sonic1

Here is a sample online of the Rootabega stories. http://www.josephperry.net/rootabaga/index.html

Yes they are american, and really really good stuff. All except the White Mountains Trilogy which is sort of a kids science fiction (and decidely British), al beit with better developed characters, and not so allegorical. I too read at least 30 picture books a week, and it would be crazy to list those, but suffice it to say there are some great reads in there. Definately check out the Rootabega stories. Thay are awesome. Being a poet, Sandburg tells the stories in a rather poetic way, with lots of repetitions. And characters include talking brooms, corn fairies, Rootabega kings, and a kid that plays his "spanish spinish splishy guitars made special" with his mittens on, because of the cold bitter cold. A wacky world where the plot is dreamlike, and the characters even more so.

Poetry the past few months (mostly a lot of classic stuff). Poetry is something I go back to a lot, and don't nesessarily read straight thru like a book. I ommitted the classic romans and greeks mentioned already above. Robert Frost Emily Dickenson Walt Whitman John Dryden ST Coleridge Gertrude Stein ALexander Pope WH Auden Rudyard Kipling William Shakespeare Robert Pinsky Carl Sandburg Philip Levine John Donne Robert Lewis Stevenson William Blake Charlotte Bronte Louise Bogan T. S. Eliot Langston Hughes I read children's lit in a similar manner at poetry. I could never mention all of them, since I read like 10-15 picture books a day to my kids. But I will mention the ones I have read for myself lately, many of which are returns or frequent returns. A few are new reads. Brooks: Freddy the Detective, Freedy goes to Florida, Freddy and the Ignoramus Dahl: Matilda, The Twits, the BFG, James and the Giant Peach Abel's Island: Steig Pippy Longstockings (all three books) Aesops Fables The White Mountains Trilogy Barrie: Peter Pan The complete Hans Christian Anderson The complete Grimms tales All of L. Frank Baums Oz books and Wonder tales Lewis Carrol: alice books and poetry Rudyard Kipling: Just So Stories Carl Sandburg: Rootabega Stories Edith Nesbit: Treasure Seekers, Railway Children All the Beatrix Potter books Oscar Wilde's children's stories Kingsley: Water Babies The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales: Jon Scieszka Complete Brer Rabbit (both the original version and the modernized) and many many more I can't think of offhand

Just out of interest - any chance of a post with the poetry collections you have dipped into and the children's stuff you have read? Sure; they will be long, and I work a lot so I will have to get back about that.

I once heard a tape of Richard Bach reading his classic JLS. His really lispy wimpy voice changed my whole image of the tough pilot I thought he was when I read his books (in jr. high school).

As I said in another thread I am reading the ultimate, and arguably first, biographer (Plutarch). I recently read a biography on Johannes Brahms which I forgot the name of. It was a very good read, and the same author, if memory serves right, did a bio on Charles Ives which I started but didn't finish. I am at work so I cannot look it up at the moment.

I recently re-read Emma (I think around last November or December). I fell in love with Emma Woodhouse and her doting, homebody father. I had to be somewhat forgiving of certain antiquated assumptions and resignations (based on Austen's time of being, and place), but also felt as if some of it was very applicable even for modern times. I fell in love with, and dated, a girl who was far above me in "class" in high school. It had its inevitable drama (her mother loved me at first, then realized I was from total poverty and came to hate me and forbid me to be around her daughter). Though this is not the story of Emma, I felt for Harriet Smith, who was subject to her class designation. Though she, more resigned to living out her social purpose than I. Mr. Knightly was loveable too, in his honest mannerisms. This is my favorite Austen book by far.

I highly recommend going back to classics you read at earlier ages. I have learned so much and have experienced them so differently as an adult, as to make them seem like totally different books. The Iliad, for example, I hated in high school, because I felt it was all just war, and a total boy-book (though I am a boy). But after reading it this time, I found so much more in there. I also really appreciated Homer's depiction of his heros-which were more fallable, human and petty than even most modern literature, and therefore more truthful in some ways (even though they often exibit superhuman strength and such). The way the gods influence people is fascinating too. There are times I can look around me and wonder if Aphrodite is still using cupid to make people do totally insane things for love or to fall in love with the most unsuspected of subjects.

Last few months (omitting poetry and children's lit): Epic of Gilgamesh Tale of Sinue and other egyption poems Pindar: The Odes Petronius: The Satyricon The Code of Hammurabi Lucretius: On the Nature of the Universe The Annotated Mother Goose The Annotated Alice Strunk & White: The Elements of Style Sapho-various translations Alcaeus-various translations Euripides-complete plays Sophocles-" " Aeschylus: The Oresteia Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Gengi Kobo Abe: Kangaroo Notebook Aristophanes: Complete plays The Zanzibar Chest: Aiden Hartley Thucyclides: The Peloponesian War Herodotus: The Histories Dante: The divine Comedy Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism Rudyard Kipling: Kim The Columbia History of the World See a theme

Just reissued. Freddy the pig is the American answer to Winnie the Pooh, or maybe the answer to Wind in the Willows. I am new to these, written from the late 1920s and on, these 26 books are really great. Ok I have only read about 6 of them, but so far I love them all. Check out the Freddy home page. http://www.freddythepig.org/

I like the original historical fiction writer (well, play-write anyway).