The Lead Disk

I finished off that book I said I was reading last night. Usually I'm thinking of a million other things I could be doing besides reading, but when it gets good I can read faster. And I hate myself for letting my eyes jump ahead to see a name or resolution to a paragraph before I'm actually there.

I keep thinking of that theory (maybe proven by now) that your eye takes in the whole page at a glance and that you have read it and it's in mind even before you actually have. I don't think the theory is true in my case.

Anyway, the book was a good one, with a very happy ending. It was called "The Lead Disk." The biggest letdown in the book for me was there wasn't that much of a point to the lead disks. It could have been a green marble, a pink clothespin, anything that people wouldn't think of a gang using for entrance to their super special hiding place, Hidden Valley. As far as I'm concerned the lead disk shouldn't have been in the title, since it didn't really figure in the story that much.

OK, there's this super special hiding place, Hidden Valley, where the bad guys hang out. But there's barely any access to it. Only the bad guys know it exists. (This, I guess, was before airplanes, except it was published in 1934.) Only the bad guys and one good guy, the Indian Lone Walker. Then Tom Haley sees it and plays a dangerous game getting out of there without getting caught. As it is, it sounds like he's shot. Some of the writing was less than clear here.

The good news is I have a notch on my belt for actually finishing a book. Huh? Huh?