Follow Friday - There Are 137 Atoms in a Chlorophyll Molecule

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Words with Sarah and The Storybook Kingdom.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Pick a book in your favorite genre that you’d recommend to a reluctant reader.

If I wanted to get someone to read fantasy, I'd give them Ursula K. Le Guin's book  A Wizard of Earthsea. The first reason I'd hand them this book is that it is written by Le Guin, and in my experience, her writing is the best way to get someone to read genre, whether it is science fiction or fantasy. The second reason is that this is one of her best, and most accessible books. Le Guin's science fiction is filled with fairly overt political and social commentary, which could serve to push a potential reader away if they were adamantly opposed to the viewpoints that she brought to her science fiction - for examples see books like The Dispossessed or The Word for World Is Forest. And although her fantasy is also filled with political and social commentary, it is more subtle, and thus less likely to rub a potential reader the wrong way.^* While the story in A Wizard of Earthsea deals with the nature and responsibility of power, the struggle to choose between a life of being and a life of doing, and the folly of youth, it is at its heart a coming of age story set in a world that is both fantastical and at the same time comfortable and almost familiar. A Wizard of Earthsea is also a self-contained story. Although it is the first in a series of books set in the world of Earthsea, the story told in the book stands on its own, without needing the following books. This means that the new reader will get to the end of the book and have a satisfying conclusion to their read rather than a "to be continued" sign. Finally, I'd choose this book because it is reasonably short. Nothing turns off a potential reader to a new genre like a book that could double as a doorstop. The new reader wants a book that they can give them a taste and a feel for the genre. If they have to wade through five or six hundred pages to get their toes wet, they are likely to just throw their hands up and not bother. So, for all these reasons, the book I'd hand to a potential new fantasy fan is A Wizard of Earthsea.

*On the other hand, anyone who would be turned off by a science fiction or fantasy book that challenges their preexisting ideas about politics, society, and religion is someone that genre fandom might be better off without, but that's a discussion for another day.

Go to previous Follow Friday: The BBC's "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" Ran for 136 Episodes

Go to subsequent Follow Friday: The Hymn to Apollo Was Written in 138 B.C.

Follow Friday     Home