Daren
This ‘Quest' book from David Attenborough is different to the others I have read, in that it's primary focus is different. Rather than being a quest to capture animals for zoos and museums, or to photograph animals, it is more an anthropological study. I note that most of his other quest books contain ‘Zoo' in the title, so it's not like there wasn't a clue. It was published in 1963.
The topic of Capricorn passes through Australia about 2/3 of the way up, and given the area Attenborough spends his time I guess the title means literally around the line of Capricorn, rather than below. The areas he spends time are all in the Northern Territory, between Darwin and Alice Springs, around Alice Springs - west and east. His focus is almost solely Aboriginal culture and art.
That being said, despite the time wasted reading it to myself in his voice, this was a quick read of around 160 pages, accompanied by a few colour photographs and a lot of black and white photographs of generally very good quality.
Attenborough gets the balance between the European history and the Aboriginal history right for me, and mixes in small amounts about the animals and birds with the main Aboriginal culture and art focus. He is very sensitive in his approach with the Aboriginal communities, and in many ways portrays views ahead of his time with regard to the respect they deserve and the effects of colonialism on them.
Cleverly, Attenborough was able to gain the trust of certain elder Aboriginals who were able to share many of the more secret elements to the culture that were forbidden to women and uninitiated younger men, on the basis that Attenborough was neither of these. This was surprising, but obviously a great win for the collecting and recording of this information from an anthropological perspective.
4 stars
Well this is a short novella, simply written, pleasant enough reading... but what is it about? Well as best I can summarise it is a snapshot of village life - the protagonist, Arun, is an author trying to write, but not trying very hard. He spends time will a collection of friends and we learn their stories though his interactions with them.
There is a student, who sells odds and ends house by house to earn a living; a young prostitute, with an aged and unintelligent husband; a barber with ambitions to the city. Arun also who figures he should move to Delhi to make his living. However he enjoys the gentle pace of life in the dull and dusty village of Pipalnagar.
Written in 1960, but published much later for the first time the reader can judge whether this short story is an important work or not - for me it is perhaps just a bit too gentle...
There is plenty of Ruskin Bond's worthy prose, but the story is very slow to roll out and ends as gently as it begins.
3 stars.
Published in 1955, I assume the travel to have occurred in the early 1950s, but I can't be sure. The SS Matua, which ran between the islands and New Zealand ran from 1936 to 1968. Starting with his inspiration - in the form of various authors who have told tales of the south sea islands, and a few quotes, this author sets off on a cargo ship bound for Australia, working as an assistant purser, to depart in Sydney with Tahiti his end goal. A quick trip to Melbourne, then a return lift caught with a truck driver from Melbourne to Sydney and off on a ‘Colonial Sugar Refining Company' ship to Fiji.
Owen spends a few months in Fiji, in his defense not hanging with the colonials much, and attempting to get remote and try and understand the Fijian people. He is quote dismissive of the Indian Fijians, and doesn't have much to do with them. Here the book covers a range of things - mostly cultural and descriptions of ‘modern' Fijian life, but also some history and some dated (and pointless) gossip about individuals. Owen avoids the capital, spending as much time as he can on Vanua Levu, making friends and attending parties.
After his time is done here he starts to investigate options for his onward journey, and ends up crewing on a private yacht. While acting as the cook, he doesn't enjoy his time back with Europeans, and while he intended to stay on board after a brief stop in American Samoa, he takes the opportunity to depart to catch the Government Ship on to Tonga.
After a brief stop in Tonga it is on to Tahiti, where he spends plenty of time contemplating the difference between the French administration and the British of Fiji. There is far less a colour bar in Tahiti, where fewer Europeans look down on the natives, and there is much more cohabitation going on! Again Owen looks to avoid the capital, but ends up living in various situations just on the outskirts of the capital. Again he takes a European view, but is far more accommodating, complementary and non-judgemental towards the native way of life than most.
In spite of setting himself up with a Tahitian girlfriend, and travelling all over, taking in festivals and celebrations, Owen is unable ultimately to settle, and pines for Britain (as unlikely as that seems!) He really had a well established situation in Tahiti, was popular and got on with various of the important people, both French and native Tahitian, was able to carry out minimal work to keep himself in adequate food, had free lodging in the house his girlfriend looked after (for a Frenchman who visited irregularly) and in her own house on another island.
And so to wrap up, the books title comes from the fact Owen considers there is no poverty in Tahiti - only people who are poor. It is, at this time, relatively simple to catch enough fish to eat well, there are places to live and sleep available, and when people have money they are expected to spend it not just on themselves, but on others, living a communal lifestyle; thus, Tahiti is where the poor are happy.
3 stars.
An interesting and rapid read, on a great explorers trope of lost cities!
To be fair Douglas Preston works hard to avoid this book following that trope. However, it is what it is, to some degree. He attempts to break the mould, by breaking his book into three parts and making the lost city discovery the smaller of the three.
