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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 Murder Monster
Classic pulp. Not great, but entertaining enough. Bummer that the rendering into ebook format was so poorly done. I gather there is a host of pulp books featuring Secret Agent X. This is one of them. "X" is a master of disguise and takes on a number of personna. He can also mimic the looks and mannerisms of known people when necessary. He's also independently wealthy and absolutely abhors criminality and crime. He's dedicated his entire being to erasing crime. He has a network of private detective agencies and agents who do his bidding. None of them knows exactly who he is. He deals, always, in some disguise or another. Something like that.
So, in this book, at the end of a football game between a bunch of collegians and the inmates of a prison, "someone" manages to collect up the 25 most ruthless killers in the prison and carts them off in a truck. They all vanish.
Next thing one knows, there's a host of robberies featuring "robot killers". Sometimes they show up with an ungainly monster. The monster speaks in a metallic voice and has a finger that shoots a stream of gas at people, which upon contact causes the people to be engulfed in flames. The police are, of course flummoxed. People who might have pertinent information get incinerated in spectacular fashion. But, doggedly, Agent X and his minions eventually track the Murder Monster to his lair, eliminate him and disarm all the robot killers so that they can be returned to prison.
