Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome. Summer, 1929. Four children vacationing with family on the banks of a large, unnamed lake receive permission to take their sailing dinghy, the Swallow, and go out seeking adventure. They spend well over a week sailing around the lake, camping on islands, and pretending to be explorers and pirates. They develop a friendly rivalry with a pair of sisters who have their own boat, the Amazon. They receive only the lightest supervision from adults who obviously remember what it's like to be a kid.
The whole story is a delightful celebration of the joys of being active outdoors, of imaginative play, and of what would now be called free-range children. Even nearly a hundred years ago the level of freedom the protagonists receive pushed the limits of plausibility, but even as recently as my own childhood in the 1970s-early 1980s you could just about see something like this actually happening.
Now it would all be simply unthinkable--unthinkable that parents would allow it to happen, that kids would actually be able to handle that kind of responsibility, that they would be interested in putting their devices down long enough to want to do it in the first place. And is there even anywhere left where they could have such relatively safe adventures? The woods I used to explore near home when I was that age have all been obliterated by timber clear-cutting, and most lakes are now hemmed in by solid property development. Maybe youths' current reluctance to put down their devices and go outside is understandable, in an environment that has become so uninspiring.
Somehow I never encountered Swallows and Amazons when I was growing up. I first learned of it as an adult, when I saw its wonderful endpaper map reproduced in a book of maps of imaginary places. I stumbled across the book itself sometime back. Younger me would have just loved it!
I've been reading the Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London series--light urban fantasy involving a policeman who winds up dealing with magic.
I've also been reading some sci-fi books by Elizabeth Bear--very imaginative world building, but sometimes I can't figure out exactly what's happening.
And I started reading poetry again.
Quote from: Morden on January 03, 2024, 08:50:58 AMI've been reading the Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London series--light urban fantasy involving a policeman who winds up dealing with magic.
I love these books- they do become somewhat less light as the series goes on. The audio books are very good.
I've been listening to the Dresden Files series (Jim Butcher) thanks to the recommendation of someone one on here. Similar in some ways to River of London, but definitely more noir, and (though this seems weird to say about fantasy) less plausible (that is, once you accept the world building of RoL, everything makes internal sense, whereas in DF it doesn't quite). Still fun listens though!
I also just finished Starling House (Alix E Harrow) and highly recommend it.
From the library:
Finished: Unruly: the Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell (NF)
Comedic and informative read about England's rulers from Arthur (who didn't exist) to Elizabeth I.
Current: The Sunset Crowd by Karin Tanabe
Novel about a NY transplant in Hollywood in the 1970s
The Seine: The River That Made Paris, by Elaine Sciolino. Winter's a good time for armchair travel. So, courtesy of Sciolino, I took a visit to the banks of the Seine--from its source, through Paris (which naturally gets the lion's share of the attention), to the estuary where the river flows into the Atlantic. We learn about ancient Roman temples along the river, barge life, the Impressionists who liked painting along it, the Parisian bookstalls along the river--there sure do seem to be a lot of them--the rather hard-core river police force, and much, much more.
It's all a love letter to the river, to Paris and certain other places in France, and to a certain vision of "the good life." While I don't personally share that vision, it must be quite an experience to live in, or even to visit, a place that has that much visible history concentrated around it. Had I the means and time available to travel overseas, and freedom from the borderline agoraphobia and lack of confidence that have kept me from ever becoming fluent in another language, I'd be ready to rush out and visit the Seine. But I'm used to cutting my coat according to my cloth when it comes to travel.
Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, by Bernard-Henri Levy. The author is a well-known public intellectual in France who is obviously a big believer in speaking one's mind. It's a rambling sort of book that deals much with intellectual figures whom I don't always recognize. The thesis is clear enough--that the political Left, of whom Levy is a card-carrying, but at times heterodox, member, has lost its way. Instead of being committed to universal ideals of justice and truth, it has come to be dominated by mindless forms of anti-Americanism, opposition to Jews and Israel, and opposition to any genuine liberal ideals.
The book is written in such an over-the-top manner that it's sometime a little hard to take seriously. Levy makes some valid points, though. Now and then he even says a bit about the problem of identity politics, which has pretty much swallowed the American Left whole in recent years. In one chapter he predicts that "the new anti-Semetism will be progressive." Fifteen years later, it would appear in the wake of recent events that he nailed it.
Started from the library: The Manuscripts Club (https://www.amazon.com/Manuscripts-Club-Christopher-Hamel/dp/0525559418/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2CHTB1OG44RPP&keywords=christopher+du+hamel&qid=1706569089&s=books&sprefix=christopher+du+hamel%2Cstripbooks%2C56&sr=1-1) by Christopher De Hamel (NF)
I enjoyed the author's award winning book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (2017 US release) so I was delighted to see he'd written a new book. It's a thick tome with lots of full color images and archival material throughout the text.
This book was first published in the UK in 2022 and released here in the US last year.
Quote from: hmaria1609 on January 29, 2024, 03:05:43 PMStarted from the library: The Manuscripts Club (https://www.amazon.com/Manuscripts-Club-Christopher-Hamel/dp/0525559418/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2CHTB1OG44RPP&keywords=christopher+du+hamel&qid=1706569089&s=books&sprefix=christopher+du+hamel%2Cstripbooks%2C56&sr=1-1) by Christopher De Hamel (NF)
I enjoyed the author's award winning book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (2017 US release) so I was delighted to see he'd written a new book. It's a thick tome with lots of full color images and archival material throughout the text.
This book was first published in the UK in 2022 and released here in the US last year.
Sounds like a fascinating book! Wonder whether I could justify ordering a copy of that for our library?
Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow, by Heather Hansman. Growing up in a working-class town several states away from anyplace where ski resorts were even a possibility, snow skiing seemed as remote from my experience as a trip to the Moon. I thought of it as something that only people unimaginably richer than anybody I knew could do. In grad school I met some undergrads from affluent backgrounds who occasionally skied at entry-level Appalachian resorts. Last year I was shocked to learn that one of our staff members, who grew up here, recalls skiing with friends when she was a teenager. More evidence that this town had stronger unions back in the day than my home town did.
Heather Hansman recalls her youth as a ski bum--an unattached individual who hung around ski resorts, doing low-level resort jobs and living as cheaply as possible to maximize skiing time. She often waxes lyrical about the thrill of skiing all day and getting drunk with fellow ski bums every night. Sometimes she waxes intersectional about how getting to ski involves a level of privilege that not all groups have historically had, etc.--all of which is true enough. Now many ski towns have become exceptionally bad examples of the tendency for resort areas to be taken over by rich hedonists and corporations, making it hard for ordinary people to ski or even make a living there. And over it all looms the progressive loss of snow and skiing opportunities brought about by climate change.
She also acknowledges that there is something problematic about skiing itself. It's a very wasteful and resource-intensive activity, in a world that's using way too many resources as it is. It tends to attract self-centered thrill-seekers who take lots of risks and indulge in self-destructive behavior (lots of alcohol and other drugs). It's ultimately an empty and unsatisfying lifestyle--some ski resort towns have suicide rates three times the national average. Yet she somehow can't seem to imagine a world-view that might be more functional.
