come up with workable computers and computer languages. It's got many historical personages and characters from period novels wandering through.

Is it worth me digging through? I own it, on the rec of a peep I knew with a math PhD.

I've (twice) made it through the first two or three chapters before work tasks have eaten my head.

Is it worth me digging through?

Yes, it's wonderful, although if Steampunk is your bag start with the motherlode - Moorcock's Bastable and (kinda) Jherek Carnelian books.

Danny, Champion of the World is my favourite Dahl, and I must buy it for my nephew. I love The Magic Finger, too.

Has anyone here read any BALzac?

I'm pretty sure the novel Consuela is referring to is actually Old Goriot! As far as I know Balzac didn't write a novel called Zola (which is also of course the name of another French author).

Anyway, of Balzac I've only read Old Goriot and Lost Illusions; the former is very good and the latter is unquestionably one of the best novels I've ever read, although you do have to slog through about 200 pages about nineteenth-century printing technology before it starts getting exciting! One of the interesting things about Balzac is that you always know exactly how much money his characters owe and to whom. Also, characters from his novels make cameos in other novels; I guess these days we'd call it the Balzacverse.

It's kind of strange how little Balzac is read by English-speaking readers; he's arguably the most important French novelist of the nineteenth century.