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
Robinson Crusoe
God, this one is awful. It's tedious and boring and very poorly written. Defoe has essentially no ability for description. The story line should be interesting, but long, tedious patches are taken up with hideously awful maundering on Calvinist theology, theology which Crusoe apparently picked up merely by picking up a Bible at the age of 26 or so and reading it through a few times. It doesn't work that way. I have a recollection that I read and enjoyed Robinson Crusoe back in elementary school. I'm thinking I must have read one of those "as told by" thingies. No way I'd have persevered through this rubbish when I was 10 or so.
My suggestion is that anyone wanting to know the story of Robinson Crusoe would be well served to look for a condensed version specifically aimed at children. That way, you'll likely manage to escape most of this book's awfulness, awfulness that consumes the major part of the work. All the "action" is basically subservient to the twisted theology Defoe purports to propound. Reading this book was not a pleasant experience.
