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I thought of this book because I saw it mentioned on The Zen Leaf among a list of banned books. I was really taken aback- what could be objectionable about The Red Pony? So I pulled my own copy (with lovely illustrations by Wesley Dennis) off the shelf to thumb through and refresh my memory.
I think this book has sat longest of all on my shelves unread (six years). I still remember clearly when I acquired it. I was a student in San Francisco, and one of the used bookstores I liked to browse had an extensive section of coffee-table books, replete with beautiful images and heavy, glossy pages. This one always caught my eye, and finally one day I gave in and bought it. At the time I used it frequently for reference, practicing drawing from the photos of the animals.
I feel a bit discouraged that this seems to be the week of books I don't care for. And that a lot of them are from the reading list I made for my own reading challenge, so I'm having to rework the entire list as I go! Here's another one- a collection of writings by a gardener. Just my thing. It's a nice enough book. It has a lot of information about different plants (mostly flowers) arranged by the seasons they show their colors in. Also a small section on thoughts about gardening work, and another about the author's pet peeves! But it wasn't nearly as engaging as Thalassa Cruso, and lacked the advice on horticulture that I appreciate. Lacy shares lots of info about the history of plants- their countries of origin, the persons who discovered them and made them popular. He quibbles a lot about plant names, too. But the discussion of nomenclature in Weeds in My Garden was far more interesting. I really only read a solid fifty pages, then started thumbing through to try the parts about my favorite flowers (nasturtiums) or plants I'm more familiar with (hostas and marigolds). Even the part about calling the stuff underfoot dirt or soil only vaguely annoyed me. Sorry, I had to put another one aside!
I read this book once because I saw the title mentioned as a favorite of a character in a book I loved (how's that for a recommendation?) It's an epic-style fantasy about two warring kingdoms in a medieval world. It starts off with one man's quest to rescue his brother from the enemy and overthrow a tyrant- then the two factions battle endlessly to see who will control the entire world. Ordinary poor folk and foot soldiers die by the thousands for no good reason. The battles are huge and bloody, there's constant fighting, deceit and mass confusion going on. And sorcery, strange creatures, beautiful women who get ravished, etc etc. I can't say I've read another book so full of gory battle details (unless it's these by Richard Monaco). Looking back, I'm not sure what kept me going through the whole book- unless it was the fantastically rich, archaic language. Eddison writes like no other. His prose can be tedious, confusing and very beautiful. If you like reading epic sagas (particularly Nordic ones), or are interested in a fantasy tome that heavily influenced Tolkien's work, I could recommend The Worm Ouroboros. But for me, the storyline was too wandering and the ending frustrated me beyond belief. It's a complex work, that probably deserves a more discerning reader than myself (see below links for more appreciative reviews). It's full of heroism and romanticism, treachery and tragedy and headaches for this reader. I admire it very much but I hardly liked it at all.
This book wasn't really what I expected. I spotted it on a shelf in a bookstore one day and from the back cover blurb gathered that it was about the author's attempt to see if he could outrun a pronghorn antelope. The story unfolds in small pieces: his brother studies how mammals breathe while they run, theorizing that humans evolved an upright stance because they could regulate their breathing and have greater stamina for long-distance running. He wants to test the theory in person, as well as interview primitive people who are said to have run down game on foot. That in itself interested to me, but the antelope thread is interspersed with many other brief stories and vignettes. They chronicle Carrier's wanderings throughout his life, particularly his work as a fledgling journalist. The segments about his travels to Mexico, Kashmir and Cambodia were more in depth and most interesting- especially as I recently read about situations in Cambodia in Search for the Golden Moon Bear, and here a lot more light was thrown on that for me. But on the whole I found many of the pieces in Running After Antelope too brief to satisfy me. Colorful and intriguing snapshots of American life and journalistic travels, often ironic, sad, conflicting- but sometimes I was left wondering: what was the point? Belatedly I realized this book is an assemblage of radio pieces done on NPR for "This American Life." I'm not very familiar with the program; maybe if I'd heard them on the air first I would appreciate it more.
Esperanza and slipbananpeel !!!
And just for the fun of sharing, here's a few photos of my kitten lounging atop one of my TBR piles. She's grown so big I can hardly call her "the kitten" anymore! I'm trying to think if I can work one of these into my header...
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In the middle of reading The Long African Day, a passage about Nile crocodiles caught my interest. I know little about them, so I looked through my shelf and found another book specifically about these aquatic reptiles. Alligators and Crocodiles is an overview of all the crocodilian species: two kinds of alligators, six species of caiman, thirteen different crocodiles and the two gharials (an animal I never heard of before). The book is full of stunning photos- some of the large gators and crocs look very sinister and remind me that crocodiles are an ancient species that existed alongside dinosaurs. Others, especially the young caimans, strike me with the beauty of their patterned scales, and their fierce toothy grins. Although the book clearly explained the difference between alligators and crocodiles I know I still couldn't distinguish the two even if they were floating side by side!
