I'm tired of looking 'round rooms wonderin' what I gotta do or who I'm supposed to be

[gogmagog]

Well, I'm participating in 31_days...let's see if I can make it every day. Today's entry was a heart-melting story about the forbidden love between Natsumi and Giroro. Or possibly between Natsumi and yams.

You may have seen this brouhaha (inspired by this TIME article on JK Rowling). To be fair, I think Pratchett has a point - fantasy hasn't been unicorns and Morris dancing for a long time before Harry Potter came along. Also, I find it interesting how Rowling is so disparaging of the Narnia books considering as recently as 1998, she was quite fond of them. Methinks fame has gone to someone's head, perhaps, and being hailed as "the revitalizer of fantasy" is causing her to buy into her own hype? Because let's face it, there's been wonderful young adult fantasy for years - Diana Wynne Jones, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, and Madeleine L'Engle, just to name a few. All J.K. Rowling did was write well-timed (and admittedly, quite good) children's fantasy that is much more merchandisable "marketable" than that of these other authors. But she didn't reinvent the wheel, any more than Dan Brown's schlock reinvented the thriller genre - it just added some twenty-year-old, warmed-over conspiracy theory to the mix.

Let's Positive Linking!
- For your daily dose of WTF, a news story about a toothless man who steals toothbrushes. (From surlykitty.)
- I was quite surprised, while surfing a music piracy site, to discover an ad banner for this. And they say there are no more romantics in the world. *eyeroll*
- GIVE ME YOUR PANCAKES. Strawberry pancakes, don't make me wait for it; strawberry pancakes, I'm coming for you. (Thanks to the delightful jantalaimon.)
- New report says American 13-year-olds are fairly conservative. In other news, most American 13-year-olds (in fact, most 13-year-olds in general) are rather unpleasant people to be around. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.
- Promotion of Chinese language on the rise, and the fat government subsidies that go along with it.
- And finally, if you've ever been displeased with the lack of off-color Pac-Man parodies, what would you do without me?

Edit: Tuesday's story is posted too. FEEL THE DISGAEA LUV

Comments

[ahebert.livejournal.com]

Don't forget Peter Beagle and Michael Ende, writers of The Last Unicorn and Neverending Story, respectively.

[yoshitsune.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm ashamed to admit I've never read The Neverending Story (DON'T STONE ME PLZ), and I've always thought of Peter S. Beagle's work as adult fantasy that's palatable for kids, too. (Kind of like J.R.R. Tolkien - though kids often read them, they're generally shelved in the adult fantasy section.)