My Son The Author

loulou123

As an avid reader myself i would be a bit wary of Stephen King books to be honest. I read them from quite a young age (early teens at a guess) as my mum wasnt a reader herself and didnt realise what i was reading! (she wasn't too happy when she found out about some of the content either!!)

Some of them are very very graphic and contain some quite explicit scenes too, oh and a lot of swearing. As someone else suggested a few of his books are a bit lighter such as The Green Mile.

I did A-level english Lit and my reading list was:
Frankenstein
King Lear - shakespeare
Paradise Lost by Milton
Silas Marner - cant remember who this is by
and the complete works of Tennyson

Jamies story is fantastic by the way and good luck in the competition

Pepzofio

Has he read any of the Gormenghast trilogy? I think he would really enjoy them, as they have a similar descriptive style to his. I remember loving the crazy-long sentences describing even the most trivial of plot details - it really helped build up a vivid mental image of the story. I bought the trilogy in one book to read when I went travelling to India. I bitterly regret swapping it in a second hand bookshop - in fact I must buy another copy and reread it!

Here are a couple of quotes:

"If ever he had harboured a conscience in his tough narrow breast he had by now dug out and flung away the awkward thing - flung it so far away that were he ever to need it again he could never find it. High-shouldered to a degree little short of malformation, slender and adroit of limb and frame, his eyes close-set and the colour of dried blood, he is climbing the spiral staircase of the soul of Gormenghast, bound for some pinnacle of the itching fancy - some wild, invulnerable eyrie best known to himself; where he can watch the world spread out below him, and shake exultantly his clotted wings"

and

"Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow."

I also really like John Irving's work, in particular 'The World According to Garp'. 'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller is also brilliant, although the plot does not follow a linear timeline but jumps all over the place (so it will tell part of a storyline, then jump to something else, then later on it will go onto something which explains how the characters got into the situation in storyline A, and you end up back at the beginning, IYSWIM!)

Not sure if this would be a problem with the Aspergers? (Please don't take offence at that - I don't really know much about ASDs, I'm just sure I've heard that rules and structure can be important. If I've got that completely wrong that's my ignorance!)

jimbms

Ok first of all have you considered obtaining dragon write to transcribe speech to text, it is very good and would save at home on a scribe, second with the reading, you have to consider his condition in that what is determined as the norm for his age does not count and as such things like Dante as you stated have a different meaning to him and no longer need to be of concern, what is more important is the way the author expresses himself and the style, have you considered James Joyce especially Ulysses, a hard book to follow but his style I would say has an incling towards your sons in an abstract way.