Ski towns come across as a microcosm of our world. There are the obnoxiously rich and excessive haves; the have-less ski bums, who resent the haves but really seem to differ from them mainly in degree; the true have-nots, who are just trying to get by; and all living in a world where we're in the process of ruining the environment itself. Maybe we should be looking to something outside of ourselves and the pleasures around us for our hope and satisfaction? Hansman's account of skiing culture makes me suspect that those of us who have spent our lives locked out of the chance to ski haven't really been missing that much. Though granted, skiing sounds kind of fun, and one can kind of feel for those who enjoy doing it but are now being priced out it.
Just a quick note to say that I've split up the previous thread so that these can now be yearly threads, which might make them a little more manageable to navigate. The old thread has been relegated to the archive, here (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=3489.0).
If the idea of a yearly thread isn't working for you, let me know, and I can always undo it.
I'm a few months behind on my reporting, but I promise I'll get to it soon!
Thirteen by Richard K Morgan. A near future semi-dystopian novel set in a world where Mars has been colonized, and the US has split into several nations (New England, The Rim States, and Jesusland). The main character is a genetically modified human (a Thirteen) - they have been rounded up and put on reservations, or sent to colonies on Mars, or in the case of the protagonist, used to hunt down renegade 13s. In that sense, it is reminiscent of Blade Runner but is a deep dive into genetic determinism and human nature. This is the third 'world' of Morgan's I've read and this is a great stand-alone (although I hear there is a quasi-sequel) novel that introduced his writing style. Highly recommended.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on February 02, 2024, 03:36:22 PMJust a quick note to say that I've split up the previous thread so that these can now be yearly threads, which might make them a little more manageable to navigate. The old thread has been relegated to the archive, here (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=3489.0).
If the idea of a yearly thread isn't working for you, let me know, and I can always undo it.
I'm a few months behind on my reporting, but I promise I'll get to it soon!
A yearly thread sounds like it might be a good way to organize things.
I was a bit startled when I logged on and saw that I was the first poster in a thread I knew I hadn't started....
Quote from: apl68 on February 03, 2024, 06:37:49 AMQuote from: Parasaurolophus on February 02, 2024, 03:36:22 PMJust a quick note to say that I've split up the previous thread so that these can now be yearly threads, which might make them a little more manageable to navigate. The old thread has been relegated to the archive, here (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=3489.0).
If the idea of a yearly thread isn't working for you, let me know, and I can always undo it.
I'm a few months behind on my reporting, but I promise I'll get to it soon!
A yearly thread sounds like it might be a good way to organize things.
I was a bit startled when I logged on and saw that I was the first poster in a thread I knew I hadn't started....
FWIW I don't mind when the threads get really long. Sometimes it's fun to go back in time and look for recommendations or comments from a prior period.
I agree. I don't see why we can't just keep the same thread going — it makes it much easier to find things. But, whatever.
Well, the archive of lengthy threads gives us a handy opportunity to revisit the older ones. I was going through the original hundred-plus-page reading thread reminiscing just last week, and found it unwieldy. Annual threads might be handier to peruse in the future.
Try the academic novel The Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates. A bizaare very original take on a secluded
liberal arts college in the fifties, narrated wholly by a 17 year old girl, who is way too smart and mature for her age. This remark struck me--- Nothing that is done here will make any difference in the future. All the papers, projects and grants will not matter at all--looking back from the future.
Psychology faculty will especially enjoy.
Two 1930s novels that I encountered in my travels. Pipe All Hands, by H.M. Tomlinson, is about a contemporary merchant vessel and its voyages and trials. In Old Captivity, by Nevil Shute, involves a bush pilot who flies for a very small aerial survey expedition at an archaeological site in Greenland. Oddly enough, each story features a British academic who takes his just-grown daughter on a hazardous journey into an unfamiliar setting. Tomlinson and Shute were each also known for setting their stories in a world they had some first-hand knowledge of--sea travel and air travel, respectively. Shute is probably best remembered as the author of the book on which the movie On the Beach was based.
Neither of them is really what you'd call an adventure story, although each has moments when the characters run into some danger. Shute's tale takes a rather out-of-left-field excursion into past-life regression toward the end. They're both readable, but not the most compelling stories I've ever read. I found the Tomlinson book more interesting.
Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World, by Seth Stevenson. Continuing my winter of armchair travel with this non-fiction travel account of a couple who spent several months in the late 2000s circumnavigating the globe without flying. They sail on ships, ride trains and buses, drive (across the Australian outback), even ride bicycles for a time (across much of Vietnam). Some segments of the trip were evidently pretty enjoyable. Others (Russia notably--because, Russia) weren't so much.
An interesting travelog, with much clever writing and witty observations. Yet also a sad book. The author and his significant other come across as rather self-absorbed. They don't show a lot of sympathy or understanding for many of the people they meet along the way, or just a whole lot of curiosity about the societies through which they pass. They also meet a lot of aimless lost souls along the way. Time spent on a seriously pricey cruise ship elicits commentary about privileged sorts who spend their wealth going around and around essentially just killing time. It doesn't seem to occur to the author that others might just form the same sort of opinion about him.
The Nun's Story, by Kathryn Hulme. A young Belgian woman from an educated family joins a religious order in the late 1920s. She spends the next 17 years striving to conform herself to the order's severe monastic Rule. Though she wins much respect from colleagues and others for her service as a medical missionary, she suffers from chronic imposter syndrome. During the World War II Occupation this comes to a head, as she is unable to develop any Christian charity toward the German invaders. Finally she leaves the order--not because she has found romance, or otherwise decided to lead a self-centered, worldly life, but because she has concluded that she can better serve God as a secular nurse.
And really, she's probably right. For all that the nuns' total-life commitment to serving God deserves respect, in some ways there is something misguided about it. New Testament codes of sexual morality and such may seem like wild-eyed fanaticism to most in today's society, but Jesus didn't call upon his followers to live under a rigid, all-encompassing monastic Rule or beat themselves as penance. He didn't tell them to renounce all innocent enjoyments, or abandon all normal ties of family and friendship. God may lead them to lose many of these things or endure suffering for the sake of building character, but when that's necessary this world can be depended upon to provide plenty of suffering and sacrifice without our having to make a point of creating more for ourselves.
Monastic orders also have a way of institutionalizing the common tendency to divide Christians into those who have a full commitment to the faith, and those who merely go to occasional services and try to keep their noses more or less clean. Jesus called on all of his followers to have that full commitment. Christian baptism's symbolic portrayal of death, burial, and resurrection is meant as a reminder that the old life before Jesus has been replaced by a radically new life. It's a life meant to be as different from the everyday concerns of the world as the lives of any monks or nuns, and yet it can be lived out in families, in work settings--anywhere. Jesus calls all kinds of people.
Hulme's "Sister Luke" is based very closely on the real life of one Marie Louise Habets. They met after the War when they were both working with refugees. The Nun's Story became a 1950s bestseller--books with religious themes could actually do that back then--and soon served as the basis for a movie starring Audrey Hepburn. Pretty good movie--much better book.
