Today and yesterday

1. My daughter got to an age, or a stage, when she asks her very few friends for book recommendations.  Her last acquisition (is it a right word?) was something called "101 ways to bug your parents".  I read it, not because I censor her reading, which I'm not entirely adverse  (is it a right word?) to do, but do not do yet, since she doesn't read enough yet for the said censorship to be needed, but because the book was lying around.   The book starts with grotesquely cliche, but still funny, description of the middle-school class dynamics (the topic and the setting I hate profoundly, if this is a word): a vain and gossiping girl, a cool guy, a pretentious boy, a girl with a sad back-story, and a couple of nerds nobody likes.  Nerd#1, the narrator, needs money to get to an inventor's convent.  He also needs means of transportation and some parental attention.  Silly boy, he could have had so much fun with his sympathetic, permissive and overburdened parents while and as long as they were not paying attention.  But this is a standard school-library fare.  Anyway.  Nerd#2, the sidekick, gets kicked aside in the course of the story, but bounces back vigorously and shows his waivering friend the true meaning of friendship.  Nerd#1 writes a book about bugging parents to sell it, because he needs money.  He gets in trouble.  He gets out of trouble.  In a true heroic moment he forces his way in the room with the the PTO meeting there his book and possible firing (for permitting this topic for an assignment) of his teacher is discussed, and, in a dissociated moment, hears himself speaking in a microphone that firing the teacher would be wrong.  Fanfare.  He doesn't get to the convention, but he discovers...  Oh, my.  How the same hand that which could type "Burp with your mouth open"could type "Because the inventing is who I am [...] Doing something because you believe in it, because it's right -- that' what counts".  I mean.  It's almost as bad as a book about a girl who was so nice and good all little cuddly animals believed she was beautiful, even if she, actually, was just as plain as you are, my gentle reader.  Now go blow your nose and be good.  Now, the question.  What are the normal, staple, classical English books for a seven-year-old to read?  I don't mind reasonable amount of violence and disturbance, and I have very lax notion of what is appropriate, but I don't want her to read something good too early, not get most of it and ruin her perception of the book.   Currently she reads this bugs, the Church Mice series and "the Jungle Book".

2. While visiting friends happened to watch last fifteen minutes of a generic TV movie.  School bus of hostages, a maniac who turned mad with his problems with IRS (my heart goes out for the men), frantic parents abusing very David Wellham -like (but shorter and handsomier) boyfriend of the hostage driver, yelling at him how hard it was to persuade  their children that the school bus was safe (my heart goes out for the moronic parents: of course the school bus is not safe!), a sweating pony-tailed blond female police lieutenant with the sexiest sing-song voice, a cool to pieces police sniper.   No idea how they got there.  The madman was shot, the children were safe, the brunette driver kissed her boyfriend, my kids crawled out from under the furniture and asked why didn't they shot at tires?  I do not know. 

readers club

While we are at it, what would you, dear friends, recommend me to read?  A short (ten to hundred titles) list of
books  by missing which I'll miss the essence of the English-speaking culture.  I'm probably familiar with classic,  (Shakespeare,
Dickens? ) but mostly in translations.  Which classical books I must reread in original to get?  Are there any new titles worth reading?  I think the most recent fiction I read was Harry Potter.  Random novels from bestseller lists didn't quite capture my attention.