Reddit reviews The Cat in the Hat

Books my son has loved:

• "That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown". Queen Gloriana the Third tries every trick in the book to get her hands on Emily Brown's rabbit Stanley, but Emily Brown isn't giving her best friend away, not even for all the toys in the world. This is my son's favorite book ever. Great story, both main characters are female. The text is just right - a few challenging words/phrases which are repeated often, the rest easily understood by 3-4 yr olds. Illustrations are funny and awesome.
  
  
• "Falling for Rapunzel" - A fractured fairy tale (my favorite kind) in rhyme. The prince thinks Rapunzel needs his help and rides to her tower to rescue her, but she keeps mishearing his request to "let down her hair". Text is a bit challenging for 3-4 yr olds, and you might need to stop to explain the meanings of a few words, but my son loves the rhyme and LOLs a lot at the story. Nice illustrations too!
  
  
• "Where the Wild Things Are" - a classic, I'm sure you are familiar with it. When we read this book, I make sure the wild things are often "she". :)
  
  
• Several Dr. Seuss books, such as Green Eggs and Ham, and The Cat in the Hat. Some Dr. Seuss books are boring for my son, especially the ones with a LOT (just pages and pages) of nonsense words - entertaining for a bit but it's a chore to get through the book. We like the ones with a story. With Dr. Seuss, you need to be extra vigilant about gender of the characters, there are almost no female characters in his books. In our home when we read, I make the Cat in the Hat female :) all "she" where it says "he", and so on.
  
  
• any "Dora the Explorer" book. Great for characters of color. I highly recommend Dora in general, it's perfect for 3 yr olds. My son's outgrowing her now that he's 4, though, it's a bit too simple for him.
  
  
• recently we've added a bunch of nonfiction books about volcanoes, planets, dinosaurs, etc. When we read them there's always a discussion of stuff like "what's going to happen if we go to Pluto?" and so forth. Great time to inject diversity education: our astronauts are often disabled!

You won't believe how this ends.

Is it this?

LOL, the self-justification is strong here. I was just making a joke, but now that you've said the series is terribly written I can see that you are going to great lengths to prove that you do not in fact have low reading comprehension (which it seems you do).

“Ser? My lady?” said Podrick. “Is a broken man an outlaw?”

“More or less,” Brienne answered.

Septon Meribald disagreed. “More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.

“Then they get a taste of battle.

“For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe.

“They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.

“If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world…

“And the man breaks.

“He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them…but he should pity them as well.”

When Meribald was finished a profound silence fell upon their little band. Brienne could hear the wind rustling through a clump of pussywillows, and farther off the faint cry of a loon. She could hear Dog panting softly as he loped along beside the septon and his donkey, tongue lolling from his mouth. The quiet stretched and stretched, until finally she said, “How old were you when they marched you off to war?”

“Why, no older than your boy,” Meribald replied. “Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. Willam said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he’d stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape.”

“The War of the Ninepenny Kings?” asked Hyle Hunt.

“So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was.”




When I read that I just put the book down, terrible writing, who would think that's any good?

You've shown me that I should heed the opinions of people who didn't even bother to read and instead listened to one audiobook then quit when it comes to which series are well-written or not.

Here's a book suggestion that is more suited to your reading level.

>No I'm distinguishing between PC bullshit and actualities in what's accurate.

I'm sure you're a delight at the dinner table...

The very fact that you said everything I'd recommend would boil down to "socialism" tells me, very matter of factly, that you actually don't know what it is. If you did, you'd understand that socialism isn't a destination or final product but merely a theoretical transitioning point from capitalism to communism. With that in mind, I've included a few reading selections that are suited for your level:

This one should get you ready for this one. When you think you're up for the challenge, try this one on for size.