From the library: Rosalind Thorne/Useful Woman Mystery (https://www.darciewilderomance.com/darcie-wilde/#darcie) series
Set in Regency era England, Rosalind must make her way after her father suddenly leaves without fully explaining why and the family's reputation ruined.
I'm on the 5th book in the series now.
Quote from: apl68 on February 08, 2024, 07:36:59 AMIn Old Captivity, by Nevil Shute, involves a bush pilot who flies for a very small aerial survey expedition at an archaeological site in Greenland. Oddly enough, each story features a British academic who takes his just-grown daughter on a hazardous journey into an unfamiliar setting. Tomlinson and Shute were each also known for setting their stories in a world they had some first-hand knowledge of--sea travel and air travel, respectively. Shute is probably best remembered as the author of the book on which the movie On the Beach was based.
Just to say that I love Nevil Shute.
Trustee from the Toolroom is my favorite. I recently reread
No Highway — excellent (apart from a tad of sexism, but I forgive him) — which also made a good movie with Jimmy Stewart, Marlene Dietrich and the late lamented Glynnis Johns.
Quote from: apl68 on February 16, 2024, 07:58:36 AMThe Nun's Story, by Kathryn Hulme. A young Belgian woman from an educated family joins a religious order in the late 1920s. She spends the next 17 years striving to conform herself to the order's severe monastic Rule. Though she wins much respect from colleagues and others for her service as a medical missionary, she suffers from chronic imposter syndrome. During the World War II Occupation this comes to a head, as she is unable to develop any Christian charity toward the German invaders. Finally she leaves the order--not because she has found romance, or otherwise decided to lead a self-centered, worldly life, but because she has concluded that she can better serve God as a secular nurse.
And really, she's probably right. For all that the nuns' total-life commitment to serving God deserves respect, in some ways there is something misguided about it. New Testament codes of sexual morality and such may seem like wild-eyed fanaticism to most in today's society, but Jesus didn't call upon his followers to live under a rigid, all-encompassing monastic Rule or beat themselves as penance. He didn't tell them to renounce all innocent enjoyments, or abandon all normal ties of family and friendship. God may lead them to lose many of these things or endure suffering for the sake of building character, but when that's necessary this world can be depended upon to provide plenty of suffering and sacrifice without our having to make a point of creating more for ourselves.
Monastic orders also have a way of institutionalizing the common tendency to divide Christians into those who have a full commitment to the faith, and those who merely go to occasional services and try to keep their noses more or less clean. Jesus called on all of his followers to have that full commitment. Christian baptism's symbolic portrayal of death, burial, and resurrection is meant as a reminder that the old life before Jesus has been replaced by a radically new life. It's a life meant to be as different from the everyday concerns of the world as the lives of any monks or nuns, and yet it can be lived out in families, in work settings--anywhere. Jesus calls all kinds of people.
Hulme's "Sister Luke" is based very closely on the real life of one Marie Louise Habets. They met after the War when they were both working with refugees. The Nun's Story became a 1950s bestseller--books with religious themes could actually do that back then--and soon served as the basis for a movie starring Audrey Hepburn. Pretty good movie--much better book.
Jesus was a Jew. Jews do not give up love, family, friendship - those are the point of life and living.
Jesus was even believed by some to have been married - the feast of the loaves and fishes has hints of having been his wedding ceremony.
Jesus the Son was not officially recognized by the Christian Church until 300-400 AD... so there's that.
Okay, I've fallen way far behind in my reporting. Here's November and December, and I'll get to January and February soonish.
November and December (2023):
Darren Naish – Ancient Sea Reptiles: Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, and More: Does what it says on the tin, in a very accessible and gorgeously-illustrated way. I now know loads about Mesozoic marine reptiles, whereas before I knew almost nothing. I'm particularly happy with the comparative illustration of turtle/leatherback shell development, because I've never quite understood the shell-rib connection. Now I do!
Bill Richardson – Dear Sad Goat: A Roundup of Truly Canadian Tales & Letters: This was my favourite program on CBC Radio One, once upon a time. This is a compendium of letters written in to the show. I picked it up years ago (when I first moved here, way back in 2017) but only just got around to reading it. It was mildly amusing. Very BC-centric.
James Herriot – The Lord God Made Them All: We've been reading it as a family for most of the year. We finally made it to the end. A few stories are just uproariously funny (especially at the beginning), the rest are comforting and fun. It's nice to read them alongside watching the new adaptation of All Creatures, too.
Halldór Laxness – Independent People: My partner's favourite novel (apart from Jane Austen's works, I imagine). I started reading it years and years and years ago, but didn't get far before turning to other stuff. This time, I couldn't put the train wreck down. It's gorgeously written, as always, but something of a painful read. Not much happens, and you wouldn't imagine that would be interesting, but it is. What's really cool, though, is that it's basically the anti-Atlas Shrugged. Like Rand's novel, it's about someone who wants to be fully independent from the government and totally self-reliant, independent from the rest of society. But Laxness shows us how truly fucked up that is, the misery it leads to, and the impossibility of being consistent about it. It's really a triumph of a novel.
Patrick Rothfuss – The Narrow Road Between Desires: A reworking of his short story, The Lightning Tree, in illustrated novella form. I haven't read the original, because I was saving it. But this is a real master stroke. Rothfuss's process doesn't produce much, but he is really good at being a really good writer. The fabulist element of the story is beautifully realized.
Ann Leckie – Translation State: A Radch-adjacent standalone novel about a juvenile Presger translator and an orphan who uses entertainment media as an emotional crutch (several months later, I now see this is cribbed from Murderbot). It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it very much, even though my memories of the Radch novels is somewhat hazy at this point.
R.J. Barker – The Bone Ships: A new fantasy series basically about pirates, set in a waterworld where the main building material for boats is the bones of (aquatic) dragons—except they're all extinct. It's a pretty richly realized world, though with a few false steps that make no sense—e.g. those who've had a leg or foot amputated become cobblers, while hand/arm amputees become... tailors?! and at least one cartographer is blind. It was fun, if rather movie-inspired/angling for a film option.
R.J. Barker – Call of the Bone Ships: Much weaker than the first, though still fun. There are three main POV monologues which are very long and absolute trash.
R.J. Barker – The Bone Ship's Wake: A big improvement on the second, this definitively concludes the trilogy. It's a darker novel, less of a pirate romp. The darkness is realized so-so; I think it's actually darker than Barker realized, and it would have been nice if he had (some of his characters are very much transformed by events, and not for the better).
Quote from: Hegemony on February 17, 2024, 12:40:03 AMQuote from: apl68 on February 08, 2024, 07:36:59 AMIn Old Captivity, by Nevil Shute, involves a bush pilot who flies for a very small aerial survey expedition at an archaeological site in Greenland. Oddly enough, each story features a British academic who takes his just-grown daughter on a hazardous journey into an unfamiliar setting. Tomlinson and Shute were each also known for setting their stories in a world they had some first-hand knowledge of--sea travel and air travel, respectively. Shute is probably best remembered as the author of the book on which the movie On the Beach was based.
