...continued
Aug. 12th, 2005 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_schrapnellInterruptions of an interesting sort, at least - on returning from dog-walking, there was an extremely nice Italian art student with a large portfolio of paintings done by a group of students from a bunch of countries. We took a while to look through them, and liked two quite a bit, but €150 was a bit more than I'd hand over at the door, unfortunately. Then I worked with daughter on her latest story, which she's going to submit very soon.
Next panel was 'How Do We Reinvent Time Travel?', which wouldn't have got me in there because of the title, but did because Connie Willis was on - except that she never showed. Kim Stanley Robinson was running it, and did a great job with the running comments about how CW, who did time travel so well herself, was clearly going to appear after the panel and have been there the whole time, etc. Harry Harrison was also on, but I'd only read one of his books, which didn't involve TT, and he was quite difficult to hear, though clearly a fun and interesting speaker if he could be heard, and pretty much all that stuck was someone saying that Titanic was really a TT story because young Edwardian women of a certain class wouldn't have been doing jigs on the tables with the Irish riff-raff. And everyone agreeing you had to watch that kind of anachronistic mentality.
Next was 'It's OK, It's Lurve: Sex in Children's and YA Books', with Ben Jeapes, Oisin McGann, Janet McNaughton, Sharyn November and Terry Pratchett. Predictably, there were a lot of laughs (I'm hoping![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
generalblossom can remember the TP line about his lack of knowledge of how to handle sex scenes (in his books) and his wife's agreeing with this, which none of us can remember. Ben Jeapes (whose first book has been sitting in one of the piles in my room for some time, for when I get more Reading Time), was also funny about his surprise at being published as a children's book, when he had a scene with sex with an alien, though they did change a 'sod it' to 'damn it'. TP said his Discworld for YA/children is clearly going to run into sex - or lurve - in a book or two, and he was hoping to pick up tips. This lot was particularly good about saying they were aware of the responsibility of writing about sex for young people, and being realistic, and not gratuitous. All was well, until Sharyn N. said she didn't like parents, and it was hard not to feel it was a bit of a sweeping generalisation! There are those of us who buy a lot of books with teens, and read them as well, which surely counts for something. I tried not to take it personally, which was easier as I was sitting not beside my two teens, but beside generalblossom. ;) Janet McN is clearly very sincere about her desire to show girls that they don't have to put up with abusive treatment in relationships, which is good, and all of them sincere about showing sex realistically, but I did wonder why parents of younger children should assume all writers/publishers are as full of integrity as this lot. Would that it were so. Very interesting panel all told.
Then we entered the flaky zone - with 'The Green Children of Woolpit' - two green-skinned children who appeared (or so say - a whole two sources) in Sussex back in the long time agos. Quite fun, as it was short, but the leaps which led the speaker to assurance that they were returned from another planet after abduction and experimentation were pretty impressive.
Then real ale on the grass in the shade, until the 'Just a Minute' panel game, which was hilarious. This is a BBC Radio 4 game in which you've to speak for one minute on a topic, without hesitation, repetition or deviation (from the topic, that last is), and I think only one of the 6 players seemed to know the rules, and the 'quiz-master' had listened to a couple of episodes that day. Connie Willis was on it, and as much fun as always, and the whole thing got wilder and goofier as it went on.
Finally, to a party to which I'd no reason to be invited, and which caused me an accute attack of the Shys, but at which I met Bob Harris (who's written a couple of books in the Young Heroes Series, including Odysseus in the Serpent Maze with Jane Yolen, and Leonardo and the Death Machine alone), who was incredibly easy to talk to and nice as could be. I also metfjm and chilperic (before they won the Hugo, if not before they were famous!), of whom I was also very intimidated, until meeting them. As likable as intelligent and interesting, which is saying a lot. And more talk with Stella, which was also great. But Connie Willis was there, and I refused, quite stubbornly, to be pushed into accosting her at the party! Got my Connie Willis & Martha Wells meetings on Sunday, about which I'll write tomorrow...
Next panel was 'How Do We Reinvent Time Travel?', which wouldn't have got me in there because of the title, but did because Connie Willis was on - except that she never showed. Kim Stanley Robinson was running it, and did a great job with the running comments about how CW, who did time travel so well herself, was clearly going to appear after the panel and have been there the whole time, etc. Harry Harrison was also on, but I'd only read one of his books, which didn't involve TT, and he was quite difficult to hear, though clearly a fun and interesting speaker if he could be heard, and pretty much all that stuck was someone saying that Titanic was really a TT story because young Edwardian women of a certain class wouldn't have been doing jigs on the tables with the Irish riff-raff. And everyone agreeing you had to watch that kind of anachronistic mentality.
