Re: Thomas Covenant series

On Tue, 09 May 2006 23:36:43 GMT, mbottorff@xxxxxxxxxxx (Michelle
Bottorff) seems to have said:

Brian M. Scott <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Pamela Dean's "Dubious Hills", however *that* I was too stupid to read
when I first picked up. I had to wait until I was feeling better. The
connections I needed to make I *could* *not* *make*.
<snipping>

It is a *much* more difficullt a book than anything I've ever been
assigned in school.

I think _The Dubious Hills_ is an excellent example of how our genre
approaches complexity. The language is simple, the story is
straightforward, the complexity is all there, but the book can be read
and enjoyed just for the adventure -- and you'd still get the core
ideas. They're not that hard. I wish I'd had the book to read when I
was ten: it would have been my favorite then, as it is now.

Michelle will correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me
that she just said that she could *not* read and enjoy the
book -- at any level -- until she was feeling better.

Yes. That is what I said. That is what I meant.

I bounced. Completely. Twice.

I could *not* follow the story just as an adventure, I couldn't get it
to make any *sense*. I got up to about page three, realized that I had
no clue what was going *on*, tried it again, realized I *still* had no
clue what was going on, and then I said to myself, "Gah! I should have
known better than to try something by Pamela in this condition, I think
I'll try a regency."


Which isn't to say that I think it wouldn't be beloved by a great many
ten-year-olds. This is another thing that people are coming up with
that is confusing me... it is suggested that to like x takes
intelligence, and the rebuttle is, "it does not, I know a ten-year-old
who read it and had no troubles" (or whatever.)

Why is it assumed that children are *less* intelligent than adults?

As far as dealing with truly unique situations goes, kids tend to score
*higher* than adults. (Not to mention language aquisition scores.)

I always consider children to be fully as intelligent as adults, so find
this use of children as a rebuttal to the intelligence question to be...
er...

...snobbish and arrogant?

Could you please stop calling me names? I'm not calling you names.
I'm not calling anybody names. Why are you doing it, by the way? If
I've somehow insulted you in the course of this conversation, I don't
know it and didn't intend it, and I'm willing to make a blanket
apology. But if you call me names again I think I won't respond at
all, because I really don't like it.

I _don't_ assume children are less intelligent than adults (by my
understanding of what intelligence is, kids are smarter than adults,
and we give up some cleverness and intelligence as we mature, in
exchange for a certain economy of thinking and the use of our
experience). I'm not exactly sure how I seemed to say it. Oh, I get
it! and it actually is relevant to the discussion.

I moved from "it's not that hard a book" to "a lot of children would
like it." Because I _don't_ think about the intelligence of the
reader as having a great deal to do with anything much, let alone the
difficulty of the task of reading a novel, I wandered off down a
tangent without noticing. I was at that point not talking about
intelligence at all, because my magpie mind was attracted and held by
a side discussion of one of my favorite books: I was talking about
that book anyway. Since I don't think I'm debating, by the way, I
don't think I'm making rebuttals. But it was sloppy to wander around
like that, with no signposts to where I was going, and I apologize for
that.

Kids generally (generally, generally, generally, not always, not
every) prefer less hard books for the reason that beginning piano
players prefer simpler pieces to play -- reading takes practice, and
when you've been reading for three years or five years you're less
practiced than when you've been reading for twenty years or forty
years. So, generally, generally, generally, not at all always, your
younger reader likes more straightforward books.

Lucy Kemnitzer, still
--The Donor:
the harm reduction vampire story, now complete:
http://www.baymoon.com/~ritaxis/donor/donorweb/donorindex


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