Just to say that I love Nevil Shute. Trustee from the Toolroom is my favorite. I recently reread No Highway — excellent (apart from a tad of sexism, but I forgive him) — which also made a good movie with Jimmy Stewart, Marlene Dietrich and the late lamented Glynnis Johns.
My dad was something of a fan of
No Highway in the Sky with Jimmy Stewart.
January:
Mark P. Witton - Pterosaurs: This represents the third installment in my plan to read a concise summary of current(ish) knowledge on Mesozoic reptiles. I now know all about pterosaurs, and they're much weirder than I ever knew. Witton's books are always a joy to read, because (1) he explains things so clearly, and (2) he illustrates his work copiously (and gorgeously), and does a fantastic job of providing helpful illustrations for the technical things he describes. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read a genus-by-genus overview of pterosaurs.
Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Command: A new Sharpe novel, retrofitted into the timeline. It fits the template, and is a fun read, though there are a fair few instances of repetition that the editor should have caught, and one bit that was clearly a mistake (but I can't remember what it was now!). Seems like it was a bit rushed, but I didn't mind. I like the series, after all, and have a high tolerance for Cornwell-style templates.
Martha Wells - All Systems Red: The first book in the Murderbot series, recommended to me by a friendly librarian acquaintance. Basically, the story of a highly paranoid security bot that uses entertainment media to regulate its emotions. It was great fun, and I see now that it clearly seems to have influenced Leckie's Translation State in one respect.
Martha Wells - Artificial Condition: More Murderbot, more fun. Murderbot befriends a ship and goes investigating. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on February 20, 2024, 11:23:11 AMMartha Wells - All Systems Red: The first book in the Murderbot series, recommended to me by a friendly librarian acquaintance. Basically, the story of a highly paranoid security bot that uses entertainment media to regulate its emotions. It was great fun, and I see now that it clearly seems to have influenced Leckie's Translation State in one respect.
Martha Wells - Artificial Condition: More Murderbot, more fun. Murderbot befriends a ship and goes investigating. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.
I listened to those two books and really enjoyed them. Some listeners apparently didn't like the narrator (Kevin R. Free), but I thought he was great and added to the dry humor.
I think it's been a while since I updated on my books, so I will try to do that at some point. Right now, I'm listening to
Lessons in Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus), which I now see is narrated by three people (Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes). I hadn't realized that. It's a pretty popular book about a woman scientist in the early 1960s dealing with a lot professionally and personally (e.g., sexism, family dynamics). I'm enjoying the story and her victories, but some of her traumas (e.g., sexual assault, loss of a loved one) have been really difficult to listen to. I have heard many stories with these elements that didn't bother me as much, so I guess it's something about the way they're told. It's some pretty heartbreaking and angering stuff. In any case, I can see why it's a bestseller and am looking forward to seeing what else occurs. I will update when I'm done.
Immediately before that, I listened to David Sedaris's self-narrated collection of essays and stories,
The Best of Me. There is such a range of stories that it's hard to describe this book. Much of it is hilarious, and some is absolutely wrong (there is overlap between these groups). He's a pretty clever guy and prolific writer. Of course, some content was better than other content, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much of it fit into the first category.
Quote from: Hegemony on February 17, 2024, 12:40:03 AMQuote from: apl68 on February 08, 2024, 07:36:59 AMIn Old Captivity, by Nevil Shute, involves a bush pilot who flies for a very small aerial survey expedition at an archaeological site in Greenland. Oddly enough, each story features a British academic who takes his just-grown daughter on a hazardous journey into an unfamiliar setting. Tomlinson and Shute were each also known for setting their stories in a world they had some first-hand knowledge of--sea travel and air travel, respectively. Shute is probably best remembered as the author of the book on which the movie On the Beach was based.
Just to say that I love Nevil Shute. Trustee from the Toolroom is my favorite. I recently reread No Highway — excellent (apart from a tad of sexism, but I forgive him) — which also made a good movie with Jimmy Stewart, Marlene Dietrich and the late lamented Glynnis Johns.
If you like Shute's novels, do read
A Town Like Alice, which is quite different from the two books mentioned above. The section about the women prisoners of war who were marched from village to village for almost two years was based on actual events. I recall watching the mini-series (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081949/) on PBS several years ago.
Seven League Boots, by Richard Halliburton. Halliburton has been called the first of the modern celebrity travel writers. He spent the 1920s and 1930s going around the world to exotic places and writing books about his experiences. One of his early feats involved swimming the length of the Panama Canal (and being charged a toll of 36 cents). In Seven League Boots he visits Haiti and other places in the Caribbean, travels to the Stalinist Soviet Union, visits Mount Athos in Greece, meets Saudi dynasty founder Saud and Ethiopian emperor Haile Selasse, and follows in Hannibal's footsteps by riding an elephant across the Alps.
And he tells lots and lots of stories about the lands and peoples he encounters. Evidently he was not a very critical researcher, since he helped to publicize myths about super-centenarians in certain parts of the world, and the idea that the people of the Khevsur region in Soviet Georgia were descended from stray French Crusaders. A reported "deathbed confession" by one of the murderers of the Romanov family (who lived another 17 years) was later found to have been fed to Halliburton by the NKVD to conceal the fact that the crime was, horrifyingly, even worse than what was described to Halliburton. And Halliburton held many of the common prejudices of his time. You pretty much have to take most of what he claims with a lot of salt.
It's at least entertaining. The book also has some interesting photos. I first learned about this 1935 book many years ago when I saw an advertisement for it in one of the bound volumes of old popular magazines that I used to browse through at my old job at a research library. It looked interesting. Over the years I saw some of Halliburton's books here and there. Last year I found a fine copy of Seven League Boots, complete with intact original dust jacket, in the Midwest while on vacation. This was a 1942 wartime edition with the usual plug to buy war bonds. As for Richard Halliburton himself, he was lost at sea in 1939 while trying to sail a Chinese junk to San Francisco. One wonders what he might have accomplished as a war correspondent.
Seven League Boots sounds very entertaining. Along those lines, I recommend Petticoat Vagabond Among the Nomads (1939), by Neill James (a woman), who had a truly amazing time traveling around in Lapland before the war.
Meanwhile, I am reading John Aubrey, My Own Life, compiled by Ruth Scurr. Aubrey was born in 1626 and led quite a life, and Scurr has compiled what is effectively an autobiography from his own writings. He can write like nobody's business — beautiful, insightful, and fascinating. On nearly every page I say "I must remember that! I must note that down!"
Quote from: ab_grp on February 21, 2024, 01:42:13 PMI think it's been a while since I updated on my books, so I will try to do that at some point. Right now, I'm listening to Lessons in Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus), which I now see is narrated by three people (Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes). I hadn't realized that. It's a pretty popular book about a woman scientist in the early 1960s dealing with a lot professionally and personally (e.g., sexism, family dynamics). I'm enjoying the story and her victories, but some of her traumas (e.g., sexual assault, loss of a loved one) have been really difficult to listen to. I have heard many stories with these elements that didn't bother me as much, so I guess it's something about the way they're told. It's some pretty heartbreaking and angering stuff. In any case, I can see why it's a bestseller and am looking forward to seeing what else occurs. I will update when I'm done.
