2. The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher

The City of Gold and Lead, the sequel to White Mountains starts with the heroic threesome from the first book training for the Games, an annual Olympic-like competition that pits athletes from nearby villages against one another for the privilege of winning a one-way ticket to the Tripods main city. There the champions will serve the Tripods. Because nobody ever comes back, what exactly this services entails is anyone's guess.

There really isn't much I can say about the plot that isn't a spoiler, so let me talk about the style - this is a much faster paced book than the first. While the first book had some "philosophical" talk weaved into the action, while Will tried to figure out what to do with himself, this one has Will focused on his mission with little side discussion about personal goals or impact on the Self.

It's probably not a surprise that Will wins the Games and heads to the City of Gold and Lead, but what he finds there is surprising. I thought I already had the Tripods figured out, and I am happy to admit I was wrong.

While Will is in the city he learns about the Plan and what will happen to mankind. This makes the book more than a simple science fiction tale and makes it a metaphor for colonization and the fight against imperialism. Or maybe that's my English teacher brain forcing an interpretation onto a text (in itself a form of imperialism?).

And Christopher knows how to tell a story: lots of action, drama, cliffhangers, twists and turns, and foreshadowing. I'm eager to start the third and final book!

1. The White Mountains by John Christopher

A great recommendation by Mt Benson Report.

His is as good a review as I could write and I don't have much more to add. But I will say this, it took me a little bit longer than I expected to get through the book (though it is a fast read) because I just didn't really care until the last 50 pages or so.

I do feel for Will's struggle though, facing the same question we must all face at one time or another: do I strike out for what I think is right, or do I conform and sacrifice my Self?

I think the differences in our world are less stark, or, rather, the two moral positions aren't as far, or as fatal as I pretend they are, but for Will it's a question of life or death.

I recommend this book, too, and I look forward to reading the remainder of the trilogy. I have book three, but will have to look around a bit more for book two. And then I send them to Vancouver...

27. The Wreck of the Dumaru by Lowell Thomas (as told by Fritz Harmon)

Thanks to Olman for the recommendation and the present of the actual text! His review is here.

Simply told this is a tale about 32 guys in a 20-man lifeboat adrift in the Western Pacific for 24 days. Fourteen of them survive.

The Dumaru is a wooden supply ship transporting gasoline and munitions from Guam at the close of WW1. After the ship is hit by lightning in a storm it catches fire and explodes. The ship sinks, but not before three life rafts are set adrift. We ride with the First assistant engineer Fred (Fritz) Harmon in an overcrowded life raft. After thirteen days they are out of water and sea biscuits. It doesn't rain, so they rig an evaporator (designed to boil sea water so they can collect the fresh water from the steam that results). As the men begin to die from dehydration, starvation, injuries, and exposure, the survivors make the grim decision to eat the recently deceased by making a broth/stew. Some of the scenes of the cannibalism are quite grizzly - before they decide to actually eat the meat of their shipmate (the former first engineer) they drink his blood mixed with a bit of seawater. To get the blood out of the body the hatchet off the dude's head! One time they do it and leave the head lolling around in the bottom of the boat!

Eventually they land on the island of Samar and are rescued.

I thought this was a great book. It's right up my alley - shipwreck, survival at sea, and the battle between man and the environment and between man and his own endurance. I feel like reading these stories is like research for an eventual test - although I sail in water not much deeper than a good-sized backyard swimming pool and never out of sight of developed civilization.

I'm going to pass this one on to Uncle Jack who is always up for a good sea story.

26. Spring Tides by Samuel Eliot Morison

A short little number published in 1965. This is a sailing book that I have never heard of before. I have heard of Morison, though. He's written quite a bunch of books about WW2, especially the War in the Pacific.

The book is divided into six sections: Spring Tides; A Yacht's Cabin; An August Day's Sail; A September Cruise; The Ancients and the Sea; A Summer Cruise in the Aegean.

Some good insights into the beauty of sailing. And Morison tries to explain the mystery of why a yacht's cabin, despite it's cramped quarters and mix of funky aromas, is as cozy as it is. And the chapter on late summer sailing is excellent.

