Secret of the Old Clock, the

Wow, I don't remember any of that, but I must have read that book at least five times. My mom rescued about a dozen Nancy Drews from a dumpster for me when I was in grade school and I had designs on getting through all of them...but I think I just read Secret of the Old Clock over and over again. I totally want to be in your reader's theater. That was my jam as a wee one.

Did you read the 1930 original or the updated version. The first few books were updated in the 1950s (which, of course, by today's standards are just as outdated as the 1930s editions).

My dear cousin,

I am so glad to see you write so nicely about Nancy Drew. It reminds me of how I often tell people how much I enjoyed reading "Anne of Green Gables" just before my daughter was born, and how it was far more observant and astute in its social commentary than many would assume.

I have long had a theory that many of those who see themselves as "liberal" or "left" in America are actually true romantics and sentimental at heart. To put it another way, "Show me an antiquarian and I'll show you at least a 'liberal' in the modern American sense." This is perhaps part of the reason Gore Vidal said the only people who want to actually conserve anything of value in America are people disdainfully called "liberals." It is also what Murray Kempton was saying in the mid-1950s when he critically noted that most of the Hollywood Ten, far from engaging in Marxist subterfuge in their screenplays or films overall, were instead sentimental in that almost banal American manner.

Wonderful of you to extol the virtue of a Nancy Drew book!

I believe this is the only Nancy Drew book I've ever read, but I don't remember it at all, except that she seemed to change clothes an awful lot. Glad to hear there was more to it.

I am a total sentimental radical.