Latest Read...

Amongst the books I picked up at the library the other day was Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, by C.S. Forester.  My father, when I was growing up, had something of a fetish for maritime museums and adventures.  Patrick O'Brien, C.S. Forester, the U.S.S. Constellation at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  The sea and its lore were pretty much the bane of my childhood existence.  I can't tell you how many times we were drug aboard some ship to satisfy my father's penchant for all things nautical.

When I first bought the book, I wasn't sure if it were something I'd read before.  After finishing it, I'm pretty sure I haven't.  All in all, it's a pretty passable book.  Pretty formulaic.  Nothing too exciting (or mayhap I'm simply past the age when I find such stories exciting.)  Which may be funny, as I still take the time to reread Latham's Carry On, Mr. Bowditch at least once a year.  It could be argued, though, that neither of these stories are really books about the sea.  That's just the setting.  Forester's Hornblower is all about pluck, courage, and duty, Bowditch is about perseverance and the integrity to follow up on what is correct.

Reading this book reminds me of my time working at an estate auction company growing up.  We used to go and clean out houses in Southeast Pennsylvania after the owners had died and sell the contents at auction.  A lot of my early exposure to reading came from box lots of books that I'd pick up for a dollar or two a pop.  That tended to be a lot of Irving Stone, Herman Wouk, Michener, and Reader's Digest condensed classics (and you could probably do some sort of anthropological survey based solely on the 20-50 books that your average suburban household in the U.S. carries.  I can't begin to tell you how much overlap there was between a lot of those bookshelves.  How many copies of How to Win Friends and Influence People or The Power of Positive Thinking do you think have ended up in landfills in Southeast PA over the past 20 years?)

While the book is the first book chronologically in the series, it's the sixth published.  As it is, I'm not sure I have much desire to follow it through.  Then again, for a book that took me four hours to read, it probably wouldn't take much to breeze through the rest.

Gothise?!?!

According to the stats tracker on my blog, quite a bit of my traffic (really, a rather large portion of it) comes from Gothise, a social networking site for "alternative-people."  Which kind of makes me scratch my head and say "huh?"  I'm no stranger to trying new things.  And have often gone out of my way to do much the same.  But part of me still wonders how that came to be...

Anyone want to step up and claim responsibility for the links?

See if I can get back into the swing of things...

So I've not been posting much, mainly because I've not felt I've had much to say.  I'll see if I can get back into the groove, here.  Though I'll be taking a much more low-key approach to the blog from here on out.  I figure if anyone wants to read it, they'll find it.  I won't be pushing it.

In the same spirit, I'm trying to get back into the swing of reading.  As I mentioned in a previous post, my reading activity has declined greatly over the past few years.  In 2007, when I first moved to SoCal, I'd read about 45 books by the month of July (when I moved to the area.)  As it is, I'm not sure I've read 25 books this year...

I'm sure I could check my library on my profile at LibraryThing to see how many books I've put in this year, but I don't think I even want to bother.  Instead, I went to the public library yesterday and picked up about 20 books from the Friends of the Library Bookstore.  A mix of classics, books I've read and enjoyed in the past, books I've heard good things about, and authors that I want to check.  Mostly on the lighter side, as I haven't had the attention span or concentration to keep focus.

Last night, I reread The Return of Sherlock Holmes.  A pretty light, quick read.  I'd received the complete Sherlock Holmes as a birthday or Christmas present when I was 11 or so.  Used to love the stories.  They don't hold up nearly as well as I would have liked.  Formulaic isn't quite the word I'd use, but they telegraph their intent much too easily.  I get the same feeling reading these stories now as I did when I tried reading Encyclopedia Brown when I was 11.  Everything just glares from the page.  I do wonder, however, if Holmes would be considered autistic nowadays.   ;)

Still pretty enjoyable, nonetheless.  And fun to revisit some favorite characters from my youth.  I'm not sure I'll end up digging any deeper, though.

Not sure what comes off the To Be Read stack next, though.

We'll see.