A High Wind in Jamaica

by Richard Hughes

- there are some spoilers in this review -

I found this story curious, amusing and baffling at the same time. It's about five English kids who have been raised in Jamaica at the end of colonialism. Their parents' estates collapse when a hurricane basically levels the island, and the kids are shipped off to England for safety. The ship doesn't get far when it is set upon by pirates, and the children get transferred to the pirate ship. The adults on the orignal boat think them killed, the pirates make off with their loot and then don't know what to do with the kids. They try to offload them on another island, and fail. They take them along criss-crossing the Carribean in a desultory way (piracy being a faltering occupation at the very end of its heyday) and rather ignore their presence unless forced to deal with them. So the children are more or less left to their own devices on board. Someone else said the book was like a mix of Lord of the Flies with Peter Pan or Treasure Island- I'd concur.

The story is mostly concerned with the inner lives of children- and how different it is from adults' reasoning. The children unquestioningly accept their change in circumstances and adapt, even developing an affection for the pirates they now live among. Not so many horrid things occur as you might think- although what events do turn, are awful enough- however seen through a hazy uncomprehending screen of the childrens' viewpoint most of the time. The oldest girl may have been raped by one of the pirates, that is never made clear. Another girl kills a man the pirates had taken prisoner, in a fit of pure terror. There's a monkey with a gangrenous tail, a girl who makes dolls out of every ragtag bit of paraphernalia on board, a boy who unthinkingly imitates and idolizes the pirates. (There's a significant scene near the beginning that takes place in an old elevated warehouse, with a beam and tackle for raising cargo. I actually saw for the first time myself these hooks on the outside of upper stories of buldings during a brief stop in Amsterdam last year, but never encountered them in fiction until I read Heartsease. Now I can actually picture the situation, where before seeing those buildings it would have been harder to imagine.) There's also a very sad scene where the pirates run down a ship that happens to carry wildlife as cargo, for a circus. The tiger and lion were released from their cages in hopes of a fight, but there was no spectacle- the animals were so emaciated and sick from sea travel that they only wanted to crawl back into their cages, and just lashed out at people when they came too near...

Most of it though is about the strange dreamlike inner world the children inhabit (for one in particular, Emily, it shows her sudden self-realization quite distinctly.) Their games and small bitter quarrels, their quirky logic and fierce battles for attention. Eventually the children's presence becomes a hindrance to the pirates, who determine to be rid of them- but in a humane way if they can. The fragmented way in which the kids answer questions after they leave the pirate ship, mis-remembering certain incidents, entirely forgetting others, fixating on small details that don't seem relevant- that appeared quite accurate to me. There's a terrible ironic twist at the end. The whole story is so odd and uneven, yet brilliant in its depiction of the kids in a rough situation. I had a hard time getting through it and at the same time can't stop thinking about it. I'm not sure if I really like it, but it's one I want to re-read later and see what I think again.

Rating: 3/5           241 pages, 1929

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The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag

by Jim Corbett

I'd been on the lookout for another Corbett book, because his one about the man-eating tigers in India was so interesting. This volume, about a notorious leopard he strove to track down, was rather dry in style but I kept going back to it regardless. Corbett relates how he was summoned to hunt down a man-eating leopard that terrorized villages near Rudraprayag. He surmises what makes a leopard habitually prey on man (old age, serious injury, or learning humans can be a food source when bodies are dumped over a cliff instead of properly buried during a disease epidemic). His account is one long list of failures- following every little rumor of a kill, sitting up for the leopard over a body, staking out goats in hopes the leopard would come to it (it still fed on cattle and goats when couldn't get a person), setting out poisoned bait and careful traps many times over. I was puzzled why he repeatedly claimed leopards were easy to hunt as they had no sense of smell (what?) yet the big cat neatly eluded him over and over. He did kill two leopards that were in the vicinity but knew by the details of tracks and behavior patterns it wasn't the right leopard. It took eight years of tracking, stakeouts and numerous attempts before he had success. With several breaks to rest and avoid getting killed himself, when fatigue set in and he feared would let his guard down. Through the story are some details about life in rural India, the superstitions of the local people (many believed the leopard was an evil spirit, impossible to kill), their abject terror of the beast, their profuse gratitude when the leopard was finally done in. Also, very similar to the other book, some interesting notes on other wildlife in the area, and how Corbett's observation of their behavior helped him track the leopard.

