Life in Books

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Classics Illustrated Comics

Now, I get to pay homage to another kind of book that sustained and inspired me in my childhood: the comic book. I read all kinds of comics and was always trading them with my friends. Batman was a favorite, but I kept gravitating to the Classics Illustrated comics. They basically stripped the classics down to their bare bones and revealed that they each had at their heart, a great story worth telling.

Loved all the Jules Verne stories, and eventually read most of his books, but a particular favorite was "The Mysterious Island" that was a kind of sequel to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" which I also first encountered in comic form and then in the Disney movie that I loved. I was excited when I found out they made a movie of Mysterious Island, and saw it in the theatre when it came out in 1961. I was not disappointed even though they strayed a fair bit from the book and combined it with elements of the H.G. Wells book, The Island of Dr Moreau.

The original Classics Illustrated Comics are now in the public domain and the Internet Archives has a terrific set of them that are free to download in PDF format for anyone who loved them as kids and would like to revisit them:

Classics Illustrated Comics at the Internet Archive

Lots of other comics free to download at the Internet Archives, such as:

Early Batman adventures

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Mammals - Golden Nature Guide

I have owned and loved this book for as long as I can remember, from when I would just look at the pictures and study the maps, and I still have it now, so it is by far the oldest book I have owned continuously. As a kid, it was endlessly fascinating and I wondered if indeed someday I would head down to Southern California and maybe Mexico and actually see kangaroo rats like those hopping on page 92:

We did eventually get to Southern California, though most of the kangaroo rats we saw were in the nocturnal area of the marvelous San Diego Zoo. They have a special feeling for Kangaroo Rats there, and continue to study their conservation in a very thorough going way:

How We're Helping to Save Kangaroo Rats

We spent whole days at the San Diego Zoo and once at closing time we passed by the cheetah enclosure and noticed a small dog running around in there!

Our first thought: "OH NO! THEY ARE FEEDING THE CHEETAHS STRAY DOGS!" But there was a zookeeper standing by and so we asked him, and he said that after hours they put a stray dog in with the cheetah for company.

Surprisingly, they do become friends, and apparently the little dog becomes the dominant one. The zookeeper said that when the cheetah would start its obsessive pacing back and forth, it was as if the little dog said, "ENOUGH ALL READY!", grabbed the cheetah by the ear and drag him off! You can read more about these unlikely friends...

Dogs And Cheetahs Living Together At The San Diego Zoo

Thornton W. Burgess - The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat

When I began taking piano lessons around the age of seven, our piano teacher Mrs Lodge would present us from time to time with the gift of a Thornton W. Burgess book with a vivid red dust jacket, presumably as a reward for sticking with it. I recall that one of my favorites was Jerry Muskrat, followed closely by Johnny Chuck. These were among the first chapter books I ever read.

Many of the Thornton W. Burgess books are now in the public domain and can be downloaded for free in PDF format from the Internet Archive. For example, the book:

The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum