>>6862
That's good to hear.

>>6862

Thats lovely.

My mate's kid is now the age yours was when you started the thread - and shares the same birthday, apparently. For Christmas this year he got an xbone and a TV to go in his room, so instead of staying up to sneak in some reading it'll be staying up to play Fortnite and send abusive messages over xbox live.

>>6865

In my day, late night secret TV viewing entailed Eurotrash and pervy Channel 4 programs like "Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns."

>>6867

I remember It took me the longest time to realise the one with long hair was a guy and the one with short hair was a girl, although looking at it now, he has a little goatee.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBpW7w4FgHA

>>6865
Laddo's spent a few nights away at his grandparents. His bedroom there has a TV in and he's been sneakily watching it until 3am, i.e. when the channels he was watching went to teleshopping. He said he's primarily been watching Impossible Engineering on Yesterday, which he complained about because the engineering in it was actually possible, but he's also watched a few true crime shows about murder. I know when he's stayed before he's stayed up late watching Red Dwarf or BBC4 documentaries on ancient Egypt.

That's why he doesn't have a TV in his bedroom yet.

>>6870
> watching Impossible Engineering
That's probably one of the early indicators of autism

>>6870

Corrigan juniot

>>6871
I think if he was on the spectrum we'd know about it by now or at least have suspicions; he has no real issues socialising and has a good circle of friends. Lots of children enjoy programmes along the lines of Impossible Engineering, How It's Made, Inside the Factory and everyone's favourite Auntie Mabel.

>>6870
I got a TV / VHS combi in my room when I was about 13 and recorded Monkey Dust on a whim one night. That was probably the beginning of the end for me if I'm being honest, lads.

Back on topic, have you thought about seeing how your lad fares with something like Ender's Game?

>>6870

He sounds like he's got a bright future ahead of him, or at the very least a strong career in britfa cuntoffs.

I don't know if nerds still get bullied at school or not, but make sure he has a cool haircut and at least a baseline level of how football works. He'll thank you for it later.

>>6875
> at the very least a strong career in britfa cuntoffs.
That's what life is all about after all.

>>6874
>have you thought about seeing how your lad fares with something like Ender's Game?

To be honest, I've largely taken a backseat with his reading choices as he's got a library card and I was choosing what I was reading myself when I was his age. I chose a few mythology books for him for his birthday/Christmas but apart from that he mainly received Magnus Chase/Kane Chronicles books because he's really into Rick Riordan at the moment. His mum chose the Alex Rider books which he's been devouring.

>>6875
>at the very least a strong career in britfa cuntoffs

He'd be banned after his first post. Considering how much he reads his spelling and grammar is fairly atrocious. I don't think he enjoys English at school and he does that typical boy thing where he likes to give as short an answer as possible to questions. Maths has always been his strong point.

He hasn't been picked on, to my knowledge, although his best friend was pinned down the other week and someone threatened to stab him in the eye with a compass.

His sister's borrowed a couple of books by David Baddiel from the library. Fucking hell, what an absolute crock of shite they are.

I'm starting to get self-conscious from this thread. Your lad has probably now read more books in the last five years than I have in my life. Including during my undergraduate.

>>6925

Read more then lad.

Maybe we should have a .gs goodreads or summat

>>6926
>Maybe we should have a .gs goodreads or summat

I think that's more-or-less covered by >>5456. I'm presently reading What Am I Doing Here thanks to that thread.

>>6927
I recommended The Yiddish Policeman's Union aaaages ago to some lad here. On the offchance you're around, did you enjoy it as much as I did?

>>6928
I'd take that as a no.

>>6929
Well, not everyone posts here every single day. I hear some users actually have the attention span for books!

>>6928
Cheeky title lad. What's it about?

>>6931
It's about a cynical, alcoholic Jewish detective trying to solve the execution-style murder of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy in a halfway house. It takes place in an alternate reality where Israel lost the 1948 war with the Arabs and the Jews were resettled in Sitka, Alaska (this was an actual proposition for their relocation post-WWII). Our murder takes place decades later when 'reclamation' is about to happen, reverting the land back to full American status since the settlement was only supposed to be temporary. Our grizzled detective has precious little time to clear out the list of unsolved murders before this date, as ordered by his boss who is, of course, his ex-wife. The death of this strange young man soon takes on a conspiratorial bent as he looks into it, finding himself in more danger than he would ever have expected. The language is peppered with Yiddish slang, as Hebrew never took off as their new tongue, and it's got a great sense of humour among the general Jewish fatalism. A cracking read overall.

>>6932
It was delightful to read this synopsis ladm8.

>>6928
I'm >>6925 and your recommendation has reminded me that probably the last novel I read cover to cover was on holiday the summer before last, The Manual of Detection. It was an interesting Kafkaesque detective fiction. After a detective goes missing, his administrative handler is promoted to find him and has to follow a 'how to be a detective' book, with hilarious consequences. There's also some Gothic fantasy in there.

>>6934
Go on, lad. Read a book. I'm almost halfway through Catch-22 at the minute.

>>6935
If you're exactly halfway through, doesn't that make it Fumble-11?

>>6936
No because two fumbles don't equal a catch.

>>6934
>Kafkaesque

Where's the best place to start with Kafka?

>>6939
Page 1, left to right, can't go wrong.*

*Unless you got the Hebrew or Arabic translation.

>>6939
Illiteratus here; the only Kafka I ever read all the way through was Metamorphosis and, compared to The Trial which I got bored with, it's a straightforward tale. All the way through I was like "no, stop it, why is this happening", which I think is probably the quintessential reaction to Kafka.

>>6939

Why? The Metamorphosis is well enough known that you can think enough about a lot of its potential interpretations to the point you needn't really read it unless you especially want to, in which case there's your answer.
As >>6941 points out, The Trial is an exercise in bureaucracy that's not a whole barrel of laughs to read through, it's sort of like those bits in Family Guy where Peter's fighting that chicken or hurts his knee and it just keeps going and going and you just want it to end which arguably is the point.
If you want to get anything else out of him, reading something you haven't already heard umpteen different perspectives on then just get a collection of his short stories. Most of them will likely leave you nonplussed but you'll probably get more out of it than just reading the most well known ones.

Success, lads. He's just finished The Colour of Magic and has started cracking on with The Light Fantastic.

>>6954
You already had this success. >>6751

>>6955
He's actually reading them now, though.

>>6927
>I'm presently reading What Am I Doing Here thanks to that thread.

I enjoyed the parts on China the most, particularly the section on Emperor Wu-ti and the Heavenly Horses. It's piqued my interest; do you lads have any recommendations for further reading on Ancient China?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eudsYr0iER0

It didn't fill me with trepidation, unlike the Artemis Fowl trailer, so I guess that's a plus.

World Book Day: Parents spend more on outfits than they do on novels

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/world-book-day-parents-outfits-14097200

That doesn't surprise me. Most of the kids I've seen going to school this morning seemed to be dressed as superheroes or Disney princesses.

>>6961
Carpet-bagger.

https://fairytale.ink/book/grimms-fairy-tales

>>6961
>Parents spend more on outfits than they do on novels
That's not really surprising. Clothes are expensive, books are not.

A quarter of parents are using digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri to read bedtime stories to their children, a survey suggests. Two thirds said that they gave their children time on smartphones, tablets or television before they went sleep instead of a bedtime story

Some parenting websites extol the use of Alexa at bedtime. They say that, as well as allowing it to read a story to your child, you can ask it to sing to them, dim the lights, create white noise and respond to them from another room if they wake.

The survey showed that half of parents aimed to share a story with their child every night but barely more than a quarter did. Nearly a third said that work or commuting stopped them getting home in time and a fifth said they were too busy. For parents who did read stories with their child at night more than half said that they would choose to use an app or YouTube for the task. More than two fifths of children younger than 11 own a tablet and one in eight owns a tablet and a smartphone.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/busy-parents-rely-on-alexa-for-bedtime-stories-dtrm2xmhp

Are there any decent British comics these days? I'm going to trial The Phoenix for my daughter, but I can't think of any others. The Beano seems to have gone to shit and almost everything else is magazines for about a fiver with a load of tat attached to it.

>>7017
Get down the jumble sale and get some old annuals.

>>6784
>His sister is older now than he was when I started this thread and she's the opposite; she'll read but, other than Roald Dahl, she only wants to read relatively simplistic stuff

She's now obsessed with Jacqueline Wilson books. I swear at least 90% of them must be about a kid whose parents are going through a divorce. Either that or they've already divorced and the kid now has to look after their younger siblings because their mum has fucked off to Benidorm with her new fella and there's no telling when she'll be back.

>>7029
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Smart kid.

>>7030
It might just be that these are the main themes she's decided to follow in her books aimed at 9 to 11 year olds. That and bullying.

She does have books aimed at older girls, but I know they cover things like sex and periods so obviously we aren't going to let her read them yet. Who knows what the themes in these books will be? Backstreet abortions and the time dad held mum's head over the hob for burning dinner?

>>7031
I read James Herbert's The Fog when I was 12 and it never did me any harm. No, watching If.... when I was 11 ruined my life.

>>6667
>Apparently they're making a His Dark Materials TV series.

It starts on Sunday. I'm not sure on the casting; the film was shite but it was at least well cast. I can't see James McAvoy pulling off Lord Asriel.

>>7065

There's not a fucking chance the BBC of all producers is going to effectively depict a child-maiming aristocracy and a full frontal assault on Catholicism.

Likely it'll just be a bit of an adult Harry Potter cum generic steampunk fantasy.

>>7066
The first episode was alright, albeit I don't think they've got the pacing right yet and it could have benefited from something like the mud wars between Lyra and the gyptian children as no real relationship was established between the two in Oxford. I'm not entirely convinced by Mrs Coulter, either.

I'll see how it goes.

>>7065
>>7067
I'm watching it and it seems decent but I paused it a while ago and can't be bothered to start it again. I don't like the use of CGI, it makes everything feel like the sets are tiny dioramas with no actual world around them.