Rating: 3/5               164 pages, 1947

In Africa with Schweitzer

by Dr. Edgar Berman

I knew very little about Albert Schweitzer before picking up this memoir at The Book Thing out of curiosity. Schweitzer was a brilliant philosopher, theologian and a virtuoso on the organ. His great loves were writing, studying religion and music. As far as I understand it, he was Lutheran and wished to travel to then-French colonized Africa to preach to the natives, but the church declined to send him because his historical studies of the life of Jesus were considered heretical. So at the age of thirty he took a three-year course at a medical school and then went to Gabon to set up a hospital in the jungle on the edge of a river. There was no other medical care available in the area at the time, people would travel from hundreds of miles away. Schweitzer treated the impoverished native people for myriad diseases and injuries, in appallingly primitive conditions, while indulging in his desire to preach the gospel (his view of it, over the supper table more or less) to them. Schweitzer received the Nobel Prize in 1953 for his humanitarian work. He used the money to build a sanatorium for lepers on his hospital grounds. He ran his hospital, living in rough conditions without electricity and many other conveniences, for some fifty years.

Anyway, this book was written by a surgeon who deliberately volunteered to go work at the hospital in Gabon because he wished to get to know the famous man, and question him personally about his views. He was honest about his intentions and Schweitzer reportedly said well, if you work hard and prove yourself, we'll get to know each other. So part of the book is about conditions in the hospital, how the local people were treated, how the staff was managed, certain medical cases and surgeries the author assisted at or performed himself. The rest of it relates the private talks he had with Schweitzer (which some of the staff resented, as they were not on such close terms with the man in spite of having been there much longer, and had to often act as interpreters for these conversations as well). They discussed religion, medicine, music, touched a bit on recent history- the atrocities of WWII were painfully close and that subject often avoided- and especially Schweitzer's personal philosophy of reverence for all life. He had a pet deer, pig, owl and myna bird, and allowed various monkeys, goats and chimpanzees to roam the hospital grounds freely. I liked reading the few descriptions of the animals. One incident where an elderly tribesman brought his wounded, ill dog in for treatment, which Schweitzer took quite seriously, was very touching.

In all, the description of work at the hospital was very interesting, the chapters on philosophy and religion could get tedious- either because they were frankly over my head, or simply outside of my interest. There was an obvious contrast when the author once went downriver to perform an emergency surgery at another small hospital (because its surgeon was drunk, a state he cultivated to forget the horrors he had survived as a prisoner of the Nazis). This other hospital had more modern, pristinely clean facilities which impressed the author, but the surgical tools were so crude he had difficulty performing the operation. After several months spent working at Schweitzer's hospital and living in awe of the man's company, the author returned home, obviously relieved at having modern comforts again. He returned once more to Gabon some twenty years later, after Schweitzer had died and the hospital was run differently, and reflected upon the improvements made, but the loss of "spirit" that had once pervaded the place.

I looked up some stuff after reading this book. The hospital still exists in Gabon, it is now a world heritage site. The original buildings are part of a museum, and newer ones operate as a research and medical facility providing care to the locals.

