It's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚

I have been addicted to books since around the fifth grade

You can read the longish introduction to the series in either 

Let’s Talk BOOKS 2023-04-02 Genre: Romance

Let’s Talk BOOKS 2023-04-16 Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Some of my favorite books over the years which have been read and re-read will be the focus of this series, as long as it lasts. I’ll cover a different genre and at least two books in that genre in each edition.

GENRE — YA (Young Adult) 

Now you might wonder what a 61 year old might be doing reading YA stories. Okay, I read them when I was still young, but I believe they are fit for readers of any age. In fact I’ve picked up some modern YA novels and found them enjoyable, but most of those come to me by way of my baby sister, who is a more voracious reader than I am. 

Tom Swift Jr books by (pen name) Victor Appleton were some of the earliest YA books I can recall reading. The Gutenburg Project has three of them in the public domain and ready to download, two are text books one is an audio only book. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/42251

Tom, like his father, is an inventor and adventurer. The Wiki entry on this decades old series (33 novels) has a ‘pretty much what I remember’ description of Tom, although I thought Tom was more like 14 or 15, but I remember the striped shirt: 

• Tom Swift Jr.— The son of Tom Swift Sr. (precursor series to this one). He is 18 years of age throughout the run of the series, and is described as lanky, blond, crew-cut, possessed of deep-set blue eyes, and closely resembling his famous father. Virtuous, brave, and very very smart. Typically depicted in illustrations as wearing a blue-striped T-shirt and slacks, even under the sea.

As I recall, these novels (mine was one of the early prints and came in a pale blue colored fabric binding) were much like episodic short films in the late 1940s to late 1950 which were seen at walk in theaters in the 1960s during ‘trailer’ time in modern theaters. You’d have to come back to the theater to catch the entire arc of the story. Crash Corrigan was one of them which really is vibrant in my mind. It is now in the public domain & the entire 12 episode series is available to watch at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWQILzjeenM&list=PLESDrGLwFOLWX0Uu6JmDBH4sko4Vj4H8h 

Tom had many, many adventures and although the particulars escape me so many decades later, I recall that I enjoyed these scientifically oriented stories greatly. Submarines and spaceships, oh, my! 

Here’s a perspicacious review of the first book in the series, Tom Swift and his Flying Lab, from an Amazon reader:

“These are clever stories for 7 to 11 year old future inventors. American classics. The technology is dated, but the themes of loyalty to friends, combining talents to identify and solve a problem and have the good guys figure it out to save the world -- this is refreshing! Long before we had MacGyver, we had Tom Swift. These are set in a time in America which was less complex.”

Next up, the Juvenile Stories of Robert A Heinlein  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/robert-heinlein/heinleins-juveniles

I believe that the first work of Heinlein’s which I ran into was Have Spacesuit Will Travel (a Hugo nominee), which would have appealed to me because my live viewing of the July 20, 1969 landing of the Eagle upon the Moon had made me rather space crazy by the time I was 9 years old. 

Short description of the book at FF (Fantastic Fiction.com)  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/robert-heinlein/have-spacesuit-will-travel.htm

One minute Kip Russell was walking about in his backyard, testing out an old space suit and dreaming about going to the Moon -- and the next he was out cold, the captive of an insidious space pirate. The whole thing seemed like a bad dream until Kip discovered there were other prisoners on board, and they were all on their way to the Moon -- and a fate worse than death!

The novel ‘voice” is one that I find preferable in many genres, blunt, plain and often hilarious. Here is how chapter one starts out: 

CHAPTER ONE     You see, I had this space suit.    How it happened was this way:    "Dad," I said, "I want to go to the Moon."    "Certainly," he answered and looked back at his book. It was Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which he must know by heart.    I said, "Dad, please! I'm serious."    This time he closed the book on a finger, and said gently, "I said it was alright. Go ahead."    "Yes.... but how?"    "Eh?" He looked mildly surprised. "Why, that's your problem, Clifford."

Reading those juvenile stores lead me to the rest of Heinlein’s larger body of work, and while his writing does reflect the era in which he lived, especially when it comes to female characters, he remains one of the pillars of my science fiction reading education. 

A more modern YA series I love to reread: 

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan https://rickriordan.com/series/percy-jackson-and-the-olympians

This entire series is a great example of how YA books can appeal to both younger readers and more mature readers, too. 

Character driven plots is the biggest factor in reaching a wider audience, and Riordan does a great job in the PJ&O stories. Percy is a bit immature compared to the rest of the Demi-God crowd he meets at Camp Half-Blood, but that’s because he’s been shielded from knowing who and what he is until that fateful day that changes everything for Percy and he meets the real Grover and shortly thereafter, Annabeth (daughter of Athena): 

It's a freaky place for a kid who's known nothing but relative normalcy his entire life. All of a sudden, he's playing Pinochle with a Greek God (Dionysus---what a drunk), his best friend Grover turns out to be a satyr, and the gorgeous blond girl who rescues him thinks he's a doofus and she keeps calling him "seaweed brain."

If you have read any of these books or any YA story you’d like to talk about, c’mon in, sit down and put your feet up and Let’s Talk BOOKS!

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