Dark Star Safari

This is the first time I've read Theroux. It will not be the last.

I think the sheer audacity of the trip Theroux proposes--from Cairo to Cape Town over land--is the most attractive aspect of the book, to me. I'd love to do something that foolhardy, that crazy, but I couldn't possibly leave my wife and family and go off to do that and not feel guilty about it every single day. Theroux has been doing it for decades.

After reading, what stays with me though is not just the fact of this absurd journey, but the imagery Theroux uses. I was completely taken with his writing, his use of the language, and throughout regardless of how I felt about his commentaries on various things the writing was just wonderful.

The trip is certainly worth taking. Theroux visits parts of Africa few Westerners ever visit, and does so via means rarely if ever taken by outsiders; I was reminded of Jeffery Tayler's canoe trip down the Congo when Theroux decided to take a boat downriver from Malawi into Mozambique; who does these things? I want to talk to these people; where do they get such a crazy notion and why is there no one around to talk them out of it?

The book, perhaps the traveller himself, is strongest when he is able to be with someone strong enough to strike up an actual relationship, however brief. In Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi, and elsewhere Theroux spends several days with one person or a group of people and it is here that we get the best insight into Africans themselves; other conversations with former political prisoners--Theroux notes that a great many men of a certain age in Africa have been in prison, often for a fairly long time, a comment I'd heard in Djibouti but never considered--are equally illuminating. Theroux by himself tends to fall into a Brysonesque tendency to pick on people, though in fairness in Egypt he's picking on people who probably deserve it.

The book has received some press coverage and commentary for Theroux's strong comments about the international aid effort in Africa. Some of his complaints are petty and I think personal--he consistently complains that aid workers in their shiny new Land Rovers never stop to pick him up when he's looking for a ride; yet at the same time he knows full well how dangerous the areas he's going through are, and why should an aid worker believe his story and give him a ride when there are no doubt dozens of Africans who'd like the same favor? Theroux never considers that or, if he does, he doesn't write about it. Seems petty and I was a little annoyed with it by the sixth or seventh time he complained about it.

Theroux's main argument about aid is that the Aid For Africa industry--and it is an industry--has done nothing to improve the lives of everyday Africans, employs no Africans, involves no Africans in its decision-making, and works almost entirely to further the goals of other nations and the careers of the aid agencies themselves. Some of those criticisms are certainly fair, not the least of which is that all the millions or billions of dollars spent in Africa by aid agencies over the years has led to precisely zero improvement in the lives of Africans; things are indeed worse than ever. And a lot of aid programs are tied to requirements from the home country--the project must use a certain contractor or purchase materials from certain places, instead of everything being done in Africa by African suppliers and companies. Part of the reason there's no corporate infrastructure in Africa to speak of is that most government budgets are aid, and most aid requires projects to use international contractors, so local contractors can't even get work from their own governments and thus cannot build local wealth.

But a lot of aid work is done by Africans, and there is a glaring problem with Theroux's anti-aid bias: he never talks to an aid agency. He talks to a couple of Catholic nuns, and a handful of teachers, but not to anyone in a leadership capacity; indeed, he'd rather sneer at the people driving the Land Rovers than try to engage them, although in fairness they don't seem interested in engaging him.
There are people more learned than I about the topic who have criticized Theroux's statements, and I'll let you look those up if you're interested; a good bit of the criticism seems to be picking nits, though, and most impartial observers are coming to agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with the international aid is handled in Africa. Whether he's right in all the details, Theroux's complaints about aid are not unique and certainly should be food for thought.

Controversy aside, the book is a wonderful read, and there's just not anything else out there like it. Travel writing about Africa tends to be either limited in scope or of poor quality in general; this book is certainly neither of those. Now if there was just something of this quality about west Africa...

The American Home Front

This is one of many books I've had in the house for a while but never bothered to read. It's a shame I let it sit so long.

I have a number of books by people who've attempted to travel the entire breadth of the United States to... I don't know. Find America, usually. Sometimes there's a conceit--in the case of The Cannibal Queen, it was that the traveling was done in a 1941 Stearman biplane (my kind of conceit). In Lost Continent, the conceit was the in the author's attitude to everyone he came into contact with. In other cases, there's a specific reason driving the journey, as in Haynes Johnson's Divided We Fall, a tour of America during our last (real) recession in the early 1990s (a depressing but relevant book). I enjoy the genre, but I find that there's not usually anything terribly new in it from one book to the next, once you get past the conceit or the reason. You might go to a different place, but America is America, and as Bill Bryson pointed out just about everywhere has become Anytown USA.

