{"id":2132691,"date":"2023-12-24T05:15:02","date_gmt":"2023-12-24T10:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/christmas-and-the-boy-reader\/"},"modified":"2023-12-24T05:27:39","modified_gmt":"2023-12-24T10:27:39","slug":"christmas-and-the-boy-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/christmas-and-the-boy-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Xmas and the Boy Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchristmas-and-the-boy-reader%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2132691&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Books for Christmas: A \u2064Nostalgic Journey<\/h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There were always books\u2064 for Christmas. Mounds of them: flurries of paperbacks, drifts of presentation copies inscribed in the unreadably copperplate hand of maiden great aunts, avalanches of \u2062books on chess, and manuals of do-it-yourself chemistry \u200cexperiments <i>using household items!<\/i> And teach-yourself sleight-of-hand\u200b magic\u2063 guides, and the not all-that-gratefully-received Latin to English\u2014<i>and English to Latin!<\/i>\u2014dictionary. \u2064The already-too-childish\u2064 children&#8217;s chapter books, from distant acquaintances of our parents. The\u2064 popular Victorian and Edwardian fiction, adult stories that had somehow moved down the reader&#8217;s scale to be thought of as proper for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/anti-racist-organization-says-it-can-no-longer-use-dr-seuss-books-to-teach-tolerance-because-they-dont-address-structural-racism\/\" title=\"\u2018Anti-Racist\u2019 Organization Says It Can No Longer Use Dr. Seuss Books To Teach Tolerance Because They Don\u2019t Address Structural Racism\">young readers<\/a>, marketed\u200d to harried uncles seeking\u200c something in last-minute bookstores: <i>The Adventures\u2062 of Sherlock Holmes<\/i>, <i>Around the World \u200din Eighty Days<\/i>, <i>The Prisoner of Zenda<\/i>, <i>The\u2063 Scarlet Pimpernel<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We never got Hardy \u200bBoys or Nancy Drew books. But I remember other series: Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover\u200b Boys,\u200c the Wizard of Oz books, although mostly \u200das stray\u2064 and dusty copies on bookshelves in the childhood bedrooms of aunts and uncles, long since \u2062moved away from my \u2063grandmother&#8217;s house. The standard girls&#8217; books \u2064of their\u200c era, \u2063too: \u200b <i>Pollyanna<\/i>, <i>Anne of \u200dGreen Gables<\/i>, <i>Little \u200dWomen<\/i>, <i>Rebecca of\u200d Sunnybrook Farm<\/i>, <i>Daddy Long-Legs<\/i>, <i>A Little Princess<\/i>. Ugh.\u200b <i>Daddy Long-Legs<\/i> and <i>A Little Princess<\/i>: Even at eight or nine years \u2064old,\u2062 I had \u2062a vague unease about the wish-fulfillment in them. But\u200d there they were, on the old shelves, demanding to be read by a child stretched out on the faded ripcord bedspreads of \u2062a generation past.<\/p>\n<p>Not that\u2062 my own preferences were much better. \u200b <i>The Mad Scientists&#8217; Club<\/i>, for example. I ached for the book when I saw\u2064 it\u2062 in one of those \u2062Scholastic Books catalogues they used to hand\u200c out in school, and I couldn&#8217;t understand why my mother wouldn&#8217;t \u2062let me place an\u2064 order,\u2063 till the paperback showed up in a Christmas stocking.\u200c My first vague \u200binklings of\u200d sexuality came from Robert E. Howard&#8217;s Conan \u200bbooks\u2014but, then, my first creeping sense of a malevolent supernatural, like a gateway drug for H.P. Lovecraft,\u200b came from those Conan stories, too.\u2064 Edgar Rice Burroughs&#8217;s <i>Tarzan of the Apes<\/i>, Arthur Conan Doyle&#8217;s\u2063 <i>The Lost \u2062World<\/i>: a dive into the genre of \u2064lost primitivism that began with Rudyard \u200cKipling&#8217;s Mowgli \u2064in \u200dthe first <i>Jungle Book<\/i> and ended\u2064 with a thud, for me, at Rima the Bird Girl \u2063in William Henry Hudson&#8217;s <i>Green Mansions<\/i>\u2014just as my love of pirates began \u2064with Robert Louis Stevenson&#8217;s \u200b <i>Treasure Island<\/i> and Rafael Sabatini&#8217;s <i>Captain \u200bBlood<\/i>,\u200b and closed hard when someone\u2063 gave \u2063me Richard \u2063Hughes&#8217;s <i>A High Wind in Jamaica<\/i>, about the horrifying\u200d indifference of children taken by pirates, as a Christmas \u2064book when I was 11 or 12.