Kidnapped

I don't remember how old I was when I read Treasure Island, but I remember enjoying it once I got past the obscure references in the first few chapters. I thought a squire worked for a knight, and I didn't understand the social structure the story was embedded in, but the book was fun. When I re-read it a few months ago, I noticed things I hadn't seen the first three times. Fortunately I've not had experiences with pirates, but I knew the environment much better than when a young boy.

My parents, presumably gratified by my interest in the story, bought Kidnapped. Screeching halt. I tried twice to get into the book, but the dialect was too alien and Stevenson assumed that the reader understood a wealth of different things about Scotland and its relations with England. (Only 1/4 Campbell: I don't keep track of clan leaders)

For an adult, the book is worth the time. David isn't the same kind of resourceful hero (as witness his time on the island), and is fairly prickly, but the story works.

I don't know if the picture of the Highlanders is true to life, but it is crisp and lively. If you haven't read it, you'll probably like it.

Once I got past Margaret Wise Brown (I wish I had her wordsmith skills), there seemed to be three classes of books: Winnie-the-Pooh class, Green Smoke-class, and Gulliver's Travels class. (We tended to get more British children's book authors, possibly because it was easier to get them from James Thin than from New York.) For some reason I never was very enthusiastic about Winnie (and Paddington was only a little better) myself, and never read them with our kids. But Wind in the Willows I can still read for fun. Odd that the sophisticated stories and the ultra-simple ones are the ones with better staying power. (There was a bit of a furor when the library pitched Mary Poppins, but when I went back to read it as an adult I realized why nobody had taken it off the shelf in years--it isn't really very good.)

With no TV (only a few hours at night), and radio broadcasts more static-y than I cared to put up with, I browsed the eclectic mix lying around at home. I wasn't Christian and eschewed the obviously Christian books, but Gabriel and the Creatures was nicely offbeat and Manson's Tropical Diseases endlessly fascinating; there was Ayesha, Rabelais... but funny thing: when I started reading Ian Fleming all the James Bond books suddenly and permanently vanished.