Rating: 3/5                308 pages, 1986

There's a Rhino in the Rosebed, Mother

by Betty and Jock Leslie-Melville

This is a hilarious, and sometimes sobering, collection of little stories and anecdotes by a couple who ran a private tourist operation in East Africa during the sixties. I've read their book about raising Rothschild giraffe, and apparently they were famous through their other writings because they spent half the year touring in America, giving talks about their life in Kenya and drumming up business, the other half of the year taking people on safari.  The book has kind of an odd beginning- it pitches almost immediately into anecdotal stories about traveling around the States, getting into odd, amusing mishaps. Other parts have just as amusing snippets about their dealings with safari guests, and what life was like in remote, rural Africa. And their complaints about how things changed as it became modernized. The book is solidly placed in its time. Diane Fossey was still alive. There's mention of the Adamsons filming stories of their lions, and of Zamba as well. African countries were just gaining their independence from colonialism; in fact several of the final chapters went into great depth about the horrors of apartheid and the "terrorists" in Rhodesia, which gave a different view on the local situation as described in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. There is not a lot about wildlife, something I missed as I rather expected it from what I remembered of another book they'd written. In spite of that I found this one quite entertaining with its sometimes insightful look at people just being people. The friendly, down-to-earth tone reminds me of Betty MacDonald. Of all the many quirky little incidents related, I think my favorite is the one about a man who encountered a chicken in the outhouse, and thought it was a snake. In spite of his misfortune, I laughed so hard.

Rating: 3/5           253 pages, 1973

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

An African Childhood
by Alexandra Fuller

Memoir of the author's childhood in Africa - she grew up on various farms in Rhodesia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, during and just after the Rhodesian war for independence. It was a rough childhood to say the least. Her family was always struggling on poor land, whether it was for cattle ranching or raising tobacco. Drought, disease and violence were common. Her mother was a drunk, to put it mildly, and struggled with mental instability after loosing three of her children when they were very young. The author describes all the struggles they had with poverty, and then the moment of revelation when, as an older child, she finally stepped into the home of an African for the first time, and realized there was another level of deprivation altogether. All the details of growing up, with correspondence lessons and then boarding school, with treks into the bush and picnics on lake shores, with hyenas whooping at night and dogs forever crowded under their feet. Endless teasing from her older sister, casual racism towards servants and nannies. Bad roads, poor medical care, soldiers and checkpoints wherever they went. Blackouts, frequent power failures, unclean water, you name it. Came through it all with a fierce love for the country, which stayed with her, even after living in America later when she became married. Not much wildlife mentioned in the story- well, aside from snakes, rumors of leopards and baboons that lurk near. Mostly it's about the vast land, the people, the political upheaval and what it was like to live through all that as a kid. Reminiscent of The Flame Trees of Thika, and also in some ways Rules of the Wild.

Rating: 3/5                  315 pages, 2013

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Salvage the Bones

by Jesmyn Ward

This is sad, brutal and touching. It's about a poor family on the Mississippi coast, facing the oncoming terror of hurricane Katrina unawares. Well, they've had warnings. They prepare as they have always done, for hurricanes. This one is different. Without a mother, with their father injured, ill and abed. One son preoccupied with basketball, another keenly focused on his treasured pit bull who just birthed puppies and is also lined up for a fight. The daughter, through whose eyes we see all, has just realized she's pregnant. They don't seem particularly tender or supportive to one another, but cling together fiercely when facing the dire hurricane. The book has so many heavy themes: poverty and racism, dogfighting, teen pregnancy, the kids growing up pretty much on their own, older ones still keenly missing their mother and trying to raise the youngest. There's also some very poetic and vivid prose, which led me to read it all the way through, in spite of the times when you'd want to look away.

Just so you know, there is brutality towards dogs, and to people. There is death. Katrina is a looming presence all through the book, but the actual storm doesn't happen until the final two chapters. The aftermath is very brief, with the survivors going through the wreckage and finding who is still alive. Then it ends and you don't even know what happened to all the characters, particularly the one I was most interested in... it has a hopeful note, but still, you don't know.

