Book Club 4

It somehow seems appropriate to write a post about reading books on a blog that nobody much reads anymore. Difficult to say whether I am playing to captive audience or not, do blog readers also read books? If you are a reader, are you a reader? So to speak. Anyway, I don't have a huge amount to say about birds or anything really, so books it is. Perhaps you will be interested that one of the books below in read in one single commute to Canary Wharf and back. Then I read it again, to really chew over the words, the language, the rhythm. What is it about this book that won the Nobel Prize for Literature? Do others write like this? Indeed could I write like this? 

It is an interesting question - does reading make you a better writer? Do you somehow pick things up, be it vocabulary or construct, and weave it, perhaps subconsciously, into your own writing? Is your writing better for it? For instance can you too put four commas into a single sentence? What I found interesting about Hemingway, for that is the author I'm talking about, is that some of his sentences seemed very long indeed and entirely devoid of punctuation. And yet it flowed and flowed, borne on by the fish. Anyhow if you have a spare hour or so it can't hurt. Everyone can find an hour can't they? Just skip the latest episode of whatever junk it is that you're watching on Netflix and pick up a book instead. And if by some miracle there is still a functioning library where you live, you could even do so for free. What I am saying is read more books.

So here is the latest installment. I know it is not a long time since the last one, but I've had a pool-side holiday and a trip to the Far East with interminable hours in a plane. A very nice and comfortable plane with a huge TV screen, and yet....

Augustown - Kei Miller
This was rather a departure for me, passed on by Mrs L after one of her regular visits to Daunt Books in Marylebone. Although it is fiction, August Town and some of the events and people described are very real indeed. Centered around a depressed and downtrodden suburb of Kingston, it explores Jamaican society, divisions and belief, with character dialogue written in a form of patois that if you are in the right frame. A mixture of myth and grit, you can see where the story is headed from some way out, if not exactly how, and as a result it is a quick and enjoyable read. Not the type of book I would normally pick up, but in straying outside of my comfort zones I've yet to find something I have truly not been able to read which can only be a good thing. And I now want to go to Jamaica...

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway has better known works, novels whose names you will all know, such as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and so on. But this short story is one that won the Nobel Prize however, and taken as whole is a delight. But when you first pick it up you could be forgiven for thinking that it's not all that. I found it laborious intially but gradually I became hooked. See what I did there? I fairly raced through it, pulled by the strength of the fish and the direction of the narrative. When I had finished it - one commute is all it took - I read it again, for it is truly a short story. And it is a glorious tale, built on dreams and fable, and anchored in blood, tears and hope.

Ghost Month - Ed Lin
As well as a Mediterranean holiday I also went to Taiwan. As is becoming customary, before I travel I like to read something either about or set in the place where I going. This is the latter, one of seemingly very few choices. I think I would have preferred some historical non-fiction, the story of the Chinese civil war, the two Chinas, and Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. However this is what they had, and like the Miller above something different can often be good for me. Well in this case I am sad to report I found it complete and unadultered garbage with a pathetic plot line and a fascination with Joy Division that was totally out of place. Despite actively thinking "God this is shit" about every five pages I persevered, and then right at the end I found a glossary of useful information about Taiwanese history and culture. Would that I had started there. The best I can say about it is that it made me want to visit a Taiwanese Night Market and eat some food, but as far as "good reads" go I found it made Dan Brown look like Pulitzer Prize material. Avoid unless desperate.

Sicilian Carousel - Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell spent almost his whole life in love with the Mediterranean, and this is another of the many books set either on its shores or islands. It is the late 1970's and Durrell is being driven around Sicily with a tour group. It seems so out of character but of course his fellow participants become integral extras as he weaves the letters of a dead friend who he never managed to visit on the island with a potted history of the main towns and their history. Durrell takes a clockwise loop from Catania on the east side, through Syracuse and Agrigento, and then up to Palermo and across to Taormina. A dissection of the foibles of people and Sicilian life and history follow, and having now been to the island on holiday it does not seem that an awful lot has changed. If you are as acerbic as I am this is really a fun read. 