Update on this one: First, I was mistaken about the narrators. Actually, Miranda Raison was the only narrator, and Bonnie Garmus and Pandora Sykes were just listed because of the interview-with-the-author section at the end. I thought I only heard one voice, so this makes more sense. I thought the rest of the book was very good and would recommend it pretty highly with the caveats listed above (those parts were few but tough to listen to).
Phoenix: the Men Who Made Modern London, by Leo Hollis. London in 1666 was in sad shape. First the city experienced a visitation of plague far deadlier than the recent COVID pandemic. Then most of it burned down. Yet in the decades to come, it would grow into one of the world's largest and most powerful cities. Hollis tells the story of how London came to be rebuilt mainly through the lives of architect Christopher Wren, author and diarist John Evelyn, political philosopher John Locke, scientist Robert Hooke, and land developer/speculator/borderline crook Nicholas Barbon.
They were all versatile Renaissance-style figures who made contributions in more than one area--Wren was a scientist as well as an architect, for example, while Hooke was also a significant architect and was responsible for the vital post-Fire survey needed to prepare for the reconstruction. Hollis seems most engaged with Wren's decades-long struggle to rebuild St. Paul's cathedral into what it remains today. I can understand his fascination. Working with my bricklayer father helps me to envision what all was involved with the building's sophisticated masonry, and to better appreciate just how much must have gone into each aspect of the massive project. And it was all done with absolutely nothing in the way of computer modeling, high-tech surveying, or powerful modern construction machinery.
Quite a fascinating look at London in the latter part of the 17th century. Britain in the 16th-17th centuries was my area of concentration as a PhD student in history back in the 1990s. It's good to read something now and then that reminds me of why I find the era so fascinating. So much of our world grew out of that time. It's still very relevant to study today.
The English Channel, by Nigel Calder. Calder was one of those science writers who also had an interest in pretty much everything. Here he takes readers on an armchair tour of the entire circuit of the English Channel, one little region of France and Britain at a time. He dives deep into the geology, natural history, prehistory, history, and present of each place he visits. This is the kind of book where you can learn offbeat things like where Portland stone (Which figured extensively in Hollis' account of the rebuilding of St. Paul's) comes from; what a Brixham trawler looked like; and how most of the Cinque Ports of the Middle Ages ceased to be significant ports as rivers shifted and harbors silted up.
Lots of great stuff there. The Channel and the coasts around it are such a small part of the world, and yet there's so much there when you get to really looking at it. We find, if we just show a little curiosity and pay some attention, that we live in such an amazing world. And, thanks to not paying attention, we find ourselves losing so much of what had been here for so long. It's mind-boggling to consider how much that had been around for centuries and longer is passing away within just our lifetimes.
I was introduced to Calder as a teenager when I read Spaceships of the Mind. A great science writer. It's sad that later in life he somehow turned into a crank global climate change denier.
Quote from: Langue_doc on February 21, 2024, 07:25:03 PMIf you like Shute's novels, do read A Town Like Alice, which is quite different from the two books mentioned above. The section about the women prisoners of war who were marched from village to village for almost two years was based on actual events. I recall watching the mini-series (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081949/) on PBS several years ago.
TV trivia fact: The limited run series had the distinction of being the 1st non-British production under the "Masterpiece Theater" banner on PBS. It was part of season 11 (1981-82).
Just snagged a copy of The Girl with all the Gifts from our local library, thanks to movie thread. I also got Kingsolver's Flight Behavior.
Just finished Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. I have a hold on Flight Behavior.
Quote from: RatGuy on February 29, 2024, 09:39:30 AMJust snagged a copy of The Girl with all the Gifts from our local library, thanks to movie thread.
Oh! That one's great fun.
Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop, by Christopher Morley. These two early (1910s) books by the prolific Morley are what he's best remembered for. Parnassus on Wheels is a kind of humorous romance about two bibliophiles and the horse-drawn mobile bookstore of the title. Great fun to read, and it captures a lot of the appeal of bibliophilia. Lots of allusions to classic authors--many of whom, like Kipling, were still contemporary or nearly so at the time.
The Haunted Bookshop is a sequel in which the protagonists of the first tale have traded up to a bricks-and-mortar location in New York. Not as charming, due to an odd, melodramatic spy plot (set in the immediate aftermath of the Armistice of 1918), the bibliophile schtick getting laid on a little too heavy, and some drearily predictable efforts at philosophizing. Still amusing in places, and boasts lots of loving descriptions of that bookstore. Which has probably been serving as an aspirational goal for bookstore owners and would-be owners ever since.
Both items are still in print, often in one volume. Author Anne Patchett started an independent bookstore called Parnassus Books in Nashville some years ago. They even tried running a mobile branch called Parnassus on Wheels that you can find pictures of online.
I read them as part of a big omnibus volume of Morley's work published long ago, when he was still a living author. I found this last year on vacation, at a place in Galena, IL called Peace of the Past. It's one of those antique stores that has enough books to qualify as a bookstore in its own right. I loved browsing there and finding this and other things, and snagging a couple of their bookmarks. Being able to order whatever you want online is great and all, but may we always have bricks-and-mortar bookstores to browse!
Quote from: Morden on February 29, 2024, 01:41:56 PMJust finished Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. I have a hold on Flight Behavior.
Another recommendation for
The Poisonwood Bible and
Flight Behavior which I've read more than once. Do read
Prodigal Summer if you get a chance, and The
Lacuna. I'm glad I read the latter, but might not be up for a rereading of the same. There's also
Demon Copperhead which I keep putting holds on, but have usually had some excuse or other when I'm notified that the book's ready to borrow.
I just picked up Christopher Hitchens'
A Hitch in Time from the library.
We used to have an Audiobook thread, but it is a Zombie now. Should we revive that?
In the meantime....
I found a three volume HP Lovecraft Omnibus collection and, having a passing familiarity with the author's works, decided to really go through the canon (also, I have a dozen or so of the books in print, haunting my shelves). This is the same series that I mentioned earlier in the (now archived ) thread of the Conan and Elric of Melnibone omnibus collections, which have a contextual/historical introduction to each work. The Omnibus Vol. 1 said I should start with Vol. 2 if it was my first time through the works, as that contained the best and most famous of the stories (and excluded the early poetry). Despite my completionist tendencies, I obeyed.
The 2nd story was The Call of Cthulu, which I found underwhelming. This is supposedly THE STORY and it fell flat to me. But, I persevered. Others I have finished are
Pikeman's Model (meh)
The Strange High House (a cool short story)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (a good, but weird adventure story)
The Silver Key (Continuation of dream quest, time travel involved)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (Creepy story, well written)
The Color Out of Space (Peak Lovecraft Horror here)
The Very Old Folk (Short story set in Roman Britain. Cool, but unfinished)
The Dunwich Horror (Peak Lovecraft Horror here)
The Whisperer in Darkness (Peak Lovecraft Horror here)
I once had Lovecraft stories described as "gothic horror in late 19th-early 20th century New England. Characters either die, or go insane." That is, while not entirely accurate, close enough for the casual reader (which I am). The stories also refer to places near me (and many that I have been to) albeit in an earlier time.
