My Weeks in Books: Catching Up on Required Reading

I was listening to David Huntsberger talk on a podcast about Hatchet (Brian’s Saga, #1) by Gary Paulsen and saying how it was required reading for lots of people in school. I’d never even heard of it! The way he described it, though, sounded very much like My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, which I still love. I had to check it out.So the thing about reading a book targeted at children grades 6 to 8 is that they tend to be pretty quick reads. The words are shorter but the type is bigger, the sentences run shorter and the plots (usually) are a little easier to grasp. In Hatchet, the plane thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is taking to visit his father in Canada crashes after the pilot dies. What follows is Brian’s story of survival.

In terms of a living-on-your-own-in-the-wilderness story, I prefer My Side of the Mountain, but I think it’s because I was of the right age when I read it. The plane crash aspect of Hatchet? Terrifying and such a good read.

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On a recent online list of teen dystopian novels, I saw The Giver by Lois Lowry. I know the author because of her Anastasia Krupnik books, which are sort of chic-lit for the tween set. (At least in my memory…) The Giver is definitely science fiction, dystopian drama and completely different from any Anastasia Krupnik books. I read the book, loved it and was telling my brother and sister-in-law about the book and they were all, “Oh yeah, that was required reading in school.” What? So in the last two weeks, I’ve read two books that were required reading for people. I’m thinking I may need to dig up some reading lists for schools and work my way through them.

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In preparation for an upcoming trip to Nepal (!), I ordered a few novels set in that country. I realized in the first few pages that Little Sisters by Stuart Perrin is about child sex trafficking and maybe wouldn’t be the best introduction to the scenic side of Nepal. The story was interesting, written in much the style of a romance novel (sexy passion between characters, macho men who can fight for their women, out-of-place-in-the=story steamy sex). I would have preferred a slightly de-sexed book, but I do feel more informed about the child sex trafficking occurring in Nepal and India.

I will not be lending this book to my travel companions for that trip.

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I read The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy in December of 2012 and absolutely loved it. I found it laugh-out-loud funny and immediately warmed to the characters. This past Christmas my mother gave me a copy of The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son which really delves into the personal life of Conroy in a much more explicit way than some of his other novels. In The Death of Santini, Conroy says that all of his books are really based on this family, thinly disguised. All of this is important back story.

I decided to read The Prince of Tides, also by Conroy. As soon as I started I was able to spot some of Conroy’s family members he’d described in The Death of Santini. It was very disturbing! Add to that an accidental spoiler by Wonder Boy, and this book just wasn’t for me. I wish I had read it earlier, because I think I would have really liked it had I been less informed.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.