Mama M said....
Travis McGee was the MamaM's first love. She might have settled for Meyer, but McGee was the favorite. She started reading the series in high school and kept the books stored in a box under her bed, as they were plenty edifying for her but not the sort of edifying reading material encouraged in her home at that time.
So true Mama M. I loved the Travis McGee books and have everyone of them in tattered paperbacks. They were among the first I started collecting along with Louis Lamour and Robert E. Howard and HP Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle and Max Brand and Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and the Horatio Hornblower books. These series gave me the feeling that I was entering another world. And there were so many of them! I could save up and buy another one the next week and have something to read on the subway on my way to work or school or just in the backyard while I listened to the game.
Travis McGee was the MamaM's first love. She might have settled for Meyer, but McGee was the favorite. She started reading the series in high school and kept the books stored in a box under her bed, as they were plenty edifying for her but not the sort of edifying reading material encouraged in her home at that time.
So true Mama M. I loved the Travis McGee books and have everyone of them in tattered paperbacks. They were among the first I started collecting along with Louis Lamour and Robert E. Howard and HP Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle and Max Brand and Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö and the Horatio Hornblower books. These series gave me the feeling that I was entering another world. And there were so many of them! I could save up and buy another one the next week and have something to read on the subway on my way to work or school or just in the backyard while I listened to the game.
I tried to buy the McGee books for my kindle but they are not available. I loved in particular loved "One Fearful Yellow Eye" and "A Tan and Sandy Silence." I read those books twenty years ago and I still remember them fondly. I wish I could get them all on the kindle because they hold up today.
There are a lot of great writers and series that I did not include in the poll but who I would recommend highly that you give a chance. John D. MacDonald and Travis Mcgee.. Walter Mosely and Easy Rawlins and Mouse. Joe Lansdale with Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. The great Elmore Leonard. Dennis Lehane. And one of my personal favorites Loren D. Estelman and his Macklin series. I you want a series that sparks of realism you should check that out nd.
There are many great fictional series that you can dive into that will give you hours of pleasure.
The kindle is just a vehicle to get more of them back in your life.
I have hours and hours of great fun in store for me.
18 comments:
So, let me ask, did you follow all three of L'Amour's families or just the Sacketts?
Always seemed to me he was looking to follow his roots (Franco-Irish descent), but didn't get into them as much.
It was always fun when a few of the Sacketts got together to settle a score.
Troop, you forgot the greatest detective of all...Nancy Drew. She started my love of reading, and from her I branched out to Gothic romances, SciFi, Conan Doyle, general literature. Currently my fave series are PD James' Adam Dalgliesh, and Cold War intrigue, especially Le Carre and Deighton.
I never could get into Agatha Christie, except for Ten Little Indians. As far as PI's, the only one I ever got into are the Donald Lam/Berhta Cool series written under Erle Stanley Gardener's pseudonym, AA Fair. Loved them as a teen.
Ed, my Dad is interested in finding some L'Amour books on tape about his other families, which he just found out about. He's listened to all the Sackett's he can find. (Eye problems.)
I never read Nancy Drew but I did watch the TV show because Pamela Sue Martin was one hot piece of bacala.
"Fair Blows the Wind" is a great Louie Lamour book about Tatton Chantry which is one of the three familys edutcher is talking about. That would be a great audio book as would Borden Chantry which is a more traditional Western and lots of fun.
I own every book that Louis Lamour ever wrote.
Pamela Sue Martin, eh? Couldn't pick her out of a line-up. I was only frosted that they slapped a name on a girl solving dippy crimes and called her Nancy Drew.
Thanks for the tips on the Chantrys. I conveniently have my dad's library card number and just order his library books online.
Yeah, I never got into westerns. The only one I recall reading was Shane, and that was required in high school.
Conan Doyle's best writing--Baskervilles, A Study in Scarlet---was a thing of beauty. Eloquent, precise, logical. But Dr C-D churned out a great deal of whodunit pulp--just little tricks more or less. And it's so bloody English.
The Maltese Falcon was a whole 'nother ballgame. Mean and lean, like Dash the one-time Pinkerton hisself.
She started my love of reading, and from her I branched out to Gothic romances, SciFi, Conan Doyle, general literature.
Read it, closely TY. ....Bogus with a Capital B (as in...Belcharoni!). Gothic romances....oooo. Such as?
Name a Conan Doyle story you've read Mr Deb. Zip.--wait....Googles away
My favorite Sherlock Holmes story is "The Sign of the Four" whick strangely enough almost reads like a Western for most of the story. I read the complete works of Conan Doyle when I was about 13 and have always enjoyed them. That is why my series of Holmes pastiches starring Inspector Lestrade are some of my favorite things to write.
What always amazed me about "The Sign of the Four" is I think they stole a part of it to make a Sean Connery Movie called "The Molly Maguires." I know it was based on history but they kind of stole the story.
Pamela Sue Martin was of course one of the hot young asses we saw climbing up and down hatchways in the "Poseidon Adventure."
Trooper, We haven't covered nonfiction. There is so much good nonfiction out there it's tough for me to squeeze in fiction. This was a bone of contention w/ my deceased sister who taught high school English. She would say derisively, "Oh, that's right..you read that nonfiction."
"Valley of Fear"---a fave, along with the aforementioned. C-D describing what life was like when surrounded by treacherous masons, mormons, and outlaws--a complex story within a story as well. Based on C-D's own travels in the USA, supposedly and a bit different than his Holmes usual whodunit--political even.
HP Lovecraft? creepodelick. HP could write but I'm not so down with all the ghoulies.
Okay, I didn't realize there was a Nancy Drew series in the '70s. I was talking about the most recent one.
But I also see there were movies in the '30s...off to youtube I go.
lol this is not Nancy either. Or her dad or housekeeper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNxwK-2DpC0
wow Hardy Boys next, Mr Deb? . Is this little fraud Mr. "Deborah" perhaps in LDS, given its appearance anytime someone says something vaguely anti-LDS (as with many on Ahouse too)? I say so TY. Bogus---like Mitt Romneytoid bogus, or..... "Belcharoni".
Yeah. Pamela Sue in her red shorty shorts. She got a Playboy cover...
Trooper York said...
My favorite Sherlock Holmes story is "The Sign of the Four" whick strangely enough almost reads like a Western for most of the story. I read the complete works of Conan Doyle when I was about 13 and have always enjoyed them. That is why my series of Holmes pastiches starring Inspector Lestrade are some of my favorite things to write.
You're talking about the one set in Utah, right? Thought that was "Study In Scarlet".
Lost my Complete Sherlock in a move eons ago, so I'm going on memory (first read it 50 years ago and the synapses are a little rusty).
Edutcher on books?I doubt he can read the newspaper.
Educita doesn't read books, apart from like a history of the klan, or meth cooking for dummies
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