An anthology of writings by Wilfred Thesiger.
The man's biography is just astounding. I googled for this bit:
"Alexander Maitland
Tuesday February 14, 2006
The Guardian
Wilfred Thesiger was already a distinguished explorer and traveller when he first visited the Iraqi marshes in October 1950. Using a Leica camera, he had documented his journeys between 1933 and 1938 in Ethiopia's Danakil country, northern Darfur and Tibesti in the French Sahara. A new exhibition seeks to chronicle his experiences in the marshes.
Thesiger travelled in 1950 and 1951 to Iraqi Kurdistan. At Jabal Sinjar, near Mosul, he photographed a wedding party of Yazidis, so-called devil worshippers, "with the men and women and children dancing round in a circle hand in hand". Thesiger found travel in Kurdistan, however, too restricted. He longed to live again among Arabs, "to be more than a mere spectator".
The Iraqi marshes covered a smaller area than Kurdistan, but it was a world complete in itself, populated by tribes among whom Thesiger felt at home. "They lead an extraordinary life," he wrote, "in the heart of these great swamps of bamboos and bullrushes, living either on small islands ... [or] half-submerged platforms of accumulated buffalo dung and reeds."
From 1951 to 1958 he spent a large part of each year in the marshes. With four Marsh Arab youths as canoemen aboard a sleek 36ft tarada - reminiscent of a Venetian gondola - he roamed through the marshes, sleeping in barrel-vaulted mudhifs - guest houses - built of giant reeds."
As well as living among the marsh arabs of Iraq, he describes camel journeys acros the mountains of the Arabian peninsula, lion hunts and wars in Ethiopia and Eritrea, voyages by dhow along the east coast of Africa.....
Spellbinding.
Well, like much of the nation, I recently finished Harry Potter. What a great ending to the series. I won't say anything more, except that I was very pleased.
Now I'm back to Slaughterhouse Five.
I have never read a Harry Potter book. Not even a page. I feel almost unpatriotic, or something.
I am reading a book called Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife. It's by a guy named Richard Conniff. I bought if because of the name years ago. I read and enjoyed a couple chapters but am just getting back into it now. So far, more than half way through the book, the only repulsive behavior I've read about has been from the humans featured within.
churchill's "history of the english peoples" - i skipped book one , but will probably get back to it .
i enjoy history books - particularly those written some years ago .
hbg
I just started City of Quartz by Mike Davis. I've had the book for years - it was published in 1990. Part of why I haven't read it before is that it is damn heavy; must be made with high grade and high weight paper. I could bash my nose if I fall asleep while holding the book....
The other reason I've tended to avoid actually reading the book is that I've read articles by Mike Davis before and I have found him an irritating writer, in that his anger, some of which I share, invades his sentences in a disconcertingly adolescent way. Or so I think so far.
I like getting different points of view on Los Angeles history, though, and plan to forge ahead in the book. I'll probably build some arm muscles too.
The Child That Books Built -- A Life in Reading by Francis Spufford
Enjoyed the first chapter. Now we're getting into psychoanalysis...hmm...we shall see.
Just finished
The Chess Machine which is a very good historical fiction tale about a machine that was built in the 1700 to play chess. It did play chess and it won nearly every single match. The secret is it is really powered by a dwarf hidden inside the machine. A very good book.
I just started
A Good and Happy Child which is really about a sad and angry child... I'm not quite sure what to think of this one yet. It is kind of a mystery/fantasy/psychological thriller... so far not to bad and a little bit strange.
A Moveable Feast, Hemingway, for the first time actually.
This of course makes me want to read Babylon Revisited. It's been a while since I last touched base with those modern fellows.
I'm up to page 24 (24!) of City of Quartz. Teeth grindingly irritating, it is. But onward...
Here's a sample paragraph -
"Yet we must avoid the idea that Los Angeles is unltimately just the mirror of Narcissus, or a huge disturbance in the Maxwellian ether. Beyond its myriad rhetorics and mirages, it can be presumed that the city actually exists. I thus treat, within the master dialectic of sunshine and noir, three attempts, in successive generations, to establish authentic epistemologies for Los Angeles."
I just finished Shibumi by Trevanian. Absolutely phenomenal. My favorite quote comes from a part discussing the American occupation of Japan after WW2:
The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure -- in short, all the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals.
I highly recommend the book.
Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became The New Conformity by Hal Niedzviecki
I'm about half way through and can't help relating it to Heatwave's thread "Infidelity Makes Me Ill". For some people it really is all about them and pop culture seems to endorse this perspective.
I'm further on in the struggle with City of Quartz. Should I ever be good and finish it, I'll post my final take and some links to others' takes. It's an important book re LA. I hate it, hate it, for Davis' attitudinal mix of grasping a vast region in a claw hammer of theory. Well, and then the next theory. And the next. And then that he always, always, skips the people. I spit tacks for about the first fifty pages, now reading the blur of this and then that, am at about page 110. Something like 434 in the book, so help me.
On the other hand, I'm learning things, and I didn't start this book in a vacuum, having done fair research at different times myself.
Luckily, last week's New Yorker came today. Respite...
Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende.
Another Allende book to fall into.
'10 stupid things men do to mess up their lives.'
By Dr.Laura Schlessinger
John Irving: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed.... the last of Irving's books that I haven't read yet.
I just finished A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott....interesting. Very dark after having written Little Women...ending sucked though.
Crisis and Critical by Robin Cook.
Both easy reads but enjoyable.
Big Man Coming Down the Road by Brad Smith
Reminds me a bit of James Lee Burke (and that's not a bad thing). Really enjoying it.
I used City of Quartz today to help lift my bureau to put casters under it. No harm, it's a tough book. I got away from it last evening with the NY'er, but plan to keep going on it. Getting slight less peevish about it.
What do you make of it?
