I'm afraid that Vital Signs Ministries’ activities have kept me from doing a whole lot of reading in this last month. Three weddings, plenty of lawn care work and even a brief trip to St. Louis also played their part. Therefore, I’m just now getting back to a normal pattern.
There have been a few books I have managed to slip in here and there. They've included:
* The 1951 John D. MacDonald novel called Murder for the Bride. I liked JDM's Travis McGee novels when I first read them back in the 1980's but he is inconsistent in the books where he tries to get away from his Ft. Lauderdale "salvage expert." This book predates his creation of McGee and, while it has some hints that made his future books into bestsellers, it was overall disappointing. Don’t bother about this one.
* My first entry into the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ world of Tarzan (Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar), came via a 25¢ copy from a used book table in St. Paul, Minnesota. It wasn't worth it. No kidding, I really disliked this book. The Darwinian/ Nietzschean philosophy was nearly overwhelming while the extravagance of the jungle king’s talents, strengthens, instincts, etc., went way beyond the comical.
* A novel I did find entertaining in my recent reading was Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho written in 1794. It was one of the earliest and most popular examples of what became known as Gothic horror stories. It was an entertaining read but much too long and uneven to be a novel I'd recommend to others. Also, the amount of fainting, swooning and collapsing women was pretty annoying after awhile!
My motivation for reading Udolpho came from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (a Notting Hill Napoleon’s selection from a couple of month’s back that I really enjoyed). Austen had obviously relished The Mysteries of Udolpho and I wanted to see what her excitement was all about. Okay, now I know.
* Finally, one more "pleasure book" from the last few weeks (this time not a novel) was one I found delightful, even inspirational. It was Treasure In a Cornfield by Greg Hawley. Written in the mid-90's, it is the story of an incredible family adventure – the reclamation of goods from the Missouri River steamboat Arabia sunk in 1856. It was an exciting real-life story of American history, buried treasure, and inventive and persistent researchers. Very fun.
