I do plan on reading them in order. I love finding a new author, it's like a doorway to a new and exciting mansion, who knows what's inside!J.J. Walters wrote:If you plan on reading more of the Travis McGee books I'd highly recommend reading them in order (or close to it anyway -- you can skip a few here and there). It's fascinating to follow Trav as he makes his way through life, from the end of the Kennedy years, to Nixon, Carter and then the Reagan years. From 60's counterculture, to the crazy 70's, and the new wave 80's... Trav is there, foiling villains and impressing the ladies all at the same time. The knight errant! And MacDonald does a great job of slowly adding in information about the character as the series progresses. It's one of the great book series of all-time if you ask me. Kurt Vonnegut famously said this about John D. -- "To diggers a thousand years from now . . . the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen."ConchRepublican wrote:I'm not reading at the pace I used to, but I knocked off the first two Travis McGee books and am almost done with Neil Peart's (Rush drummer and lyricist) autobiographical travelogue, Ghost Rider.
The McGee books were good, fun reads. I like the societal/philosophical comments John D. McDonald drops into Travis' thoughts. Good stuff and it seems things really haven't changed all that much from the early 60s.
The Neil Peart book intrigued me when I saw Rush Behind the Music. The poor man lost his 19 year old daughter to a car accident and then his wife to cancer (broken heart really) in a 10 month period. The book is about how he soothed, and saved, his "little baby soul" like one would any fussy child, movement. He motorcycled from the Toronto area of Canada north and west to Alaska, then south. Not along the coast but further inland in the eastern Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah areas, into Cali then the Mexican Baja and finishing in Belize.
The whole time he's describing the scenery he sees, how he feels, what and who he experiences along the way and how it slowly heals him. An amazing journey of both the body and the soul and the saving of both.
I've read Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road also! A GREAT book! I'm also a big Rush fan. He's an inspirational person (and one hell of a good drummer).
Right now I plan to space JDM out and read a couple of other books then come back to home for a couple then go back to someone else. I don't want to burn out and get bored with Travis. There's something special about returning to familiar characters, it's why I reread some authors/books, it's like visiting with friends, the old stories are still fun to hear for a second, or third time.
Heck, I've read The Lord of the Rings and the Riverworld series at least 4 or 5 times each. It's comforting.