Long ago, in a land simply called the Old Country, a young girl went after the fox that was stealing her family's chickens. She found herself deep in the forest, in a strangely magical place where the animals could talk. The animals demanded proof that the fox was guilty, and quickly arranged a trial where a spider was the judge, and the jury a crowd of birds. Although her grandmother had warned her never to look long into the eyes of a fox, she did- and found herself transformed into the fox's body, while the beast ran off with hers. Of course she set off at once to get her own shape back, but it's a hard task. For one thing, although she can speak to all the animals, people no longer understand her, only hear a fox's yapping. For another, her country is being ravaged by war, and her own family uprooted by the violence and suspicion. Her only hope is the assistance of a silly chicken, her pet cat who wants to be a lawyer, a bear that escaped from a circus and a shape-shifting forest sprite. Together they must navigate the horrors of war while seeking to find her family and convince the fox to trade places once again. By the end of the story, experiencing life in the fox's body has profoundly affected the girl, and she is surprised to find that choices she once thought were clear are now difficult to make. The Old Country is a wonderful meld of fairy tale and fantasy elements, a story of wartime survival and one little girl's search for herself. It's a bit grim at times, but a lively and captivating tale.
This book describes the author's various safaris to view wildlife in Africa during the 1950's. I really enjoyed reading his vivid descriptions of the weather, landscape and animals- especially incidents where he came into closer contact with the wildlife. One night a hyena snuck into his tent and ate his leather boots right from under his cot! Not so nice was reading his descriptions of the various native tribes- he only praised those that had tall, slender people, and spoke in really insulting and derogatory terms of others whose appearance did not please him, especially the pygmies. Some of the animals were also recipients of his prejudice- his party found wild dogs so distateful that they threw stones at them to drive them away. There is one chapter specifically about poaching operations- especially ivory- and another on how the Masai's needs for land to graze their cattle conflicted with wildlife. One of the most interesting sections of the books described a hike his party took into the foothills of Mount Muhavura in hopes of seeing moutain gorillas. He mentions some pioneering researchers- Carl Akeley and Jill Donisthorpe- whose names were new to me, as the fame of later scientists like George Schaller and Dian Fossey has eclipsed them. The final chapter is about his trip down the Nile, where I found a very interesting passage about which books are good to read while on vacation in Africa!"In these circumstances one reads books in quite a different way. Not only do you make a re-appraisal of them, so that those which before seemed good now sometimes seem trivial; inevitably the actual experiences that happen to you on your journey get mixed up with the book you chance to have before you at the moment. And the results are often bizarre..."He goes on to briefly discuss various genres and which make a good fit with the safari atmosphere. His final conclusion? "In the end Jane Austen may be the most rewarding." So all you Jane Austen fans, you must make the experiment of reading one of her novels next time you travel in Africa, and tell me if you agree with his assessment!
This was my first book for the Random Reading challenge. A few days ago I made a list of all the titles in my TBR stack, and plugged it into random.org. The number that came up was 40- A Thousand Acres. I found it at a library sale once, picked it up because I enjoyed Moo. I was expecting A Thousand Acres to be different, but not that it would be boring. Without the wry humor that permeated Moo, there was not much to keep me interested in this book. The setting is a thousand-acre farm in Iowa, a farm carefully built up from swamp to success by generations of the Cook family. When the patriarch of the family retires, he suddenly leaves the farm to his three daughters, dividing up the land. Caroline, a lawyer in the city, doesn't want it. Rose is bitter and outspoken, Ginny (the narrator) more compliant but harboring her own hurt feelings. They all have issues with their father and his rigid schedule, coldness towards his family, scorn of outsiders. Another key figure is Jess, a draft-dodger who returns to the community after fourteen years' absence. He brings new ideas about how to do things. That contrast interested me- the new methods versus traditional, or the smaller farm that did just enough to get by and be content, compared to all the other farmers who competed to have the biggest, and most profitable farm. But I didn't care about any of the characters, so I was unable to follow them through the story, to find what disaster and tragedy was looming. I put it aside at about 120 pages.
This is a really bizarre sci-fi novel. It's set on a strange world where interplanetary colonists struggled to overcome local plant life. Wild creeping grass strangled their crops, proliferate moss spores struck the people and livestock with a form of intoxication that drove them into madness. Then a sunstorm affected pregnant women with its rays, and thousands of the resulting newborns died of birth defects. The six that survived had some strange mutations- one had healing powers, one could see the future, one could commune with birds, another with the plants, etc. They were shunned by the community, and grew up wild and solitary, tended by a few nurses. At the point where I left off (about fifty pages in), they had started sneaking out of their cottage to run wild through the fields and forest, to spy on the "pilgrims" and frolic under the influence of the moss dust. I like the way Scyoc writes, and I picked up this book because Daughters of the Sunstone intrigued me and I wanted to read more by her. But Sunwaifs was just getting a little too crazy for me, and I didn't want to continue.