Puligny Montrachet: Journey of a Village in Burgundy - Simon Loftus
If you like wine, as I do, you will like this book. In fact I would say that even if you don't like wine you are still in for a treat, for at its heart it's about people. Although he did not ever reside in the village, the author spent many weeks over numerous seasons visiting the vignerons and sampling the wine. The wine is front and centre of course, and reading this will teach you a great deal about 'terroir', the individual plots of land that make Puligny so special (and so expensive, sadly. It also provides and overview of the science (or perhaps art) of wine-making, but to classify this book as being solely about wine would be a huge mistake. Over the course of the book he explores the characters in the village and its history, and of course the ancient rivalry with the neighbouring village of Chassagne, with which Puligny shares some of the great Montrachet slope. I devoured this book in short order and above all it made me want to go back to Burgundy, to walk around the sleepy village, and to taste the wine in situ. Plans are afoot!

Book Club 3

Another installment of the book club I'm afraid, covering all the things I've read since the last time I posted. It's a surprising amount actually, I guess I just really like reading, and it makes my commute to work and other travel I undertake pass that much more quickly. On a recent journey I went on I'd finished the one book I had taken with me by the end of the first flight and had to swing by a bookshop and stock up. It is rare I even switch on the fancy entertainment systems on a plane these days - maybe at a push the moving map, but I'm perfectly content just reading and listening to music. Ensure a regular supply of gin and tonic and I am an extremely fuss-free traveller. It has to be real book by the way, made of paper and so on. A bit old fashioned these days but I doubt I would read half as much if the sole option were a Kindle or whatever. 

So, what have been perusing?

A Single Swallow - Horatio Clare

You might think this is about birds, and in a way it is, but actually that's just a pretext. The author leaves a life of material possessions behind and attempts to follow the northbound migration of the Barn Swallow from South Africa to the UK. So it becomes an overland journey through Africa with a passing nod to Swallows from time to time, and is mostly about the people he meets, the physical travel and landscape involved, and how the journey changes him. And this is of course what makes the book. I'm fascinated by the continent, yet have only visited the very top and the very bottom. Horatio Clare does too, indeed he starts off at somewhere I've been birding. I enjoyed it a great deal, though it is not in the same league as Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux, which is the same journey north to south. 

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

This was one of those moments where you're working your way along a shelf of books with your head cocked awkwardly and the title jumps out at you and your inner voice says "Oh, wasn't that a film?", and reached out for it. Like me, most people will know or know of the film starring Anthony Hopkins, and so as I'd never watched it I gave it a try. And it was rather good, without being exceptional like some books I've read recently. Despite it being a novel in which not a great deal happens, it is just very well written as a character portrait. A butler in a once great english country house relives past glories of professionalism, loyalty and dignity, but at what cost did they come?

The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Arnim

This was a real left field choice, picked up in hurry whilst trying not to miss a flight, but it proved to be one of the very best things I've read recently. At first glance a 1920s novel about four unacquainted and very different ladies who leave their lives behind and together rent a castle in Italy for month was not exactly something I would normally reach out for, but somehow it sounded, well, enchanting. And it was, in fact it was completely wonderful. The writing is superb, the comedy understated, the characters expertly formed, and the eye for human frailty, small-mindedness and various other personality traits fantastic. Like the book above, the storyline is quite banale and simply to do with happiness, but that doesn't matter in the slightest and it is quite charming. Pick it up, and like Mrs Wilkins, Mrs Arbuthnot, Lady Caroline and Mrs Fisher, let the sun and the Italian riviera work its magic.

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

This was another loan from a friend of mine, very different to anything I might normally read. London Below is a parallel city inhabited by the magical and the occult. You cannot exist both in London Above and London Below, and one evening Richard accidently crosses from one to the other losing his identity in the process. Expect many plays on words, for instance there is genuinely an Angel called Islington, an Earl holds court, and there some Black Friars and old man called Bailey. See what I mean? Richard is taken on a whirlwind tour of this alternative and scary London by the Lady Door, hunted by ruthless assassins. Hard to put down, but ultimately not a book I can rave about for some reason. Nothing wrong with it, just not really my kind of book.

Pathfinders, The Golden Age of Arabic Science - Jim Al-Khalili

This was hard work but rewarding. I learnt heaps about heaps, and not just about the scholars, philosophers, scientists and polymaths of 9th century Baghdad. If you thought you knew about "modern" science, think again. Copernicus, Kepler and Newton and the like might be the ones we know in the west, but Arabic scientists had established the circumference of the world to within a percent of the actual distance by the 11th century, and much of the work of the court of the Abbasid Caliphs laid the foundation for much of what is known today. Algebra, Algorithm....just think for a moment where those words might have come from. I am completely hopeless at science and [real] maths, and I know far less than a middle-aged man ought to know about the laws of the universe, so this was a massive eye-opener in basic terms as well as for the historical story Jim Al-Khalili tells. If you have not heard of the enlightened Caliph Al Mamun and the House of Wisdom, well, you have a lot to learn. Fascinating.

