A Busy Time of Year

Spring is a busy time of year for me, and this year I have sufficient distractions to keep me from reading as much as I usually do. Another core interest I have is everything about the fictional hero, Zorro, and a Zorro telenovela airs five nights per week on Telemundo until the middle of summer. Currently, the shows are 90 minutes long and will probably return to 60 minutes long in a week. Needless to say, the telenovela is taking up most all of the time in which I normally read. I have started to read the Susan Sand series, but it is going very slowly due to lack of time. It seems that I read a chapter during one sitting around a couple of times per week. That's it. Unless I speed it up a lot, it will be awhile before I get through the series. I am near the end of the second book at this time. My current feeling is that the Susan Sand series is like a parody of Nancy Drew. I have acquired some nice new foreign and library editions as well as two Riddle Club dust jackets that I did not previously have and upgraded a third Riddle Club dust jacket. As time and energy allows, I will place scans on my site. Next week, I do get a week off of work, so I expect that I will get some of the scans added at that time. I may even manage to read most of the Susan Sand books.

The Lost City of the Aztecs by J. A. Lath

I just finished reading The Lost City of the Aztecs by J. A. Lath. I purchased this book solely because I thought that the dust jacket was pretty. I really didn't know if I would like the book.

I do not tend to like boys' series books as much as girls' series books, because many of the ones that I have read tend to have too many fistfights and other things that don't interest me much. This book turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Within the first few pages, I knew I was in for a treat. This is the best book that I have read in quite some time. It is highly suspenseful, and I could hardly put the book down until I finished it.

In this book, a boy named Ralph finds a cipher and a message hidden in the binding of a book about the Aztecs of Mexico. Ralph's friend, Dick, decodes the cipher, which gives directions to a lost Aztec city that is located in the crater of a dormant volcano somewhere near the Arizona border with Mexico. The boys decide to try to find the lost city and are accompanied by two friends. I would love to mention something about what happens when the boys reach their destination, which is only halfway through the book, but I feel like this would spoil too much. All that I will say is that what they find is fantastic, and the second half of the book is extremely suspenseful reading.

I highly recommend this book. It is a scarce book, but copies of it can be found reasonably at
www.abebooks.com.

I am now going to read the one other book that J. A. Lath wrote, The Cortez Emerald Mystery. It features the same characters, and I am eagerly anticipating what it might contain.

More on the Riddle Club Series

I finished the Riddle Club section yesterday, proofread it again today, and placed it on the site a short while ago. I try to place a humorous or somehow important quote at the top of each new section. I particularly like the one I have used for the Riddle Club section:

"I read in a book that people with sense always watch things. When they are taking a walk, they see the trees and the plants. When they are out driving they notice the landmarks. I like advertisements—I always watch them. And when our car tipped to let the other go by, I looked right at that advertisement for orange marmalade and I remembered it. So when Polly said she dropped her pin I knew she must have dropped it there."

"My goodness, you read a lot of books, don't you, Artie?" Jess said, with manifest respect.

" 'Improving' ones," Artie said modestly.

"Huh, what about the story books you keep under your bed?" Fred suggested. "Nothing very 'improving' about Indians and pirates, that I ever heard of."

"That's because you don't read 'em," announced Artie. "Ward and I have an invention most made now—a new kind of arrow. Any book is 'improving' that teaches you something."

The quote is from The Riddle Club at Sunrise Beach. The reason I like this quote so much is that Fred comments that the storybooks that Artie reads are not very "improving." The type of books that Fred refers to are books like the Riddle Club books and all of the other Stratemeyer Syndicate books. Artie has a good answer when he states that "any book is 'improving' that teaches you something."

I feel like this statement takes aim at all of the people during the early 1900s who blasted the Stratemeyer Syndicate books as poorly-written, sensational books that would dumb down children. It is certainly true that even formula-driven series books can teach children new things, and even I as an adult have learned new things from these vintage books. I learned lots of new riddles while reading the Riddle Club books!

