Major Apologies to David Rodaughan Just about the time I think I've gotten my act together, I make another embarrassing discovery. Yikes! I get a letter like his and I throw it in a drawer. By the time I'm next writing these pages, Back in October of 2000, David wrote that he'd been reading "some of the 'classic' titles"
I was reorganizing the shelves and drawers in this guest/computer room and discovered David
Rodaughan's letter from Maffra that's almost two and a half years old. (Maffra, for those of you
who have forgotten, is in Victoriaãthe one in Australia, not Canada.)
I've forgotten it's there. Just read on a bit further. I found another letter as well. It follows what David wrote.
and he found it interesting that there was so little dialogue in them. Here's what he'd been reading:
| Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. It took a little while to really look forward to the next reading session, but once I got used to the style, it was quite easy reading. It's a good tale of how a young seaman tried to overcome his doubts about his abilities and character. | ||
| The Virginian by Owen Wister. This is a book I had been chasing for many years. It was a delight to find a new reprint on special in an out-of-the-way bookshop. Certainly I was not disappointed in what is generally put up as being the standard setter of the Western (cowboy) style of novel. The Virginian does set the standard and it is clearly a standard that Zane Grey and O Henry have also achieved. | ||
| Beau Geste by Percival Wren. This is the most recent of the 'classics' that I have read. It tells of how three brothers join the French Foreign Legion. There were a couple of very late nights where I was literally unable to put this book down. It is also one where the setting of the scene really came forward. | ||
| Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. It took me about two chapters to get acquainted with the language. It is an engrossing tale set in the time of the early French and English settlement in the vicinity of Lake George. It has certainly stood the test of time. |
David mentioned that Elaine Hills had written about Bill Bryson (and by now so has Michael Thielen). David wrote,
| I have also found his books a good read and his comments, thoughts and candour very interesting. Amongst those titles I have read are A Walk in the Woods, Notes from a Big Country, Notes from a Small Island (which Elaine liked) and his latest 'expose,' Down Under. Bill's ability to put into words his travelling experiences so they can be read and enjoyed is not achieved all that often by others. He appears to have an open mind and as a result gives extensive reviews of his experiences. | ||
| In 1996, for three months I was in the USA and Canada. I was able to have something of a look around, or as much as that amount of time allows in such a large region. | ||
| The early periods of English settlement and the 'opening up of the West' have always been of interest. That being the case I toured the area around New England and the locality of Boston. While there I purchased the book Patriots by A. J. Langguth, which was recommended. It certainly gives a good insight into the characters, events and general settings of the period leading up to, during, and after the War for Independence. The Appalachian Mountains were also interesting. While reading Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, I was imagining the sections of the trail I saw up on Wildcat Mountain, where the wind nearly blew me off the planet. | ||
| To get from the East Coast to the West Coast, I took a three week tour that wended its way across the continent and took in such places as Philadelphia, Washington, D. C., Gettysburg (I was amazing what Abraham Lincoln was able to put into a speech that took less than three minutes. I wish some of our politicians could use this as an example.) Other places of interest were Mount Rushmore, crossing the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon, and other parks in that region. | ||
| I was amazed at just being able to see the distances that the early settlers traversed in wagon trains (who had a good day if they travelled 20 miles).
This also led to the purchase of other books. The one I purchased after my homecoming was Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose. It seems to be full of good insight into the exploration travels undertaken by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. It was unfortunate that after the expedition, Lewis was apparently unable to commit himself to putting the events and findings into a proper written account. At least there were extensive journals written at the time by the two leaders. | ||
| It was not long after reading this thoroughly interesting book that there was a series of television programs based on the expedition and Stephen Ambrose was one of the contributing commentators. So there was a great deal of the locations of the expedition that I was able to relate to as I had travelled up the West Coast from San Francisco to Vancouver. I had seen the Columbia River on which Lewis and Clark had travelled. | ||
| The recovery of Mount St. Helens is amazing. Even though it erupted in 1980, I was not expecting the recovery to be as far advanced as it was. |
Now comes my most embarrassing paragraph in David's letter:
| So, all the best for future editions and I shall not be as long with my next contribution. Sometimes I think I must get a holiday cottage by a lake somewhere so I can sit out on the porch of an evening and watch the sun go down. |
Well, David, I hope I won't be as careless with the letters that come to me.
The stamps you sent were well used for mailing Reading back to you. Thank you
for them and for the good words.
I didn't know Beau Geste was a novel. I thought it was just a famous American movie
starring Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Susan Hayward, and Broderick Crawford,
directed by William Welman. I had to look up the details about the 1939 movie, and I didn't
know the movie was based on a book. Nor did I know that Owen Wister was a predecessor to Zane
Grey. (Anyone else want to offer me lessons about American literature?)
Write Tell a little bit of the world what you think.
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By Ken Wedding. 08.19.02 Updated 02.07.03.
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