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
Complete El Borak
These stories—novellas, actually: each story is about 20,000–25,000 words— were published in various pulp magazines in the mid 1930s, towards the end of Howard's life. There are five in all: 1. The Daughter of Erlik Khan
2. Hawk of the Hills
3. Blood of the Gods
4. Son of the White Wolf
5. The Country of the Knife
El Borak is the Arab name for an American who is swift as lightning and quiet as a cat, or something like that. He grew up in the American southwest, learning the ways of the Native Americans. But now, he's transferred his base of operations, so to speak to the Middle East, mostly in the "-istans", the rough hill lands between Pakistan, Afghanistan Turkmenistan, Persia, and into eastern Turkey. One story, however, Blood of the Gods takes place on the Arabian peninsula. El Borak wrangles with lawless war lords in the "-istan" regions; becomes a war lord himself; rescues a British spy (pretending to be a German spy) from the Turks; saves an old mystic sitting in a cave, who just happened to be rumored to have a pile of highly prized pearls with him; and so forth. It's all swashbuckling fun, and not half badly written.
