Someone recommended this book to me: The Death Ship. He said, “It’s by Traven.”

“Oh yeah!” I remembered. “That’s the guy who did The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I had to read that for a film and lit class. It was really good.”

Since I had to take a test on it, I knew that Traven was kind of a pinko socialist kind of guy. He wrote TOTSM as a kind of critique on capitalism and greed, etc. The story is about goldminers, after all. How much more greedy can you get?

But TOTSM was a great story, and I actually liked hearing the description of how they did the actual mining. Being from Alaska,I ran into a few gold miners now and again.

As is often the case, the book is better than the movie, but the movie is really great too.

Remembering all this I went to check out The Death Ship. This one was in a similar style and structure as TOTSM, but unless you are really into sailing…I mean, I don’t know. It didn’t grab me. It went on and on in very grim depressing language about how this life was so awful and the ship was so crappy. In the end, I couldn’t finish it.

Which is too bad. The other book was so great I would have loved to read another like it. Maybe I’ll try some of his other books.