Previously on Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief: Percy discovers his parentage, is given a quest, nearly gets killed once, nearly gets killed again, meets the god of war, and nearly gets killed a third time. He’s been busy!
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Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1: The Lightning Thief (Part Two)
Previously on Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief: Within the span of about fifty pages, Percy Jackson has finished seventh grade, gotten kicked out of school, went to demigod camp, and met his future waifu, not that he knows that yet. What he hasn’t done is figured out who his father is, which is definitely not contributing to his abandonment issues at all.
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Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1: The Lightning Thief (Part One)
What’s up, I was looking through my blog and having a little chuckle at my own jokes, as I do, when I realized that like…all my posts for the last three years have been Nancy Drew-related — and I’m still working on those, but I figured I could mix it up a little! I loved the Percy Jackson books back in the day — I was a member of at least three PJO forums-slash-LiveJournal-communities (I remember having to defend my love of Taylor Swift from some of the Thalia-esque Green Day-loving community members) — which is a bit funny, because I wasn’t one of those kids who had a Greek mythology phase, actually. Everything I know about Greek myths comes from this series and that Nancy Drew game. Perhaps this reread will be educational for me!
Anyway, my best friend and I have been reliving our youth by watching the Disney+ adaptation. Admittedly we’ve mostly been reacting to the show with, “Wait, did that happen? Was that in the book? I do not remember that.” After the first season, I said I was going to reread the books to refresh my memory, promptly did not read the books for like, a year, but finally got around to it! As it turns out, I had in fact forgotten nearly everything that had happened in these books, including just how quick they are to read. I burned through all five books in about as many days.
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Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #1: The Secret of the Old Clock (1959)
Man, I have seen the cover of this book so many times. For those of us not old enough to have lived through World War II, this is probably the version of the first book that we’re most familiar with, and it might be the most recognizable image of Nancy overall — look at her, in the middle of some random woods, whacking someone’s family heirloom with a screwdriver, staring judgmentally off into the distance. That’s what this series is all about.
Anyway, my understanding of the revisions is that sometime in the mid-20th century, the Stratemeyer Syndicate decided to save money by quite literally just printing less paper, and they set out to rewrite the first 34 books and shorten them a bit. While they were there, they also took the opportunity to remove some of the obvious ’30isms (no more telegrams or marveling at electric lights), and overall made the books less of a pre-Hays Code affair with drinking and gambling and shootouts. While the rewrites are more progressive in some ways (less racism, less of Nancy’s seething classism towards the nouveau riche), kind of interestingly, Nancy herself is a little more traditional, more demure; there’s a little more stereotypical ’50s propriety in her asking permission to go places and do things, rather than making off with people’s boats and breaking into their houses as she did in the original books. All the orgies have been cut out, too 🙁
I actually hadn’t read many of the original books before; I’d read several revised versions because those were the ones my mom and aunt had (being children of the ’60s), and I had a bunch of the Girl Detective series, which was the series published during my own youth. I’d been assuming most of them were like Shadow Ranch, which has a completely different plot across the two books, but this book is actually nearly identical to the original — it mostly just tweaks the scenes a bit, changes some names, and bizarrely crowbars in an orphan kid and a random Italian. Shall we begin?
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Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #1: The Secret of the Old Clock (1930)
The first Nancy Drew book, everybody! The game Secret of the Old Clock, you’ll recall, went back to Nancy’s roots with a detour to the 1930s for the setting, pulling primarily from the first four Nancy books: The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and The Mystery at Lilac Inn. The end result was something like a mystery of an old clock hidden in an inn with a secret staircase. (IDK where bungalows come into it.) Never let it be said those games weren’t economical. (By the way, I think I mentioned in the game recap that I didn’t know why they’d suddenly wanted to do an homage to the early Nancy Drew books, but ten(!) years later, I finally figured out that it was because 2005 was the 75th anniversary of the series. Cute.)