The first part covers previous explorations to the Mosquitia area, primarily in exploration to discover (or visits to, and legends about) Ciudad Blanca, or the fabled White City. These included Spaniard Hernán Cortés in 1526;, America John Lloyd Stephens in the 1830s; Mormon Church originated expeditions to investigate the Maya, who the Book or Mormon identified as a lost tribe of Israel (that one ended badly with most of the explorers being excommunicated because they were doubtful of the link!).
Moving on to the 20th Century, Preston covers Luxembourgian ethnologist Eduard Conzemius, and in the 1930s William Duncan Strong who was the first to recognise that there were sites that had been inhabited by ancient, unknown people who were not Maya. Next was George Gustav Heye, a wealthy American collector of Indian artifacts - who engaged an explorer to carry out the actual work. Frederick Mitchell-Hedges turned out unfortunately to be a con-artist. Heye's next two expeditions was led by Canadian R. Stuart Murray, and brought back various artifacts. It was Murray who was to introduce Theodore Morde to Heye, having met him on a cruise ship where Murray was a guest lecturer and Morde a journalist.
Heye engaged Morde to undertake his next expedition, and it has been Morde's expedition that has given much voice to the legends of the City of the Monkey God, and therefore inspired Steve Elkins to fund the expeditions and work that is the subject of Preston's book. Morde's journey is then described in some detail, including the reviewing of his personal diary, which had not been seen in full before, as it was owned by his family. It was this journey which inspired also Christopher Stewart in his book Jungleland, which I read and reviewed mid 2023. Here Preston makes some interesting discoveries I won't spoil for others.
And so all of this leads into the Steve Elkin's funding venture. This consists of use of new tech (for that time) LIDAR scanning, after establishing likely sites that they name T1, T2, T3 & T4. There is a lot going on here, and I don't want to spoil what is a gripping read. After the lidar scanning gives big hopes, they are able to organise the actual on-the-ground exploration - Preston does a good job of describing all the logistics, process, risks (think biting insects, fer-de-lance and coral snakes!) and of course the discoveries.
Coming back to the third section of the book then, Preston covers the Leishmaniasis which the majority of those who visited the site had to deal with on their return to civilisation. Leishmania braziliensis is a very hard to treat strain of Leishmaniasis, and the cure is often at bad for the body as the parasitic disease is. Caused by sandfly bites, infected by a host animal with the disease, the outcome being a disease that eats away at the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth, but initially displays as a lesion or skin tumour that won't heal. Preston covers his own treatment and some of the others in a more general way. This section of the book was particularly interesting and identifies the risks to the old world explorer in the new world. Preston goes on to expand on the reverse - the impact that old world explorers bringing disease to the new world Indians, in some cases wiping out 90% of the population!
4 stars.
Tom Stobart is probably best known for being the film-man on John Hunt's Everest Expedition in 1953, but this is the culmination of this book. Well written, and with plenty of pace, this is Stobart's autobiography of his life basically from the time he left Cambridge until 1953 and the success of Hillary and Tenzing on Everest.
Two things that stand out about Stobart are his drive to succeed and his stubbornness, and these who things, which might be one in the same, helped him achieve incredible things.
Studying zoology at Cambridge may have influenced the field in which he worked, but it was love for a Romanian girl in London who returned home shortly before the War (WWII) that started his travels - he travelled to Romania to visit her (and make a film on Romania) and in transit the Russians signed their pact with Germany, which effectively kicked off the war. Instead of turning tail and heading home, he carried on, visiting his girl, although he had to leave fairly quickly, making his way back to Britain, but needing to find a new route to avoid Italy.
Not content with awaiting callup in the military (he was still too young for the intakes at that point) he joined the Quakers to make another trip to Romania, where he again stayed too long, and was isolated by the war. Never one to sit back and wait (not that he had much choice, as the Germans struck into the west) he headed off through Bulgaria and Turkey, then by train to reach India.
I am going to need to speed this up, as this review has got lengthy already - and all of this occurred in the first 60 pages of the book! In India Stobart was shoulder-tapped to join the army as a film-maker and spent two years filming for the military, but on leave he got his first taste of the Himalaya, as he planned an expedition to Nun Kun, and grappled with the problems of high altitude filming.
By now he had made a name for himself, and was sought out to make a film of an Antarctic expedition, and then worked for the famous Armand Denis and his wife Michaela in Kenya and then South Africa, filming their many exploits with wildlife. This continued into Australia with them, in the Gulf of Carpentaria filming crocodiles, where Stobart was struct down with fever, and repatriated to Britain for specialised medical treatment.
It was early in his recovery that he found out he had been selected for the Everest expedition, although he had tried to hide his illness. Then began his race to recover and gain some fitness for what was to be one of the biggest physical challenges of his career.
