“Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over 15 years for various blogs. This was first posted on February 2, 2012.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. ~ Groucho Marx

I must confess that I am a bad television viewer. There are shows I like, but I seldom like to watch them. For the most part, with the exception of sports, I prefer books.

When I was younger… in my teens and twenties… that meant only poetry and “great” literature. Somewhere along the way I loosened up and started reading things that I had skipped or eschewed altogether as being “beneath” me.

Now, I keep a few dozen books in play at all times: at least two or three volumes of poetry, some history and sports books, a couple mysteries, some scifi and fantasy, a few traditional novels, some theology and chess books…. I am admittedly a restless reader and a restless thinker.

One of my guilty pleasure of late has been a Edgar Rice Burroughs, he of Tarzan fame. I had never read Burroughs until the last six months. But Kindle editions of his work are available for free or nearly free from Amazon, and so I thought I would give him a try. And so I have:

• At the Earths Core
• Pellucidar
• Tanar of Pellucidar
• Tarzan of the Apes
• The Return of Tarzan
• Princess of Mars
• The Gods of Mars

There is a reason that Burroughs was famous and successful and that a few of this characters like Tarzan have become so iconic. Burroughs understood pulp writing and did it well. He made no pretense in his writing about elevating his readers… he only cared about entertaining them. And in that he was successful… and is still successful.

Good pulp writing pulls you in and pulls you along like good movies and television shows do. It is the perfect kind of writing to read in snatches, between things. And so when I have a few minutes in bed before falling asleep, or when I am sitting in the car waiting to pick up one of my  daughters, or in a waiting room waiting to be called, or when I have been chased out of the family room because someone has turned the television on,  I know I can open up the Kindle app on my iPod and read another Edgar Rice Burroughs book and be entertained.