That makes Alistair Cooke's The American Home Front: 1941-1942 rather interesting, as he made his journey before Levittown was built, and before the rest of the country started to look like it. Cooke was a Brit sent to America by the BBC to report on America to the British. He earned his citizenship in 1941, just before the war, and embarked on this journey primarily to give the good folks back home a look at America on the brink of war. The places he visits, even those that are intimately familiar (Jacksonville and Tampa, for example), are hardly recognizable, the America of Yesteryear, yet presented without nostalgia because the book was written in Yesteryear.

Needless to say I enjoyed it immensely, because I do like the genre. But like almost every book in said genre, it was a bit too long. America is very big. You can travel around America and notice things for about 200 pages before you need to wrap it up. Really. And you can't possibly see the whole country in that time, so you have to limit yourself... or not, as no one respects the 200-pages notion. So the books always drag by the last quarter. It's not that the writing isn't as good nor the insights as fresh, it's just that, well, nothing new is happening. Change in setting is not enough to maintain interest when everything else remains more or less the same. I can't think of a book I've read of this sort that wasn't too long; even On the Road was too long. It's a shame, because either you get sick of the book and the writer, or, as in this case, you're tempted to skim parts of the last quarter, and those areas of the country last on the itinerary you're less interested in reading about.

So. I like this genre, and anything well-written in it is going to be appealing. And the greatest fault of this book is the same as that for any other in the genre, namely, it runs a bit too long. Why read this one instead of any other? I could go on about Cooke's writing, which is very nice, or his observational abilities, which are excellent as one would hope for a journalist. The truth is, though, this is an America you can not go back to. And not only that, anyone today who tries to tell you what America was like in the 1940s, even from personal experience, is going to get a lot of things wrong. We are nostalgic creatures, and nostalgia colors our view of the past. You can't change that. The only way to get a sense of a historical place is to read a contemporary writer who was deliberately trying to write about the here and now. And that is exactly what Cooke was doing.

Some travel-across-America books do not wear well, for various reasons; the writing may be substandard, the conceit may hinder readers' interest. Others will still be read decades from now. I hope The American Home Front is in the latter category. It deserves an audience, and before long there will be few people left who can even offer clouded remembrances of the era. As a historical document then, as much as anything, this is a great book. How nice that it's also such an enjoyable read.

Six Short Book Reviews

I've been meaning to review these books forever and haven't got round to it and at this rate I won't for ages. So here's the abbreviated version in order of the first read. As always any of these are available for checkout from the Smitty Library.

1. An Embarrassment of Mangoes, by Ann Vanderhoof.
Wonderful book. Enjoyable to read, will whet your appetite for a Caribbean vacation. Great recipes, although we haven't actually tried any of them yet (but I really want to, especially now I know the DeKalb Farmer's Market in Atlanta has callaloo). Ann Vanderhoof has done what we all want to do--leave the rat race behind and take a vacation forever (or a year, in her case)--so obviously she has more money than the rest of us, but she never ever writes like it, and the book is just a pleasure. Highly recommended.

2. The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson.
A reread. I love Snow Crash and, the last time I read it, I still loved it. I like this book a great deal, but it runs out of steam 3/4 of the way through and enters a territory of great weirdness where it starts to get difficult to follow and even, frankly, to suspend disbelief for. Still contains wonderful moments of philosophy and lots of solid factual grounding, and still mostly a very fun read. But not as much fun as I remembered. Definitely worth looking at, but it shows the direction Stephenson has taken generally (i.e. increasingly hard to read).

3. Whatever You Do, Don't Run, by Peter Allison.
Subtitled "True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide." Lots of fun. Not quite as funny as you might expect from the cover blurbs and actually surprisingly touching at times, nonetheless a light, quick read, perfect for a bedside book as it consists of a collection of short episodes. I greatly enjoyed this book, and I don't think you need to have gone on safari to enjoy it yourself. It may make you want to pick up and go, though. I suspect Mr. Allison has three or four more books of stories in him and he is a fine storyteller. Smittywife needs to read this before it goes into the lending library circulation.

4. Airline/Transport Pilot Oral Exam Guide
Technical book of very limited interest. Will be out of date soon anyway, and since none of the airlines are actually hiring I won't need to take the test. Useful for brushing up on things before my interview, though.

5. Emergency Sex, by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson.
Absolutely my highest recommendation; the best book I've read this year. The authors were UN Peacekeepers during the 1990s and into the early 2000s and these are their tales. If you are at all aware of the existence of other countries you should read this book. If you are a firebreathing conservative and think the UN should be shut down, you should read this book. If you are bleeding-heart liberal and think the UN should take over the world, you should read this book. If you think it matters at all how the US is viewed in the other countries, you should read this book. If you don't think it matters how the US is viewed in other countries but are aware that other people have opinions, you should read this book.
You should read this book. It is gripping. It is well-written. It matters.

