As most of you know, I am easily amused, so every Amtrak trip, when the train to Montreal passes Ticonderoga, New York, I get a little giggly, since it invariably reminds me of the classic No. 2 pencils of my childhood and adolescence. [I bet today’s school kids don’t even fill out those endless circles on Scantron forms any more. Being childfree, I have no idea WHAT they do for exams and standardized tests any longer.]
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| Somewhere in upstate NY. Purty, no? |
And in the classic way that my mind works (don't ask) this particular trip I started reminiscing about a historical fiction series I read as an pre-teen, Renno the White Indian, by Donald Clayton Porter. I read through a significant chunk of the series (Colonization of America: White Indian, published 1979 - 1996), but as bad as my memory may be, I am positive that I did NOT read all 28 books. Nine or 10 maybe, but not all the way through to 1996.
I remember loving the historical background, but am afraid to revisit the novels in case the actual writing turns out to be mediocre at best. However, Goodreads rated the first book 4.18 out of 5 stars, so maybe it's safe to go back and reread it from the start...in my copious free time.
There is a fascinating blog post about the history of the book series itself, Forgotten Books: White Indian -- Donald Clayton Porter (Noel Gerson) and thanks to Noel Gerson's Wikipedia entry, I am enlightened as to how I wound up reading about Renno & Co: I'd started off with the author's entire 24-book Wagons West series under his Dana Fuller Ross pseudonym. (For blurbs about each of the first 20 books in Wagons West, click here.)
Okay, now totally blogged out and Imma go watch a movie on HBO Go (cancelling arbitrarily assigned premium movie channels would've saved me all of $6+ per month on my cable bill, so hey, I kept 'em).
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