BOOKS THREAD

I am going to try, once again, to read The Crying of Lot 49. I started it over the summer, got almost halfway through and just didnt pick it up again. I want to get through a Pynchon novel.

Also up is The Black Dahlia.

 

I'm not sure if this one has been mentioned, but I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow this week. For those that don't know, Randy Pauch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who gave what was literally a last lecture after being told he had only months to live due to cancer.

I'd heard the story before and always meant to watch the video of the lecture on YouTube, but never got around to it. The book is a series of stories and lessons from Pauch's life, including the story of the lecture itself. I tore through the book in a day. (Granted, it was a day that wasn't very busy). It had plenty of humor, some interesting insights and some very touching moments.

Here is the video. I haven't finished watching it myself, but I figured I'd share now that I got around to finding it.

 

I started this Thursday night and finished it Friday afternoon backstage at an NCAA regional. Late in the book, there was a twist -- go figure -- that made me laugh really loud. I was sitting by myself in the media room, and I'm sure folks looked askew at me. No matter.

In a Reddit thread this weekend, someone posed the question of which book totally hooked you from the first page. There were several votes for Choke, including mine.

Joe Bob says check it out.

 

Feeding a life-long interest I've had in marine mammals, I read "Killing Keiko," a first-hand, largely first-person account by former Sea World trainer Mark Simmons.

Simmons was a primary participant in the retraining of the killer-whale star of the movie "Free Willy," whose attempted reintroduction to the wild ultimately failed, despite the heavy financial backing of the wealthy Wendy McCaw, infamous around these parts in recent years for her handling of the Santa Barbara News-Press and its employees.

The story, by turns fascinating, discouraging, exhilarating and, ultimately, sad, makes readers root for this unusually gentle male killer whale -- so unlike the now notorious Tilikum, whom Simmons described as known to be a potentially dangerous animal even back then -- was compelling, engaging and thought-provoking.

It serves as a cautionary tale regarding the care, handling and treatment of captive animals and the dangers and difficulties of trying to return zoological animals to their wild state in a way that is safe and survivable for them. It also is a sobering look at the dangers of human interference and transference that can impact in life-and-death ways the decisions concerning such animals.

Keiko, ultimately, did not survive, after funding for the popular long-term project dried up after three years following McCaw's divorce. As a result, Keiko's reintroduction was hurried along, too fast and at the wrong time for him, and he was rejected and traumatized by the first close-up encounter he had with a free-ranging, wild pod in Iceland, where Keiko had been captured as a 2-year-old juvenile.

Thereafter, having never really learned to hunt again (because project leaders, including Simmons, had hoped and believed that a successful reintroduction to a wild pod would naturally take care of that lesson) after his 20-year stay in captivity, Keiko wandered, alone, from Iceland to Norway, interacting -- choosing to interact -- with humans more than with his own kind, for much of another year before he died of hunger and a recurring respiratory infection that ultimately overwhelmed his system.

There had been a plan to rescue/retake Keiko into captivity should the attempt to rehabilitate and reintroduce him to the wild have failed, and that might have occurred at some point if not, again, for some bungling on the part of human beings determined to force a quick return to the wild, ASAP and at all costs, especially once those costs could no longer be afforded.

The situation so upset Robin Friday and Simmons, the heads of the project, that they left/were dismissed because they wouldn't support the way things were being done in the last year of the three-year project. On Keiko's behalf, their exit from the project upset me, and I wondered how they could have walked away, and how the activist organizations involved could have let them leave, in the middle of things and just when Keiko would need them most, after having already invested so much care, time and effort into such an extraordinary animal.

 

I read "Overboard!," by Michael J. Tougias this week, and was completely engrossed in it. I'd recommend it highly to anyone interested in true-life adventure/survival tales. I tend to gravitate toward them, and after reading this book, I was reminded again of why that is.

The book recounts, in captivating fashion, the story of the U.S. Coast Guard's search-and-rescue case of the year of 2005, when two of five crew members -- the captain and the first mate, no less -- of the sailing vessel called the Almeisan, were swept overboard in heavy Gulf Stream seas during what was to have been a five-day cruise from Connecticut to Bermuda.

It was a trip that the 45-foot sailboat's captain, Tom Tighe, had made 48 times before, and one that good friend and first mate Loch Reidy had made with him 20 times before, but that, this time, cost Tighe his life.

As a reader, I felt like I was in the midst of the monster storm with them and the rest of the otherwise relatively inexperienced and terrified crew as they all had no choice but to try to ride out waves that were 30 to 50 feet high -- Tighe and Reidy while floating alone, in the middle of the ocean, at night, without a life raft, and the others in a water-logged cockpit and cabin on a sinking boat.

The rescue effort was tense and unbelievably frustrating for all concerned and you'll feel that if you read the book. You won't be able to stop reading as you go through the experience with both the crew, the Coast Guard and the civilian merchant-ship rescuers who also played a key role in the ultimately successful outcome. You'll also appreciate the tie between Reidy and Tighe, which remained close until the end, literally, because Reidy tethered his captain's body to him after the latter's death in his arms as they floated and were tossed about in the rough seas, vowing that he would bring his friend home, or die, too, in trying.

Early on in the book, I'd been thinking that it was written a little bit simplistically, but I came to appreciate the easy read and the careful explanation of various sailing terms and situations that helped a novice sailing reader like myself to easily understand and therefore to stay engrossed in what was ultimately a great human drama and a compelling story.