Rating: 3/5                      271 pages, 2011

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Menagerie Manor

by Gerald Durrell

This wonderful book is about a young zoo. Durrell was determined to start his own zoo against all odds; he parked his collection of wild animals in his sister's back garden and simply went looking for a location. Happily acquired the grounds of an expansive estate to convert into his zoo. Some of the book is about the management, brief purchasing trips to foreign countries, public relation efforts and necessary fund-raising. But most of it is just about the animals, which delights me. Durrell describes with obvious fondness the antics and behavioral quirks of many of his wild charges, as well as their efforts to provide the proper diet, improve housing, treat diseases, deal with accidents and breed rare species. There's an amusing account of trying to catch a tapir that escaped and rampaged through a neighbor's fields (at night, in a rainstorm), and another of baby coatis that constantly squeezed out of their cage to romp on the main driveway, and a funny bird that seemed to think its role in the zoo was to welcome every new animal that arrived (a few of them did not appreciate its company). Some of the more interesting animals featured include a spectacled bear, a pair of tuatara, surinam toads, a very grumpy crested porcupine, some wonderfully amusing marmosets and a wide variety of apes, monkeys and smaller primates. A chinchilla that liked to ride on the backs of giant tortoises and steal their food. An overweight skunk who needed a mate to encourage her to get enough exercise. And more. Near the end of the book Durrell realizes that the zoo's purpose should be to keep more rare specimens and attempt to breed them to aid conservation efforts, and he closes with an environmental appeal in particular asking for donations to further the zoo's cause and hopefully slow the extinction rate of wildlife.

As usual, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the animals' behavior, and efforts made with their care and husbandry. There's plenty of very amusing passages as well which had me laughing aloud. Durrell has a real knack for telling a story. The book has some beautifully expressive pen-and-ink drawings by Ralph Thompson illustrating nearly every other page. I love that so many were included, and found through one of the descriptions that the artist made at least some of these drawings (perhaps all?) from life, which you can tell by their liveliness and quality.

Rating: 4/5                 180 pages, 1964

El Zoo Petrificado

Los Diarios de Cereza
by Joris Chamblain

I bought this book while traveling, because the illustratons intrigued me so much. It's the first book I've ever read in Spanish and actually enjoyed, rather than struggling to translate every sentence. I did have to look up quite a few words, but not enough to slow me down. The original is in French.

It's about a young girl Cereza who dreams of being a writer and likes to imagine other people's secrets. She's busy decorating a tree house with her friends when they notice an old man come out of the woods in paint-splattered clothes. They're nervous and go home. Cereza comes back later on her own and sees the old man again. She decides to follow him and see what he's doing. Without telling her friends and lying to her mom, by the way.

- spoilers ahead -

He's painting scenes of animals on the walls of a derelict, abandoned zoo in the forest. Cereza decides to help him and gets her friends and other kids involved in cleaning up the old zoo grounds. Eventually they get some adults of the town involved as well to make major repairs. Delightfully, the artist not only paints animals on the walls, he renews the paintings periodically to make it look like the animals are feeding, new young are born and grow up, etc. It's a constantly evolving art form. Cereza convinces him to let the town see, and they open the doors to visitors, bringing memories alive for many of the older citizens and recognition to the old man for his art. The front and end pages of the book are like a diary (in a hard-to-read handwriting font) and some of the later pages are news articles about the revitalized zoo in its new format, and criticism/praise of the old man's art. These articles with more formal language was the most difficult for me to read.

- end spoilers -

The story is a nice tidy mystery, and in spite of some flaws (dishonestly, ignoring and criticizing her friends) I rather liked Cereza's character. At the end of the book she determines to find a way to talk more openly with her mother, but isn't quite there yet. While a big part of it is about friendship and acceptance, I admit I liked best the parts about the old man's secret work. I'm reading this book aloud a second time round with my teen, so she can practice her Spanish, and she's quite enjoying it as well.

Rating: 4/5             72 pages, 2017

Herbs

Exciting Recipes for Cooking with Herbs
by Linda Tubby

I have so many cookbooks, and I rarely use them. Attempting to change that. This book delighted me with its absolutely beautiful photos of live plants and fantastic-looking plated dishes. They are a bit sophisticated for my regular kitchen pantry, but the author helpfully mentions what substitutions can be made, if you can't find a particular ingredient. Which is nice because she uses a lot of uncommon items like shiso leaves and fenugreek (at least, they're unfamiliar to me). The intro portion of the book has some basics on selecting fresh herbs or growing them yourself, and methods of  preserving them. The list of plants tells a bit of interesting facts about each one- where it originated or something of its historically medicinal and culinary use. It has me curious to try a few new things in my garden: lovage, winter savory, tansy. The recipes are sorted into groupings: appetizers, soups and salads, light brunch/lunch dishes, full entrees, vegetable courses, pastas and breads, desserts. Final pages include how to infuse olive oil and vinegars with herbs, make candied flowers, tisanes, syrups and flavored drinks. I am encouraged to try!

