Has anyone ever read ‘The Mountain Man’ books by William Johnstone?

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  • July 13, 2017 8:48 pm at 8:48 pm #1317452
    yitzyk
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    Has anyone ever read ‘The Mountain Man’ books by William Johnstone?

    Someone gave me a whole bag of them to pass along to a child to read. I have never heard of them before. When I was younger I was a very avid reader of huge amounts of books, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Now that I have ‘grown up’, I B”H don’t have time to waste on non-Torah books. But assuming that the intended recipient DOES currently read non-Jewish books, I need to know:

    – Are they ‘kosher’ – meaning safe topics and language appropriate for a young impressionable mind?

    – What age group are they intended for?

    – Are they good? On this one I assume yes, because there are an awful lot of books in this series. In fact, there are so many that I suspected that ‘William W. Johnstone’ might be a pseudonym for more than one writer. Wikipedia confirmed that some of them are written by his nephew and possibly a few others.

    Those of you that didn’t read these books, please try to hold yourselves back long enough for me to at least just get the answer to my questions before steering this thread off topic to discuss YOUR favorite books, or the Theological correctness of reading secular books, or whatever.

    July 13, 2017 10:32 pm at 10:32 pm #1317485
    ☢️ Rand0m3x 🎲
    Participant

    Are they good? On this one I assume yes, because there are an awful lot of books in this series.

    That means they sold well, not that they’re good.

    July 13, 2017 10:32 pm at 10:32 pm #1317486
    ☢️ Rand0m3x 🎲
    Participant

    I don’t think these books were meant for children to begin with…
    They’re certainly violent. A comment on a book website’s page for one mentioned
    that it was more gruesome than the series usually was – interpret that how you will.

    July 14, 2017 9:36 am at 9:36 am #1317704
    yitzyk
    Participant

    Thanks for the responses! I could assume that ‘selling well’ is typically due to it being an enjoyable book. Maybe a one-shot unknown author could sell a lot of books if the publisher wasted huge amounts of money on marketing. But a series of 50 or more books would not keep selling if they weren’t considered good – at least within some limited audience.

    The violence point is a good information.

    I have no problem donating them to the library, selling them on eBay, or just recycling them. I asked in the first place because I respect the person who gave them to me, and wanted to at least consider delivering the gift as suggested. I do not however trust their Hashkofa enough to do it without checking first. Furthermore, the giver is a much older person who might not be a good judge of age-appropriateness, and I had no idea which of my children they had in mind.

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