Alas, my loan has expired, and the book is currently unavailable. I'm sure I'll return in time, but I have had enough for now.
I have a one-volume jumbo Lovecraft omnibus at home that I keep meaning to read. Well some of it, anyway--some Lovecraft stories I recall being so nasty I don't care to revisit. "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" I recall being a fascinating work of imagination. "Dreams in the Witch House" and "At the Mountains of Madness" are also.
I've written a lot of "Lovecraft Lite" stories over the years that are set in a fictionalized version of the region where I grew up. One of the towns in them sounds like it was inspired by one of Lovecraft's locations, but it's actually a variation of the place's real-life name.
Quote from: Langue_doc on March 03, 2024, 09:27:23 AMQuote from: Morden on February 29, 2024, 01:41:56 PMJust finished Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. I have a hold on Flight Behavior.
Do read Prodigal Summer if you get a chance,
Of all the Kingsolver novels I've read so far, that's the one that affected me most deeply. I'm a huge fan of The
Bean Trees, but
Prodigal Summer just knocked my socks off. Maybe it's simultaneously going through a divorce and falling for someone from Appalachia, but that's the one I've been recommending to most folks.
From the library: Sisters of Fortune by Anna Lee Huber
In April 1912, a trio of Canadian sisters sail aboard the "Titanic" after a grand tour of Europe and Egypt.
Getting back into my old fave Dr. Harry Turtledove, master of alternate history, and pretty darn good with straight historical novels, as well. Just finished 'The Wages of Sin', about a 19th c England that had been dealing with the HIV virus since the early 1500s, and am about halfway through 'Salamis', the last of 4 historical novels set in the late 4th c. BCE. Pity the doctor is aging-- his novel output is no more than 2 a year now, whereas 20 years or so ago it was more like 5 or 6, and there are many of his series he sadly will likely never revisit.
Second Hand Curses by Drew Hayes. I started reading his work when The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant. I was hoping for something with a similar mix of humor and mixed up tropes. Second Hand Curses delivered. The book begins with a tale of adventure featuring three characters traveling and working together. Each subsequent tale adds bits of backstory, until you realize that the book isn't quite a collection of fractured fairy tales. It's entertaining, with adventure, humor, and some dark overtones that reminded me of fairy tales before they were Disney-fied.
Quote from: Vkw10 on March 12, 2024, 07:48:46 PMSecond Hand Curses by Drew Hayes. I started reading his work when The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant.
I read (and enjoyed) The Utterly Uninteresting and Adventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant, two or three years ago, and I think I heard about it here!
I haven't reported on my reading in a long time, so I'll just mention a few of my favorites from 2023, all of which I would recommend highly.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is beautifully structured from some half a dozen stories, each with a gripping narrative arc. The stories are tied together by their protagonists' connection to a play by an ancient Greek dramatist that has survived only in fragments.
Quichotte, by Salman Rushdie, transmutes Don Quixote into an Indian-born pharmaceutical salesman in Donald Trump's America who sees the world through the lens of the television shows he watches. Reality becomes increasingly tenuous as the the main characters pursue their quest through a country in which alternative facts are gaining steam.
Time Shelter, by Georgi Gospodinov, takes its name from an imaginary epigraph: "No one has yet invented a gas mask and a bomb shelter against time." The author weaves a story that has much to say about time, memory, and the past, and the epic battle that each person must fight against old age. There is a wonderful scene in which the aging protagonist wonders how soon he will lose his memory of letters. He imagines them crawling like insects from his notepad and books and leaving the room en masse.
The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, by Kati Marton, is an excellent biography of a very private woman. She became a physicist, she said, because she wanted to understand Einstein's theory of relativity but also because even the East Germans couldn't change basic arithmetic and the laws of nature.
Jane Against the World, by Karen Blumenthal, is a highly accessible history of the attempts to legalize contraception and abortion in the United States in the 1960s and early 70s. I was surprised to learn that many Republicans were pro-choice in that era; opposition to abortion was not a Republican tenet at that time.
I am always significantly out of date, so I am now reading Barchester Towers. I can see that there's a reason it's a classic.
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi's memoir of coming of age in revolutionary Iran has justly been regarded as a good example of how the comics medium ("graphic novels"--except Persepolis isn't, you know, fiction) can be used to tell serious, grown-up stories about real-life subjects. She uses a basic, yet distinctive, art style to tell her story in a way that couldn't quite be done in any other medium. The first section of the work--it was originally published in two parts--is the more successful of the two. It gives more context of what was happening in Iranian society. The second part focuses more narrowly on adolescent Satrapi and her narrow circle. It is also much wordier, with many of the sort of wall-of-text panels that tend to get in the way of optimum comics storytelling.
Persepolis does a lot to humanize the Iranian people, who are all too often caricatured in the West. I remember well what we all thought of them during the Iranian hostage crisis of my childhood. Later, reading the work of journalist John Simpson helped me to understand more about how the Iranians were real people and not just all like the fanatics under whose rule they have had the misfortune to fall (It was from Simpson that I learned that revolutionary Iran's most popular TV show was the local version of Candid Camera. Who knew?). The portrayal of the Iranian people that we see in the background is the story's main source of interest. Were it not for that, it would frankly just be a memoir of a selfish, spoiled adolescent from a privileged family acting like such people tend to act. Living under a brutally repressive regime enabled Satrapi and her friends to think of their drunken partying as acts of "resistance."
There is another form of resistance to revolutionary Islam that Satrapi doesn't mention. In recent decades several hundred thousand Iranians--estimates vary, as numbers are understandably hard to come by--have converted to Christianity. The Islamist regime in Iran officially tolerates the existence of a tiny historically Christian minority. The evangelism that is a fundamental part of New Testament Christian teaching is absolutely forbidden. In Iran and other Islamist regimes it can get you killed. That's how "privileged" Christianity is in some parts of today's world! Yet people are finding Jesus valuable enough to turn to following him despite the risks. He knew what he was talking about when he said that he would draw followers to himself from every nation.
The Hilarious World of Depression by John Moe. THWoD is the story of John Moe's life as he learns (and fails) to deal with depression, addiction, suicide, and the vicissitudes of life, marriage, family, and the NPR world.
Moe was the host of the THWoD podcast (https://www.hilariousworld.org/episodes) (2016-21) where he interviews famous people (often stand-up comedians) about their struggles with depression and other mental illnesses. He never talks about his own struggle on the podcast, so this book is his story. I chose it as an opportunity to better understand some of MFP's struggles, but it was less about that than his journey. Still a good, albeit disturbing at times, read.
They Were Counted, by Miklos Banffy. This is the first volume of Banffy's "Transylvania Trilogy." It has nothing to do with vampires and werewolves. It's set in early 20th-century Transylvania, when it was still dominated by a Hungarian minority ruling it as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Banffy gives a vivid portrayal of a lost world of aristocratic privilege that somehow lasted into the age of railroads and electric lighting. It is sometimes funny and often melodramatic, but not nostalgic. Banffy portrays his Hungarian elites as thoroughly morally, ethically, and politically corrupt.