Book Club 2

I tried this out at around this time last year, and seeing as I restarted birding at the weekend yet only saw a Chiffchaff this strikes me as a perfect time at which to have another go. I have been reading a lot recently - I am in the voracious phase and have read most of these in the last six weeks. Clockwise from the top left a visit to a friend provided the first two, a trip to Daunt Books provided the third which in turn recommended the fourth, and Mrs L passed me the fifth and sixth saying I would enjoy them. She was not wrong. Books are one of the great pleasures in life - I read on the tube in the morning and evening, in bed at night, and very frequently on airplanes. I just wish I could develop a habit of sitting down in the daytime at home and reading - I have a lovely armchair with a nice view which would be just perfect for this - but unfortunately I am totally unable to sit still as there are just too many jobs to be done. I have not read as much as I would like this year - a lot of my spare sitting time was spent catching up on my travel journal which I let slip for the best part of a year. That is now finally done and I can turn my attentions towards what others have written which is a lot more interesting. So here are this summer's reads.

Travels with a Tangerine - Tim Mackintosh-Smith
This book explores the remarkable travels of Ibn Battutah, a fourteenth century muslim native of Tangiers who set off on a pilgrimage to Mecca which ended up taking him most of his life and across huge swathes of what was then the known world. Like me he kept a journal, he can be said to be one of the first travel writers. His experiences however were incredibly interesting, and so with "The Travels" in hand the author (fluent in Arabic) sets off to try and trace Ibn Battutah's medieval journeys and to see if he can find what he saw. A lot of this involves religious shrines of one sort or another, but don't let this deter you from what is a cracking read and truly excellent travel writing.

A Little History of the World - E. H. Gombrich
If like me your knowledge of entire eras is a little sketchy then this is an ideal book to try and fill in the gaps. It was written for children, and is brilliantly done, no wonder it is a classic. In a six week period the author somehow covered the entirety of human history from 2500 BC to the end of the First World War. The language is a bit facile in places as you would expect, but if you are in need of a crash course of almost the events that have shaped the world as it was known up until the advent of Facism, this is a book for you.

Sicily through Writers Eyes - Horatio Clare
In a rare outing to London Mrs L dragged me to Daunt Books - a heavenly place. We have a family holiday to Sicily coming up, and so I went off to have a look at the Italian section and pulled out both this and Sicilian Carousel by Lawrence Durrell. This book is an exploration of Sicily throughout the ages, from its earliest beginnings to the modern-day Casa Nostra. The islands has been through more hands than almost any other place, and the Sicily of today is therefore a tapestry of Phonecian, Carthagian, Roman, Greek, Norman and Italian to name but a few. Like the book above it is presented chronologically, with the author using the prose of others to navigate through the centuries. In truth I found some of the earlier parts of the book hard work, ancient battles and campaigns chronicled by Homer, Herodotus, Plutarch and Cicero felt like something I had to get through, but the extract from the Travels of Ibn Jubayr (who preceded Ibn Battutah by 140 years) was a particular highlight, as was the chapter taken from Il Gattopardo by Lampedusa. So good in fact that I bought the entire book straight away and absolutely raced through it.

The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) - Giuseppe di Lampedusa
What a book. You can never really do wrong reading the classics. It desribes the life of a Sicilian noble, Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, and his extended family, set at the time of Garibaldi and the Risorgimento (the unification of Italy). The Prince forsees that he is the last in his decadent upper class line, and that a new vulgar order will take over and could destroy all traces of the past unless the old order somehow accepts the new. An unenthusiastic and unsuccessful attempt to change the unfaltering path of history then follows. I only wish that I could have read this book in Italian, for what I found hugely enjoyable would probably be doubly so in the original text.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I don't know how to describe this book. It is both comedy and tragedy, magical farce and bitter historical violence. A hundred years of multiple generations of the Buendia family (almost all called Aureliano - confusion is inevitable, even the family tree at the start barely helps - I am sure this intentional) from the founding of their town of Macondo to it's utter ruin after war, famine and flood, a microcosm of Colombian history and national ethnicity. It inspired Louis de Bernieres' South American trilogy set in the city of Cochedebajo de los Gatos, and I am glad I have finally read "the original", another modern classic. 30 million people were always unlikely to be wrong.

