Still reading Nancy Drew #5, The Secret at Shadow Ranch (original 1931 version, not to be confused with the pathetic 1965 rewrite in which Nancy is sissified), but had to stop for this bit:
Speaking of the 1965 version of the book, which I'm also reading, not only does Nancy not shoot anything dead in that one, she doesn't even carry. But worse than that, in the rewrite Nancy is just de-powered, made into a girly girl instead of the bad ass she was in the original.
And furthermore...you're halfway through the original Shadow Ranch before there's even much of a hint of a mystery--until then it's just Nancy and her friends hanging out at a ranch and cowboying up, riding horses and shooting wild animals. In the rewrite, the mystery hits you in the face after the first few pages...and it's a really STUPid mystery. The author of the rewrite clearly doesn't think the audience is intelligent enough to wait for it, whereas the original gives you a nice change of pace as you catch a glimpse of Nancy in her Non Sleuthing identity.
If I hadn't been reading the rewrites side by side with the original books, I never would have realized what a huge difference there was between them. It's not just a matter of updating the story...they're almost completely different stories, and in every case thus far (that is, Books 1 through 5) the rewritten versions are vastly inferior. They make Nancy two years older, much more of a girly girl, and, as I may have mentioned previously, gunless. Fuck these rewrites, man. Make Mine 1930s!
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