(no subject)
Watched Captains Courageous again on TCM this morning. Great film (love those Grand Banks schooners), and reminded me of when I read the book for the first time. It was one of those cool old hardbacks I occasionally found as a child. Each one was an adventure - you never quite knew what you'd be getting. Paperbacks always tell you about the book - plot, a bit of blurb - but hardbacks don't, if they're missing their dustjackets. This just had the title, the author, and a medallion with an elephant's head. And a swastika. So I was expecting a wartime jungle adventure, something like Tarzan Triumphs. Instead I got a great rite of passage sea story. Loved it. Re-read it a few times, as I recall.
[The swastika was put on all Kipling's books, I later learned, at least until the Nazis started using it. He just knew it as an Indian symbol of good fortune. He didn't know what it was going to come to represent later... The elephant, I suppose, was there 'cos he just liked elephants] .
The book was a 1917 edition. I think it came into my possession after Dad's best friend, the best man at my parents' wedding, passed away in his forties. It'd be one of the ones they used to read as kids. It's on my desk, now. Think I might re-read it again.
[The swastika was put on all Kipling's books, I later learned, at least until the Nazis started using it. He just knew it as an Indian symbol of good fortune. He didn't know what it was going to come to represent later... The elephant, I suppose, was there 'cos he just liked elephants] .
The book was a 1917 edition. I think it came into my possession after Dad's best friend, the best man at my parents' wedding, passed away in his forties. It'd be one of the ones they used to read as kids. It's on my desk, now. Think I might re-read it again.