A Little Love for Edgar Rice Burroughs

I have the first three John Carter of Mars books. I haven't actually read them yet though.

I've read several of his Tarzan books. I read a Pellucidar book when I was young and loved it.
I have several of the John Carter of Mars series, but have only read five of them. I don't recall why I stopped.
ERB sure knew how to keep the tension going.

I was a huge Tarzan fan. The Disney version ruffles my feathers everytime I see it.
I know it's Disney, so they couldn't really have Tarzan be, well, Tarzan, but all during the movie I'm like "C'mon! Tarzan could've so kicked Clayton's butt! He would've just ripped his head off and been done with it!"
And of course Clayton was the bad guy. Poor guy can't catch a break.

I reread A Princess of Mars at the end of last year. I was deciding between "At the Earth's Core" or "The Land that TIme Forgot" next.

Kindle has free downloads of most of ERB's Tarzan, John Carter, and Pellucidur books and a few others, like Moon Maid and the Venus series, which is an extension of the Mars series.

If you don't have the Kindle, you can down load the Kindle for PC. It works very well. The Mars series alone is like 11 books. (I hated the 11th book because it was put together by his editor and publisher after his death from two pulp stories he wrote.)

While I have the paperbacks of most of his works, (yes, they are old and looking a little dog eared), I still downloaded the Kindle freebies because, well they are good freebies...

Just curious, but why you would say the Venus series is an extension of the Mars series.

The Mars series MC is John Carter. Mars is a dying planet.

The Venus series MC is Carson Napier. Venus is a lush rain forest where people live in trees.

Shadow Ferret,

Your right...I stand corrected. Not sure what I was thinking when I typed that up...

I have a lot of love for ERB. I was particularly fascinated by the Pellucidar books when I was a YA. He was for me what JK Rowling has been more recently for a lot of people just discovering the hallucinogenic joy of reading.

blacbird, yes. Edgar Rice Burroughs was what I consider the first adult novel I ever read. I found "Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar" at the bookstore and I don't know if it was something about the cover, or the fact that I enjoyed the movies so much on Sunday Matinees (I find it a shame no one ever shows Tarzan reruns any longer). But when I read it, I was stunned by the majesty, the imagination, the adventure. This wasn't "The Hardy Boys" or "The Bobbsey Twins," this was... something else and up until that moment I had been an indifferent reader.

But after that novel, I was hooked and devoured nearly every book ERB wrote. He opened up the joy of reading to me.

Shadow,

I feel the same way, ERB books were what I consider my first adult fantasy book. More so even than HG Wells. The only reason I say that is because while Wells books were exciting and scary, I found his characters pretty standard and the technology could over whelm the characters and stories at times.

Burroughs on the other hand; his women were very erotic, and the men very manly. Any technology in the stories did not get in the way of the story. But by today's standards, his stories were pretty tame. Still, they excited the young boy in me back then...

Howard reminds me a lot of Burroughs, only a little more daring than Burroughs was.

I read a lot of the Tarzan books and the entire John Carter series when I was a kid. I have been meaning to reread them one of these days. I also loved the old Marvel comics adaptation of John Carter.

I recently saw the hideous abortion that was the Traci Lords direct-to-DVD John Carter movie. IT CHEWED A CHUNK OF MY CHILDHOOD OUT OF MY BRAIN AND SHAT IT OUT AGAIN! I am hoping the upcoming Andrew Stanton movie won't be too bad.

I too was and am a huge ERB fan.
I have most of his books in paperback and a few in hardback. My personal favorites were the first three Mars books, several of the Venus books, and Beyond Thirty.
I liked the Tarzan series but it was his science fiction that really got me.
I discovered A Princess of Mars when I was in the 7th grade and I immediately started collecting every ERB Book I could find.
I patterned my early writing on him and the first novel that I completed (in the 7th grade) was called A Swordsman of Venus, a campy ripoff of Princess. It's so horribly bad, I can't believe I actually wrote it.
ERB, REH's Conan & Kull (& Valley of the Worm), and Dent's Doc Savage series were early reading that hooked me like a fish and I never looked back.
Makes me want to visit the bookcase and pull out an ERB book just for old times sake.

Adrian

Just read Tarzan a few months back for the first time. A real good read, but I will say, the man loves his "lofty monarchs of the forest." That one wore itself out quickly.

I read everything ERB when I was a teenager. I reread one of the John Carter books a few years back (when I was around 40 years old) and found it unsatisfying. I marked those down as better in memory than reread. And my memories are very fond of them.