11
Followers
23
Following
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
The Spirit of the Border
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Delilah of the Snows
Mrs. Miniver
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
A Christmas Carol
The Way Some People Die
Envy of Angels
The Third Round
So, for some reason, I decided to take up Bulldog Drummond again, and I have to say, it's rapidly become tedious. The first was silly and improbable. The second was good enough that it tempted me to try the third. This one was tedious and I kept wishing it were over. It wasn't horrible, just not very good. Were I able to give +s and -s, this would most definitely be ***-, or more likely, **+. Anyway, Bulldog Drummond finds himself locking horns with the world's master criminal, Carl Peterson, aka Comte du Guy, aka all kinds of other names.
In this book, a famous, elderly chemist, Professor Goodman, discovers a chemical method for creating perfect diamonds in his laboratory. The head of the diamond syndicate has dinner with him, sees the amazing diamond pendant his daughter is wearing—the daughter is betrothed to one of Bulldog Drummond's buddies—and becomes worried about the possible consequences. The professor, it seems, has created a diamond worth some 5,000 pounds for a mere fiver (they don't count labor time as part of the cost). So, the diamond syndicate, once they figure out that they can't buy the old guy off, hires master criminal, Carl Peterson, to see that that Prof. Goodman can't present his results to the next meeting of the Royal Society. Peterson could, of course, just kill the guy, but then his secret would die with him. Much better, Peterson thinks, would be to know the secret himself before he kills the old guy. So, we have Peterson abducting the old chemist; blowing up his laboratory in spectacular fashion; almost killing Drummond multiple times; Drummond trying to save the old chemist; almost killing Peterson multiple times; car and boat chases, and so forth. But in the end, Drummond escapes death and Peterson escapes Drummond, presumably so they can lock horns again in the next book in the series.
I'm not sure I'll go on with this series. This book got incredibly silly and tedious. It might be fun, however, were we elderly chemists considered worthwhile in any reasonable sense of the word. I'd likely suppress some of my research for a million or so pounds (or perhaps even a hottie red head!). But then, there's little commercial value in metastable nitrogen, so I'll likely just molder along for a few more years, continuing to amount to very little.
