Jack London: A Daughter of the Snows

If I ever ventured to surmise based on my positive recollections of one book that Jack London maybe was worth reading, could write or anything else of a positive nature - consider it revoked. I take it all back. The man was, and his writing still is, obnoxious, chauvinist, monotonous and most of all despicably through-and-through racist, in the vilest pseudo-scientific manner. This book made me gag many many times. All my former prejudices were proven true. Before Adam must be an anomaly; I'm guessing since it's all imagination there's no room for ranting about how Native Americans must be inferior to Europeans (especially the Nordic "races") because otherwise why would the Europeans have won? 

Utter utter shite. Avoid avoid avoid. I took notes but it was ages ago and frankly I don't feel it's worth the effort now (three months later).

Jack London: Before Adam

If you had asked me three weeks ago whether I'd ever read anything by Jack London I'd have looked you straight in the eye and with complete assurance said no, definitely not, I'm sure I haven't. Yet I've surely read this book about a dozen times as a child and loved it. And I've always avoided Jack London's books, with their aura of manly maleness, chapped skin, doggy smell and antiquated frontier spirit. That aura is of course based solely on my prejudices. Jack London wrote, I was convinced,  adventure and hunting books for boys; for boys who grew into the sort of man my (paternal) grandfather was (a house tyrant who bullied his sons a fair bit, hunted, and expected the sort of respect one is due as Head of a Household). He, of course, owned a complete set of London's novels.