I've always enjoyed reading Burroughs, both his Tarzan and John Carter novels. Characters are mostly cardboard and a product of their time (see how Germans are portrayed in the books written during WW1 for example). But the plots and settings were always interesting. And, even if Africa covers thirty million square kilometers, you could be sure that the various safaris, caravans, castaways, solitary hunters, etc.., are going to run into one another, sooner or later. Good, light reads, perfect if you are in bed with a cold.
The covers, both on the Ballentine Tarzan books and the Del Rey John Carter novels, are great.
I just looked at my collection. I have 11 of the 24 books. But I've read all of them at one time or another in English. It has been a few years, but I recall liking The Return of Tarzan, Tarzan and the Ant Men, and Tarzan at the Earth's Core. I always thought that Tarzan should have dumped Jane and ended up with La.
I've recently read Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar in Spanish, and am in the middle of Tarzan and the Leopard Men, again in Spanish. Leopard Men has several parallel plots (which is typical of Tarzan), one of which is about El Viejo, a hunter who has come to bury himself in Africa after a failed love affair, another about Tarzan who is looking for the Leopard Men, and a third about a woman alone on safari. Hmmm. Do you think that the hunter and the woman are going to end up together? Naah. Never gonna happen. Africa is way too big....