 

Great call!
Read it this weekend and loved it.
I plan to check out some of his past fiction, which sounds intriguing.

I started Johannes Cabal: Necromancer yesterday. Loving it as well.

 

Happy 10th anniversary to the Books Thread. Moddy showed his worth way back when by starting the longest-running active thread on SJ.com 10 years ago today.

The book I am reading honors this thread in two ways:



It's a post-apocalyptic rendering of middle America as St. Louis is now a walled-off city a couple centuries after a flu wiped out most of the population. Eventually a couple of visionaries named Lewis and Clark set out on a trek to find out what else is out there after the city receives a mysterious visitor ... kind of a reimagining of the original Lewis & Clark adventure, only into a devastated future.

If anyone dared wander through the 10 years of this thread they would find our own version of dead lands. One of the first posters was Ledbetter, who hasn't been around since before LeBron returned to Cleveland. True_North and zosopu and greedo, we hardly knew ye. Friend of the friendless loved his books eight years ago, but must be reading lots of them the last few months. There's Herbert_Anchovy six years ago, though he hasn't smelled up the place in years.

But then you can find plenty of our long-term members in on the ground floor of the thread. Ben_Hecht, JR, 21, and Hank_Scorpio are all on the first page. Huggy and HC were there by the second. The thread was good enough for Ace as well.

Well done, SJ.com, give yourself a hand for a long-lasting thread that still draws attention and in a way memorializes your community. Then go read a book.

 

As many of you know I have spent a couple of summers on an island off the Brittany coast called Belle-Ile where they have an annual opera festival. Don Wallace and his wife discovered the island in the 1980s, fell in love and ended up buying a ruined home which they (very) slowly restored. This is a memoir about their life on Belle-Ile, the history of the area and the wonderful people who live there. He really captures 'the spirit of the thing'. (He has published a sports book as well: "One Great Game: Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game" so I'm guessing some of you know his work.

LOVED this book. Made me long to be back there so strongly it was like physical pain.

 

That has me intrigued, and I may have to check it out because I've read "One Great Game..." and liked it pretty well. I also had a great interview with him about that game and the book for one of the last things I ever wrote for my last full-time newspaper. We had a really good conversation, and I wouldn't mind talking to him about his renovated house, either, as that's the type of project I've long wanted to take on, as well.

 

Highly recommend that you look this up. The reno work is interesting because Belle-Ile is beyond protective in allowing development. One of the beautiful spots on the island is a large cliff on the western side of the island known as Le Cote Sauvage. When I was there in 2008 there was a hotel and restaurant on the site. When I returned in 2014 the Island preservationists had purchased them so that they could be demolished and the area restored to it's original state. I'm glad they did but that shows some SERIOUS commitment to preserving what makes Belle-Ile special.

 

I have been attempting to gain some greater understanding of and appreciation and empathy for the religion of Islam, not because I'm interested in it for myself but because the radicalism that seems to be attached to it appalls me.

I admit it: I don't get those who become so heavily involved in something that seems, too readily, to devolve into violence for little or no reason, and I'd like to know how and why that happens, and how it could happen.

Toward this end, I spent the week reading a lengthy, in-depth book called "Growing Up bin Laden," by Najwa bin Laden and Omar bin Laden as related to an author of Middle Eastern-topic books whose work I've been reading lately, Jean Sasson.

Najwa bin Laden, a first cousin of Osama bin Laden and the first of his five wives, and Omar bin Laden, the fourth of the Al-Qaeda leader's seven sons and 11 children he had with Najwa, have put forth something that is, essentially, an amazing oral history of their lives. It is, by turns, poignant, captivating and devastating, and I'd recommend this 2009 book to anyone.

Seriously, this up-close and-personal look at life close to Osama bin Laden for his five wives, his 20 children and those involved in his terrorist organization and activities is informative -- even eye-opening. It also is quite breathtakingly personal and honest -- and is fascinating, fascinating reading. Do yourself a favor and give this book a look.

It opens with a prelude that includes these words from Omar: "As the son of Osama bin Laden, I am truly sorry for all the terrible things that have happened, the innocent lives that have been destroyed, the grief that still lingers in many hearts. My father was not always a man who hated. My father was not always a man hated by others..."

Later, Omar discusses his accidental discovery at 16 -- on a radio show he listened to clandestinely because his father would never have approved -- the music of Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, known at the time for her haunting love songs. He relates how he became enthralled with poetry and music. "Listening to any kind of singing was strictly forbidden by my father, yet I was entranced, wanting so badly to hear more that I was willing to risk his wrath...From that moment on, poems and songs became an important distraction to the backdrop of my miserable existence...Umm Kulthum's message brought me to the realization that there was a parallel world to our bin Laden universe of hate and revenge -- a world previously unknown to me where people lived for and sang about love...The children of my father are universally believed to be tarnished by my father's activities. There are so many who avoid us because of him.

"I am nothing like my father."

Truly a great book, often in the most human, and, conversely, the most inhuman, of ways. You should read it.

 

TSP, "The Dead Lands" is a great book. I checked it out Friday before work, and just raced through it. A true "page turner" with the right combination of action, social commentary and interesting characters.

Plus, a devastating flu plague which wipes out much of America starts in Ames, Iowa. Damn Cyclone fans ...