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.
Buffy? I like that. That girl's so hot, she's buffy.
Forrest ,'Conversations with Dead People'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
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."
Toddson - Jun 15, 2007 9:10:48 am PDT #2855 of 28176
Friends don't let friends read "Atlas Shrugged"
Steph L. - Jun 15, 2007 9:19:06 am PDT #2856 of 28176
I look more rad than Lutheranism
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.
erikaj - Jun 15, 2007 9:21:45 am PDT #2857 of 28176
Always Anti-fascist!
I remember some cheesy dialect in some of the ones I got.
Sophia Brooks - Jun 15, 2007 9:25:07 am PDT #2858 of 28176
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here
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!"
Frankenbuddha - Jun 15, 2007 9:28:43 am PDT #2859 of 28176
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"
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.
Steph L. - Jun 15, 2007 9:37:51 am PDT #2860 of 28176
I look more rad than Lutheranism
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.
Frankenbuddha - Jun 15, 2007 9:42:00 am PDT #2861 of 28176
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"
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.
erikaj - Jun 15, 2007 9:42:24 am PDT #2862 of 28176
Always Anti-fascist!
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.
-t - Jun 15, 2007 10:31:12 am PDT #2863 of 28176
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration
I never read much Nancy Drew, but the thing that has always struck me as odd about Christie and Tey and Marsh mysteries is how taken for granted the idea that criminality was inborn is - I can remember at least a couple of Christie's where the culprit was the child of a murderer, for example, and that whole business about physiognomy in Daughter of Time, as much as I like the book, is impossible to swallow now.
Laga - Jun 15, 2007 10:39:01 am PDT #2864 of 28176
You should know I'm a big deal in the Resistance.
I (also Irish) laughed at the Missing Mick.
I'm reading Kavalier and Clay on the bus but I get nauseated if I try to read while we're moving so I've got 20 little cliffhangers per day as I wait for the bus to stop rocking to read another line, paragraph or page before we start moving again.