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1839594\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1839594\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/?attachment_id=1839594\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1839594\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1839594\">(C.E. Brock for &#8216;A Christmas Carol&#8217;)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A mistake, in those book-strewn days, was the giving of Christmas books for Christmas. The time\u200b for the tearjerkery of Henry van Dyke&#8217;s <i>The Other Wise Man<\/i> or Kate Douglas\u200d Wiggin&#8217;s <i>The\u2063 Birds&#8217; Christmas Carol<\/i> is in Advent&#8217;s toboggan run toward Christmas. Even the better Christmas books\u2014Dickens&#8217;s <i>A Christmas Carol<\/i>, Dylan Thomas&#8217;s <i>A Child&#8217;s \u200dChristmas in Wales<\/i>, which my \u200cparents\u200d would read aloud\u2014need\u200b to \u200dcome before the actual arrival of Christmas. I&#8217;ve always had a soft spot for Jean \u2063Shepherd&#8217;s <i>A\u200b Christmas\u200c Story<\/i> and O. \u2062Henry&#8217;s\u200c truly sappy &#8220;The Gift of the Magi,&#8221; but \u2064they&#8217;re for the \u2063days when the goose is getting fat. Once the goose is cooked,\u200c so are they.<\/p>\n<p>But poetry \u200bbegan for me with Louis Untermeyer&#8217;s <i>Golden Treasury of\u200d Poetry<\/i>, which I still have with the Christmas inscription from my grandmother, \u200cthough the binding is cracked and the pages\u2062 drift out like snowfall when I take it down\u200b from the shelf. Philosophy began with Plato&#8217;s <i>Apology <\/i>and<i> Crito<\/i>, which I didn&#8217;t understand but seemed adult and sad. Mysteries started\u200b with \u200cEncyclopedia Brown and quickly moved to Agatha Christie&#8217;s <i>Murder at the Vicarage<\/i> and Rex Stout&#8217;s <i>The Golden Spiders<\/i>. Science fiction began with <i>A Wrinkle in\u2062 Time<\/i> and <i>Flowers\u200c for Algernon<\/i>. Fantasy began as a dive into the\u200d deep end with <i>The Lord of \u2063the\u200c Rings<\/i> when I was 10. Theology began with the lives of the saints in a children&#8217;s version of the <i>Golden Legend<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Every \u200bera has\u2064 its advantages and disadvantages, its benefits and curses. My time saw the collapse\u200d of shared knowledge, the decay\u200b of belief in authority, the \u200bfailure of \u200cconfidence \u200din \u200dculture. But books were everywhere. We\u2063 had that, at least. Icebergs of books, to cling\u200d to as we set out on the sea of adulthood. Cascades of books, like heaps of snow collapsing from branch \u2062to \u2064branch down a pine tree. Avalanches\u200c of books as their unsteady stacks gave way. And Christmas was their stormhead,\u2064 their North Pole origin. New \u200cauthors, new genres, new worlds, new lives to live vicariously\u2014all unwrapped at Christmas. Each examined and weighed and felt, with one chosen to sneak upstairs and read early on\u200c Christmas afternoon, while the scent of the pine tree and the kitchen&#8217;s first saut\u00e9ings drifted up the stairwell.<\/p>\n<p>With the triumph of eBooks and eReaders these days, you can&#8217;t say that text has disappeared. If \u2063anything, the \u200bcomputer revolution \u200chas made\u2063 written words more ubiquitous, more all-surrounding, more intrusive. But the fading of physical books seems to \u2062have brought with\u200d it a fading of a category \u200dwe\u2064 used to acknowledge: the boy reader.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, there\u200d are still boys and\u2064 still books. Still boys who read. But hard to find anymore is the culturally accepted category \u200dof the boy reader, the bright little kid who \u2063inhales books like oxygen\u2014&#8221;reading \u2064as if \u2064for life,&#8221; in Dickens&#8217;s description of the\u200b young \u2063David Copperfield\u2014and wants to know everything: \u200cliving in\u2062 books every life, feeling in characters every emotion. The little boy who needs to grasp the world.<\/p>\n<p>This is something a \u200dlittle different from \u2063the books listed these days by\u200c web pages with such titles as &#8220;Books That Boys Say Are \u2063Awesome.