The Sixth Extinction - Elizabeth Kolbert
I am only halfway through this one but it is riveting. There have been five main extinction events, the most recent being that which ushered the Cretaceous period out. Humans are now creating the sixth, condemning many thousands of species to death before we had even worked out a word for "extinction". It is a sobering read, and in the context of the daily news around climate change and people like Trump and Bolsonaro, an important one. In short post-industrial revolution humans are creating an event that is geological and catastrophic in terms of scale, and that will be recorded in the sediment in the same way as the gigantic meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.

~

I have lots more to come. As I think I have mentioned I go through intense periods of reading followed by intense periods of doing other things. It was ever thus. So I have an extensive backlog of books that I want to read. They are gifts from others, or indeed gifts from me to me, loans from friends and hand-me-downs from family, and it is quite exciting to think that so much discovery awaits me. Some of them I am in the middle of already, but have put them down to read something else. The scramble for Africa is 680 pages of european incursion and robbery that has set the scene for post-independence dictatorships and civil wars that have lasted longer than the original colony. It is a tough read and there is only so much of it I can take in one sitting, but I am learning a massive amount about a continent that I have barely visited yet know many of the countries, place names and areas through my love of plants. 

There is another book about Sicily, a book that combines birding and travel, a book about espionage, a Jamaican microcosm and a book about the use of Pigeons in WW2. A rich and varied pile, I have no idea which one I should read next! Do let me know if you have any particular suggestions regarding reading order, or indeed your thoughts on any of the ones I have already read.

Book Club

Bit of a change today. I read in fits and spurts, either not at all or voraciously. At the moment it is the latter, and I get through books in a matter of days. Most of the time I read books about travel or wildlife, at least notionally, but occasionally I pick up (or am passed) something completely left-field that I would be highly unlikely to have chosen myself. Here are the last three things I have read.

Beyond a boundary – CLR James

Described as the best book about cricket ever written, it seems both current as well as obviously written in a different era. The pleasure derived from watching cricket, as well as the skill needed to truly do so remains as current today as the 1960s when it was written, although it covers West Indian cricket from several decades earlier. Those West Indian cricketers around whom so much of the book revolves every keen follower will probably have heard of in passing, but have little idea of who they actually were and what they did - Constantine, Headly and Grace to name but a few - so it was interesting to fill in some historical gaps. I have rarely heard, even on my beloved TMS, cricket strokes described so perfectly. It has a clear political slant, and explores the racial divides in Trinidad and the wider West Indies, but also how cricket shapes a person. A must-read for any lover of the game.

Crossing Open Ground - Barry Lopez 

A fantastic read, exactly my kind of book. Wilderness adventure, exploring nature and the relationships between humans, animals, birds and the land. Set in North America and laid out as a series of essays, this is travel writing of the highest order, supremely considered and thoughtful, beautifully written and compellingly interesting. Set in North America he ranges from the southern deserts to the Alaskan coasts, delving into the past and present alike. Geology, geography, art, science and morals - an all-encompassing view into some of the special areas of the US that have shaped the history of the country and those who call it home. I've read this several times before, and about every five years I feel the need to return to it. This is the kind of book that makes me want to travel as much as possible, even if I could never describe remotely as well as this master of his genre.

The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng

This is the kind of book that makes Mrs L want to travel, which is a very rare thing indeed. She read this and declared an urge to travel to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. Who was I to argue, I had a frequent flyer 'magic voucher' to burn, and so we are off there later this year. I would not have said this was my kind of book at all, but I demolished it in under three days. Set alternately at a hill station in colonial Malaysia during the period immediately after the Second World War and then some years later, this is a story that weaves history and fiction together around the relationship between a Chinese Malay ex-POW and a Japanese gardener. I read it avidly, but remained slightly unfulfilled, feeling that the author had tried to blend too many strands into his narrative, leaving too many questions and stories open. There is also a somewhat ponderous rhythm to it that I cannot put my finger on - a bit florid perhaps? That said I found it impossible to put down, and it kindles an interest in the story of Malayan independence, the mixing of cultures and, once again, parts of the world hugely different from the London underground which is where I read most of it. I'm looking forward to visiting and drinking the local tea.

