Posted on 05/12/2025 11:02:12 AM PDT by Borges
I liked A. Merritt, too.
I haven’t heard of him before. I’ll check him out.
Hope you like his stuff. Some books that I really liked when I was a kid don’t seem nearly as good when I reread them now, though. For instance, when I was 10 or 12 I loved the Doc Savage stories, but let’s just say that they did not age well IMO.
I haven’t read anything by A. Merritt in about 50 years, so I don’t know if I’d still like him.
FTA: A second charge against the book is that of misogyny. ‘I can safely say that there is not a petticoat in the whole history,’ the narrator, elephant hunter Allan Quatermain, tells us proudly near the start. The story itself is dedicated to ‘to all the big and little boys who read it’, which is the sort of thing that might possibly offend some sentiment today....
~~~~
So stupid. How can the absence of female characters be consideredmysogynistic? Good grief!
Let the boys have a nice tail of adventure not messed up by distracting women.
I like the “Naked Prey” of all movies about Africa, but all of your picks are great
You say marrow, I say morrow...
I liked She better, but still loved King Solomon’s Mines. I need to dig both of them out and reread them.
It is a thundering good yarn. I read it as a kid about the same time I read all the classic children's novels, Treasure Island, Kim, Captain Courageous, Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland, all great books but King Solomon's Mines was the one that I carried to three countries because I liked re-reading it.
Left it in, I think it was Peru. Hopefully who ever got it enjoyed it as much as I did.
I’d read a couple Doc Savage books and really liked them. It was the summer of 1974 and I found an entire set of the Bantam ones at a used bookstore in Ocean City Maryland. I weedled a loan from my parents and bought them all. I read through them for the next 2 months. Re-read them a ton of times.
They’re in a box in my garage, It might be time to give them another look.
I read (and reread) a lot of Doc Savage books starting when I was about 11, until I was maybe 15 or 16, then pretty much lost interest in the series. Read one on the Kindle about a year ago, but it just wasn’t the same. Still, I hope your rereading is as much fun as it was back then.
I only have a few books left from 50+ years ago. Wish I still had them all but I’ve moved around way too much.
They’re perfect for their time and place. I’ll give them another run through and sell them to the best local used book store ( they have a rare section ) so someone else can enjoy them.
I’m doing the same with some of my gun collection, I’ve enjoyed owning and shooting them, but now it’s time for others to cherish them.
I have to admit I’m still accumulating books, and there’s still a gun or two I want. It’s really hard getting rid of stuff, especially once you get settled down enough so you don’t have to move it all every few years (or even more often).
“I’d bet the farm that one other writer he influenced was Edgar Rice Burroughs.”
And I’d make the same bet on Arthur Conan Doyle and “The Lost World”.
I’ll look for it on audiobook.
I did not know he was an organist. Hope this is not just a movie still of him pretending to be. But Monsieur Lom was wonderful. Terribly funny, perfect foil to Chief Inspector Clouseau. RIP H. Lom.
Nobel Prizeman, who, if he published the same stuff today, would be imprisoned in the UK for thoughtcrimes, hatecrimes, etc.
How far we have fallen!
What a wonderful poem.
I wish every high school kid had to memorize it.
And every college kid had to write a paper on it.
No doubt!
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