The chapter on the Ancients could be better explained. I mean, reading it made me wish I had studied the Ancients.

25. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad's classic that was turned into a great movie, although mediocre version of this story.

In the story Marlow and his pals are sitting around on the deck of the cruising yawl Nellie, waiting for the tide to shift and the sun to go down. To pass the time Marlow decides to tell a story of the time he was a freshwater sailor and had to taken a steamer up a river in the Congo. He had gotten a position with an ivory trading company through the influence of an aunt and as his first job he was tasked with taking a station manager up the river to retrieve Kurtz.

Now Kurtz is a trader who has gone nuts with his own unlimited power over the natives. His followers are not willing to let him go and attack the steamer as it draws closer to the clearing where he has set up camp. Marlow and the station manager dock the boat and meet up with Kurtz, who, it turns out is quite sick and near death. He resents the fact that he is being called back. After all, he's gotten so much ivory for the Company that it's piled up at camp.

The end of the movie is not exactly the same as the book, so I'll stop here.

There is some really great writing here.

24. Learning to Sail by H.A. Calahan

Also posted at: http://theredwing.blogspot.com/

First off, let me just say that I have wanted to read this book for a good, good long time. Published for the first time in November 1932, it's not an easy book to find. And by find I mean find, not search for, if you get my meaning.

This book has everything - nice thick paper, great illustrations and photographs, no author bio about his living on the Maine Coast with his wife, three kids, and two cats, one of whom enjoys sailing, and all that modern luggage a new book must ship. This one is just pure salt.

Now, naturally, one cannot learn how to sail from a book. It's one of those learn-by-doing jobs, so this is a book for people who have just finished, say, their third or fourth lesson. They know the vocab, they feel good, and have enough experience to be able to listen to advice.

And this book has a lot of old-time advice. And some plain old good writing.

From the chapter on Helmsmanship:

"After the beginner has learned to maneuver his boat with a fair degree of confidence, he is quite certain to slump and become careless. If at this point he could understand that he has mastered the very rudiments of sailing and the finer touches are still to be acquired, he would progress rapidly. As a rule, however, the beginner continues as a beginner until he starts to enter races. Then with the other boats passing him as if he were standing still, it begins to dawn on him that he has not mastered the fine art of helmsmanship" (135).

And again from the same chapter:

"A sailboat is the most alive creation ever made by man. She has her whims and moods and there must be a sympathy and understanding between the helmsman and the boat" (135).

From the "What to do in a Thunderstorm" chapter:

"A thunderstorm is carried in the direction of the tide and may pass out with the ebb and return again on the flood. When you see a thunderstorm approaching, try to get in the lee of a shore or rather hide behind the shore that will be to windward when the thunderstorm breaks. It is easy to forecast the exact direction of the wind of the storm by watching the movement of the approaching clouds. Rest assured that the wind will not be blowing from the pre-storm direction when the storm breaks. Just before the storm comes, it irons out the wind and you find yourself in a flat, ominous calm. The longer and more pronounced the calm, the more violent the storm will be when it breaks" (176-77).

From "Fitting out:"

"Springtime! What does that mean to the sailor? Not the sinking of the plowshare into the moist, brown earth nor the return of the birds, the first green buds upon the trees or the gay new apparel in shop windows.

"No, spring expresses itself to the sailor in the tapping of the caulking mallet, the pungent smell of copper paint, the good will and the hard work and the cheery good fellowship in the shipyard; the warm sun overhead and the cold, forbidding, empty blue water just beyond. Spring is a joyous time in a shipyard. The boats emerging grimily from their winter covers seem to stretch and yawn and cast an eye seaward. There is a joy in the scraping and painting and puttying; in the overhauling of gear and equipment. And when at last the old hooker slides down the ways and bobs gayly in her new coat of paint, it is a moment of sheer, unalloyed joy" (307).

