Letter meme: A

[liv]

The less geeky side of the FB crowd are discovering sharing memes just like we used to on LJ back in the early 2000s. It's very cute. But somehow, even doing a fun silly meme on FB feels unpleasant to me, a bit like trying to socialize in a skeevy noisy bar, where you can't hear conversations properly and you're always looking over your shoulder in case the aggression spills over.

So I'm pleased this list things beginning with a letter meme has shifted back to DW, where I feel like this kind of thing spiritually belongs, and anyway I feel lots more comfortable. pseudomonas gave me an A:

Something I hate: anti-semitism. I was going to say aniseed, but really I don't hate it, I just find the flavour unpleasant, and then I was casting around for stuff to actually hate. I hate the existence of a belief that I'm worthless because of who my ancestors are.

Something I love: apoptosis.

Somewhere I've been: Australia. My mother has a brother and a sister out there, and we visited them twice when I was a kid, aged 8 and 13 and had two awesomely memorable holidays. And then I went back at the end of 2005, hoping for a post-doc which fell through at the last minute. That felt like a big path-splitting moment; I suspect if I'd got that job I'd have ended up a much more career-successful scientist, probably at the expense of personal life, and I very likely wouldn't have met jack or stayed connected to my SE England social circle.

All three times I've visited Melbourne and Sydney, where the cousins are (and the job would've been in Melbourne had it happened). And I've travelled a little bit between the two cities, visited Canberra and some smaller places basically along the Great Ocean Road. I've never been to the north or west of the country, nor to the Outback at all. I was almost going to put Ayers Rock as the place beginning with A that I'd like to go, but it's been acknowledged as a religious site now and not open to random tourists.

So, somewhere I'd like to go: Athens. I feel like that's a place a European person should go once in their life, and I never have, cos I keep using up all my holiday time and money on seeing far-flung friends. I've never been to mainland Greece at all, my parents took me to Rhodes when I was three, but all I can really remember of that trip is the hotel where we had my birthday dinner.

Someone I know: Andreas, who is ghoti and cjwatson's youngest, and has invited me to his third birthday next week. Talking of, does anyone have any good suggestions of presents for three-year-olds? I am most likely going to get him a book, cos we both like books, but all the books I loved when I was his age are dated and maybe the suck fairy has got them, and also he probably owns them already.

A film I like: it's really obvious, but I've always been fond of Amélie.

Please comment if you'd like a letter. I don't promise to have a really robust randomizing method, but I don't suppose you care whether your letter is chosen at random or not.

Comments

[liv]

I have to admit, I'm not that fond of the That's not my... books (though I really like The story of little mole who knew it was none of his business, which is similar only more scatological.) Whizz pop, Granny stop sounds cute, I like witchy books.

A tiny but real glockenspiel sounds like a really clever present, well done for thinking of that. I think I've left it too late to source something like that, though, I probably need to default to something I can order from the internet.

And yes, more colouring in books or sticker books or activity books, always good. I remember as a child just wanting more of those and not quite being able to articulate why I liked them. Thank you for lots of good suggestions!

[highlyeccentric]

I loved That's Not My Monster, but they're getting overdone now, I think. Kids don't seem to care about that though.

You might as well just go to a bookstore with a budget, and spend an hour finding the most awesome book and-or other toy/gadget/etc you can for the price.

[liv]

I think browsing a bookshop and picking what seems awesome is a good idea, and if I flicked through some books I could work out whether they're things I want to be gifting and potentially reading aloud. The problem is that the only bookshop within 5 miles of here is a small campus Blackwells, which does have one or two children's books but not really a selection. And obviously Cambridge has children's Heffers, which would be a lovely place to spend an hour or an afternoon and some serious money, but I am not at all sure I'm going to have time between now and Andreas' birthday to do that.

I'm somewhat leaning towards getting something that I loved myself, that feels right as a present, as long as I can find something that's not so obvious that all bookish parents my age already have it.

[highlyeccentric]

That is a pretty good plan, yes.

I've done alright with ordering books and toys and things from fishpond.co.uk. I'm not sure what their UK delivery times are like, though - they're slow to switzerland and aus.

[liv]

Thanks for the rec. They didn't have the book I wanted for a sensible price but anything that's not part of Amazon's evil empire is great to know about!

[highlyeccentric]

Alibris is the other one I go to a lot. Betterworldbooks (US company, two weeks shipping to EU) is also good for second-hand/factory second books.

