Books

The River

Gary Paulsen tells another story in the Hatchet universe. 

You should not read The River. You should not even read this review unless you have kids. Go and read things for grown ups. 

…

OMG I love these books. Brian is such a likable hero. I’ve reread them all in the past couple years to my kids and I enjoyed them every bit as much as I did as a tween. They’re a mainline injection of “I could definitely hack it as a caveman” delusion. 

My boys also like them for the same reason plus, to quote from my 6yo’s reading journal, “I liked it because it was the kind of story I could really understand.”

Start with Hatchet, the original story of a teenage boy stranded in the remote woods. From there you can pretty much bounce around anywhere in the series. 

Five star YA adventure lit.

The Two Towers

JRRT packs two separate books into one volume. 

The first is the story of everyone other than Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. Merry and Pippin get captured by orcs, escape, meet the ents, and go with them to Isengard to fight Saruman. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli follow hot on their heels, meeting the riders of Rohan and a resurrected Gandalf on the way. And then the good guys all smash up the bad guys at Helm’s Deep. Peak LOTR. 

The second book is the story of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum advancing the ring roughly from Moria to Mordor. That’s the slowest, weakest section of the entire series. I think the whole series, but this book in particular, would benefit from heavy abridging. 

I’m not going to try to sell anyone on reading this. You probably already know if you should. It’s fantasy canon, outside the world of recommendation and rating. 

I will say that my boys still fight imaginary orcs many months after finishing these, so they’re definitely still relevant.