(no subject)

[zana16]

Sir Now Appearing bought Dan Brown's Lost Symbol on CD, and I copied it to my ipod because I figured I could do with some cracktastic fiction. So last week, I was walking through downtown DC (the locale of the book) with my headphones in, and the following thought went through my head:

"Wow, Dan Brown. This is a record, even for you. Way to go! FAIL within the first three chapters!" And as you may know, his chapters are about two pages each.

And ambyr and I were at dinner last Tuesday talking about books we used to read that don't hold up now*, and Racefail, and the book we were reading for queerscifibookgroup (Havemercy) which failed on several levels -- including, in my opinion, the queer level**. And I was thinking, I expect mainstream TV to be full of fail, but there is lots more fiction than TV shows. But we couldn't think of more than a handful of books that do not fail, on various counts of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism***, ableism, or having an all-white all-straight cast. And I've missed several other -isms; I apologize pre-emptively for my own fail.

So this would be me looking for recs! I realize that non-fail-y books do not tend to be mainstream books, which is BS -- and a reflection of the structural problem. No matter how obscure: what are your favorite non-fail books?

*See my post about how rereading Narnia to write my Pros/Narnia crossover made me aware that I would never read these books to my child should I have one, and anyway just how the hell did I miss the blatant racism in them when I was little?

**I did not finish the book. I had no interest in several of the characters, and the other characters were nothing more than stereotypes that drove me nuts. There were no female characters (and two female authors, which... where to begin?). And the m/m romance... this was the book I kept thinking of all through the m/m debate.

***I've been rereading some other childhood classics -- Five Little Peppers, The Hardy Boys -- and Jesus how does this stuff get republished?

Comments

[twistedchick]

I think (on no absolute evidence) that some of the worse childhood classics stay in print for two three reasons: they're out of copyright, so the author doesn't need to be paid and the publisher makes money; they are often published in very cheap editions because of the previous reason; they are given to children by grandparents and other older generations who haven't read the books since they themselves were children, and thus retain a sentimental fondness for them.

Personally, I look at some of the older books as sources of information on the culture of the time they were written, such as the Boxcar Children and the Five Little Peppers. But the Hardy Boys/Bobsey Twins series were strictly written as moneymakers for the authors, very much like the Harlequins or Cartlands (though perhaps with more character and better plot?) ::sigh:: Some books are just dated. I remember with horror my oldest aunt saying she would find some Horatio Alger books as gifts for my boy cousins; she hadn't herself read them since 1920 and they were dated back then.

[zana16]

I think you're exactly right on the sentimental fondness part. I loved Narnia as a kid. My love is now qualified by realizing the manifest faults -- and also I have a different understanding of authors and stories. Until I was in my teens, I believed that everything in books was well-researched, well thought-out, unbiased, and for the most part true. This is partly because I was raised by academics, with "look it up" being the answer to most of my questions, and partly because I was raised by Quakers who made an effort to speak truth always. (I didn't really understand the concept of a lie until later in childhood than most kids.) That some books are written purely to make money made no sense to me.