3 posts tagged “books”

What books are on your nightstand?

What?  I have a lot of books, OK?  Don't you judge me.

I went to church this morning, despite myself.  I overslept, so I came in late and missed the first hymn (which I'm told was horrible), but I made it.  I enjoy the services, but what I really look forward to are the bagels afterwards, or, rather, the company in which I get to enjoy the bagels.

I don't get a lot of chances just to sit around and chat with people, and there are some of the most interesting people I've ever met in our bagel group.  Today, I discovered that several of them share my obsession with interest in the history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration.

We talk a lot about dogs, so maybe that's how we got onto the topic--you need good dogs to get you through the snow, since motors freeze and crack and horses get stuck and die.  My interest in the Arctic started with the story of Sir John Franklin, who was determined to find a Northwest Passage through the straits of the Arctic ocean above Canada.  He captained two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, both of which disappeared along with their captain and crew.

Now, we have a pretty good idea of what happened to them--they got lead poisoning, and then ran out of food and, after turning to cannibalism, they froze to death.  What intrigues me the most, though, is how thoroughly unprepared they were.  They didn't take skis with them, or parkas, or warm boots.  They didn't learn how to handle dogs for sleds.  They didn't pay any attention to the ways the Inuit survived in such unending darkness and cold.

No, they just loaded up their ships like they were sailing to France, instead of through a sea so cold it was often frozen solid.  They wore English naval uniforms, not seal or caribou parkas lined with fur.  They didn't go out and hunt for their food, even when they were trapped in the ice.  Instead, they ate from tins suffused with lead and bacteria.

We know from historical accounts that when their ships became trapped in the ice, they did have contact with the local Inuit populations.  They didn't barter with them, though.  They didn't ask for help, they didn't try to learn the things that allowed the Inuit to survive in a land that was always frozen.  They were so very arrogant.  Why should they bother with what the savages knew?  They were English, damnit, and they'd make their own way, thank you very much.

There are graves on King William Island in Nunavut that attest to the fact that, no, they didn't make their own way.  I doubt we'll ever find traces of the Erebus or the Terror.  I think they're at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, along with the bodies of the men who weren't scavenged by wild animals before the ships sunk.

What we talked about this morning, though, was the Scott expedition of 1912.  Robert Falcon Scott was leading a crew, racing against another crew led by Roald Amundsen to be the first to reach the South Pole.

Scott made a lot of the same mistakes that Franklin made.  They didn't know how to lead dogs (though, unlike Franklin, Scott had thought to bring some), they instead used tractors (which froze) and Siberian ponies (which died).  He didn't have a ship strong enough to withstand the dangerous Antarctic waters.  He was trying to do too much at once--make it to the pole and conduct scientific experiments.  I'm not saying Scott was an idiot, he just wasn't as prepared, focused, or organized as Amundsen.

Amundsen, after all, had been the one to make it through the Northwest Passage, largely because he, unlike Franklin, understood the importance of things like a high-fat diet, proper clothing, and sled dog handling.  He even gave his men a daily ration of chocolate in order to ensure they got sufficient calories and fat.  He also knew how to ski, a skill that would have served Scott and his men well--instead the members of the Scott expedition went on foot when their tractors broke, their ponies died, and their dogs were insufficiently trained to pull the sleds.  They went on foot, dragging the rock-laden sleds behind them.  If only they had left the rocks behind and gone on skis, instead, they may have actually made it off the Ross Ice Shelf.

OK, so that's depressing.  If you want to read a fantastic book about the arctic that's also hilarious, you have to read Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf.  The movie came out when I was a little girl, and I thought it was a horror movie because in the previews, they showed Mowat eating mice on a cracker.  Once I finally read the book, I couldn't believe how funny it was.

One of my favorite episodes in the book is Mowat's (successful) attempt to mark his territory by, um, marking his territory.  He was in a tent close enough to see the wolf dens, but far enough away to keep the wolves from getting nervous because of his presence.  To keep them away from him (because, you know, he still didn't know whether or not they'd try to eat him while he slept), he drank a lot of coffee and went around in a circle, peeing on rocks and weeds.  His description of this, not to mention the alpha wolf's reaction, is one one of my favorite non-fiction passages of all time.

Ramona and I have been trying to get some of the men in our neighborhood to do this--to mark our territory along the fence line in order to keep the coyotes out.  We have, as of yet, been unsuccessful in our convincing, though Nettie's son intimated that he might be willing to mark the property if we first buy him a six-pack of beer.

Wouldn't that be fun, though?  We could have a neighborhood marking party, with beer and margaritas and lots and lots of ice water.  The women could barbecue while the men, um, marked.  And then the coyotes would stay out and not eat our dogs.

What?  It could totally work.

This book is the first in a series of the absolute best brain candy available.  Well, brain candy for people who like their brain candy scary and gory, anyway.  What I like most though, I think, is the fact that the science is plausible.  I mean sure, OK, it's ridiculous--a monster loose in the American Museum of Natural History--but Preston and Child obviously have science backgrounds because they make you believe it.  I also love that most of the main characters are nerds and geeks because, yeah--you always like to see reflections of yourself in fiction.  The smart anthropologist girl is the hero!  Yay!

Reading this then leads to Reliquary, Cabinet of Curiosities, Brimstone (my personal favorite), and Thunderhead, among others.  Each book can be read on its own because the authors do a good job of filling in any important background details, but once you read one, you're going to want to read the rest.  Really, is there anything better than a good mystery?

My other current obsession is Slings and Arrows.  It's the best show on television right now, quite possibly the best show that's ever been on television.  Of course, it's on cable (the Sundance Channel), so I can't see it except for on DVD.  I considered getting cable, but it would be silly to pay for premium channels just to watch one show.  Plus, you just know that I'll flip past the Discovery Channel and get sucked into some documentary that I'll never get out of.  I know TV can be educational, I just don't like the mindless zombie state it puts me in.  I don't actually know if educational progams teach me anything, to tell you the truth.  I think they keep my interest far more than, say, the painfully inane sitcoms that dominate network television, but whether or not I retain that knowledge is still up for debate.

Where was I?  Right.  The best show on television.  It's hilarious, yes, and Paul Gross is somebody I could happily watch read the phone book, but it's so much more.  The first season is about Hamlet, and about love and madness and integrity and art.  Some people have said that you have to know a lot about theatre to truly appreciate the show, but I disagree.  Like Shakespeare, the specificity of the setting and the characters actually contributes to its universal appeal.  It doesn't matter if you know nothing about theatre, you still know about loss, friendship, and fear, don't you?

What is it about Canadians that makes them produce such good television, anyway?