&#8221; The\u200d explicitly \u2063boyish boys&#8217; book existed, back in the day, and I remember reading a worn \u2063and rebound copy of <i>The Kid Who Batted 1.000<\/i> in a junior-high-school library, along with such boys-at-boarding-school stories as Owen Johnson&#8217;s <i>The Prodigious Hickey<\/i>. Bertrand R. Brinley&#8217;s <i>Rocket\u2063 Manual for Amateurs<\/i>, for that matter: boys&#8217; books, all.<\/p>\n<p>But the boys of the boy-reader type would receive a copy of, say,\u2063 <i>Lost Horizon<\/i> (a boy&#8217;s book, maybe) and then want to \u2062read <i>Goodbye, Mr. Chips<\/i> and <i>Random Harvest<\/i> and the rest of James Hilton&#8217;s novels.\u200b In the\u200b 1940s, Lionel Trilling looked back at the sets of books that had filled the bookshelves of the middle-class\u2014or, at \u2063least, the middle-class \u2063strivers, who wanted their children to grow up surrounded by \u2064the accoutrements of culture. And he decried\u200b the decline of the\u200c set on those family shelves\u2014The Works of Dickens, The Collected\u200c Writings of Thackeray, The Complete\u200c Washington Irving\u2014observing that, upon discovering an author, young readers would &#8220;remain loyal \u200dto him\u2064 until they had read him by the yard.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Girls could read this way, too, of course, but the culture has lost the idea of the boy reader more completely than that of the girl reader. In <i>Strong Opinions<\/i>, a collection of his criticism, Vladimir Nabokov shows us almost the ideal model of that boy\u200b reader, turned adult. Of G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan \u200bDoyle, and Joseph Conrad alike, he remarks, \u200d&#8221;A favorite between the \u200cages of 8 and 14. Essentially\u200c a writer for very young people.&#8221; Hemingway is &#8220;a writer \u200cof books for boys. Certainly better \u2063than Conrad.&#8221; He says of Shakespeare that he &#8220;read complete works between 14 and 15.&#8221; H.G. Wells was\u200c &#8220;my favorite writer when I was a boy. His \u2063sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, \u2063but his romances and \u2062fantasies are superb.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Few of us are Trillings or Nabokovs, but they belonged in adulthood to a recognizable type,\u200b having been boy readers \u2062(in\u2064 an era with an almost moral distinction, greater than my later time held, of the difference between literature culturally recognized as great and books that were merely popular or fun). And recognition of that type has clearly faded. I paid a Christmas visit to a \u2063distant neighbor&#8217;s house early last December, a family with lots of kids and\u200b cousins, all of them bright. But as the parents wrapped packages while we chatted, I noticed the absence of books\u2014the physical hard copies that had been the\u2062 center of Christmas \u2063gift-giving when I\u2062 was young. I don&#8217;t blame\u200b them. Why give books when the children can simply download, with a\u200d library subscription or an account with an eBook-seller, the texts they want?<\/p>\n<p>And yet, I \u2064reach my hand \u200cdown into the\u2063 ice-flanged sea of memory, and\u200d I\u200c pull out the copy of Elliot Paul&#8217;s comic lost-generation-in-Paris mystery, <i>The Mysterious Mickey Finn<\/i>,\u200c that my older sister gave me the Christmas I was 12, my\u2063 introduction to the Dover catalogue \u200bof reprints of everything from Capablanca&#8217;s chess memoirs\u200b to Leonardo da Vinci&#8217;s drawings. Like taking a core sample of a glacier, I can drill \u200cdown the layers of past Christmas \u2064seasons to find \u200cColin Wilson&#8217;s <i>The Outsider<\/i>, an account of \u2062cultural misfits \u2062that briefly seemed, when I was a teenager, the most meaningful\u2063 thing I had ever read. And Robert Frost&#8217;s\u200c <i>Collected Poems<\/i>, which took years to appreciate. <i>Zorba the Greek<\/i>. Robert Heinlein&#8217;s sci-fi juveniles. <i>Lord Jim<\/i>. \u2062Back at the beginning, <i>A Child&#8217;s Garden of Verses<\/i>. And toward the end of childhood, Thomas \u00e0 Kempis&#8217;s <i>The Imitation of Christ<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Christmas was books, and books Christmas, in those days now mostly washed\u200d down to the cold sea. Was it such a bad way to grow up?<\/p>\n<p><i>Joseph Bottum is director of the Classics Institute at Dakota State \u2062University and poetry editor of the<\/i> New York Sun<i>.