Words... what do they all mean?

This is the fifth in the Tarzan series, and there is conspicuously no mention of or even reference to his son with whom we spent the entirety of book 4. Odd. Maybe it's supposed to be, like, what happened to Tarzan and Jane _during_ those years that Jack and Meriem were tooling around the jungle. Maybe the sixth book will bring things together again and tell us just what is going on with this family.

Oh, but! I actually like Jane again. True, she's once again the damsel in distress, over whom everyone in the book _except_ Tarzan vies (he has amnesia). But she actually shows some backbone. She puts up a fight when Arab raiders come to kidnap her and destroy her home: "Upon the veranda Lady Greystoke stood, rifle in hand. More than a single raider had accounted to her steady nerves and cool aim for his outlawry; more than a single pony raced, riderless, in the wake of the charging horde." This is Jane. See Jane kick ass. Go Jane go! Of course, ultimately she fails in defending herself and her home and is whisked away (how else could Tarzan rescue her and prove his manly leet jungle-god skillz?), but she does manage to effect her own escape at one point, so I'm very proud of her.

The Evil European this time is Belgian, a murderer and deserter who masquerades as a Frenchman in order to cozy up to the Greystokes, initially to kidnap and ransom Jane, but subsequently to steal their fortune, which he learns comes from the treasure vaults of Opar.

Ooh, geeky sidenote: the gold of Opar is described as "oddly-shaped ingots" which reminded me of the wonky gold jewelry of the Deep Ones in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Also the priests of Opar are rather inhuman-looking (ahem, the Innsmouth look...), and prone to human sacrifice. _And_ Opar was supposedly a colony of Atlantis (insert lost, exotic maritime civilization here). So. Deep Ones in the Congo?? Hmm... Actually, if there was any influence, it would have gone the other way, as "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" was written twenty years later. But still. Now I want to watch Dagon again.

Anyway, this book has given me back my love of the Tarzan series. The Son of Tarzan frustrated me because it was just so much like the first book. Everything that Tarzan did in his youth, his son was now doing, and with all the same results. But now we finally have a different story and that's lovely. Even if it does get confusing trying to follow who's in possession of the Jewels, like a big Shell Game or something.

Title:Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Pages: 350

4 / 24 (16.7%)

Off to a late start this year. I dunno, for some reason January just didn't really lend itself to much free time and reading. Can't imagine why. ;)

This is the fourth in the Tarzan series, and follows young (it never says, but I think he's like ten or eleven when the book starts) Jack Clayton, who is kidnapped by one of the Russian baddies from the last book, but ends up escaping into the jungle and following - kind of literally - in his father's footsteps. Never mind that he's spent his whole life up to now a pampered aristocrat in London, he's the son of friggin' TARZAN and that means he's automatically capable of everything his father is capable of. *eyeroll* Personally, I think Jack's more than a little silly in not returning home once he escaped, but then there'd be no story, right?

It's starting to feel repetitive and formulaic, but dammit I'm still addicted for some reason. This book at least is an improvement over the last in that it doesn't break its own stride by pulling away from Jack/Korak's story to try and concurrently tell what Tarzan and Jane - excuse me, Lord and Lady Greystoke - are doing in the wake of their son's disappearance. Though, as a parent, I was of course passionately curious about their reactions and to what lengths Tarzan the Great would go to get his son back, but that wasn't the focus of this story. I have to say that I don't like Lady Greystoke as much as I liked Jane Porter. Marriage and motherhood haven't done great things for her character. I hope the same fate doesn't befall Meriem after she marries Jack.

Title: The Son of Tarzan
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Pages: 315

1 / 24 (4.2%)

Finally caught up on my reading. This is the third in the Tarzan series, and took me forever to read, though I think it's shorter than the first two. Pretty much the only time I read it was at work while documents were scanning. So, like, one or two minutes at a time. So perhaps it didn't really drag as much as it seemed to, because of all the interruptions. _But_, if it were really grabbing, I would have found more and longer periods of time to sit down and blast through it. So. Jury's still out there.

Tarzan and Jane are married, and have a son named Jack who is abducted by the villainous Rokoff we met in the last book. Tarzan, of course, goes haring off after him, and Jane goes haring off after Tarzan. The book switches back and forth between Tarzan and Jane's points of view, which probably contributed to the slow feel of the book, since the narrative kept interrupting itself. The eponymous beasts are a tribe of apes and a panther he meets after being marooned on Jungle Island by Rokoff. Tarzan of course befriends them and they travel with him to find Rokoff and save his son.

Title: The Beasts of Tarzan
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Pages: 239

16 / 24 books. 67% done!

Whee, another non-school book! So, yes, I shamelessly went out and found the sequel that would set my mind to rest about the unsatisfying ending to Tarzan of the Apes. And yes, all is well now (though it took the whole gorram book). The problem is that now I think I'm well and truly addicted to these stories. And there are so many of them! I might have to give up my hope of having "matching" covers and thus buying the oldest editions I can find (this copy I have is from 1915), though omg this is so tempting it isn't funny. At all.

Eenyhow. This starts immediately after the first book, and Tarzan heads to Europe to heal his broken heart. On the way he meets the Count and Countess de Coude, and two shady Russians stalking them, Alex Paulvitch and Nicolas (shouldn't this be Nikolai?) Rokoff, who apparently are recurring villains over the course of the following novels. Tarzan also discovers the fabled lost city of Opar which, again, figures into later books. I suppose Burroughs was setting the groundwork for this long series even in the first book, but in this one you really can tell that this is the beginning of something big. Friendships, enemies, not-so-chance encounters that don't really seem to mean much at the time but you just _know_ are going to be important a few more books down the line especially if you spoil yourself by reading Wiki.

Tarzan continues to be good times, and Amazon is hooking me up with the next three in the series. Now I'm getting excited about other vintage fiction. Like Zorro. Maybe I'll move on to Zorro if and when my interest in Tarzan fades.

Title: The Return of Tarzan
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Pages: 314

9 / 24 books. 38% done!

EDIT: Wow, this time last year I was only on book six. I'm making good time!

First book of the year! Very fast read (for me); three days or so of concerted, sitting down and spending hours reading. I haven't been able to read like that in a long time. I suppose it helps that the book is interesting.

This is the first in the Tarzan series of books, and tells of Tarzan's birth and growing up in the jungle on the west coast of Africa, and how he came to meet Jane and learned to become a gentleman. Never having read any other book about Tarzan nor seen any movies other than the Disney version, I was frequently squeeing to Alan in pleasant surprise (over things like Jane being American and blonde), or noting pivotal moments like his first love letter to her and... character deaths, and points where the film had diverged (Sabor is a lioness, not a jaguar; Clayton is Tarzan's (unknown to either of them) cousin, not a random big-game hunter looking for gorillas, etc.). I really really enjoyed the book, and found myself believing that Tarzan absolutely could have taught himself to read and write in the way the book describes, and his incredible physical prowess managed not to come off at all Gary Stu-ish. So the book was absolutely beautiful, right up until the last two pages. Dude. I have not been this dissatisfied with an ending since Doctor Zhivago. I can't get any more specific than that for fear of spoilers, but those of you who know my proclivities in books and film should be able to guess why I'm so grumbly. I shall have to find the second book and hope that things turn out not to be so bad as they seem as of the end of Tarzan of the Apes. Yes, I realize that was exactly Mr. Burroughs' intent, and I shamelessly bow to the commercialism that will satisfy my curiosity.

Title: Tarzan of the Apes, although my cover looks like this (reproduction of the first edition)
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Pages: 401

1 / 24 books. 4% done!