This book was loaded with fascinating anecdotes and stories, including meeting Ralph Izzard, and it alludes to the next adventure in line for him, an expedition with Izzard and Charles Stonor to find the Yeti, covered in Izzard's The Abominable Snowman Adventure, also excellent.
Great bio.
5 stars.
This book seems to fill a few gaps in Tilman's other books and is made up of two parts.
Peacetime covers a few expeditions in Assam and Sikkum (and across into Tibet), which are not in chronological order, and occur either side of his Everest expedition (1938). They include what even Tilman describes as a very unsuccessful expedition, in which he establishes a base camp to attempt Pandim but fails to make even an attempt at a climb because he and his Sherpa's all go down with Malaria (and later diagnosed with black fever). Then followed two expeditions to attempt to traverse Zemu Gap (near Kanchenjunga) - one failure and one success. Tilman's respect for the Sherpa and Porters was evident, especially when one of the Sherpa died of malaria, and Tilman felt plenty of guilt for having tried to wait out their recovery rather than retreating immediately (he was as ill as the man who dies though).
Wartime War then breaks out, and with a mere mention of his time in the deserts of Iraq and Syria, Tilman tells of his three opportunities for climbing during wartime. First an unnamed mountain near Amadia (Amedya?) in Iraq (considered almost of ‘alpine standard'), followed by Mount Bisitun, in Iran, climbed while the Major he was with spent some time trout fishing near the foot; then after being shifted north to Tunisia, Mount Zaghouan, which was a night ascent, using flares for visibility at times.
None of these were particularly impressive climbs, but a man takes what opportunities he can when at war I suppose!
It was after this that Tilman became bored with the desert and when volunteers for ‘special service' were called for, Tilman was selected to go to Albania. Italy had largely been defeated and were expected to surrender formally, so Tilman thought this was a role to stop the Albanians slaughtering the Italians as they were transported back to Italy. This wasn't really the case, as the Italians were still resisting (for a time) and the Germans were to rolling in to fill the void once Italy did surrender. The Germans were better equipped and made more inroads against the Partisans. As we hear in various reports from Yugoslavia and other parts, the infighting was as bad as the Axis fighting - and the British approach to support all parties at a political level was problematic for the British Liaison Officers like Tilman on the ground.
The Albanian resistance movement was made up of three parties - the LNC (Levizja Nacional Clirimtare, or National Liberation Movement), which embraced all classes, all political opinions, all religions, and represented about three quarters of the people of southern Albania. It identified with the Allies against Fascism and Nazism, and its primary goal was to rid Albania of Italians and Germans. It was with these Partisans that Tilman worked for the 10 months he was there.
The principal rival party was the Balli Kombetar (or National Front) which regarded the Greeks and Yugoslavs as the real enemy. While supported by the British, they worked with the Germans and fought against the LNC, which to all seemed a real own-goal by Britain. The third group, were of little importance at the time Tilman was present, and they were the supporters of the absent King Zog, and they became more prominent later.
Tilman talks bout the successes of the partisans, of the harsh conditions and the ill-founded support for the Balli, who aided and informed the Germans also assisting with the attacks on villages supporting the Partisans. Tilman doesn't make anything of his personal contributions, but then this is probably his style.
After his ten months in Albania he is rotated out, and is deployed to Northern Italy, again to aid the partisans - this time Italian partisans, fighting the occupying Germans. Tilman spends time with the Gramski Brigade, the Nino Nannetti Division, and the Belluno Division. All the time he is coordinating drops of stores, clothing, weapons and ammunitions, as well as organising guerilla actions, such as blowing up bridges, but mostly they are just on the run being overpowered by the German forces.
Eventually the balance of the scales shifts, the Germans eventually capitulating, although most were not pleased to be surrendering weapons to the partisan forces. Tilman fits in some brief mountaineering in the lesser Dolomites, but more because he can than due to them being good climbs.
Throughout Tilman doesn't talk up his role much, sharing the successes and taking responsibility for poorly taken decisions. This was an interesting book, but I felt it didn't match up to the other mountaineering books that I have read from this author.
Still a worthy 4 stars.
With a Land Rover, George Stonier and wife Pat decide to head off travelling - London to Cape Town is their goal. Stonier would write some articles (as well as this book) and Pat would photograph wildlife and this would adequately finance their travel.
They start off well enough, driving through France, then onto a ferry through the Mediterranean to arrive in Eqypt. But on reaching Cairo, George is laid low with illness. Admitted to hospital, the diagnosis is “...infection to both lungs. Pneumonia, pleurisy, hepatitus, and jaundice!”... so that should be quickly fixed! This really sets the journey back - 3 weeks in hospital and several weeks immobile recovery in Cairo, while Pat makes the most of her time. George wasn't up to driving again - I am unsure he drove again before the end of the book, but Pat was a quick learner.
Eventually they set off again, through the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. This was followed by a side trip to Basutoland (now Lesotho) and Swasiland.
