'Time Bomb'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I don't think Agatha Christie mysteries are as bad as early Nancy Drews (although I suppose it depends what year series you have as they went through many incarnations for precisely that reason).
On the other hand, I think Nancy Drew at least avoided using the n-word in one of the titles. That one is probably my favorite Christie book (not that I've read a lot of them), and pretty atypical for her from what I gather.
I'm trying to think of other mass-market (as opposed to "literature")books I've read that were written in the 1930s to compare on the race issue, and the only ones I can think of are the Little House books, in which Wilder only encounters African-Americans once (the doctor in The Little House on the Prairie), and views Indians in a much more sympathetic light than her mother saw them. Her opinions on Indians were obviously shaped by the fact that she was on the verge of the frontier most of her life, and sensed the passing of what had gone before as it was changing throughout her childhood.
I've read mysteries from the '20s and '30s - Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr, among others - and I do remember reading some things that made me cringe. And John Buchan ("The Thirty-Nine Steps") ... eesh.
On the other hand, I think Nancy Drew at least avoided using the n-word in one of the titles.
Yeah, but then there was The Mystery of the Missing Mick, which didn't go over too well with the Irish population.
I remember some cheesy dialect in some of the ones I got.
The early Nancy Drew (and The Bobbsey Twins) were bad enough that some of it made me cringe as a child. Especially when my mom read The Bobbsey Twins out loud, and Sam and Dinah (the black servants) sounded like "I's gwine a go down t' tha stoah and buys me some a dem der watermelons." It was really bad. I am not sure if those were changed in later incarnations.
The Agatha Christie stuff is more along the lines of -- "he may be an ass, but he certainly didn't want a Russian Jew calling him one!"
Yeah, but then there was The Mystery of the Missing Mick, which didn't go over too well with the Irish population.
Heh. Nope, I'll bet it didn't.
Yeah, but then there was The Mystery of the Missing Mick, which didn't go over too well with the Irish population.
Heh. Nope, I'll bet it didn't.
That was just a (bad attempt at a) joke on my part.
Also, I'm Irish, which is the reason I picked "Mick," but I'll delete the post if it's offensive.
That was just a (bad attempt at a) joke on my part.
Well, it did make me flash on a funny but HUGELY deliberately offensive line from Blazing Saddles (the one that ends "...but we don't want the Irish!"), so I wasn't sure if that was an actual title or not. Given some of the more offensive Hardy Boy stuff I've heard about, it wouldn't entirely surprise me.
I thought it was funny, Tep, and really that book held together much better than the Case of the Kriminal Kraut...cute spelling was the least of that one's problems.