The stretched pasta with herbs pressed between thin layers and then quickly cooked, has me super intrigued. It's pictured all over the endpapers- see below.* Unfortunately, I don't have a pasta machine. I did make the salmon and new potatoes dish, with dill. It was pretty good, but not spectacular. However I used dried instead of fresh dill, and fresh instead of smoked salmon. Definitely going to make more recipes from this book. Especially in the summer, when I have fresh flavors at hand out in the garden.

* photos coming soon

Rating: 4/5               144 pages, 2004

A Horse Called Dragon

by Lynn Hall

Another older horse story, one I'm sure I must have read as a kid, borrowed from my elementary school library. It's a fictional account of a real horse, an Appaloosa mustang from the Sierra Madre mountains in Michoacán. Who was caught and brought into captivity to become a founding sire of the POA breed. This little book tells of his early life, years as a stallion defending his band, modes of survival. His capture and slow adjustment to a new way of life (the mares tamed pretty quickly in this story, which I found amusingly implausible but oh well).  For such a short book, it's a surprisingly satisfying read. Very well-written. I like how it shows things from the stallion's viewpoint- what he would have understood, his reactions and decisions according to various circumstances. There's vampire bats in this book too, which feed on the horses at night and sometimes endanger the newborn foals. In that area of Mexico the bats are still a common threat to livestock.

Rating: 3/5                96 pages, 1971

Midnight

Wild Stallion of the West
by Rutherford Montgomery

An older book I picked up secondhand somewhere. It's about horses that live on a cattle range in the southwest. In particular, one fine black mare owned by the ranch but allowed to run free on the range and an old squatter living in a cabin in the high country who admires her. The mare sometimes mixes with a band of wild horses. When she goes missing the squatter is accused of stealing her. Things happen, the mare goes off on her own and raises a colt in seclusion. Later the mare dies and the young horse grows up on his own, eventually challenging the stallion of the wild band, drawing attention of a ranch hand who recognizes he must be the offspring of the missing mare. This guy determines that catching the young stallion and showing it to the ranch owner will exonerate the squatter- plus acquiring himself a fine horse. His plan to catch the wild black horse does not turn out so easily.

I was skeptical of this story at first, but it turned out to be pretty good in the end. While it has a lot of vivid descriptions of the scenery, weather and interactions of various wildlife, much of the animal behavior is exaggerated or downright inaccurate and had me rolling my eyes. For example, wolves don't hamstring their prey, and the mating behavior of bears described in here made me laugh outright, it was so ludicrous. It's obviously written to be exciting for young readers, with a lot of vicious battles between wild animals for survival, and sensational scenes. The young black horse fights off (at different times) wolves, cougars and a bald eagle, survives an encounter with a bear, and battles another stallion on the edge of a cliff. But then many depictions of how the wild horses live, elk in the rutting season, mule deer interacting with the mare and her colt, are very nicely done. I really found the final third of the book more interesting, when the young stallion had taken over the band but obviously did not know how to lead the mares, and had to face his human opponent.

I happened to like the ending, particularly because it had some unexpected outcomes.

Rating: 3/5                 274 pages, 1940

Winter Pony

by Jean Slaughter Doty

I wanted this book because it's a sequel to Summer Pony- one I loved reading many times over as a child. I haven't written about the first book yet- last time I read it was long before I started blogging. Basically it's about a girl who gets her dream pony- which turns out to be an unkempt mare from a rundown pony-ride circle. Keeping Mokey is more hard work than she ever thought.