They spent much time in national parks, stalking wildlife for photography, lots of camping (although with Georges health they spend more time in hotels and as guests in houses), and covered many miles driving. It was probably an interesting time to visit, 1965, as a few of the places visited were experiencing new freedoms - Rhodesia has recently changed to Zambia and Zimbabwe, Batsutoland was about to change to Lesotho, and Tanganyika to Tanzania.
We didn't get much grit from the story - it was fairly vanilla in the telling, with no real excitement. There were some gentle jokes, but overall it was more about the animals they temporarily adopted (hedgehog, a dog, various birds, a mouse) most of which met untimely ends!
Hard to recommend this one, a mild start to the 2025 reading year!
3 stars.
A first novel from this author - In the mountains between the United States from British Columbia two unsuspecting climbers witness a plane crash, finding the pilot dead and a survivor with a suitcase of drugs which they later agree to smuggle to the USA across the mountains for some quick cash. What was a quick money-making adventure, that they were in control of, does not work out as they expected.
There are a few twists and turns to the story, but it is as much a showcase of climbing (snow, ice and rock in equal measures) as it is a drug smuggling adventure and police procedural. The climbing all comes across as technically proficient, and is described in great detail adding up to around half the book. Normally in novels you either get police procedural with a little climbing or climbing with a little adventure crossover, but this really is equal parts.
The three parts of the novel are led by a different character each, giving a slightly different driver in each, but not focused fully from that characters point of view.
This was ok, but not really much more - there were some interesting enough characters in the story - the climbers, the love interest, the American and Canadian detectives working the case, cross border cooperation etc. It was however a quick read, and the pace was good.
2.5 stars, rounded up.
1975, and with independence declared for Angola by the Portuguese, Angola prepares. How does Angola prepare? With a further chapter of civil war.
The MPLA (Popular Movement for Liberation of Angola) led by Agostinho Neho, and backed by Russia and Cuba) is defending Luanda, the capital, against the FNLA (National Front for Liberation) led by Holden Roberto, backed by Zaire and UNITA (National Union for Total Independence of Angola) led by Jonas Savimbi, backed by South Africa.
The front is constantly moving, all sides are Confusão.P118
Confusão is a good word, a synthesis word, and everything word. In Angola it has its own specific sense and is literally untranslatable. To simplify things: Confusão means confusion, a mess, a state of anarchy and disorder. Confusão is a situation created by people, but in the course of creating it they lose control and direction, becoming victims of confusão themselves. There is a sort of fatalism in confusão.
“In Europe,” he said, “they taught me that a front is trenches and barbed wire, which form a distinct and visible line. A front on a river, along a road or from village to village. You can trace it on a map with a pencil or point to it on the terrain. But here the front is everywhere or nowhere. There is too much land and too few people for a front line to exist... This is a war of ambushes. On any road, at any place, there can be a front. You can travel the whole country and come back alive, or you can die a metre from where you're standing. There are no principles, no methods. Everything comes down to luck and happenstance. This war is a real mess. Nobody knows just where they stand.”
Well, people seem to love this book, acknowledged as an early book in the sky thriller genre that set the groundwork for the genre thereafter. But to be honest I found this really slow - labourious even - the first 50 pages had me checking again what the plot was. First published 1903, for me there was some hesitance in the writing, and it was very slow to get the story moving. The story is set along the German coastline around the Frisian Islands and the Baltic Sea - an area I hadn't even a vague notion of, so I was thankful of the maps and charts.
No doubt it is technically very accurate with its yachting terminology, tidal descriptions, geographical accuracy and descriptions of the waterways and landforms, complete with the maps and charts made it an accurate story, which I suppose it needed to be with the form of the story. The descriptions on land were not lacking either, the small German villages, the people in them all very neatly described.
There was some interesting interplay with the main characters Davies and Carruthers - very British of them, both trying to out-polite each other. The era of the story shows up the lack of technology, working with charts, potentially out of date, no gps, no cellphones of course, no email. Was it prescient, being published 11 or so years before WWI? Well Britain did strengthen her seaboard defenses after it was published.
Would I recommend this to others - certainly for sailing enthusiasts, who like accuracy. For others who want to read the spy thriller genre? I would refer them to other peoples reviews, as people seem genuinely taken by this book that missed the mark for me.
I was quite surprised however when I read the Introduction (after I had finished the novel - you won't catch me four times by spoiling the story in the introduction) to find that Childers played a part in the Irish rebellion mixing himself up in gunrunning, lobbying on behalf of Sinn Féin, even winning a seat in the revolutionary parliament before taking a strong view of the treaty (on the anti-treaty side), falling out of favour and being executed by firing squad.
What I was not surprised about however, were his multiple visits the Frisian Islands on his own yachts, as it was clear this was where his accurate descriptions came from.
3 stars.
Geoff Nicholson is a pretty quirky author. I have read a fiction book of his previously - What Did We Do on Our Holiday? and I think very much to read and enjoy him you need to ‘get' his humour. It will definitely not work for everyone, or probably many.