6. The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene.
Interesting. On a lot of "Best Books" lists, which is why I read it. I will pick up The Quiet American and The Comedians on the basis of this, but I can't say I was exactly swept up in it or transfixed by its brilliance. Greene knows how to build a novel and is a good writer; if the subject matter, faith (in particular Catholicism) and keeping faith when there is no Earthly reason to do so, is of remote interest to you, this is one of few novels on the subject that doesn't preach to you (there's plenty of preachy junk out there for you if you want that). But it never really answers any questions, for the protagonist or for the reader. Valuable, but not one you need to put at the top of your list.

Footprints Across the South

This morning I finished James Kautz' book Bartram's Trail Revisited. There has been a minor upsurge in interest in William Bartram in the last decade or so, and Kautz began working to retrace Bartram's trail in 2001, while living and teaching in the Atlanta area. My review is after the jump.

Several works have been written about Bartram, about his travels (not least, of course, Bartrams Travels); about the flora and fauna he collected, identified, was the first European to see and name; and about the land over which he traveled. Kautz has taken a different view: this book is about what the land looks like now. He is not a fanatic follower of the exact path Bartram trod (indeed, the exact path is not known, what with GPS not being invented until 200 years later and all; very good estimations are made based on Bartram's accounts but in some places all we can do is get within 10 or 20 miles of the likely path), but instead visits the places Bartram wrote about, and looks to see what they are like today.

It's a very enjoyable read--though I'll admit if you aren't from the South or at least haven't lived here you probably won't be that interested--and spans all sorts of topics. Kautz gets into history and politics, he visits both natural places and developed ones, he discusses issues of race and class (which sadly still pervade the South at every level), he talks about fishing and canoeing, and about shopping and restaurants.

The book is not written chronologically; it is laid out in roughly the order in which Bartram traveled, but Kautz took his own trips where and when he could over the course of five years. Though certainly you'll learn some things about Bartram from this book, really, it's a look at the world Bartram visited, 230 years later. What would the man see if he took the trip today?

Kautz manages to avoid being too pro-environment here, and certainly he understands the need of people to have jobs and places to live and things to eat. He is no starry-eyed tree-hugger bemoaning the loss of the wilderness Bartram traversed. But neither is he blind to the devastation Americans have wrought on their landscape, both physically and culturally. Consequently the book is not depressing or sad, although it could be. Instead it's an enjoyable read, thought-provoking for any resident of the South, and a good introduction into the world of William Bartram. It's not the best book I've read this year (I think it will be tough to top Emergency Sex), but I can certainly recommend it.

The Gods Drink Whiskey

The Gods Drink Whiskey, by Stephen Asma, is not quite what it seems. It was deep, fascinating, and well worth a read. And I don't think the cover blurbs were written by people who'd actually read the thing.


I picked this book up thinking it was a travelogue. The top cover blurb from the Dallas Morning News says "An account of the ultimate hippie road trip." Steve Asma isn't a hippie. This isn't a road trip. And if you look at the entire blurb from the DMN on the back, it becomes apparent that the reviewer never actually read the book.

This is not a book about getting drunk and stoned and patting the Buddha's belly at Angkor Wat. It's not even a travel book, except in the sense that Asma did in fact travel to Cambodia and did do some traveling while he was there. But while he went to Vietnam and Thailand and possibly elsewhere, chronologic tales of these trips are glossed over in favor of philosophical trips the author took while on those travels. It's a much deeper book for this.

I actually wanted to read this with a highlighter at times. Asma says much that I've been thinking lately (and no doubt this book has influenced my thinking plenty). He discusses what I mentioned above, the incapacity of Americans both to be happy where they are and to actually be happy when they get that one thing they wanted that they thought would make them happy. By contrast southeast Asia's Buddhists are taught to eliminate craving and find their happiness and satisfaction whatever the present circumstances, to experience the now and not confine themselves in the prison of craving for the future or living in remorse for the past.

But Asma, a Buddhist himself (he traveled to Cambodia not for some hippie road-trip but to teach Buddhist philosophy at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, quite an honor for an American but important since Cambodian Buddhism lost most of its philosophers during the Khmer Rouge era), is no starry-eyed idealist about the virtues of Southeast Asian Buddhism and lifestyle. Around him he sees grinding poverty, blind mysticism, meaningless violence. He sees where Buddhism has helped the people live in this environment, but also sees where a little Western modernity would help them live better in their environment. He wants neither to make Cambodia a Buddhist America, nor to make America a prosperous Cambodia. No place is perfect, no society has all the answers. But there is good in many places, and Asma notes how these goods could be combined, if only.