Winter Pony takes place after Ginny has learned more or less how to care for her pony through the summer, and made a small space for it in the backyard. She's looking forward to riding in the snow, especially when she finds out her friend's dad has an old (but well-kept) sleigh in storage. With the help and close tutelage of the stable hand (a guy who used to race in steeplechases, had to retire after an injury and now works in the stable- familiar character from other horse stories I think) she learns to harness Mokey to the sleigh and how to drive her pony. It is a very long process and Ginny often gets impatient. Finally they are able to ride in the sleigh, driving Mokey in circles around the property and across nearby fields.Then one day when they are unsupervised, the girls unwisely take the pony driving on a road and have a very close call with a snowplow.

That's the entire first half of the story. The second part is about Ginny's shock and delight when she finds out her pony is expecting a foal. She endures a long anxious time waiting for the foal to be born, and then is appalled when her pony doesn't react in a loving manner to the newborn. Once again the stable man teaches- coaxing the pony to accept her offspring, and instructing Ginny how to care for them both.

It's a nice horse story for kids, but somehow is rather lackluster compared to the first book. And mine seems to end abruptly, when Ginny happily goes to the house to get some carrots for her pony soon after the foaling. There are no endpapers, so I'm not sure if my book is actually missing a few pages, or if it ends just so! I'll have to find a library copy and check.

Rating: 2/5      106 pages, 1975

The Crumb

by Jean Slaughter Doty

A horse story about show jumping. The young girl who narrates it has a scruffy pony she keeps in her backyard. She needs to buy her pony a new winter blanket, so takes a job at a nearby stable where more well-to-do kids have riding lessons. The stable owner is so impressed, she's allowed to bring her pony to work, and goes along to horse shows as an assistant. Where she ogles the beautiful, famous horses owned by wealthy folks, listens in on gossip, and finds out about a scandal revolving around some rich stable owner who discards horses by dishonest means, to collect insurance money. The girl inadvertently gets way too involved, and results are devastating for her. Honestly I was shocked when the tragic event occurred only two-thirds through the book. I wondered what could transpire afterward, but it had a tidy ending- a tad predictable, but overall I was impressed how the author dropped hints, subtly allowing the reader to figure out what really happened. Nice story. And very horsey. I don't know how accurate the details are about training methods, show conditions, shady means used to improve a horse's performance, etc- but it felt very realistic. Grimy underside to a world full of girls who love horses, and wealthy folks who want to show off with them.

Rating: 3/5         122 pages, 1976

Heartsease

by Peter Dickinson

This is the sequel to The Devil's Children, and I'm glad to say the story more or less stands on its own. It's set five years after the Changes which made people in England revolt against technology (some kind of mental sickness) and flee the cities, living in small villages and farming communities while deliberating avoiding modern conveniences. A man from America (unaffected by the Change) who arrived on foreign shores to find out what is going on in England is attacked and stoned for being a "witch". Two young people rescue him in secret. He's severely injured but they hide him in a shed and nurse him back to health with rough care. The kids are gradually becoming disaffected by the Change- the girl Margaret still feels uneasy around machinery but is curiously compelled to visit the empty city and explore. The boy on the farm, Jonathan, is intrigued by machines and good at figuring out how they work. Together they form a plan to get the injured man out of the country. It involves Jonathan manning an old tugboat through the canals while Margaret rides ahead on her pony to open bridges. It has to be secret because the locals are highly suspicious of anything unusual; even their maid's brother Tim, a gentle man with mental disabilities, is at risk of being called a witch and killed by the community simply because he is different. The plot of the rescue mission is really straightforward, what makes this book so much better is how well its characters are written. Jonthan is quick of mind and keen about solving problems, yet totally callous and dismissive of animals- when a pony balks at getting aboard the tug he just says "I hate horses" in disgust. Margaret for her part finds anything remotely mechanical confusing and avoids being around it, but is remarkably patient with the ponies and understands their behavior and needs very well. She's also pretty brave- getting chased by a pack of feral dogs, and baiting an aggressive bull as a diversion during the getaway. They make an interesting contrast and a good team. Too bad there wasn't more of the other characters in the story- the foreigner, the maid and her brother Tim are all interesting people as well. but play minor roles. It was a pretty good read. A few times it seemed like the kids made remarkably complex plans or conveniently drew overly quick conclusions, but I took it in stride to enjoy the story. The ending surprised me somewhat.