This is non-fiction, and as can be seen from the title, it is ostensibly about deserts. It was cheap in a second hand bookshop, I recognised the authors name and thought I would give it a go.
I say ostensibly about deserts. It contains four sections, each about travel to a desert, but the thing that ties this book together is the death of the authors father. He is at a different stage of dying for each section, and it is a particularly sad read in the parts about this - very real, and very honest with his thoughts - actually that last part applies right through, the author shares all his thoughts. Many of these are humorous - I am not sure all are supposed to be.
Nicholson's trips to the desert consist of - a group tour in Morocco which doesn't really reach the Sahara, but gives a ‘flavour of the desert'. The only quote I marked comes from this section: P35, upon reaching a traditional Berber hut, with a family dressed in traditional clothes...
We were told we were free to take pictures of the scene, but it would cost us a couple of dirhams each. Some of our group lost the moral high ground here, handing over eh money and began snapping their cameras. Others, myself included, felt that this was a fairly unedifying spectacle. We never expected much human dignity from tourists, but we'd hoped for more from the Berbers.
Sadly, I am finding Clune's books very hit and miss in this era - I am hoping he gets past this as a lot of his later books are on interesting topics. If nothing else, I still own a load of his books I haven't read! Why are I reading them? Good question, but I am a completist and as with Ion Idriess books, I am reading them is published order (on the basis of the ones I have been able to source).
I come to dread any visit to Darwin by Clune, as it gets him started on his White Australia Policy rant. I can't believe a man who travels for a living and writes about it can maintain such a divisive view of emigration, although I am sure the war years have an effect on his view. It is unpleasant reading of Clune's objections to Australian and British financial assistance of places like New Guinea and Kenya.
Anyway, after a poor start racially, and wading through a short description of every man and his dog Clune coming into contact with on his trip from Sydney to Darwin, he finally gets underway internationally... but this isn't a book I got a lot of enjoyment from.
He defends the Dutch in educating the Indonesians, and improving their country beyond anything they might have achieved, as he briefly stops in Jakarta. There are other stops and other disparaging comments, but the journey is brief until his arrival in Italy, where we are told how the Italians make poor soldiers. Vatican City, France, Switzerland, Germany are picked over in detail. Denmark, Prague (Czech Republic) and Vienna (Austria) and then a return to Italy before heading homeward via Greece.
Dull, slow and irritating to read.
2 stars!
This was a quick breezy read when I needed one.
The first half of the book explains where the idea and the intent for the journey came from - a three year journey split into three parts, the first of which is covered in this book: Walking from London to Morocco (more specifically to M'Hamid El Ghizlane, in Morocco. The second part - to walk through the Sahara desert, and the third part is to walk to Cape Town. The second part is covered in Paula's second book Sahara, which I read around 12 years ago, and enjoyed more than this one. Bit of a spoiler at the start of that review if you intend on reading this one, but not really a big surprise spoiler!
But it isn't as simple as that, because between the inception and the departure were literally years - from memory one and a half years in Broome (where Paula and Gary lived) then the shift to the UK where they ‘definitely weren't going to stay in London', and something like 4 years in London trying to save the money for the trip. This first half of the book was only mildly interesting, as all the relationship drama, work drama and lack of saving is shared with the reader. What it mostly established was that the money would have been saved in a fraction of the time if any form of sacrifice was made, but it didn't appear there was much - Paula in particular drinks wine at a rate of consumption I struggle to comprehend, but also trips here, moving house to pay more rent there etc etc, making it pretty painful reading.
At the midpoint of the book, they set out from Trafalgar Square carrying an almost in human amount of equipment, having done almost no physical preparation, and relying on more wine consumption as painkillers each evening. The expected trials of long distance walking take their toll - extensive feet issues. We hear a lot about this, but it is the thread common to all they do.
It is a strange combination of willpower - the quite incredible willpower to pull on the enormous pack and start walking each morning, the similar willpower to keep walking all day, and the lack of willpower in spending the money they raised by mortgaging their house in Melbourne! For a trip in which they planned to camp they spend an inordinate number of nights in accommodation. Realistically their budget was never going to get them through part one of their trip with hotels and wine in these proportions.
This only an ok read, and although I can't recall the details of the second book it may have shown more development in writing after this one, or it could have been the Sahara travel was more appealing to me.
2.5 stars, rounded up.
In 1957 Norman Carr was warden of Kafue National Park in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) - this book tells of the two orphan lion cubs he adopted. Raised from very young, Carr shares a series of stories primarily about them, but also briefly taking in his other experiences. He was ably assisted by various other game wardens to stopped in when his work required him to be elsewhere, or just to take some of the responsibility away.
The two lion cubs were male, and were initially called Nero and Hero, but the names were quickly replaced by the names Big Boy and Little Boy - a reflection of the size disparity between the two even from that early time.
