Right, so I was playing with this new addon for Firefox called “Stumble Upon” that takes you to random webpages that it ‘thinks’ you might like; it gets this information from a list of catagories, and you pick the ones that interest you.
I StumbledUpon this blog post.
From the start I think “Well, this looks like it might be interesting.”
I read through the first few books suggested, thinking I might pick them up at the library if I remember to see what they’re like.
Then I get to book suggestion number 91.
Roald Dahl’s “Danny, champion of the world.”
Of course, this being the top 100 fantasy and sci-fi books of all time, I am instantly curious. Danny isn’t fantasy as far as I remember. In fact, it’s pretty realistic, for a story about a boy capturing pheasants. Of course, I havn’t read the book myself, I’ve only seen the musical adaption. So I think “Perhaps I’ve missed something? Maybe there was more in the book than they went into in the musical.”
I read the small blurb about how and why Danny is number 91.
“To me pheasants were creatures of the farthest imagination. Danny is the deepest and darkest about having a father and what the meaning of having a father should be. I also find Danny, the Champion of the World incredibly frightening in its discussion of total vulnerability and fear of death and absolution.”
Oh, of cou- wait what?
“To me pheasants were creatures of the farthest imagination.”
Now I know people interpret things differently, but surely that is a bit more out of the box than the average person?
Sure, there are some people out there that has never seen a pheasant, heard of a pheasant or even thought about a pheasant; but to just assume they’re imaginary? Despite the obvious not-fantasy-at-all way Danny is written?
I really couldn’t get it into my head that someone could class Danny as fantasy/sci-fi and get away with it. I scrolled down to the comments section…
And found someone commenting on the fact he’d included Watership Down in this list despite it’s not-exactly fantasy/sci-fi nature. (I scrolled up to find it in the list, it’s number 80) I do agree with them there, it’s not sci-fi, but I think it could be classed as fantasy. I’m not going into that here though, I’ve not read the book so I can’t exactly comment on it.
But there was nothing commenting on the fact that Danny is not fantasy. Not one person thought “hang on, that’s not quite right.” And said something about it.
Now I could either assume these people didn’t really care and had more things on their hands than being annoyed by some dude on the internet thinking some book that isn’t fantasy is a fantasy book; or they thought it was fantasy too.
The second assumption makes me sad, and gives me the urge to educate people with the fact the pheasants are real damnnit!
Poor pheasants, don’t let the man get you down.
[Original image yoinked from http://www.english-country-garden.com/ ]
Anyway! That's enough from me, bugger off now will you? :)
Tonks x