Ruffian Dick: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton by Joseph Kennedy

I won't publish tomorrow because today I want to wish all my blogging friends a very blessed weekend and Happy Easter.  I love you all!!

Here's a young hot shot playing Grieg Piano concerto in A minor, Op.16.

 

I realized that this is a post from a year and three months ago when I spent the new 2020 year with my mom and dad.  As I've already posted, my mother passed away January 14, 2021.  I was going to change the caption, but decided it's a nice memory:

 

I've been staying with my parents in Florida this week, bringing in the New Year with them.  I've told you all that my mother has stage four lung cancer, but she is doing very well.  She's back home and, while her energy is gone, we're able to drive to the area beaches and enjoy the sand, sun and, in the case below, rain:

Artistic, isn't it?  It's because it was raining hard and I took the photo from inside the car.  What you see is the distortion caused by the rain on the windshield.  I like it.  Rather like an impressionistic painting.

The second day the sun came out.





Ruffian Dick: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton by Joseph Kennedy
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I gave this book a one star rating, not because it was horrible, but because it was OK. According to the Goodreads rating system that is what one star means. How one would rate "horrible" I don't know. Maybe they should have a negative graph system.

Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer, Freemason, and diplomat. 

 

I got the above from Wikipedia. He sounds like someone who would be fascinating to read about, doesn't he?  Maybe he is, but you won't get an inkling from this book.

 
First of all, I thought this was a work of non-fiction and it isn't. It is the product of the author's imagination, supposedly based on Burton's actually diaries and letters. Other reviews say that Kennedy is a reliable source. Fine. His writing is still a bore.

Also, he dwells far too much on the salacious and vulgar. Not inspiring. Maybe Burton really led that sort of life. Maybe he really wrote about every...single...sexual proclivity... he suffered from, but who cares? If I wanted to read that junk, I'd read Judith Krantz.

I got this at a warehouse for three dollars and, I know it seems cheap on my part, but I am returning it and exchanging it for a biography on Duke Ellington. I have a self-imposed budget limit and I chose this over Duke. Let's hope Ellington's biographer is more interested in giving a balanced picture of one of my favorite big band, jazz artists. I'll let you know.


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As I said before I want to post a few photos with my mother (and father, of course) in memory of her.  My parents on their wedding day, July 11, 1957. They got married at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, Texas.  When they visited, we loved to drive to Fort Worth and visit their old haunts.  The house they lived in has been torn down, but the site is still there.