I liked this one when I read it years ago, but when I tried to re-read it aloud to one of my kids[1] I discovered that most of Hilton's characters' dialog read exactly the same—they have no voice—plus the prose was really clunky to read—uniquely so among the oddball books I read aloud to my young kids, and I read them some a lot older than that, plus a couple contemporary to Hilton's book, so it's not an age-of-the-writing problem. It was so unpleasant to read aloud that I didn't make it past the first chapter. Really soured me on the book.
[1] Hey, when they're young enough, it hardly matters what you're reading to them, may as well be something you want to read, unless you're reading them a picture book.
[EDIT] LOL, actually, now that I think about it, Gatsby was another one I read aloud to one of my kids. No problems with that one.
There is/was about an 8 hour staged reading of The Great Gatsby called Gatz that may sound like the strangest thing ever to some but I loved it (and so did the person I dragged to it).
I liked this one when I read it years ago, but when I tried to re-read it aloud to one of my kids[1] I discovered that most of Hilton's characters' dialog read exactly the same—they have no voice—plus the prose was really clunky to read—uniquely so among the oddball books I read aloud to my young kids, and I read them some a lot older than that, plus a couple contemporary to Hilton's book, so it's not an age-of-the-writing problem. It was so unpleasant to read aloud that I didn't make it past the first chapter. Really soured me on the book.
[1] Hey, when they're young enough, it hardly matters what you're reading to them, may as well be something you want to read, unless you're reading them a picture book.
[EDIT] LOL, actually, now that I think about it, Gatsby was another one I read aloud to one of my kids. No problems with that one.