The titles of the trilogy's volumes--They Were Counted, They Were Weighed, and They Were Found Wanting are an allusion to the famous "Feast of Belshazzar" in the Old Testament book of Daniel, where supernatural handwriting on the wall announced the doom of the Babylonian king and his court. Banffy was a would-be Hungarian reformer whose efforts both before and after World War I met with little success. He turned to writing to say what he thought of the careless aristos whom he held responsible. They got their "handwriting on the wall" warning in time to do something about it, but ignored it instead. For any attentive observers in today's U.S.--or anywhere today, really--this has an uncomfortably familiar ring to it....
I first learned of Banffy and his work at Neglected Books https://neglectedbooks.com/ He's one of several interesting authors I've discovered there. Not sure yet whether I'll track down the other two volumes. Banffy was out of print for some years before being rediscovered a couple of decades ago. His Transylvania Trilogy isn't too hard to find.
Starting from the library: The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda, English translation by Mari Morimoto and Jocelyn Allen
Best selling Japanese manga series about a young woman raised as a son joins the French Royal Guard at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI. There was an animated series in the late 1970s in Japan and later syndicated internationally.
I've been continuing my Agatha Christie kick. I finished Death on the Nile, then went on to Murder on the Orient Express and Sleeping Murder. I had a break between the latter two to investigate the Jane Austen mysteries recommended earlier (thanks for that!), and got my hands on the first two in the series. I liked them, but in the second one Jane was supposed to be falling for the guy she suspected was a notorious smuggler, but I didn't find that aspect convincing. I still have one more Agatha Christie on my to-be-read pile, The Body in the Library. Maybe the public library will have more of the Jane Austen ones.
Quote from: Larimar on March 24, 2024, 12:14:54 PMI've been continuing my Agatha Christie kick. I finished Death on the Nile, then went on to Murder on the Orient Express and Sleeping Murder. I had a break between the latter two to investigate the Jane Austen mysteries recommended earlier (thanks for that!), and got my hands on the first two in the series. I liked them, but in the second one Jane was supposed to be falling for the guy she suspected was a notorious smuggler, but I didn't find that aspect convincing. I still have one more Agatha Christie on my to-be-read pile, The Body in the Library. Maybe the public library will have more of the Jane Austen ones.
Have you read
Towards Zero?
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd?
A Murder is Announced? Three very different themes, other than the common one of whodunit. I liked the second two on your list above, but not so much the first one. I think I couldn't relate to any of the characters.
I'm reading The Tiger and the Cage by Emma Bolden. It's a memoir about a woman's struggle with endometriosis specifically and the problematic state of women's health care generally. It's tragic, but the author has also made it tragically humorous as well. I'm surprised at how often I find myself laughing out loud at some of her comments.
Quote from: Langue_doc on March 24, 2024, 12:58:35 PMQuote from: Larimar on March 24, 2024, 12:14:54 PMI've been continuing my Agatha Christie kick. I finished Death on the Nile, then went on to Murder on the Orient Express and Sleeping Murder. I had a break between the latter two to investigate the Jane Austen mysteries recommended earlier (thanks for that!), and got my hands on the first two in the series. I liked them, but in the second one Jane was supposed to be falling for the guy she suspected was a notorious smuggler, but I didn't find that aspect convincing. I still have one more Agatha Christie on my to-be-read pile, The Body in the Library. Maybe the public library will have more of the Jane Austen ones.
Have you read Towards Zero? The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? A Murder is Announced? Three very different themes, other than the common one of whodunit. I liked the second two on your list above, but not so much the first one. I think I couldn't relate to any of the characters.
Nope, the ones I listed are the only ones I've read. Thanks for the recommendations. She wrote so many that I have no idea which ones are the best. Glad to be pointed in a particular direction.
Larimar
The Hills Beyond, by Thomas Wolfe. I thought that this relatively short work by Wolfe would make a good introduction to the author. The cover claims it's a novel. It's actually a collection of material culled from the great mass of drafts he left behind when he died. There are many vivid and interesting passages, but overall it reads like what it is--a jumble of material released by an author's estate and admirers to give the author a kind of posthumous zombie publishing career. Which goes to show that this isn't as recent a phenomenon as people may think (Though in recent years it has really been getting out of hand--way too much recent popular fiction now bears the names of deceased authors such as V.C. Andrews).
Wolfe also, like so many 20th-century literary icons, comes across as somebody who holds most of his fellow citizens and their culture in contempt. I've often suspected that one of the rewards of liking them is the way they make their fans feel similarly superior. Can't say as I admire such an attitude. That said, the satire directed in some places against the myth of the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, which had reached a peak in Wolfe's day, was aimed at a target much in need of puncturing.
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read. In 1972 an aircraft carrying an Uruguayan college rugby team crashed in a snowy wilderness high in the Andes. When searchers failed to find them, the survivors faced months of struggling against avalanches, blizzards, and more with nothing like adequate clothing or other gear. They had no food, and had to force themselves to eat the bodies of their friends who had perished in the crash. Eventually two of them made a desperate trek out of the mountains to get help.
It really is a wonder that sixteen men survived all that. It has been called the "Miracle of the Andes." Some survivors and their families considered it an authentic divine miracle. They commissioned Read to write this "authorized" account of their ordeal from their interviews. He did such an effective job of evoking their experiences that Alive has become one of those nonfiction classics that has only been added to, never superseded by, later accounts. It's the sort of portrait of real people under extreme stress and degradation that is tough to read, and yet prompts admiration for the persistence and resourcefulness on display.
At least some survivors are on record as saying that they didn't feel that Read adequately captured their experience. Several have over the years published their own first-hand accounts. I've read one, and may check out another sometime for the sake of getting a different perspective. Some of the survivors went on to have high-achieving careers. They felt that, having been given a second chance at such a high cost, they were responsible for making the most of their lives. Which, now that I think about it, seems like an appropriate theme for the Easter season.
QuoteAlive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read. In 1972 an aircraft carrying an Uruguayan college rugby team crashed in a snowy wilderness high in the Andes. When searchers failed to find them, the survivors faced months of struggling against avalanches, blizzards, and more with nothing like adequate clothing or other gear. They had no food, and had to force themselves to eat the bodies of their friends who had perished in the crash. Eventually two of them made a desperate trek out of the mountains to get help.
I recall reading about this book, but didn't have the stomach to actually read it. You might like Jon Krakauer's
Into Thin Air, an account of the ill-fated 1996 Mt. Everest expeditions.
Quote from: Langue_doc on March 28, 2024, 11:41:30 AMQuoteAlive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read. In 1972 an aircraft carrying an Uruguayan college rugby team crashed in a snowy wilderness high in the Andes. When searchers failed to find them, the survivors faced months of struggling against avalanches, blizzards, and more with nothing like adequate clothing or other gear. They had no food, and had to force themselves to eat the bodies of their friends who had perished in the crash. Eventually two of them made a desperate trek out of the mountains to get help.
I recall reading about this book, but didn't have the stomach to actually read it. You might like Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, an account of the ill-fated 1996 Mt. Everest expeditions.