[antisoppist]

I tried the the That's Not My .... books on my eldest and she was bored by them and actively hated some of the textures and was cross that there wasn't enough story - Why Are They Telling Me All These Things That Aren't Right? It Is Worrying!. I also found them very boring to read aloud. I didn't attempt reading them to child no. 2. However, child no. 3 picked one out in the library and was fascinated by it, would sit there constantly stroking it and talking about different pages being hard or soft or fluffy or shiny. It was a revelation! At 7 she is the only one of the three who is interested in things and how they work. I would say it very much depends on the child. And if it's for reading aloud, it depends on the parents too!

One of my stalwart gifts is You Choose by Nick Sharrat and Pippa Goodheart. Keeps them entertained for hours, especially on long journeys.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I think they're OK for very young toddlers (Zoe likes them, aged 14 months), but 3 is getting a bit old for them already.

Nick Sharratt is good. We have "Ketchup on your Cornflakes", which is almost like Apples to Apples for little kids, with the random mix and match aspect leading to hilariously silly combinations.

[liv]

That's good advice, thank you. I'd rather give Andreas something a bit old for him than too young; he does enjoy what I think of as "baby" books, but at the same time he's pretty good at grasping complex ideas, and being selfish I'd rather pick something he needs a bit of guidance to appreciate, so that I can read and discuss with him.

I am pretty bad at little-kid-suitable silly, it's one of the skills I'm working on. jack is really good at reading stories to the littles and subverting the reading in ways that absolutely crack them up, but I feel self-conscious about doing that, it's like trying to do improv comedy for an audience from a different culture. But I understand why Apples to Apples is funny, so something with that sort of silly mix-and-match might be a game I could play.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Noone can do what Jack does without fundamentally being Jack - I don't even try.

[liv]

You're right, I should not try to be Jack, but it was mainly an example of silliness. Silliness was discouraged quite a lot when I was growing up, it was next to naughtiness and mostly kept away from adult disapproval. And now I've read child development stuff which suggests that it's important for adults to be silly with children and I don't really know how. But I am aware that thinking it through carefully and assessing the evidence base and so on isn't really the best way to go about being more silly :-7

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

It was meant to be reassuring! I mean, I'm very glad that someone is being Jack around my children but I'm equally glad that it's not me because I'm bad at it. And so, you bring a uniquely Liv flavour to our lives, and that's valuable too. Your obvious respect for them, the way you take them seriously without trying because that's how you intact with people, is really important.

[liv]

Thanks for these comments! I know, different children are different, I'm doing that terrible thing of saying, what do three-year-olds like? without giving any other information about his personality or interests!

And there absolutely are things that little children love even if they're teeth-grindingly awful for adults (Peppa Pig comes to mind), but I think there's enough out there that I like and which also appeals to pre-literate children that it's worth picking something in that category.

It's true that reading aloud depends on the parents, but I'm also thinking I might be visiting sometimes and I do seem to get asked to read stories, so if I give something I enjoy reading myself, that's a bonus. Plus I know what I like and I don't exactly know what his parents like, so that's an easier criterion to use for picking something.

Thanks for the rec, too, that's a book I'm not at all familiar with, and something that's playable as well as readable might well be the thing.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Heh, I actually quite like Peppa Pig. It has a lot of humour that appeals to adults, of the gently-mocking-social-commentary variety. Alex has described it at The Simpsons for preschoolers.

(Do you mean the books or the TV series? IMO they cut all the interesting/funny bits from the cartoon to make the books.)

If I have to watch preschool TV, Peppa is about as good as I could expect. I'm thankful that neither of my kids have got into In The Night Garden - I saw one episode of that once and could feel my brain turning to mush.

[liv]

I am perhaps being unfair on Peppa Pig, I haven't seen all that much of it! I've been in company of a number of different children who seem to want to watch or read it over and over again. And I find the stories to be very stereotyped, not only in the sense of how they portray gender, but the story structure itself is very predictable and simplistic. Which is fine, I know it's educationally valuable for children to have very structured stories, but as an adult I find it grating, whereas there are plenty of even young children's books that are a bit more playful or have a twist of some kind that I enjoy more. And I suspect that's quite related to the fact that kids ask to repeat the same episode or book; if there's an interesting and thoughtful story, once you've read it you've read it, but if what you're getting out of it is the pleasure of knowing exactly how the story will work and what's coming up, you can get more of that by repetition.