However, I have always been more ambitious than I am smart (props to the Sims 2 CC maker who introduced me to that phrase; they probably didn’t know they were creating a load-bearing part of my lexicon when they were talking about making 200 recolors of a shirt or whatever). Thus, let’s attempt to do all of the books that the game was based on, both the original ’30s versions and the ’60s rewrites, for eight books in total. Look, man, I’ve been having a rough time and I gotta keep busy, okay?
So here we are, where it all began! It’s 1930, the war is over, Prohibition hasn’t been repealed yet, and we’ve just discovered Pluto, which is definitely a planet, stop asking questions.
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Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #77: The Bluebeard Room
What’s up guys, long time no post. Sorry about that. Shortly after I posted the Shadow Ranch recap, my life went precipitously downhill — my mother’s health got worse very quickly at the start of the summer; she passed away a few weeks ago. Not to make this wacky blog depressing, but — that’s what’s been going on. It’s been a garbage summer, so let’s cap it off with a garbage Nancy Drew book, shall we?One of my first thoughts upon reading The Bluebeard Room was “Idk why they didn’t just make it a Files book”, what with the incredibly ’80s references to cocaine and new wave music, Nancy cheating on Ned, Aunt Eloise being there…and as it turns out, this was in fact apparently a kind of “backdoor pilot” for the Files series. You can’t fool me, Bluebeard Room! I was a devotee of Sweet Valley High as a teenager, I know a janky ’80s teen novel when I read one! Anyway, like I said, this book is terrible and I am shocked that it somehow left people wanting more of Nancy’s take on sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. No accounting for taste, I guess. (more…)
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Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #5: The Secret of Shadow Ranch (1965)
Alright, we’re back to 2 Shadow 2 RanchThe Secret of Shadow Ranch, revamped for the modern times of 1965, with a brand-new plot and a brand-new preposition in the title. The first time we did this story, Nancy uncovered a kidnapping because she was convinced a child was too upper-class to be related to her caretakers. This time, the story is closer to the one we all know from the game: Nancy Drew goes to hang out with Bess and George at their family’s ranch, but accidents keep happening and a SpOoOoKy ghost horse keeps popping up at the scene of the crime. What could be happening? (more…) -
Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #5: The Secret at Shadow Ranch (1931)
It’s horse girl time, everybody! The next Nancy game, Secret of Shadow Ranch, was based on one of the classic, early Nancy books, The Secret at Shadow Ranch (yes, the original title is different by exactly one preposition). The original Shadow Ranch book was published in 1931 and was later part of the ’60s overhaul of the books to make them more modern (i.e. have ’60s racism instead of ’30s racism). The two books are actually very different, plot-wise, and the game is largely based on the reworked ’60s plot instead of the original. Still, in the interest of completion — and for history nerds, i.e. me — we’ll start with the original, 1931 version. -
Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #153: Whispers in the Fog
Squeaking out one last post for 2024! We last left Nancy in 19531983, wherein characters had convenient identical twin siblings and went to coffee shops inside airports because you could do that back then. For this book, we zoom ahead to the year 2000, where you could still go hang out inside an airport, but not for much longer!So we have Whispers in the Fog here, the book on which Danger on Deception Island was based. It’s…somewhat similar, in terms of the plot beats and character personalities, and somewhat…not. Let’s dive in (haha, get it, because this book takes place on the coast? I slay myself).
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Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys (Part Seven)
Previously on Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Seven Keys: We spent about eighty-five years doing useless puzzles and then suddenly the plot showed up and now we’re at the end of the game. Sure. Why not. In order to capture the culprit, we’ve decided to make the seven keys they need in order to open the crown jewels’ vault and hand them over, then follow the culprit and hopefully catch them before they actually make off with the jewels. You know, it just occurred to me that we could’ve just…made fake keys, instead of actually handing the culprit a way to pull off their heist and just betting that we can stop them. Whatever, Nancy. (more…)