And finally, from the afterword of the printing I found (at my university's library), from a section called, "What it's all about:"

"There is a fraternity of the sea, not understood by landsmen. You may golf or ride or drink with a man and never see below the surface. But sail with him and you know him. Go through danger and hardship and adventure together and the knot of friendship is firmly tied. Yachtsmen visit one another in the ports they touch. The yacht clubs compete in extending hospitality. Yachtsmen help one another whenever possible. There is more genuine good fellowship among yachtsmen than among among almost any other group of humans. Perhaps it is the salt water in the blood" (318).

23. Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry by Mildred Taylor

The other side of the To Kill a Mockingbird coin - the sad situation of the Jim Crow South with the friction, heat, and armed conflict that is missing from Mockingbird.

Set during the 30s, the Logans own their own farm, 200 acres that have been in the family for going on three generations. They farm but are left with so little money left over that the father is forced to leave the family to work the railroad in Louisiana. The mom holds down the fort, teaching at the local black school (with hand me down books from the white school), and organizing a community boycott of the white grocery.

The main conflict comes from this boycott, which is in response to a half-lynching by the family that runs the store, the Wallaces. They are a mean bunch, and they light two guys on fire for flirting with the checkout girl. One of the guys dies immediately and the other lingers.

Naturally nobody is punished for this crime and the black community is split between the that's-just-the-way-it-is crowd and the we're-not-going-to-take-it crowd.

The story is told through the voice of Cassie, who is about twelve. She's one tough cookie, getting into fights, mouthing off to her elders, and disobeying direct orders from her mom.

It was good, better in many ways than the Watson's book (#22), and would be a perfect pair with Mockingbird.

22. The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

A great book about a very close family who lives in Flint Michigan. Because the oldest son, Byron, is becoming a juvenile delinquent the family decides he should live with the grandmother down in Alabama. So, off they go on a roadtrip.

About 9/10 of the book is dedicated to character development and establishing the close knit ties between the parents and the kids. The oldest brother constantly picks on our narrator, ten-year-old Kenny. And there is a little sister Joetta.

The voice of the main character and narrator is hilarious. Curtis does a great job getting inside the head of Kenny.

The family drives to Alabama and gets there just in time for the church bombing that killed four little girls and blinded two others. For such a climactic moment there is very little politicking and lecturing in the book. Kenny has a hard time with the bombing and the causes and consequences of the bombing, and his bully brother Byron helps him work through it.

It was a very quick read. This book won honors (I guess that means not-first place) in both the Newberry Awards and the Coretta Scott King awards. I think it would be a great companion to the recent Presidential Medal of Freedom Award winning To Kill a Mockingbird.

21. Fallen Angels by W. D. Myers

I also read this for a class, and quite enjoyed it. It's classified as Young Adult literature (one of the things we are discussing is just what YA lit really is), but has some heavy ideas, some very grown up scenes in it, and clocks in at about 300 pages.

The story is about a recent HS graduate who enlists and is sent off to Viet Nam.

With fewer details about the intricacies of basic training, breaking down and cleaning one's rifle, and the irony of war (sent to help but actually harming) it's only just more than your typical VN war book/story, and fits neatly in the genre. What is most compelling to me is Richie's justification for joining: his family needed the money. With no dad and a little brother still in high school, Richie was the bread winner as soon as he graduated from high school.

I think this is important, especially now, as Bush's haphazard, aimless foreign policy puts young men and women in danger who were probably in the same position as Richie - no money for college, no decent job prospects, and few opportunities for upward mobility or economic independence.

20. Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison

Read this powerful little book for a Multi-Cultural Education class.

In it Morrison attacks the representation and lack of representation of black Americans in American Lit. She discusses the demeaning and patronizing portrayal of blacks (think Huck Finn, especially the last third of the book), and the complete absence of effects of black Americans in the books. She asks how, since every single political decision made since the drafting of the Declaration of Independence has been about, or affected by, the presence of slaves, freed slaves, or the legacy of slavery, how can black characters, black people, black-ness not be prolific in literature. She provides some examples from Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, and gives some praise to Melville.

William Stafford

"I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along."

And a poem:

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.