Until they were three and a half years old, they stayed with Carr, initially in Kafue, but later they all relocated to the Luangwa Valley establishing a lowland camp and for the wet season a camp at higher ground. The book title tells you the end - the lions are reintroduced to the wild.
Carr shares his experience with lions, their behaviour, their hunting skills, their interactions with other lions. This primarily focuses on his own lions, but he draws on other experiences from his time in Zambia to round out this short book.
The writing, while fairly straight forward, is entertaining and honest. Carr is prepared to share the doubts he has about raising the cubs, especially when he makes the decision to kill two wild lions who are terrorising his lions, although in reality these lions are behaving reasonably naturally, defending their own territory. Carr is protective of his cubs, but has respect for the wild lions and the natural selection process that maintains balance in the wild. His intervention with the two wild lions is his only mis-step.
This short, entertaining book was just what I needed to pick up after a couple of dud books (one of which I am still battling on with). I would like to have seen it expanded to a full sized book though!
4 stars
For me this was a hagiography of Florence Nightingale, and not a very well written one. It made an attempt to sensationalise every event and to build up the subject, and is critical of every other character - even her main supporters were described as lazy and ineffective. In spite of the sensationalising, the content was for the large part uninteresting (to me at least), and I was far from taken by the writing style which I struggle to even describe. It may be the age of the writing (this Penguin 60 content is taken from a book called Eminent Victorians published in 1918), but I don't know.
Really, I don't want to spend more time on a review of a book I didn't enjoy reading...
I will say at an average rating of 3.78, I am not sure what others ae seeing that I missed.
2 stars
In the first chapter of this book Peissel is in India, preparing to visit Bhutan - under invitation, to carry out an anthological survey. It is 1959, and in the week before his entry to Bhutan China invade Tibet and all hell breaks loose, ensuring that his connections are not made and his trip to Bhutan is off. Unsure of what to do, he is advised (by more than one person) to head to Nepal - to Kathmandu and to see Boris. Boris will help you, Boris will arrange everything...
And so off to Kathmandu heads Peissel, and meets the larger-than-life Boris Lisanevich - Ukrainian refugee, Restauranteur, hotelier, former ballet dancer, world traveller, friend to all the rich and famous, host of royalty and mountaineering royalty (Sir Ed Hillary), and much more...
Within a few days Peissel is sorted and heads off to carry out his survey (or which we hear nothing). At the end of chapter one, Peissel has determined he would like to spend more time with Boris, and obtains his assent to return with his wife Marie-Claire to spend six months in Boris enormous hotel.
And so that leads to the filling out of the biography of Boris, interspersed with the current events of the moment - the coming and going of guests; Boris's whims and chaotic plans; the day to day struggle for consistency in a country (as Boris puts it) with the operational ability of the 17th Century having only move on from medieval life with his arrival!
There is so much to this book that the brief outline only touches on it. Peissel makes the point that there is so much more he couldn't include due to “politics, diplomacy or simply kindness”!
Published in 1966, Boris was still going strong. He passed away in 1985 at the age of 80, a life more filled with adventures than most can even imagine. The book outlines his generosity, his view of the happiness of others being more important the accruing wealth, and always providing assistance to others.
Highly recommended. Although as is often the case with books of this era, the views on hunting of wild and often endangered or at risk animals are inevitably contrary to todays view. The ridiculous numbers of tigers, the few rhino and other animals killed in hunts may well be disturbing to readers not happy to separate the past with the present.
5 stars. I hope the other books by this author are half as good as this one.
What to write about this novel that every man and his dog has already read and reviewed...
I though this was a great piece of work, including the translation, which demonstrates clearly the futility, the frustration and the pointlessness of war. World War I - the war that was to end all wars - little came of that. It was however one of the more brutal wars with less mechanisation and more close combat.
The narrator, Paul Bäumer, is a twenty year old, and is in the trenches with his school mates, green to war. We share the horrors and the laughs as this group of young men dwindles over the period of the war.
I will share a quote, one of many I found poignant. It occurs near the end of the novel, as the war is almost over, and the end is expected. Bäumer is reflecting on what the return to ‘normal life' will be for him.
No one will understand us - because in front of us is a generation of men who did, it is true, share the years out here with us, but who already had a bed and a job and who are going back to their old positions, where they will forget all about the war - and behind us, a new generation is growing up, one like we used to be, and that generation will be strangers to us and will push us aside. We are superfluous even to ourselves, we shall grow older, a few will adapt, others will make adjustments, and many of us will not know what to do - the years will trickle away, and eventually we shall perish.
This is the second of Upfield's Napoleon Bonaparte novels I have read. This one is #12 in the series, and was published in 1952. Upfield is an interesting writer, British by birth, emigrated to Australia at the age of twenty. He fought in the Australian Army in WWI. Following the war he travelled extensively in Australia working with stock and farming and developed an understanding of the Aboriginal culture which was to inform much of his writing.
