{"id":38794005,"date":"2010-09-15T06:24:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T06:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.casey.com\/2010\/09\/roald-dahl.html"},"modified":"2013-04-05T06:11:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T06:11:55","slug":"201009roald-dahl-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2010\/09\/15\/201009roald-dahl-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Roald Dahl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"roald_dahl.jpg\"Recently, the topic of ‘Roald Dahl<\/a>‘ came up in conversation in my house, in reference to a children’s book of his titled ‘The Twits’, with which I am unfamiliar. And that surprised me, because I considered myself a fan who grew up loving Dahl’s books; James and the Giant Peach<\/a>\"\", Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/a>\"\", Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/a>\"\", and the epic sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator<\/a>\"\". And a particular favorite, Danny the Champion of the World<\/a>\"\" (published in 1975 when I was 10, I still have the copy I received for Christmas that year).<\/p>\n

My daughter Colleen, also a huge Dahl fan, ran up to her room and returned with an armful of his books that I have never read including George’s Marvelous Medicine<\/a>\"\", The BFG<\/a>\"\", The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me<\/a>\"\", Matilda<\/a>\"\", and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar<\/a>\"\".<\/p>\n

I tweeted my surprise<\/a>, and started reading. In the Wikipedia article on Roald Dahl<\/a>, I found my explanation as to how I had missed these books. Each of them had been published after 1980, by which point I was in high school and I had seemingly turned to more age appropriate reading. Just once since then had I read a Dahl book, this one written for adults, My Uncle Oswald<\/a>\"\", a bawdy tale that predicts Viagara and sperm banks. It was a fun read, but I didn’t explore his adult books any further.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I finished the third of these new (to me) books on the bus home, The BFG<\/a>\"\" (which is of course short for Big Friendly Giant). And then in my evening web surfing I stumbled onto a coincidence, September 13th (Dahl’s Birthday) is recognized as Roald Dahl Day<\/a> in the U.K. and around the World. And a day’s not really enough, so Dahl’s own web site<\/a> claims September as Roald Dahl Month!<\/p>\n

I’m happy for the fortuitous timing of my rediscovery, and a new pile of books of his I get to explore more than 35 years after my original introduction and enjoyment of his writing. Happy Roald Dahl Month to all!<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong> – With a week left to go in Roahl Dahl month, today’s Washington Post reviewed a new biography about him. It looks like a great read.<\/p>\n

‘Storyteller,’ Donald Sturrock’s authorized biography of Roald Dahl<\/a>
\nThe Washington Posts, 9\/23\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, the topic of ‘Roald Dahl’ came up in conversation in my house, in reference to a children’s book of his titled ‘The Twits’, with which I am unfamiliar. And that surprised me, because I considered myself a fan who grew up loving Dahl’s bo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38794005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-2CM5L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38794005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173354122,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794005\/revisions\/173354122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38794005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38794005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38794005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}