Book Review - Bird Sense

I am branching out – this post is a book review. Almost unbelievably a publisher got in touch and asked me if I would like to review a new book. Ooooh, free stuff, I thought! A book as it turns out, who would have thought? Why not? I am always seeking to ensure that this blog isn’t one-dimensional, and frankly the huge amount of bird content of late has been a bit embarrassing. I commented only recently that I was in desperate need of filler material, but more often than not those posts turn out to be rants. So this is just perfect. It’s a book about birds, so fits with the general theme of me being a birder, but isn’t just me talking boringly about what mega-birds I’ve seen on the patch that are common as muck just about everywhere else. Perhaps you’ve switched off already, perhaps you haven’t? I admit that reading an actual book made of paper is pretty radical these days - I found that people stared at me on the tube - but if you can handle the unwanted attention, this is well worth picking up. But guess what? It's available as an e-book, so you can download it to read and thus avoid all the shame and humiliation.

Anyway, to the book. Bird Sense - what it's like to be a bird. What a load of rubbish, how could we possibly hope to have an idea - that was my initial my thought. Is he going to try and describe the wind rushing through the feathers of a Swift as it zooms about? The author, Tim Birkhead, to his credit addresses this key question immediately, and in doing so persuades you to read on. And it turns out the book isn't anthropomorphic at all, it literally is about avian senses, and we can and do have an idea. Lots of ideas. The preface - possibly the longest preface in the world - is therefore largely to do with the scientific process that underpins what we know. Only academics, which Tim Birkhead is, could possibly find this interesting, but you soon get through it and onto the real book, and probably a lot of what’s in it needed to be stated at some point, so why not get it over with at the start? Indeed, throughout the book he references various studies and experiments, so you might as well know a bit about it.

In short I found it totally captivating. I am not remotely scientific, the last time I was in anything approaching a laboratory was when I was 16 and doing badly in my GCSEs. I just like looking at birds, and so as a total dunce beyond that (and possibly even including that....), this book was indulgently fascinating. In the same way that I watch Brian Cox with a child-like wonder that belies my nearly 40 years on this planet, so I read this book. I mentally said “really?” about a million times as I progressed through it. I reckon I learnt something about every three sentences. For while you may think you know a fair bit about various aspects of bird behaviour and what dictates that behaviour, in reality you know very little. When I next find a Guillemot on the patch I’ll look at it totally differently.

The book starts with Shrikes, which is always promising, and essentially the author goes through the senses one by one, starting with sight, detailing what we know, how we developed and refined that knowledge, and what's next to research and discover. I could not put it down, and devoured it over the course of only a few commutes. It could be that I am particularly ignorant, but I never knew how complex birds are. Did you know that some Owls have assymetric ears, ie one near the top of its head, the other nearer the bottom, in order to better triangulate invisible prey? I didn't. Did you know that birds can literally see the earth's magnetic field? I didn't, I thought they felt it. Sensed it. Used the Force. But no, if you cover one of a bird's eyes, and surround it by a massive electromagnet, it's stuffed and doesn't know which way to go. Change eyes and it's fine again. Who knew? Well it turns out that scientists are a pretty resourceful bunch, and a lot of the book is devoted to various pioneers in avian behaviour, from Darwin and earlier through to the present day. Apparently people devote their entire lives to finding out about one tiny aspect of a bird's life. Many you will never have heard of - most, in fact - but it's incredibly impressive and dedicated. Some of them turned out to be wrong of course, which is a shame after 40 years work, but that's the way it happens - the search for the truth is constantly evolving.

A minor niggle, and I’m perhaps being picky, is that the book as a whole contains about three times as many commas as strictly necessary, so I found reading it fluently a little tough, but the content more than makes up for any extravagances of punctuation. But hey, what do I know? Tim Birkhead has several books under his belt, which is several more than me. Overall a big thumbs up.

Anyway, here’s a video of the author talking about it. This isn’t as interesting as the actual book, but adds a nice multi-media touch - ie read the book, don't just watch the video and think you're done. So, thanks very much to Helen from Bloomsbury for sending me the book. I’m available for high-quality optics reviews also – certain post-review conditions apply – please get in touch if interested.....