His ‘Bony' character is a Detective Inspector in the Queensland Police Force, and is of mixed parentage - his mother an Aboriginal and his father white. I mentioned in my review of the other Upfield novel that it is rare to have a mixed race Aboriginal character held in high regard, and protagonist of a series of books.
This novel is set in the Grampian Mountains area of Victoria, remote and thick with bush. Two young girls who were travelling through have disappeared - been missing for months, and a police officer who was sent to investigate was murdered, found with a bullet hole in his head, sitting in his car.
As seems to be the form for these books, ‘Bony' is sent in and given a free hand in how he deals with the investigation, trumping any local police, but still staying on-side with them. He adopts a cover story and goes under cover to stay at the remote hotel where the girls were last seen. He poses as a sheep farmer from New South Wales, and ingratiates himself with the hotel owners and staff, sniffing out the details of the disappearance and examining what makes the nearby sheep station so secretive with their high fences kept in such good order and routinely patrolled.
I won't share more plot outline, as it rolls out well enough in the book without me spoiling the flow.
There are other interesting characters throughout the story, and while it was quite a leisurely pace for the first three quarters of the book, based on having read only two, this seems to be the way Upfield builds suspense. The reader isn't always as well informed as ‘Bony' is, but eventually he shares his wisdom and starts to unravel the mysteries.
Enjoyable at 3.5 stars. I have another 3 or 4 of these stories to read in due course.
Mountaineering fiction by the well known author James Salter - the first of his books I have read. I wasn't exactly taken by this story, so I am not yet convinced he writes in a style suited to me - although he is often compared to Hemingway. It may be the subject matter of this one - I have mentioned before I find mountaineering fiction less appealing than the screeds of mountaineering non-fiction available.
This short book tells the story of Vernon Rand, a Californian who moves to the French Alps (Chamonix) for the climbing. It is set in the 1970's, when life was seemingly far simpler than the modern day. Americans can bum around in France working low paid jobs and still get by with enough money to buy the climbing equipment they need!
Solo Faces refers to the mountaineering lifestyle where all other facets take second place - family, relationships, careers - at times even safety and making good decisions. Rand leaves behind a wife in California, gets an English girl he is seeing in Chamonix pregnant and withdraws himself from their relationship such that she moves back to Paris to a former lover. He competes and teams up with other climbers, equally seeking and shunning fame, unsure what he wants from life other than climbing.
Rand makes some dangerous climbs, including a climb to rescue some trapped climbers, gains some temporary notoriety, but fades back into relative obscurity.
3 stars
David Pyle and companion David Derrick take an unusual route in a yacht names Hermes, an 18ft Drascombe lugger (albeit slightly modified, but usually a fishing boat) from the UK to Australia.
It was a very ambitious voyage, undertaken with very little financial backup, and seemingly quite a high risk. Dave Derrick was a stranger who answered an advertisement, and while he wasn't the first choice companion for Pyle, he proved to be quite capable and calm under pressure despite not having much experience at sailing. They made an adequate team despite being quite different personalities.
The unusual part of their journey was inclusion of cutting through the French canal system, a part of overland (the yacht on a truck), and then down the Tigris river in Syria and Iraq. Where the Euphrates is joined by the Tigris, it becomes the Shatt Al Arab, which took them to Kuwait. In Basra the boat is damaged by a ferry, so they limp to Kuwait, and there arrange a lift with a British India Steamship Company vessel to Bahrain where they undertake repairs assisted by the British Navy.
Seaworthy again they set off for United Arab Emirates, and then on to Karachi and down the coast to Bombay (Mumbai). It was here that cumulative delays led to the fact they have 6 months of sailing requiring the assistance of the monsoon, but only five months of monsoon! The call was made to hitch a ride for a thousand kilometres, which takes them close to Singapore by cargo ship.
With stops on the Malaysian peninsular then Singapore it was across to Jakarta on the island of Java, followed by a stop in Bali then Flores followed by East Timor (Timor-Leste) before making south for Darwin, making their landing on April 2nd 1970. So a journey just short of a year (they departed on April 28th 1969), completing the first journey from the UK to Australia in an open boat.
There were of course plenty of trials and tribulations along the way. The writing was good without being flashy or overplayed or overly dramatic. It didn't dwell on the repetitive aspects, and used only the necessary technical jargon.
3.5 stars, rounded up.
In the rural town in NZ that I grew up in, I was vaguely aware of the photography shop owned and run by Andris Apse, as as I grew older he became a well known name in the landscape photography field publishing many photography books. I was around the same age as his children, one slightly older and one around my age, one younger. I suspect that around the same time I moved away from the town, so did Andris and his family.
I am not sure where I picked up this book, but I took it off my shelf recently and figured I would read a little and if it didn't strike a chord with me I would just move it on to clear up some space.