If only is the problem, and again, our author and mentor and tour guide is a realist. He has trouble grasping the horrors of Khmer Rouge era when confronted with them at the S-21 prison, where tens of thousands of innocents, many of them children, were tortured and killed for no real reason. He has trouble reconciling the mystical neak ta temples and lingam (penis) worship cults with the deliberately non-mystical Theravada Buddhism that is the official religion of the state (and Mr. Asma).

I'll go ahead and say this is my favorite book of the year thus far. Whether it's the best is open for debate depending on your view of "best." I tend to think Fierce Invalids might have been "better," and it gave me plenty to think about, too, but The Gods Drink Whiskey was just the sort of philosophical brain food I needed right now. I mean, Asma makes the point in chapter 3 (I think) that Americans are actually often made prisoners of their liberty as much as they are liberated by it. Because we have, and demand, freedom of choice in so many areas, we are often overloaded by choices, incapable of feeling confident about making the right choice, and beset by anxiety over how to choose. That's me to a tee. I would fain lay down my life before I'd give up my liberty, but I clearly don't understand how to use and appreciate it. It makes me anxious and depressed; I don't trust my instincts and frequently regret my choices. Sometimes with hindsight and meditation I can be satisfied with choices I've made in the past, but I worry excessively about upcoming choices and refuse to let myself be satisfied once a choice is made. Asma isn't too sure that we wouldn't all benefit from a little less liberty and opportunity at times, and while I'm not convinced of that I had to put the book down and take a walk after reading his discussion of it because it rang so true in my life and I've never considered it. With effort I hope I can learn to recognize the benefits of liberty without allowing myself to sink into the prison of it.

And there was the comment about the division of labor in Southeast Asian families vice that in American (and most Western) ones. Asma doesn't claim the patriarchal society and family values of Cambodia are better than the equality of American family life. Actually, he believes Cambodia could benefit from a little Western-style women's liberation. But he also notes that in the Cambodian family, there is less family strife because family roles are clearly delineated. Thus even arranged marriages tend to hold up better than Western marriages do because everyone understands going in what they can expect of the other partner and what is expected of them. It isn't that the man should work and the woman should run the household; it's that somebody needs to take on the responsibility of running the household finances, and somebody needs to give that responsibility up to the other partner, instead of both constantly fighting to get things done their way. Indeed, it isn't at all necessary that one partner work and the other stay home, as long as both partners recognize that each will responsible for certain things. If both work, no one can be responsible for maintaining the household. Asma points out, too, that while in Southeast Asia the men are responsible for making the money, the women are entirely responsible for spending it--and they have a responsibility to be thrifty and spend less than the husband makes. I would say in American families, with both partners working (okay, I know I'm not working now, but that's not intended to be permanent, and I am still drawing a paycheck), the key is to say, we will live entirely off of one partner's paycheck (as much as possible). Should that partner then be responsible for the family budget? Should the other partner be responsible for keeping house? It doesn't matter; the key is, those responsibilities should be delineated, and expectations should be understood, so couples aren't fighting over every decision. The same can then be extended to dealing with kids.

Yeah, this was a book I needed to read right now. But lest you think it's all philosophy and Eastern wisdom, I'd like to point out the marijuana pizza, and the story of the schoolchildren who wanted their pictures taken with exotic white foreigner who threw up all over the front lawn of the sacred shrine (to the Buddha's toe, or hair or something). I mean, this is actually a really fun read, and I would be doing the book a great disservice not to point that out. There are plenty of laughs here, and the narrative moves along. There are a good number of unfamiliar words, and as ever I wish Asma has at least given us approximate pronunciations of the Khmer words ('Khmer' included), since there are lots of unfamiliar consonant combinations there and I stumbled over lots of the terms. Still, this isn't important.

Asma's prose is generally light and enjoyable, although at times following his train of thought through levels of philosophy takes some work. It's well worth it, though, and at the turn of the page he brings the reader back to the surface for a breath of air and a comment about something funny such philosophical introspection brings to mind when surrounded by a totally foreign culture.

In other words, this book is both fun to read and challenging at the same time. It's tough to marry those two, and for that reason alone this book is a worth a read. I highly recommend it.

Lost Cosmonaut

Daniel Kalder's Lost Cosmonaut is funny and... weird. A little weird. Not too much. As travel writing goes, it's certainly unique. You can read a dozen travel books about Tuscany or the French countryside or Ireland. But there is only one travel book about Udmurtia, or Mari-El, or Kalmykia. This is that book. Certainly you aren't burning to travel to Udmurtia. If you know where Udmurtia is on a map, you are one of a very few people. If you even know what country it's in you're doing better 99%+ of the population of the world. I imagine some Russians are unaware of Udmurtia's existence. Hell, some Americans think Idaho is a job description, so I can only imagine what Russians must think of a place like Kalmykia.

