Reply #2: Christopher Paolini [View All]

was always homeschooled. He graduated at 15 through an accredited correspondence school.

My son (recently 13) LOVES Eragon. (He's ticked we didn't go to the midnight show last night. We're probably going this afternoon, though.)

I liked the book pretty well - though it was a bit tedious in places. Not bad for a kid, though.

Eldest is not as good. I didn't really like the tangents he went off on and definitely didn't like the changes in some of his characters. Though I'm thinking maybe he thought making them more "edgy" was a mature thing or something.

Nearly all of my son's friends really liked Eragon - girls as well as boys; they're all pretty bright kids.



As for other books, I too like a lot of "YA" books. I read a lot of the same books my son does. The fantasy ones are usually superior to the "real life" ones out there, imo. They're TOO "real life" - sex, drugs, drinking, cheating at school, stealing, etc.... while yeah it is going on in schools today, I don't want my son reading that and believing it's "normal". Which is what I think having them casually written into the books does. It "normalizes" the behaviour in some way.

An interesting one I just read is Floating Island by Elizabeth Haydon. (My son hasn't read it yet.)