What Mikey’s reading now

We’ve discovered the Chamblin Bookmine in Jacksonville.  A huge warren of a place full floor to ceiling with new and used books, it has become a twice a month habit.  A wonderful discovery for me is Shusaku Endo.  Writing ‘calm and understated’ novels of seventeenth century Japan, he is fascinated by the early interaction between feudal Japanese culture and the first Christian missionaries.  ‘The Samurai’ is melancholic yet beautiful and reminded me of Knut Hamsun  (high praise from me).  On our last trip to Jax I picked up another one, ‘Silence’ and I’m looking forward to it.

A book that really lit me up is ‘The Song of the Dodo, Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction’ by David Quammen.  Rare birds and animals, exotic islands, Alfred Wallace and discussions of current understandings of evolution and ecology, all subjects I’ve been interested in since I was just a little twitcher.  The first part of the book spends quite some time with Alfred Wallace.  I heard about him a couple of years after I first crossed the ‘Wallace Line’ between Bali and Lombok in Indonesia.  I had noticed, vaguely but distinctly, that there was a big difference between the islands and that I had crossed something.  Looking back at Bali with the sunset lighting up its clouds and mountains I felt I was in a new and different world but I assumed that perhaps all the Indonesian archipelago had the same variations.  What Wallace saw was that from Bali west and north to the Malay Peninsula there was a commonality to the flora and fauna that changed drastically to the east and south.  Bird species in particular are remarkably different.  Using this as a start Quammen looks at the importance of insularity in evolution and what it means for larger issues of rarity and extinction.  This is a very important, interesting and entertaining book, I can’t recommend it enough.

 

Fernandez-Armesto, professor, historian, arrested in Georgia

The Columbus Day edition of Bob Edward’s show featured one of my favorite historians, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. I know him only from his magisterial “Civilisations”, one of the most entertaining, provocative and, to me, convincing works of history I’ve read in a very long time.

His talk with the Bob was ridiculously entertaining, confirming everything I’d suspected about the man from reading his book. When I described it to Herself she suggested he might have a blog, something I instinctively disbelieved, and sure enough there is no evidence of such a thing. After some googling though I found that he’d been here in Georgia just this year and had been arrested for jaywalking, roughed up by Atlanta’s finest and tossed in the tank for his sins.

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/34426.html

I wish I’d known this, I would have ridden to the rescue with relish. It is possible that he got more entertainment out of his cellmates than he would have from having a history nerd bail him out so perhaps its all for the best. How typical of This Modern World (TM) that such a thinker would be treated this way.

 

Doorstops dept.

Even in paperback this is a real doorstop of a book, ‘Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico’ by British scholar Hugh Thomas. Despite its size and weight I quite enjoyed it. Published 15 years after I studied the subject ( that would be 1993 if you’re counting ) it had plenty of new angles on happenings that we thought we knew something about and a good story well told.

Evidently much of the research was done in Seville and Thomas came away with a good understanding of the regional, almost tribal, nature of Spanish society even today and how much more so it would have been in the time of Cortés. He carefully notes where every conquistador was from in Spain and what that would have meant as to how they related to the various political factions, cabals and petty tyrants in the New World.

My first time in Spain I had as guide the impetuous madrileño Ramon Bujanda and he was nearly obsessed with just this. He was like a birdwatcher in the way he identified the regional identities of people on the street by their physiognomies and what that meant about them. Likewise Thomas finds clues to the behavior of historical personalities in their hometowns, emphasizing that Cortés surrounded himself with others from Extremadura and trusted them to support him.

Montezuma is well drawn and the image of him in his castle, listening to the reports of his spies on the doings of the slowly approaching Spaniards, vacillating over what to do, unprepared by life for the enormity of the oncoming catastrophe is haunting. I found it interesting that the Mexica prized rare feathers over gold, in all my time in museums I missed that, presumably because the extraordinary capes and clothing they made were ephemeral and not valued by the Europeans. Some of the costumes described sound wonderful. Thomas has a fine quote from Albrecht Durer as to the ‘wonderfully artistic things’ wrought by the Americans, how ‘In all the days of my life, I have seen nothing which touches my heart so much as these….’ speaking of the hoard of goods sent to the Emperor Charles by Cortés.

In all, highly recommended.

(Spent one half hour trying to get a spanish font going for diacritical markings. Failed. Will try again later.) Update: Fixed.

 

Book dump

Trying to catch up with the book pile:

Collapse by Jared Diamond You know that I would like this, crumbing piles of ancient stone being one of my interests and many of the case studies here having felt the scuff of my feet. Prof. Diamond has a ( one suspects deliberately ) nerdy authorial voice but he usually stays on the right side of the line between pedantic and effective exposition. I just reread it, curious to think about it again through the lens of David Quammen’s Monster of God; Man Eating Predators in the Jungles of History and the Mind . The unpredictable ripple effects of removing trophic levels from ecosystems are something scientists are starting to grapple with, with resultant interesting new ideas. Both books highly recommended.

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers I’ve lost my enthusiasm for Mr. Powers and this book didn’t stop the slide, in fact quite the reverse. I couldn’t see where it was going but suspected, rightly as it turns out, nowhere particular. I found The Goldbug Variations and Operation: Wandering Soul strikingly, even piercingly affective. Try one of those if you’re going to start on Powers.

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta I thought this was a shoe-in for our BOTY ( book of the year ) the first non-fiction winner yet. Now it looks like Cloud Atlas is going to take that going away but this is still a wonderful book. A sympathetic, self-deprecating author takes us on a tour of Mumbai through some of its colourful characters: hit-men, dancers for hire, diamond merchants, prostitutes and politicians. Really good, right to the end.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell As different from his Cloud Atlas as it is possible to be this is still a good read. Smaller and less ambitious it is closely imagined and precise. Despite being from an entirely different time and place to my own life its view of a 13 year old boys inner workings is spot on.

Albion, The Origins of the English Imagination by Peter Ackroyd   Its a real challenge to try and pin down Englishness but he does it very, very well and develops a coherent, cogent and entertaining story of the culture, its influences and tendencies.  I liked his London, the Biography too, which has perhaps less academic heavy lifting.

 

Why can’t we all just get a

In the category of greatest time sink ever Language Log ranks very high. I find it completely irresistible. See if it does the same to you……

 

Future connectivity

Via Eszter at Crooked Timber comes the link to this cool presentation on a new kind of hyperlinking. As she points out its got timesink potential. Check it out.

 

CLoud Atlas

While in Maine last week I had the chance for a fun family meal with the Briggs and as usual when I see them there was much talk of books.  I came away with three that Walter offered up and the first was superb, fantastic and wonderful, a strong candidate for Book of the Year, even in June.

Those that know us know that Ellen and I always name a book of the year and thrust it on our friends  ( some past winners; Mistry’s A Fine Balance,  The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher,  Marilynne Robinson’s  Housekeeping  ).  I had thought that I had a good candidate with Maximum City, Suketu Mehta’s exploration of Mumbai.  It would have been our first non-fiction winner.

Cloud Atlas  ( by David Mitchell ) is what they’d call experimental in structure but is accessible and beguiling.  Of astonishing scope and emotional range it will be tough to beat but it is only June.