The book is divided into four parts. In the first, Kalder travels at the behest of a friend to Tatarstan, at the eastern edge of European Russia, and discovers an utterly unknown place--unknown to most Europeans (or any Westerners)--with significant cultural development all its own that none of us have ever heard of. I'm considering trying to find a recording of music by one of the "18 Great Tatars" Kalder lists in his book, but he says not to bother--you can't find it. It's not there. This is a country that has been utterly lost to the West--and it's in our backyard.

Next Kalder convinced his travelling partners to accompany him to Kalmykia, a province at the edge of European Russia. The Kalmyks are Turks--the name means "left behind" or some such, as this is the portion of a Turkic tribe expelled from this part of Russia 200 years ago who somehow managed not to leave. It's a country with half the population of Baltimore, Maryland, spread out over a wasteland larger than Texas. Kalder wanted to go see nothing--and that's about all there was. Kalmykia is nominally Buddhist, the only such country in Europe, and the leader of the place is a bit of a wackjob who built an entire (vacant) city in the scrub dedicated to chess. Weird stuff.

In the third and fourth parts of the book Kalder traveled alone, first to Mari-El, the only officially pagan area in Europe (though only half the residents are actually Mari, and maybe half of them actually practice the local religion) and apparently a hotbed of the Russian Wives By Mail industry; and then to Udmurtia, a province named after a people who've been all but subsumed by the Russian culture that surrounds them. Both of these sections started off somewhat slow--in part because Kalder is travelling alone, in part because they start off the same way as the previous two. The fourth section, which by the end was perhaps my favorite, started VERY slow--a fact Kalder acknowledges in a section detailing his attempt to spend the entire trip in his hotel room (he doesn't succeed).

By the latter sections of the book, though, Kalder admits that he had already decided he was working on a book--he wasn't just travelling for the sake of it. Although this hurts the illusion a bit--I wanted to believe he was just visiting these places because he was an eccentric--the knowledge forced Kalder's hand a bit, so that he had to actually get out of the hotel room, set a goal, find something new, figure out what he was looking for in these places. It gave form to his narrative, and though he book would have rather different had it been written without this form (but just by an eccentric Scotsman with a taste for cold weather and poor countries), in the end it made the book feel more whole.

The section on Udmurtia is particularly interesting, as here is a place with a long history and its own culture and language, that has been completely absorbed by Russia. 200 years ago such a place would swiftly lose that language and culture and it's history would have been rewritten, but in the modern era you can't just wipe a culture off the face of the map. Yet this is what's happening--and it's the Udmurt who are allowing it to go on. Kalder makes some interesting points: there may be 1000 years of Udmurt history, but nobody--literally--knows what it is anymore; the Udmurt language was so frighteningly complex that, given the chance to speak Russian instead (itself a complex and difficult language) today's Udmurt leap at the chance; Udmurt cultural traditions in many cases were similar enough to--and sometimes were added to--Russian culture that the distinctions have mostly blended into nothingness. This is a country that by rights should be totally assimilated into the Russian mass, yet that will never be allowed to happen. There will always be someone working to preserve the language, guessing at what the cultural traditions once were, and there probably never be anyone to care. It's kind of sad.

The other sections are not so sad, but they are melancholy in their own way. Kalder is a good guide to such places. He doesn't really laugh at them, which would get tiresome (the dust-jacket copy calls him a "Bill Bryson with Tourette's," which is an insult to both Kalder and to Tourette's patients, and Kalder is in no way as cynical or elitist as Bryson can be), but he does keep a sense of humor about him and about the places he's visited. They're not very nice, after all.

This is genuine travel writing, unlike The Sex Lives of Cannibals or Together Alone, so I can easily say it's the best travel writing I've read all year. I just don't want to compare it to the other two; all three are vastly entertaining and plenty diversionary.

Together Alone

Oh good, a book I've finished somewhat recently.
Together Alone is a fascinating book, and although it's very hard to find (you could always borrow my copy, of course) it is certainly worth looking for. Ron Falconer, the author, spent several years wandering about the South Pacific in his own handbuilt boat, and, together with his wife and two children (and cat and dog) decided to move to a tiny uninhabited island far outside the usual sea lanes. And he actually did it. This is the story.

The island was Caroline, in the far southeastern corner of Kiribati--the very same Kiribati J. Maarten Troost wrote about in the far funnier (but entirely different) The Sex Lives of Cannibals. But this is a far different place from the Tarawa atoll Troost and his wife called home. Caroline supported small populations in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, but by the time the Falconers arrived at the atoll in 1987 it had not seen human habitation for almost 50 years.

Into this paradise the Falconers brought only those things they needed to survive, and they managed to do so for nearly four years. During that time they relied upon annual trips to French Polynesia and occasional visits from passing yachters for whatever they couldn't produce themselves. Over the years they built a fully-functioning settlement.