This turned out to be a fascinating book. By his own admission, this book telling the story of a Latvian family, the impact of World War II on them, and a part of their family emigrating to New Zealand as refugees could have been written about any number of families, and they didn't consider themselves so unique. I am not sure myself whether that fine line of knowing these people very vaguely made it more interesting to me or whether it would have been just as engaging had I no knowledge of them.
I will outline only the basics, as it is a story with various twists and turns, but before doing so I would add that I learned a lot about Latvia - a place I have travelled through between Lithuania and Russia, in around 2005. I don't know that I scratched far below the surface on my few weeks there, but this book did a good job of explaining the fractured relationship Latvia had with Russia, with Latvians fighting for, and then against Russians (and likewise against and then for the Germans).
Around the first third of the book explains the life of Andris Apse's father Voldermars. He recorded his time in the Latvian Army, then the Russian Army, and finally the German Army in diaries. He was at times very lucky to avoid major injury, while many around him were killed, or more perplexing, were removed and exiled to Siberia and other places by the Russians. Voldermars was a prisoner of war in both Germany and later Russia, and only a year after the birth of their son Andris, his wife gave him up for dead - either killed in battle or dead in a Russian gulag. Likewise Voldermars believed his wife and son were also killed in the war.
The opportunity to emigrate as refugees was offered to Kamilla and her young son, to New Zealand - a place they knew desperately little about, and the second part of the book explains how they set about making a new life for themselves.
After the breakup of the USSR in the early 1990s Kamilla and Andris discovered that Voldermars was still alive, and living back in Latvia. Then the opportunity arose for Andris to meet his father again after 46 years, and for Kamilla to meet again the man she had married on the last day of 1942. The tentative communication, followed by an eventual trip to Latvia fill out the balance of the book.
At times painfully sad, at others uplifting, but I found it an engaging read from start to finish.
4 stars
Spillanes “Tiger Mann” Book 2.
This differs from his Mike Hammer books in that it isn't gumshoe detective based fiction, but a cold-war spy vs spy, where America must overcome the commies at all costs. Tiger Mann works for a private agency which, essentially, is prepared to do what the government agencies can't do. This involves wanton destruction and murder, torture, making deals and giving bribes.
Tiger Mann himself? 1960's testosterone overload, the man men want to be and women want to have - albeit probably for a short time, due to his unbearable ego!
For me, this was a step up from book one of the series. That one had a really obvious storyline, and some real obvious blind-spots in Tiger's thinking - too annoying. At least in this one he came across as slightly cleverer, although still flawed as some of his mistakes are explained in the closing pages. The ultimate conclusion was fairly obvious - but I will refrain from discussing, except to say the reveal had already taken place before the obvious bit, so it read much better than #1.
The story starts on Tiger's wedding day, and just as he was about to hand in his resignation, the agency needs him - its big, and (of course) nobody else can handle it. Tiger has to put off his big day, tell his fiancée, and run about saving the day. Russian assassins / spies, political fallout, Geiger counters, a guy he once saved from something or other gets in touch to discuss something fishy on the boat he works on (?? not the strongest storyline, right); sexy Russian defector, unsexy but knowledgeable Russian scientist defector, the unhappy FBI, the angry police, almost all of whom are out to get Tiger (in one way or another).
So, yes very sexist, very misogynistic, very 1960s. Certainly don't engage any belief sensors before reading, but a fun enough light read.
3 stars
We are the problem - humans - the cause of the sixth extinction - the sixth mass extinction that is.
Throughout the history of the earth there have been five mass extinctions, separated by very long uneventful stretches with very occasionally revolution on the surface of the earth. These are:
The end-Ordovician extinction -Intense glacial and interglacial periods created large sea-level swings and moved shorelines dramatically. The tectonic uplift of the Appalachian mountains created lots of weathering, sequestration of CO2, and with it, changes in climate and ocean chemistry.
The late-Devonian extinction - caused by rapid growth and diversification of land plants generated rapid and severe global cooling.
The end-Permian extinction - caused by intense volcanic activity in Siberia. Resulting in global warming; elevated CO2 and sulfur (H2S) levels from volcanoes caused ocean acidification, acid rain, and other changes in ocean and land chemistry.
The end-Triassic extinction - caused by underwater volcanic activity in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) caused global warming and a dramatic change in the chemical composition of the oceans.
The end-Cretaceous extinction - caused by asteroid impact in Yucatán, Mexico. This caused a global cataclysm and rapid cooling.
The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption, but “one weedy species.”
Atelopus zeteki
Mammut americanum
Pinguinus impennis
Discoscaphites jerseyensis
Dicranograptus ziczac
Patella caerulea
Acropora millepora
Alzatea verticallata
Eciton burchellii
Myotis lucifugus
Dicerorhinus sumatrensis
Homo neanderthalensis
Homo sapiens
Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this, and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy. The Sixth Extinction will continue to determine the course of life long after everything people have written and painted and built has been ground into dust...”