This book wasn't what I expected, but I still enjoyed reading it. I thought it was going to be all about one lion pride, and I thought it was going to be about a particular lion pride I'd seen in a tv documentary, that had adapted to hunting buffalo in the water when their marsh flooded during the rainy season. I don't think they are, but I found a website about a BBC documentary that filmed lions in this same area, apparently some years after the events chronicled in the book. In the book, Scar was a young lion in his prime, whereas on the Big Cat Diaries, he is an older lion recently pushed out of the territory by the new males coming in.
This is a story set in a small English village in the 1920's. Its protagonist is a teenage girl named Velvet, the local butcher's daughter. Although her father does well, she has lots of siblings, so there isn't enough money to indulge in her dreams- owning a horse. But when a horse considered a local nuisance- a black and white piebald with one blue eye who is constantly jumping fences and running about the streets- gets puts up for a raffle, Velvet wins. In another stroke of unexpected luck, an elderly gentleman becomes aware of her love for horses, and leaves her five ponies in his will. Now Velvet is the sudden owner of six horses. She and her sisters ride the ponies in small local gymkhanas, with various success. Then, inspired by a comment of her father's assistant who is an ex-jockey, Velvet gets the idea to train and enter the piebald in the most difficult and competitive equestrian event in the country- the Grand National steeplechase. There are several problems to overcome: her horse is wild and untrained, she's too young to enter the race, and at the time only men were allowed to participate, as it was considered too dangerous for female riders. Velvet is determined, though, and won't let any of these things stop her from pursuing her dream.
The Cats of Lamu is a beautiful book. Its author was vacationing on a small island off the coast of Kenya when he became interested in the local feral cats. He thought they looked like cats depicted in ancient Egyptian art, and was more intrigued when he learned that these cats had been on the island for hundreds of years without intermingling with other breeds. This book is the result of several years he spent living on Lamu island, studying and photographing the cats.
There is something about Margaret Atwood's books that both fascinates and repels me. I found The Handmaid's Tale to be chilling, in a remote way. Cat's Eye was terribly dismal and depressing to me. And Oryx and Crake gave me the creeps- but at the same time I simply could not put it down. It is a horrifying vision of the future- a future in which humankind has altered the face of the world beyond belief. The effects of global warming are only a sidenote here; popultation growth beyond control causing a huge rift between the wealthy and poor, spawning violence and crime alongside ruthless pursuit of scientific answers to all problems. Genetic engineering and other kinds of tinkering has created things like pigs that grow human organs, fake boulders that water your lawn, babies with chosen characteristics. And society's utter moral degredation. It all eventually falls into chaos, until a man who calls himself Snowman is the only real human being left, alongside a group of genetically altered people who are impervious to many ills- sunburn, disease, hunger (they eat grass). Jealousy, hate, love? humor? There's not a lot left to make them human, so many things in their brains have been rewired by the scientist Crake. Who was once Snowman's childhood friend.
In the mood for more fantasy after finishing Daughters of the Sunstone, I simply picked up the next fantasy book off my TBR, and I was surprised to find it had a few similar themes, albeit presented in an entirely different way. Enchantress from the Stars is set in the future, when humankind has populated many different planets. Each world is in a different stage of development, some civilizations far more advanced than others. The most highly evolved peoples form the Federation, and are sworn to keep their presence secret from more primitive worlds, for fear of influencing their development in unforseen ways.
Here's something you probably didn't know about me: I was born several months premature. When expecting my own child, I wasn't at risk for having a premature birth myself. But while browsing the library shelves for books about pregnancy, the title caught my eye and I was curious. Every Pregnant Woman's Guide to Preventing Premature Birth is based on studies done in France, where they have actually been able to lower the nation's rate of premature births per year. The main message is simply to take it easy while you're pregnant- don't push the vacuum cleaner, ride a jolting train, spend long hours on your feet, lift heavy objects, etc. Also info on how to recognize signs of premature labor and when to call the doctor. The section about maternity leave was kind of boring and felt longer than necessary, but overall this looks like a very useful book if you want to avoid the chances of being put on prolonged bed rest or having a premature baby.
I've been thinking about bears lately. Not only because I've read a few books about different species in the past week, but because they've also been featured in some of the fiction I read. In Reindeer Moon, the primitive people would sometimes find where a bear had denned for the winter, and dig it out for meat. In Daughters of the Sunstone, some of the people on an imaginary planet passed the winter in an induced sleep, to avoid starvation when resources were scarce, as bears do.