Rating: 3/5          189 pages, 1969

The Devil's Children

by Peter Dickinson

This one was a bit odd. It's apocalyptic fiction where humanity is seized by some kind of mass infectious horror of machinery. They smash cars and radios, go berserk in riots against technology and then flee cities en masse. Disease plagues spread and society breaks down with small groups of people surviving in isolation, wary of outsiders.

However most of the book isn't actually about that- it's only described briefly in the forward and epilogue, with a few instances where the main character herself is seized by a mindless urge of violence when she sees someone try to start a bus, for example, or hears someone talk about farm equipment or radios by name. She's ten or twelve, I was never sure of the age, and lost her family in a riot. She attaches herself to a travelling group of Indian Sikhs, originally immigrants. For some strange reason people of other nationalities were not affected by the madness against machines, only the English. The Sikhs let her join them as a kind of insurance, they call her their "canary" because she can tell them what kind of actions or conversation will trigger the rage of their English neighbors. They set up a community on abandoned farmland but then have to deal with nearby English group who have formed themselves into a feudal system. These neighbors are suspicious and afraid of the Sikhs, even rumoring them to be Old Ones or Fae. Most of the story is about the girl's adjustment to living among people foreign to her- I'm not sure how accurately it describes Sikh culture but it depicted them as very honorable and relatively proud people. In the later part of the book, the girl takes a key role in their dealings with the English group, being a go-between and carrying messages, then later forming key strategies when it ends up in a battle. It seemed a bit improbable that a young kid would have such a leading role in strategies against the enemy, but what do I know. However I was doubtful enough that it kind of flattened my enjoyment of the story.

I got this book on swap because I acquired its sequel at a hotel, and wanted to read the series in order. Turns out this one was rather lackluster for me, but luckily the second one seems to stand on its own and I'm already enjoying it more.

Nothing to do with the story itself, but I did really like the decoration on the cover and chapter headings, which has a medieval or celtic-looking pattern intertwining with gear cogs.

Rating: 2/5          187 pages, 1970

The Complete Book of African Violets

by Helen van Pelt Wilson

This is an older book about the specific cultivation of african violets as houseplants, written when they were new on the scene and wildly popular. It is easy to read having a friendly style, and quite informative in spite of its age. I learned for example, that foliage isn't necessarily damaged by water contact- only if it is a lot colder in temperature and of course keep it out of the crown. In fact this book recommends regularly rinsing leaves off with light spray, to keep clean of dust. I didn't know that violets could be grown hydroponically, nor that propagation can be taken from the same individual leaf multiple times by restarting each instant the new young plant is cut free of the petiole. The care instructions are very thorough, but I would look for modern methods of pest control. The chemicals and pesticides the author recommends sound downright dangerous. There are chapters explaining how to share plants and leaf cuttings through the mail, how to grow violets commercially in greenhouses, how to conduct judged violet shows, and the difficulties of describing and naming new varieites. Illustrations in linework are quiet nice and have a lovely detailed texture of fuzziness on the leaves. The actual color photographs are amusingly quaint. I'm keeping this one around, and am now perhaps interested in acquiring a few more african violets myself. (I only have two right now, but am awful fond of them).

Rating: 4/5       247 pages, 1951

On the Wing

To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon
by Alan Tennant

After reading Peregrine Spring, I looked among my own shelves for some more falconry-related titles. I thought this one looked promising, in fact I had two copies of it among my unread-books, one picked up at a library sale and the other from The Book Thing. I guess it caught my eye twice for the same reason. It's written by a man who sometime in the eighties or nineties (my best guess) became suddenly gripped by the idea of following an individual peregrine falcon on its migration jouney- not just mapping its path on a screen via radio-tracking, but physically trailing it in a light aircraft. It sounds intriguing, especially for the time when little was known about peregrines, their exact routes and how juveniles fared on their first migration. But something about the book didn't quite work for me. The way the author apparently appropriated others' equipment for his un-sanctioned study kind of put me off. I thought the descriptions of flight in a small plane -akin to Saint-Exuprey's writing- would interest me, but it didn't. And actual descriptions of the birds are few and far between. They did learn some new things about how peregrines respond to certain weather patterns and their hunting styles, and there are some good observations from nesting sites in the arctic. Unfortunately most of the book seems to be about the travels, difficulties getting around regulations, encounters with loads of strangers, and effects of man on the environment -noticeable from the air- where the writing style just did not engage me. I found myself skipping around a lot to read the parts that actually described the peregrines. I probably missed a lot in the process and this is one case where I'm rather disappointed in myself for not appreciating a book properly.