Falconer's goal was never to achieve total self-sufficiency. It was to achieve isolation. He went there to think big thoughts about society and man's place in the world. Whether he found what he was looking for you can never be sure. Falconer digresses into introspection only occasionally, usually in the form of a conversation with his wife (conversations I assume are mostly made-up and intended just to get the point across), and although you can tell he's doing a lot of thinking about man's impact on the world, for whatever reason he leaves a lot of his thinking off the pages of the book. Perhaps he prefers it that way.

Smittygirl read the book before I did (or at any rate read it after I'd read about 60 pages) and occasionally had to put the thing down and read something else out of frustration with Falconer's occasional self-reverence. Yes, that's the word I was looking for--not self-reference. Falconer does seem to think he was on the verge of--or perhaps right in the thick of--creating a new way of life for all humanity, and he certainly has a bit of an ego. I didn't find it as annoying as she did but then I was also expecting it.

The book is written in the present tense, which I found a bit jarring at times given that the thing wasn't published until 2004, thirteen years after the family left the island.

The Falconers wanted to stay on Caroline as caretakers, but they were evicted by the Kiribati government at the behest of a new leaseholder who wanted to build a casino and other things on the island. Falconer's description of the end of their idyll is sometimes a bit wrenching; of course Falconer may make the family out to be better than they were (it's his book after all), but certainly it seems hard to imagine the family as "undesirables," especially on an otherwise uninhabited island. Given that the leaseholder's plans for development never took off it seems especially unjust that the Falconers were forced to leave.

So the ending's a bit of a downer. Bummer. It's still a really great read. Who hasn't dreamed of running away to some deserted isle to survive by your wits for a while? Well, okay, but who hasn't dreamed of just getting away from it all for a while, getting back to where what matters is a roof and enough to eat and beyond that you're free to do as you please? Ron Falconer and his family actually did that. Together Alone is definitely worth a read.

Notes From a Small Island

Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island was voted the best book about Britain by the British themselves in a poll in The Guardian or some such several years ago. It says so on the book jacket somewhere but it's all the way on the other side of the room and I don't want to get up.

Bryson lived in England for fifteen or twenty years (that's also on the book jacket), but this book was written in the weeks before he departed the country to return to the United States. He went across to the continent, then hopped a ferry and returned to England through Dover, just as he had first come to England year previously. He travelled across the country without benefit of a car, which is fairly interesting--partly because it colors the narrative and partly because no one in their right mind would try such a thing in the United States.

There's not a lot to say. It's a great book for the flavor of the English countryside, but lately I find Bryson is sometimes so sarcastic ("wry" in the language of dust-jacket copy writers) that I get the feeling he doesn't enjoy anything at all, really. This wasn't so noticeable in A Walk in the Woods but it was terrible in The Lost Continent. To my surprise this book is at times rather closer to Lost Continent than I'd have hoped.

Which is not to say it's bad. After all, it was as I said voted the best book about Britain by the British (according to that wry dust-jacket copy, or something; really, I should just get up and go get the book but I absolutely refuse to do so at this point), and if for no other reason it's clearly worth a read. It is funny and enjoyable, and Bryson's description of the three-hour film This is Cinerama that he saw in Bradford is enough to make me want to book a flight right now. Well, almost.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals includes little to no information whatsoever regarding cannibal sex, which is almost certainly a good thing.

Mr. Troost was a young over-educated politically-minded Washingtonian with no real plan for life and no desire to do what he'd been educated to do. Huh. Sorta familiar, really. His girlfriend was given the chance to travel to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, to do... well, it doesn't really matter. Kiribati is in the middle of the ocean. There's nothing around Kiribati except other bits of Kiribati. And none of the bits have anything interesting going on. Mr. Troost notes that it just may be the worst place on Earth.

I finished this book almost three months ago. It was a laugh riot. Sometimes just the chapter titles are enough to make you laugh out loud. If you're going to read one book about being isolated in the South Pacific this year... well, actually, I read two, and they were both pretty good. This one will definitely give you the bigger laughs. Like all travel writing (this is more adventure--or perhaps lack of adventure--than travel) Troost has a little trouble in the final act, but it doesn't diminish the fun. This is definitely worth picking up.