\u2062 His most\u200d recent book is\u200c the poetry collection, <\/i>Spending the Winter<i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<h2> In a society that often encourages boys to be active and always on the \u2063move, \u200bhow can we find and support young \u2062boy \u200creaders who long to lose themselves in the pages of a book?<\/h2>\n<p><span>  Acknowledged category for \u200dsuch readers) who continued to love books\u200c and find joy in reading\u2063 as adults. They were \u200dthe ones who could \u2063trace their love of \u200bliterature back \u200dto those stacks of books received at Christmas, the ones who could still feel the excitement of unwrapping a new book\u2064 and diving into a new world.<\/p>\n<p>But what about the boy\u200c readers of today? In an\u2063 age \u200cof \u2063video \u200bgames, social media, and instant gratification,\u200d are there still\u2062 boys who long to lose themselves in the pages of a\u2062 book? Are\u200c there still boys who want to explore far-off \u200clands, solve mysteries, and ponder the great questions of life through the pages of a novel?<\/p>\n<p>The answer\u200b is a resounding yes. While the category of the boy reader may have faded from our \u200bcultural \u200cconsciousness, the boys themselves are still out there, \u200dhungry \u200bfor\u2062 stories \u200cand knowledge. They may be harder\u2064 to find \u2062in a \u2062society that \u2064often encourages\u200d boys to be active, competitive, and always on the move, but they are not extinct.<\/p>\n<p>Books\u200c for Christmas can still be \u2063the catalyst that ignites \u200ca love of \u200dreading in a young boy.\u200b Whether it&#8217;s a gripping adventure novel, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/soggy-cannes-premiere-for-turkish-director-ceylans-about-dry-grasses\/\" title=\"Wet Cannes debut for Ceylan's 'About Dry Grasses'.\">thought-provoking work<\/a> of \u2062non-fiction, or a collection of poetry that stirs\u2064 the imagination, the right book can\u2062 open up a world of possibilities for a young reader. It can transport him to new \u2063places, introduce him to diverse \u200bcharacters, and teach him <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/rand-paul-mlb-might-be-a-little-too-woke-if-league-does-business-with-chinese-communists-while-boycotting-georgia\/\" title=\"Rand Paul: MLB \u2018Might Be A Little Too Woke\u2019 If League Does Business With Chinese Communists While Boycotting Georgia\">valuable life lessons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In a world that seems <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/actress-dakota-johnson-details-unusual-sleep-schedule-calls-it-number-one-priority-in-life\/\" title=\"Actress Dakota Johnson prioritizes unusual sleep schedule above all else\">increasingly fast-paced<\/a> and disconnected,\u2062 books offer a sense of connection and continuity. \u2062They provide a\u2062 space for reflection\u200d and contemplation, allowing boys to uncover their own thoughts and ideas \u2062in the midst of \u2063a noisy and demanding world. Books\u200c can be\u2062 a refuge, a\u2064 source of inspiration, and \u200ba window into other minds and cultures.<\/p>\n<p>So \u200bas Christmas approaches, \u2063let us not forget the power of books to shape young lives. \u200dLet us not overlook the boy readers among\u2062 us, the \u200bones\u2062 who \u200bmay be quietly\u200c yearning for the gift of a good book. Let us give them the tools\u200b to explore, imagine, and dream,\u200b knowing that in doing so, we are\u200c also preserving a tradition that has brought joy and enlightenment for\u2063 generations.<\/p>\n<p>Books for Christmas: a\u200c nostalgic journey indeed. But\u200b also a reminder of the timeless magic of literature and \u2064the enduring power of a good story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas was always filled with books. Piles of them: paperback storms, stacks of personalized copies from elderly aunts, heaps of chess and DIY chemistry manuals. There were also guides on magic tricks, and the somewhat unappreciated Latin-English and English-Latin dictionaries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":853,"featured_media":2132692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2132691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2132692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}