Janice Meredith

Usually I do a little bit of research on a book before I write about it — not much beyond googling the title and author to make sure I haven’t missed anything important. So I took a look at Wikipedia this morning, and while I didn’t learn anything about Janice Meredith that I didn’t already know (bestseller in 1900, made into a silent movie), when I looked up Paul Leicester Ford, I discovered to following: he was murdered in 1902 by his brother Malcolm, a famous athlete, who then shot himself. Nothing to do with the book, I guess, but any chance that I was going to forget who Paul Leicester Ford was is now gone.

Not that I really thought I would forget, because Janice Meredith is pretty good. It’s sort of like Under Two Flags, only set during the American Revolution, and about one fifth as ridiculous.

Happy Captain Blood Day!

So, September 19th is the day Peter Blood is sentenced to slavery in Barbados — if he’d been tried any sooner, he would have just been sentenced to death, instead of having the opportunity to become the coolest pirate ever. So you should celebrate, preferably by reading — or rereading — some Sabatini. Here are a few suggestions.

The First Sir Percy

I’m not exactly sure why I chose to read The First Sir Percy, the book following The Laughing Cavalier, but I suspect it had something to do with The First Sir Percy being only abut half as long as its predecessor. Anyway, I’m glad I did.

Diogenes, Frans Hals’ Laughing Cavalier, is back. He has, since the last book, discovered that his real name is Percy Blakeney, and he also, for no reason except that Baroness Orczy seemed to feel it was necessary, has been knighted. He acts much more like his eponymous descendent now. He pretends to be stupid and cowardly –  as well as blind and drunk — and even starts using some of the same exclamations as Sir Percy. He’s not really Sir Percy, but he reminds one of him, which is a big help.

The Laughing Cavalier

I forget, now, whether The Scarlet Pimpernel was my first adventure novel. I’m pretty sure that I read it before The Three Musketeers, The Four Feathers, The Prisoner of Zenda, or Scaramouche (my first Sabatini). So there was this time when The Scarlet Pimpernel was the only great adventure novel I had read. And it coincided with a time in my early teens when I was just discovering the wealth of reading material available on the internet. And during that time, I came dangerously close to joining the online Scarlet Pimpernel fandom.

See, I found this website called Blakeney Manor, and they had the texts of about twenty Scarlet Pimpernel sequels and prequels. Which is, you know, a lot of books. For free. Somehow related to a book that I loved. And if the first one I read hadn’t been so silly, I might have read them all. So I’m pretty thankful that I decided to read them in chronological order, and that the one I started with was The Laughing Cavalier.

Little Old New York: Pictures

 So, apparently I’m incapable of holding my camera still while it takes a picture. Also, I can’t turn the flash on. So when tried to photograph the illustrations from Little Old New York, they all ended up dark and blurry. But some of them weren’t quite as awful after I’d fiddled with them, and here those are. I miss the scanner on my broken printer.

Little Old New York

Yesterday I read Little Old New York, by Rida Johnson Young. I wasn’t going to write about things that weren’t available for free online, but to hell with that. This way I get to talk about pictures!

Anyway, I found this book at my grandparents’ apartment last year along with an early Edward Stratemeyer book, two or three Pollyanna sequels, an attractive edition of The Mill on the Floss, and maybe a couple of other things too. At the time, it was the part of my haul I was most excited about it, so I wanted to save it for last, and then I forgot about it and didn’t pick it up again until I needed something to read on the train back from school yesterday.