There was a movie about the
Alive story, also called
Alive.
On Krakauer: a good counterpoint is Anatoli Boukreev's
The Climb. Boukreev is Krakauer's villain, but nobody on his expedition died and he went back several times to save others. Krakauer, on the other hand, (as I recall) refused to share his oxygen.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on March 28, 2024, 11:49:36 AMQuote from: Langue_doc on March 28, 2024, 11:41:30 AMQuoteAlive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read. In 1972 an aircraft carrying an Uruguayan college rugby team crashed in a snowy wilderness high in the Andes. When searchers failed to find them, the survivors faced months of struggling against avalanches, blizzards, and more with nothing like adequate clothing or other gear. They had no food, and had to force themselves to eat the bodies of their friends who had perished in the crash. Eventually two of them made a desperate trek out of the mountains to get help.
I recall reading about this book, but didn't have the stomach to actually read it. You might like Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, an account of the ill-fated 1996 Mt. Everest expeditions.
There was a movie about the Alive story, also called Alive.
On Krakauer: a good counterpoint is Anatoli Boukreev's The Climb. Boukreev is Krakauer's villain, but nobody on his expedition died and he went back several times to save others. Krakauer, on the other hand, (as I recall) refused to share his oxygen.
I read Boukreev's account as soon as it was published, and also Krakauer's postscript addressing the criticisms, several of them valid, in one of the later editions. I like Krakauer's style of writing, so have enjoyed reading some of his other books--
Into the Wild,
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, and
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town.
ETA: If you like reading about mountaineering, you might have seen David Breashears' film on Mt. Everest. Some of his photographs of Everest are on display in the Asia Society's "immersive photography and video exhibition",
COAL + ICE. I saw the exhibit just a week before his death, which was around the middle of this month.
I read Into Thin Air some years ago. It made me wonder why on Earth anybody would ever want to climb Everest. I've also read his Into the Wild, about a poor, deluded would-be adventurer who wandered off into the Alaska wilderness and starved to death.
Easter Hill Village: Some Social Implications of Design, by Clare C. Cooper. In the 1950s the public housing authority in Richmond, California, built a new housing project at a place called Easter Hill. They avoided the soul-crushing concrete high-rise approach in favor of a low-rise planned neighborhood of two-story "townhouses." Most apartments had their own tiny front and back yards. The neighborhood as a whole had a good deal of open space, and a network of footpaths where people could move among the buildings away from the dangers of traffic. There were, however, no play areas, no indoor public spaces, and no park benches or other outdoor meeting areas. Like nearly all low-income housing, the whole thing was built on the cheap.
Cooper had the revolutionary idea, a decade or so after the project was built, of using interviews and questionnaires to ask the residents themselves what they thought of the place. The resulting book became something of a landmark study in the field. Residents' opinions were all over the map. Most thought that Easter Hill Village wasn't a bad place, but fell well short of their ideals. Nearly every household had children in those baby-boom days, and all there really was for them to do outside was run or bicycle around the paths. The cheaply-built houses had little visual privacy--the yards had no fences or only very low ones, and no shrubs to keep people from looking inside. Cheap construction also meant that there was no soundproofing to protect one from hearing everything that was going on outside or next door. All this made the place feel more crowded. Larger households had more bedrooms, but no more kitchen or living space.
The study is impressive in how they tried to survey residents' feelings and experiences regarding their environment as thoroughly as possible. The recommendations at the end of the book suggest ways that future public housing projects could be better designed to meet residents' needs. Unfortunately all the suggestions would have cost money, and public housing came to be so stigmatized in the U.S. that voters not only didn't want to live in the projects, they didn't want any built anywhere near themselves, and saw no sense in spending taxpayer money on them. The need for low-income housing is greater now than ever, and the supply of aging public housing stock just gets more and more inadequate.
Easter Hill Village had already, by the time the study was published in book form in the 1970s, gone from being an ethnically and economically diverse community to becoming a place of absolute last resort for black welfare families. In the early 2000s it was torn down and replaced by a new project with a different name. Which also seems to have gained a reputation as a crime-ridden and undesirable place to live for those trapped there. It's lamentable that our society has failed to make available the resources to make public housing projects into better environments. At the same time, it's hard to see to what extent better design and more generous amenities can fix neighborhoods where fundamental social and family structures have undergone a wholesale collapse.
From the library: The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic by Daniel de Vise (2024)
The story behind the classic 1980 movie and influence of improv. Includes photos from the set and the cast leads.
Finished my Agatha Christies (at least until I can get to the library) and have now started Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel. So far there's been astronomically (pun intended) more about him than about her... not that I'm really complaining because he was an interesting dude. I'm only a few chapters into the book, though, so we'll see.
I tried reading The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. Gave up after a few chapters. The "everything plus the kitchen sink" approach distracted from the premise. Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary is better written stylistically and has a much tighter narrative.
Skylark of Valeron, by E.E. "Doc" Smith. Forget Buck Rogers--Smith's Skylark and Lensman series are the principal forerunners of modern "space opera" science fiction. In this one 1935 adventure we have interstellar wars, intergalactic travel (At a time when the existence of multiple galaxies was still a fairly new concept), hyperspace, disembodied alien intelligences, and a federation of planets. There's also a superhero scientist who makes the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards look like a middle-school science fair participant. As no less an authority than Arthur C. Clarke has put it, Smith "holds most of the patents" on Star Wars-type story devices.
Like most science fiction of its vintage, it comes across as rather unsophisticated in terms of plot and characterization. There's a great deal of purple pulp prose. Brilliant scientists often speak like Warner Brothers gangster movie characters. The very few women in the story--and, to be fair, many of the guys as well--exist mainly to give the big brains somebody to explain their technobabble to. Still, it's an entertaining read if you can accept the dated-but-vigorous writing for what it is. Fans of space opera might find it of historical interest, especially if they didn't know that so many familiar concepts were already in use 90 years ago.
I'm not really a fan of space opera myself. I encountered Skylark of Valeron as a kid in a 1960s paperback edition that I found among the shelves of donated paperbacks in my mother's high school classroom. I had to spend a lot of time in my tween years going there after school and hanging out and browsing the books while she went about her teacher service work. After forty-odd years I've finally had a chance to revisit this one. It's always enjoyable to revisit a long-ago book and see how much of it I remember, especially since I used to be bad about skipping around when trying to read a book-length story. I must have more or less read most of this one, judging from how much I recognized.
Read some chapters of Warnings by Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy. Not as good as Perrow's Normal Accidents, Taleb's Black Swan, and Meyer and Kunreuther's Ostrich Paradox.
Also tried and gave up on Fareed Zakaria's Age of Revolutions. Needlessly repetitive.
Egyptian Made: Women, Work, and the Promise of Liberation, Leslie T. Chang. A worthy successor to her 2008 book on China, Factory Girls.
On a similar topic, I can recommend The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler (husband of the preceding author), which I read last year, and Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East by David Kirkpatrick, which I'll probably re-read this summer.
Eat the Buddha by Barbara Demick. Good history of a Tibetan town suffering from cultural genocide by the PRC.