Congo

This week's reading them was The Congo. I wrote a very--very very--long review of these two books, which I've shelved as being about a great many topics apart from the books, and I'll post pieces of it as time goes on. So here's a much quicker
review.
The first book was The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, by Congolese academic Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja. The book was more academic than I'd expected and as such I wouldn't call it a fun read. But it was certainly informative. Nzongola is a true believer in the power of democracy, truer I think than most American politicians. That bias (if you can call it that) is evident throughout the book, and Nzongola clearly believes that if real democracy can be brought to the Congo the place will settle down. But the country's history is rapine followed by more rapine; the place has never known a government that didn't consist of wealthy thugs stealing money from the treasury while ignoring the needs of the population--never. Not once since it was created in the 1880s. And it does not know that now. Having searched around on the internet for recent writings from Nzongola (the book was published in 2003, after Laurent Kabila's assassination but before this summer's election was on the calendar), it is clear he does not believe Joseph Kabila, or the elections as constituted this year, will bring democracy to the country. It is hard for me to see much hope for the place, but Nzongola does, and closes the book by reaffirming his belief that it is possible for democracy to come to Congo, and when it does it will bring peace to the country. We can only hope.

Facing the Congo by Jeffrey Tayler was a somewhat different book, a travelogue. Mr. Tayler, finding himself (as I do) bored and dissatisfied with life, decides he has a need for adventure, and that he will find himself somewhere on the Congo River. He determines to fly to Zaire (this was in 1994, while Mobutu was still in power and before the name had changed), take a barge upriver to Kisangani, the highest navigable point on the Congo, and from there purchase a pirogue (a Congolese dugout canoe), and a hire a guide, and pirogue down the river alone all the way to Kinshasa. Suffice to say he has not even made to Kinshasa and he is already wondering whether this is a good idea. It isn't, of course, it's absolutely a dreadful idea, but Tayler proceeds apace and survives to write about his trip. Of the two books, though Nzongola's is an outstanding work and very thought-provoking, this is of course far away the more readable and more interesting. More than that, as travel writing goes, Tayler's trip makes all other so-called "adventure travel" look like a Sunday drive with Miss Daisy. I highly recommend it.

So Many Books

It occurs to me that there are several books over there on the right that I have not reviewed. Before they get any farther down the list I thought I’d give them each a quick review.

I'll starting with V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. This is the comic book series (graphic novel, if you prefer; this format is a collection of several comic books into a book-length narrative) on which the recent movie (that I dearly loved) was based, and of course I was intrigued and wanted to read the comic. It’s pretty darn good. It’s also pretty darn different from the movie in a number of ways, not least the fact that V, in the book, is very much an anarchist, rather than simply a liberator of a captive populace, although the regime against which he’s fighting is equally oppressive. Most of the key events from the book made it into the movie. V is an altogether more difficult character in the book, though, a more complex protagonist. I enjoyed this but unless you are a comic book fan or a fan of the movie it’s probably not worth your time.

Next up, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’m not going to review this book because you should already know what it’s about, and that it’s very good. And if you haven’t read it I will track you down and make you do so; ask Smittygirl if you don’t believe me.

Then we have Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, which I picked up a while ago in the bookstore on a whim. I really enjoyed reading this book, but it wasn’t an easy read. No book that encourages you to ask questions about where you’ve been, to search for patterns in your life and identify the myriad ways you’ve been reacting to your life the way you did when you were a child. FMSHL argues that we react to most events in life based on the way we saw the world as children, and we have to learn to break away from our habits and our childhood understanding to really live as adults. The book is targeted at the midlife-crisis crowd, but I found that much of the book had a lot to say to me.
Frankly, this book deserves a longer review and some discussion. It’s not the sort of thing I can recommend without knowing whether you need to read it or not. But I found it a thoroughly engrossing read.

A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson, was outstanding. It’s my favorite of Bryson’s books, at least of the books I’ve read. Any outdoorsy person should read it, especially if you’ve ever considered hiking any part of the Appalachian Trail. I’ve hiked on perhaps as much as a mile of AT over the course of my life and probably will never attempt any significant stretch of it, mainly because as Bryson points out much of the trail is not especially scenic and there are lots of other scenic hiking trails to go on. But you have to admire what the man attempted to do, and this book is a fascinating and at times hilarious read. This one’s very highly recommended.


Basket Case is one of Carl Hiaasen’s more recent novels, and he’s as funny and entertaining and off-the-wall as ever. Hiaasen is my favorite Florida crime author by a wide margin (a club that includes John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, Tim Dorsey, Randy Wayne White, and a few others) and this book is in keeping with my expectations. But there’s an upsetting difference between this and nearly every one of Hiaasen’s earlier books (apart from Stormy Weather): this one doesn’t take place in the real world. Hiaasen skewers south Florida most effectively when his characters operate in a real city; Basket Case, though it manages a good satire of south Florida, is weaker for taking place in some ill-defined mythical town.

