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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 Rover Boys at School

The Rover Boys at School - Arthur M. Winfield In reading something about the author of the Hardy Boys series (Lesley something or other, a Canadian), I got interested in Edward Stratemeyer, who masterminded a number of popular youth series, including the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and the Rover Boys. Well, I'd never read any Rover Boys, which seemed to be Stratemeyer's first series and one he largely penned himself. Many of the others he outlined and then farmed out the actual writing to others, for a fixed price and no royalties. The poor bastard who wrote the Hardy Boys only made about $100 for a volume, which then went on to sell to several generations of boys over several decades.

Anyway, the Rover Boys is short and active. There's always something going on. Lots of youthful hijinx, scary adventures, e.g. being attacked by a rampaging snake, robbed by a hobo, choked on a moving train, etc. There are also lots of moral teachings, so as to instruct boys as to how to grow up to be proper men, lots of foreshadowing, and of course a summary of the story which pitches the next one in the series. Since the book leaves a number of questions up in the air, e.g. will the rich widow be bamboozled into marriage by the malevolent, former schoolmaster, one must, naturally, immediately go out to buy the next adventure in the series. So, perhaps I shall.