Rating: 2/5          304 pages, 2004

Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

A Calvin and Hobbes Collection
by Bill Watterson

I lingered over this one because it's the last of my Calvin and Hobbes books until I find a few more volumes. More nostalgic stuff of childhood: decoding secret messages, imagining grand schemes. First half is a lot of christmas glory and social commentary (or criticism of his parents) presented in snowman artwork. Calvin's dad shows himself to be an avid cyclist and takes the family camping- which both Calvin and his mom resent. The kid for his part gets regular thrills careening down slopes on a sled in winter, in a red wagon during the warm months. I cracked a smile at how Susie the girl-next-door calmly thwarts his plans to clobber her with snowballs, water balloons or some other kind of ambush. Their attempts to "play house" together, shown in a different comic art style, are hilarious. The larger horizontal format does make this book awkward to handle in softcover and I don't know if it adds much to appreciating the artwork as there are rather wide page margins.

Rating: 3/5         175 pages, 1994

The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury 
by Bill Watterson

I thoroughly enjoyed reading more Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin speculates on the realities of Santa Claus, makes terrible faces for family photos, resists bathtime, fights the babysitter, teases the girl next door mercilessly, procrastinates doing homework, imagines he's saving the world from distasters with superpowers, or rampaging around as a dinosaur, and argues with his more level-headed best friend tiger Hobbes. I laughed through many pages. I had forgotten the episode where the family's house got broken into. In this volume he starts his club against "slimy girls" and makes his cardboard-box duplicator. Yeah, second half of the book was suddenly a repeat-read for me that I skipped over: it's the entire contents of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink". With the improvement that this volume has all the weekend strips in full color. So now I know which one is immediately getting weeded from my collection as a redundancy.

Rating: 3/5         255 pages, 1992

Peregrine Spring

A Master Falconer's Extraordinary Life with Birds of Prey
by Nancy Cowan

The more I read about falconry, the more it fascinates me. This was one of those books that engaged me so much, I just couldn't read it fast enough. The author and her husband keep and fly birds of prey. Through this book Cowan shares many of her experiences with a variety of hawks and falcons. I learned so much about them. How they are raised, trained, rehabilitated, the differences between flying a hawk and a falcon. It was also really interesting to me how dinstinctly the birds behaved towards people according to their origins- those that were caught from the wild, born in captivity but hand-reared by humans, bred and raised by their own parents, or older trained birds transferred to a new handler, all so different. Each bird had its individual traits which required close observation and fine-tuned response by the handler. Cowan explains the birds are not pets but hunting partners. Some of them they hunt in partnership with bird dogs, that was really cool to read about. She and her husband worked for over a year with legislation to establish falconry as a legal sport in New Hampshire when they moved there, so they could fly their birds. Later she worked again through a lot of legal forms to apply for a rehabilitation license, to take in an injured bird of prey that would benefit from being flown by a falconer. She and her husband established a school of falconry, and spent many hours as volunteers conducting demonstrations and outreach programs to teach children and the public about the birds. So many stories, so many details. One very interesting chapter about efforts to relocate peregrine chicks to a new nest site that was safer (the parent birds had laid their eggs on a very narrow skyscraper window ledge). Sometimes close calls and near-accidents; injuries, lost birds, occasionally death. But the thrills and fierce joy all worth it. If I ever have chance to observe a flight demonstration again, I will watch more closely to see if I can note some of the behaviors and responses described to me in this book. I'd hope to understand a little better what I see, from what I have read of others' understanding.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5         265 pages, 2016