The Sir Apropos of Nothing series was a lot of fun. You can read reviews of the Peter David series from the esteemed Lucky Bob here, here, and here. On his recommendation I decided to bring the series out to Africa with me to read. I’m glad I did. I don’t usually read fantasy literature. Actually, apart from Harry Potter, I don’t read any fantasy literature at all. I’ve never even read The Lord of Rings trilogy (although I did enjoy the movies). You have to wonder about a person whose introduction to an entire genre of literature comes from a series of books that satirize the genre. I like to think the eponymous hero of the series would rather appreciate that.
I’m not likely to start reading fantasy literature any time soon. I don’t dislike it, it’s just not my thing. But this was an excellent series, and I went through the books pretty quickly. They are all quite funny, though I think the first book is funniest because it’s newest. The third book might have had the most laugh-out-loud moments, though, in particular the exchange about Ho, and Who Ho is. Had a good laugh at that; actually, had to go look up the whole Who’s on First routine for another good laugh.

These books were more than just simple fantasy, though, because the protagonist is quite the introspective fellow at times, and we are treated to some very interesting viewpoints on the notion of heroics and chivalry and fate, and when Apropos descends to darkness it’s not hard to see just about any of us doing the same thing. Absolute power indeed.
This was a fun series of books, and while as I said I’m not going to start reading a bunch of fantasy novels now, I would encourage anyone who wants something unique and humorous that’s not completely throw-away to give these books a look. You'll certainly enjoy yourself. As for me, I'm sort of hoping the adventures of Apropos aren't yet over.

Three Books

I've finished three books recently without reviewing them, and I should rectify that oversight.

First was Undestanding Arabs, which I picked up back when I thought I'd be in Iraq right now instead of whiling away the hours at work desperately waiting for something interesting to happen. It was the first of the pre-Iraq books I decided to read, and as such is also the only one I've finished so far. I can say safely even without having finished/read the other books, this is the one of the four that I would have brought with me overseas.

Obviously this isn't the sort of book you're just going to pick up and read for fun. But if you find yourself heading toward that part of the world, this book (now available in a new edition from September 2005) is basically the standard (not to say only) text on Arab culture written for Westerners. It's a great primer on dealing with Arabs on a personal level. Would that I had reason to use it.

Next up was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick. This is the novel upon which the movie Blade Runner was (loosely) based. It's a nice slim book and I took it with me during the fantastic trip to Valdosta a couple weeks ago. I read the whole book in one afternoon and another evening. I need to rent Blade Runner now and watch it again, but the differences in the two are significant.

This was a great book. I won't insult you with a synopsis since if you're reading this blog you are almost certainly well-read and well-screened enough to know how the story goes, from one source or another. If you only know the movie, and you liked the movie, you ought to pick this up. It's so much deeper, but typical of Dick it showcases a very ambiguous morality. I can't recommend this book too strongly to fans of sci-fi or dystopian fiction, though I'll admit non-fans would find many of the book's conceits a little to bizarre. Still, this is probably the best novel I've read in the past year.

And just today I finished Bill Bryson's Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. I picked this one up to take home last weekend because I wanted something ligther than the history of the middle east to read. Today I read the last two-thirds of it. Bryson is terrifically readable, funny and light and, for such a recent discovery of mine, one of my current favorites among writers. After Mother Tongue, I was really looking forward to this.

And it was light and engaging and humorous and a little sad, but it wasn't as great a read as I'd hoped--mostly because I couldn't get past Bryson's condescension toward so many of the people he met. Certainly not everyone you meet is as wise or warm or witty as yourself, but neither is everyone necessarily less so because they come from a different region or speak with a different accent. For an American, even one who when this was written had been living in England for over 12 years, Bryson comes across almost a little bit too Euro-trash, and that was disappointing.

Nonetheless, he makes some brilliant comments, especially considering that they're now over 15 years old. In particular he seems disappointed that every town in America is becoming the same--they're all Anytown U.S.A. He is disturbed by the tendency of the towns immediately abutting National Parks to become seedy tourist traps and is fairly negative toward tourist traps in general. He has some very insightful comments about the NPS' administration of the National Parks, which he sees as quite poor.

The book has been compared to Travels with Charley and Blue Highways. Not having read Blue Highways I don't know how to compare it, and Charley is almost 45 years old, so some of the insights show their age (plus I don't like poodles. Or Steinbeck). But before I started this blog, I read a book by Stephen Coonts called The Cannibal Queen. Coonts is no Steinbeck (or Least-Moon or even Bryson, frankly), but his book is perhaps the most recent version of the schlepping-through-America genre that started with de Tocqueville (who's book is still the best of the type), and to be honest with you, I like Queen better than Lost Continent. A 1941 Stearman is way cooler than any Chevette ever made, and Coonts manages to be less critical of the places he visits, possibly because as a former military man he has an easier time than Bryson looking past America's faults. While I chide this tendency in my colleagues, in print it's a much more attractive tendency than Bryson's condescension.