Joan Aiken wrote a ton of other weird and great books. A lot of them have a "steampunk" type theme but before it was lame.

At first I thought you were referring to A House Like A Lotus, which I love, but I realize you probably meant An Acceptable Time, which I think I couldn't even finish. I actually think the Wrinkle in Time series is by FAR my least favorite (I'm not a big scifi fan at all) but Many Waters was my favorite of those.

Oh, for sure. All of my sex-at-college experiences came in my senior year when I was barely taking classes and pretty much checked out of the student thing, and none of them were with people I met through my college groups of friends. They were all with people I met, like, at the bar or at random or who were not…

My parents (more, I think, my dad) read to me incessantly when I was really little, and then again some when I was a teenager. My dad read me the entire David Copperfield when I was 16 or so, with all the voices. And we have a great picture of my him reading me Winnie the Pooh when I was like a year or two old. In it…

God I loved The Great Brain series. I read his couple of adult books too a little while ago. They are both less and more fictionalized in some ways - they tell the backstory of some of the characters and we learn some details that were simplified for the children's books, even though they cover a lot of the same…

Yeah, I've never quite bought this criticism. "Outcast of Redwall" was a great exploration of that trope though.

@avclub-c6447300d99fdbf4f3f7966295b8b5be:disqus Don't you think there was kind of a reasonable doubt about that? I vaguely recall that they all had stinger endings. I think my favorite was Howliday Inn too - I remember being actually scared by it. Yes, the characterization was so great; Chester was an awesome…

Yes! This was my exact experience. My mom loved them when she was a kid and she says she used to make cardboard covered wagons all the time. I read them when I was younger, and then my mom and I read aloud the entire series when I was a teenager. We finished These Happy Golden Years right before I left to go to…

That's a great story. Harriet the Spy is actually kind of dark and disturbing read as an adult. It's one of those books that people see as a children's classic that has some serious and adult themes. I'm not saying kids shouldn't read it; I think it and Louise Fitzhugh's other books are greats example of the type of…

John Bellairs is my absolute favorite children's book author. I've read all his books so many times and reread them even now. They have such wonderful values and exceptional depictions of friendship. Not to mention how exciting and scary they are, and how fun they are to read for anyone who is into classics or…

I loved the Redwall books so much. My friends and I went through a big phase of all reading them in 4th grade. I remember so vividly reading the end of Redwall and how suspenseful that fight scene with Matthias and Asmodeus is. I'm not sure I've ever been in such a physical state of excitement from a book as I was…

Yes! They are fun and weird as a kid, but I feel like the weirdness is even better appreciated as an adult.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. I read it for the first time when I was 6 and I reread it pretty much every year from then to age 21 or so, until I had finally reached the point where I know the entire book so well there isn't much point in rereading. My copy, which used to be my dad's, is in absolute shreds. I…

My parents were strict with both TV watching (I wasn't even allowed to watch Buffy until I was 13) and book reading. This was actually good, because I was able to read literally anything including New Yorker articles from the age of 5 or so, and I was pretty sensitive, so I was constantly reading things that confused…

@avclub-e57f718840a576abbb40a7d046c4e3b0:disqus Oh ok. I thought you had a master's in economics for some reason. Yeah, I guess preprofessional programs "can" charge more because there is a traditional expectation you can make it back, which is no longer always true in the new economy. Tuition seems to be going up…

@avclub-e57f718840a576abbb40a7d046c4e3b0:disqus Here's another invasive financial question - out of curiosity did your program charge tuition for two years? My impression was that most master's degrees come in a bit under that, tuition charged over only one year, and that's without any scholarship support. But yes, I…

I once found "checking for squirrels" in a list of euphemisms for female masturbation and have been really wanting that to become common parlance. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Are they rare? I live in MA and all our bottles are returnable, also cans, but it's harder to get the returning machine to read those. I returned 135 the other day. I feel like an idiot now; when I look at the bottle it obviously only lists a few states for redemption but I somehow didn't think that meant that only…

I just spent way too long trying to find that glass animal sex toy replica site. Could not find it and now it's going to drive me crazy. Also, never google image search "animal sex toy." Those glass things were expensive though! I know some of the electronic stuff can get really expensive but if you count, like,…

In other words, that should have said "snuck out in."