My world history kids took a test yesterday. After one student had finished, he contentedly pulled out a science fiction book and read quietly for the remainder of the testing period.

I know that I should be ecstatic that a kid is reading for pleasure. I am. But I also was disappointed by the choice of reading material. I have observed a phenomenon in recent years ‚ÄövÑv¨ kids no longer read ‚ÄövÑv stand alone‚ÄövÑvp fiction. My readers are typically reading books that tie in with movies or video games. Yesterday it was a ‚ÄövÑv Star Wars‚ÄövÑvp book ‚ÄövÑv¨ something about Han Solo and Princess Leia‚ÄövÑv¥s Jedi children. Other kids read ‚ÄövÑv Forgotten Realms‚ÄövÑvp Dungeons and Dragons tie-ins or Star Trek novels. Very rarely do you see kids reading authors without connections to our consumerist mass media. Part of me wants to scream: ‚ÄövÑv Read a real book!‚ÄövÑvp

I suppose it makes me snobby, but why aren‚ÄövÑv¥t they reading Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, or Vonnegut (I know Kilgore Trout agrees with me here). Okay, if they find the old masters boring, there is still a fresh crop of sci-fi writers ‚ÄövÑv¨ Orson Scott Card would top my list. How ‚ÄövÑv=bout Jerry Pournelle or Allen Dean Foster or Larry Niven or Piers Anthony (circa 1980s before he became a pulp novel factory)? If fantasy is your game, why not put away the D&D literary abortions and pick up Terry Pratchett, Terry Brooks, Card (again), Eric Flint, or Glenn Cook?

The most recent book I read for pleasure was Cook‚ÄövÑv¥s ‚ÄövÑv Black Company*,‚ÄövÑvp a well-plotted grunts-eye view fantasy novel. One of the major problems with adult life is that there is so little time for pleasure reading. Work, family, household tasks, and farming take up more hours than there are in a day. Now, I enjoy all of those things. BUT I would love to have an extra day in the week during which I would prop up my feet on a chair and read.

* I was able to find time for this only because of enforced inactivity while I was sitting in the bathtub drowning an embedded tick that I couldn‚ÄövÑv¥t get out with tweezers, as the Maximum Leader can attest.

Question for the Naked Villainy Bloggers: What was the best fiction book you have read over the last year?