Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Whatcha readin'?

Me?

Right now some Talbot Mundy.  A little Jimgrim.

It's about the Levant.  Post Turk shennanigans in what will eventually become Isreal, written by a Brit that became an American and spent lots of time doing that Brit adventure via gummint job thing that was so fun for second sons during the British Empire years.

It opens in Jersusalem with ostensibly American main characters, early 1920s.  Americans are popular on every side because they aren't in charge of anything so their is no reason to chafe against them much.  The narrator is a New York journalist.  The hero is James Grim, an American recruited by the Brits to be their spy.

I recommend it.  Part of the writing are quite good.  Mundy can turn a phrase or two.  And it gives you the flavor of the area and can be valuable for non-fiction aspects.

I am sure I got this off of Gutenberg.  I swear, more than half my Kindle is full of free old books.  Yup, I was one of the 25 that downloaded this.

That Mundy was an odd duck that lead a fantastical life.

What are YOU reading.

More importantly, what on Gutenberg do I need to dig out and have overlooked up til now?  I got Baum, Kipling, Haggard, Rohmer, Burroughs, Hornung, Kelland.  I mean the more obscure gems.




1 comment:

pigpen51 said...

I had a friend who whenever I saw him, the first thing he would say was to ask me what are you reading? It was his mantra, since he was successful, and part of the reason for that was the fact that he never stopped learning. And he wanted to instill that same kind of thing in me.
He didn't have to worry. Once I learned to read, at a young age, I was a voracious reader. The dictionary, enclopedias, the Bible, Ernie Pyle, Norman Mailer, just some of the authors. Books like Animal Farm, 1984, Lord of the Flies, Medical Block Buchenwald, Guadalcanal Diaries. I read many of the classics by the time I was 10 years old.
I have said that once I learned to read I didn't need to go to school, since I taught myself more than school ever did.