War of the Worlds

We are reading our third novel of the year and Ian had his choice of about twenty. I tried to talk him in to reading "Old Yeller," but he wasn't interested in a book about a kid who has to shoot his dog. He picked "War of the Worlds" which, for those of you who haven't read it, is classified as Science Fiction.

I hate Science Fiction. I also hate Romance, Fantasy, Christian, Thriller and all books with any kind of redeeming message. Give me a book about family dysfunction and I'm in my element. I recently finished "Left Neglected" which was about a woman who gets in a wreck on her way to her high-pressure and high-paying job which leaves her brain believing it doesn't have a left side. The plot is fairly ho-hum - you know this injury will change her life and she'll love her kids and her husband more and leave her high-paying, high-pressure job for a job like cheese-making in Vermont and live happily ever after, but it's kind of cool what you learn about the brain.

Anyway, Ian chose "War of the Worlds" and I immediately ordered the movie from the library. The movie is not at all like the book, as Ian informed me, because he is reading the book. I did not want to, which is why I ordered the movie. It won a special effects award for 1953. I know,  1953. It was a pretty cheesy movie and we laughed a lot, especially when the lead female actress screamed and fainted; she did this four times in the movie. Fainted. She screamed hysterically about 126 times. They had a lot of close-ups of her screaming; the red-lipstick mouth, the white, white teeth; this was probably why they won the award.

Ian likes the book. It's full of Martians and some English guy who leaves his wife somewhere (I'm not real clear on the plot since I find a lot of excuses to leave the room when we're listening to it) and the protagonist is looking forward to the war against the Martians. They use words like "armament," "treble" and "forthwith." The Martians have a "heat ray" and they are destroying the earth with this, although I'm still not clear on the reason why.

In the movie Earth is saved at the last moment because they're in the church and singing and praying and the male and female leads who were separated as he went off to save the world are reunited in the church and then the Martians with their heat rays quit heating and raying everything and the movie is over. It's 108 minutes, which is plenty long. I think there's some subtle message about religion, but I'm not sure.

The point of this is that it's fascinating what kind of books young male teens like. I know, from working in the library, that the young men who still bother checking out books, love the fantasy/adventure genre. There's about 50 popular young adult authors who make a rather good living by writing these in series.

When I was a young and an idealistic English teacher I argued, with anyone who still listened to me, that it wasn't enough to have students read, they had to read the "good stuff." Now that I'm older and I've become a more discriminating reader myself, I know that that isn't true. Maybe "Playboy" magazine did have good articles in it like my cousins told my grandmother. But as long as they're reading halfway decent reading (like this Blog, for example) then it's okay.

I mean, arent' we supposed to encourage the love of reading? If a young male teen loves reading "GameNation" magazine or "Chilton's Auto Mechanic Manual," what the heck, they're reading and they aren't playing a game on the computer.

If Ian wants to fall asleep listening and reading "War of the Worlds" I'm a happy mom.

But it doesn't mean I have to read it, does it?