Next was 'It's OK, It's Lurve: Sex in Children's and YA Books', with Ben Jeapes, Oisin McGann, Janet McNaughton, Sharyn November and Terry Pratchett. Predictably, there were a lot of laughs (I'm hoping
generalblossom can remember the TP line about his lack of knowledge of how to handle sex scenes (in his books) and his wife's agreeing with this, which none of us can remember. Ben Jeapes (whose first book has been sitting in one of the piles in my room for some time, for when I get more Reading Time), was also funny about his surprise at being published as a children's book, when he had a scene with sex with an alien, though they did change a 'sod it' to 'damn it'. TP said his Discworld for YA/children is clearly going to run into sex - or lurve - in a book or two, and he was hoping to pick up tips. This lot was particularly good about saying they were aware of the responsibility of writing about sex for young people, and being realistic, and not gratuitous. All was well, until Sharyn N. said she didn't like parents, and it was hard not to feel it was a bit of a sweeping generalisation! There are those of us who buy a lot of books with teens, and read them as well, which surely counts for something. I tried not to take it personally, which was easier as I was sitting not beside my two teens, but beside generalblossom. ;) Janet McN is clearly very sincere about her desire to show girls that they don't have to put up with abusive treatment in relationships, which is good, and all of them sincere about showing sex realistically, but I did wonder why parents of younger children should assume all writers/publishers are as full of integrity as this lot. Would that it were so. Very interesting panel all told.Then we entered the flaky zone - with 'The Green Children of Woolpit' - two green-skinned children who appeared (or so say - a whole two sources) in Sussex back in the long time agos. Quite fun, as it was short, but the leaps which led the speaker to assurance that they were returned from another planet after abduction and experimentation were pretty impressive.
Then real ale on the grass in the shade, until the 'Just a Minute' panel game, which was hilarious. This is a BBC Radio 4 game in which you've to speak for one minute on a topic, without hesitation, repetition or deviation (from the topic, that last is), and I think only one of the 6 players seemed to know the rules, and the 'quiz-master' had listened to a couple of episodes that day. Connie Willis was on it, and as much fun as always, and the whole thing got wilder and goofier as it went on.
Finally, to a party to which I'd no reason to be invited, and which caused me an accute attack of the Shys, but at which I met Bob Harris (who's written a couple of books in the Young Heroes Series, including Odysseus in the Serpent Maze with Jane Yolen, and Leonardo and the Death Machine alone), who was incredibly easy to talk to and nice as could be. I also met
fjm and chilperic (before they won the Hugo, if not before they were famous!), of whom I was also very intimidated, until meeting them. As likable as intelligent and interesting, which is saying a lot. And more talk with Stella, which was also great. But Connie Willis was there, and I refused, quite stubbornly, to be pushed into accosting her at the party! Got my Connie Willis & Martha Wells meetings on Sunday, about which I'll write tomorrow...
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-13 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-13 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-13 01:20 pm (UTC)It did lead to a couple good jokes that she would be there retroactively. The pannel was interesting, and I read lots of HH as a kid so it was rather lovely to hear him speak.
Predictably, there were a lot of laughs (I'm hoping [info]generalblossom can remember the TP line about his lack of knowledge of how to handle sex scenes (in his books)
I don´t remember the exact wording, there was something about sex scenes in some books being almost unnoticeable and TP replying "funny, my wife often complains of the same". SN had one of the best entrance in the con.
All was well, until Sharyn N. said she didn't like parents, and it was hard not to feel it was a bit of a sweeping generalisation!
Sorry, you will kill me, specially after the last comment, but got to defend it a bit. Parents who love the books themselves are of course readers. But parents in the sense of something between book and reader, something censoring it, it is after all some barrier a book has to go through and one which will not read a book the same way a child will. Anyway I really enjoyed that panel, but am losing will to write about it, since you wrote so much better about it than me.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-13 02:39 pm (UTC)That's it - thank you! TP was lovely on that altogether, wasn't he?
Sorry, you will kill me, specially after the last comment, but got to defend it a bit. Parents who love the books themselves are of course readers. But parents in the sense of something between book and reader, something censoring it, it is after all some barrier a book has to go through and one which will not read a book the same way a child will.
Sure, I'd have had no problem if she'd said she didn't like parents who censored books unthinkingly, or who tried to stop their kids reading anything about lifestyles other than the ones they approved of, or any kind of qualification like that. It was just 'I don't like parents'. I wouldn't talk in a con about how I hated publishers, just because some do crappy things to good writers or the like. Not that it would hurt anyone's feelings as much if I said it as when Sharyn N. says something! And there are people out there who have no sense of responsibility to readers of any kind, but only care to make as much money as they can, and sometimes parents have to be a kind of barrier. (Thinking off the top of my head here of a t.v. show I saw when B. was tiny and I'd to go to the laundromat - so no option of turning the t.v. off! - which had a tie-in to a line of toys, which were puppies in the pound who were going to be killed if they weren't 'adopted', i.e. the toys bought. No lie. They were cute stuffed animals, but aiming the show at children too young to understand advertising or whether it was real or not was just BAD.) Parents get a lot of bad press these days, and as always, a lot of it's deserved, but then there are a lot of us around who learned to love books from parents, and a lot of parents who've done a lot of book buying and giving as well. It's just not as interesting for the papers to write about those as about the parents who won't allow their children read HP or any other fantasy.
Climbs off soap-box....
no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 03:08 pm (UTC)oh, it's a total generalization! i say it mostly for effect! good parents are worth their weight in gold. (but when i work with teenagers, i deliberately don't involve their parents; it's generally the only way one gets the truth.)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 04:02 am (UTC)'It was ALL A LIE!' says top teen book-pusher, from her plush cell.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 04:14 pm (UTC)i liked the way your friend put it in the comments -- i guess what i meant is that i don't like anyone who gets between a reader and a book, be it a parent, teacher, whatever.