The Riddle Club Series

I will be adding the Riddle Club section to my site soon, either tomorrow or later this week. I have just begun to read the last book in the series.

While I thought that the Riddle Club books might be worth collecting, I have to say that they have been a pleasant surprise and better than I expected. I first noticed the series a couple years ago as I tried to find the true 1st printing of Nancy Drew #6, The Secret of Red Gate Farm. The Riddle Club series is the series listed on the 2nd page of post-text ads in the very first printing of Red Gate Farm. This fact drew my attention to the series. The ad states:

Here is an ingenious a series of books for little folks as ever appeared since "Alice in Wonderland." The idea of the Riddle Books is this, three girls and three boys decide to form a riddle club. Each book is full of the adventures of these youngsters, but as an added attraction each book is filled with a lot of the best riddles you ever heard.

The idea of club members telling each other riddles is intriguing. There are many, many riddles in each book. Some of them were easy for me, while others were difficult. A child could have a lot of fun reading these books and trying to solve the riddles before the answers are given. Each time a riddle is asked, the club members take turns guessing and almost always get into discussions, sometimes heated, about what the answer could be.

I had trouble getting into the first book, for several reasons. Part of it was just me and that I was very busy at work and wasn't sure which series I wanted to read next (see my first post in this blog). The other reason is that I had trouble keeping all six characters straight. I gave up on that issue and forged my way through the book. By the second book, I began to see several of the characters as different from the others. I do believe that the author did a better job of exploring the characters' personalities as the series progressed. By the fifth book, Polly, Artie, Ward, Fred, and Margy were all distinctly different characters in my mind. Jess was the only one that didn't stand out. As I begin volume 6, Jess still doesn't stand out, but that's okay.

The series has a lot of humor in it, more than many other series do. I feel that humor is an important part of any series book. I find that the ones that I enjoy more do have more humor in them than the ones that I enjoy less. Book 5 is hilarious. I laughed out loud quite a few times. At one point I laughed uncontrollably. I won't try to describe the scene, but the antics of Ward (the obligatory fat friend) and of Artie (the bookworm who continually recites everything he has learned from books) are priceless.

So look for the Riddle Club section shortly . . .

Sweet Valley High Series Section Now Up

The Sweet Valley High series is the series I alluded to in my previous post. I was an avid reader of SVH from 1983 to around 1986 or so, and I have strong nostalgic feelings about the series. I prepared the SVH section a few weeks ago and put the finishing touches on it today. It is now listed on the main page of my site and can be found at 

http://www.series-books.com/svh/svh.html

 I have only covered the first 35 books in the series, because these are the only ones that I care about.

My First Post and Today's Random Thoughts

I have decided to try a blog as another means for others to contact me. I refuse to post my email address since doing so would unleash a tidal wave of spam. So, if you want to contact me, post a comment here. I’m going to try to check this page often. We'll see what happens.

I just added the Arden Blake Mystery Series to the site. I finished reading the third volume yesterday. At the end of volume three a phantom title is mentioned, The Hermit of Pirate Light, but alas . . . it does not exist. This phantom title is an odd-sounding title; somehow it sounds better as The Hermit of Pilot Light!

I now have the decision of which series to read next. I started the first Riddle Club book, but I may change my mind and read something else. There is a certain series that I have considered reviewing on my site, but I am still undecided and do not wish to mention it at this time. To me it fits, but the addition of it would surprise quite a few people. I’ll let you wonder what I mean by that. I enjoy being mysterious.

I am currently building a set of the Ruth Fielding books. This is a series that I have put off purchasing for a long time, mainly because I dislike books that all have the same exact image on each dust jacket. I have decided to buy at least one copy of each book with whichever jacket it happens to have. There are five different dust jacket formats for the Ruth Fielding series, and I doubt that I will try to complete a set of each dust jacket format. I do hope to own at least one representative dust jacket from each format. I have one format and nine titles to go.