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lgpiper

Reading Slothfully

I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.

Currently reading

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Jules Verne
The Spirit of the Border
Zane Grey
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
Beverly Cleary
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Ross Macdonald
Delilah of the Snows
Harold Bindloss
Mrs. Miniver
Jan Struther
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
Maud Hart Lovelace
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
The Way Some People Die
Ross Macdonald
Envy of Angels
Matt Wallace

The Admirable Crichton

The Admirable Crichton - J.M. Barrie Philip, the protagonist in Of Human Bondage, didn't have a lot of friends when he was young, so he spent a lot of his time reading. One of the things he read was The Honorable Crichton, which I discovered was by James M. Barrie, the guy who came up with Peter Pan. Then I discovered that The Honorable Crichton is actually a play. Well, I thought I'd not read a play since college, but realized that I was actually in a couple of plays, musicals actually, after I'd settled down and begun having children. So, I must have read those "plays". Whatever, I figured that one of these days, I should read a play or two, and now I have.

So this play is about an upper-class British family that has an oh-so proper butler, Crichton (sort of like Jeeves, I suppose). He knows his place, which is below the titled family members, and above the footmen and scullery maids. All works like clock work in the household. But then, they go off on a sailing trip and become stranded on a desert island. Once the party finds themselves in a state of nature, the natural order changes. And so forth. Basically it's a light comedy, and not at all bad. I spent a lot of time casting the play with the various regulars involved in my town's community theater. Unfortunately, the ideal actor for the role of Crichton died a year ago.