Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Classics Club {no. 9} || The Black Stallion Revolts

Rating: 7 out of 10

If you’re wondering what’s happened to all the book reviews that used to go on around here, I can explain their absence. I decided that posting a book review each time I’d finished a book led to my posting too often, and I knew that with my upcoming school schedule I wouldn’t be able to blog as much as I had been able to. I decided that I’d only post a book review once a month—around the first of each month, hopefully.

The Black Stallion Revolts, by Walter Farley, copyright of 1953, is not comparable to either The Black Stallion or The Black Stallion Returns, but it is fairly satisfactory in its own right. Here I was somewhat surprised and gratified to see Farley introduce a bit of strength in new characters, even though Alec Ramsay and Henry Dailey and their horses remained basically the same. The plot (which follows Alec and the Black’s plane crash-landing in the wilderness, Alec’s subsequent amnesia, and his fear that he committed a robbery and had hands in a murder) is unusual; a good idea, but not incredibly well-done, simply because of Farley’s simplistic writing style. There was one instance where he had a couple of comical characters trying to tell Alec (or, as he comes to think of himself, “McGregor”) a story, and one of the men got angry with the other one, and Farley tagged the end of the sentence with, “Mike said furiously,” or something of the like. I got to thinking that Farley could have portrayed much more feeling had he used a strong verb, such as “Mike shouted,” or “Mike growled.” But other than that, what with procrastinating, being very tired, and wanting a nap, I didn’t want to put the book down.

9 comments:

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    1. Thank you, Anna! You're very sweet :)

      It is a pretty good book--probably not a book I'd reread, but good all the same.

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  2. lovely review, dear. It brought back very faint memories of that book for me. Gosh, it's been a while since I read it. :)

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    1. Thank you, my friend :) Isn't it so easy for us to forget books that didn't have a very lasting impression on us. . . . Funny thing, I wasn't supposed to post this review till November 1st. I completely forgot to schedule it for that day :P

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    2. OKAY seriously, the new design is amazing!!! Super pretty and perfect!! I love it!!

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    3. Oh, wunderbar! I'm so happy you like it! And the background is all in German, too . . . how fitting :)

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    4. how do you do italics in a comment?! I've been trying to discover the secret of that forever!! (I suppose that I could google it...) And can you do bold too?

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    5. I was wondering that forever, too, and nobody would ever tell me, probably because it has an HTML code that the computer will interpret in the comments. You make italics like this (I'm putting spaces in between so that the HTML code doesn't do it): < i > (that's at the beginning of the word you want to italicize--then at the end do this) < / i > And there you have it :)

      Bold. Hmm. Let me try: hello

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    6. Yes indeed--you just substitute the b for the i in the HTML code I showed you above :)

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