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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I enjoyed, but a more obscure work by Calvino for a reason. Still, it's good to read an author "becoming", as opposed to an author who's "arrived".
Interesting, but not precious.
It provides me the much-needed reminder that Excellence is a process, not an end or result.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Picked it up, slender, curious worn cover - it's the slenderness and obscurity that draw me towards it, that and that it's priced at a dollar.
Enthusiastic reviews by nobody I've ever heard of adorn the back cover.
Written, late 1930's
A dialogue between a priest and a physiologist, both on a long ship voyage through the Suez Canal, the Priest, or Padre, on his way to a Mission in deepest colonial Africa, the Physiologist, also in Africa, studying the Lungfish, an evolutionary throwback to the days when fish breathed air before developing gills.
The conversations, on the one hand representing the evolutionary point of view, that life will out in all it's diversity, and the Priest is largely silent, his belief in something other than this - argued, but - not so much.
Not so much a dialogue as a advertisement for evolution and the randomness - and inevitability - of life.
So - always good to read - always, books from a different era, books with something to say. His Point of View stands today - even with all the advancements of science - the world is largely colored by our interpretation and understanding of it.
And there are no ready answers, which is, I suspect, as it should be.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I enjoyed this. Not, perhaps, the "Travel Classic" the reviews made it out to be - but it's thorough, well researched, introduces you to a variety of places, people & histories that otherwise I might have had no interest in - so in this it succeeds.
And Australia's treatment of the Aboriginals rather mirrors our own failings with the Native Canadians.
Easy reading, thick book, lots to think about - only criticism that I wasn't enormously sympathetic to the authors' point of view - but that is a matter of our difference in personalities, not necessarily a flaw on his behalf. Personally, I would have liked a little more information on the Geology of it all...
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An amusing, satirical anti-war novel, written in 1921 about a brilliant idiot's enthusiastic adventures in the First World War.
Overly long, but on occasion laugh-out-loud funny. And, as with any good satire - its' not that the author has confabulated, it's merely that he has that ear for the absurdity of existence. This was - I strongly suspect - one of the principal inspirations behind "Catch-22".
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Which is the first person narration of Cabeza de Vaca's 8 years in North America. One of only 4 survivors of the 1527 Narvaez expedition (from 400 initially) he became one of the first Europeans to cross North America, his odyssey saw him taken slave by various of the Native tribes as he worked his way from Florida to Mexico City - plain speaking, he embellishes nothing - yet, given his ordeal he is remarkably precise about locations, times and distances, as well as offering some cultural insights into the peoples he met.
I love this sort of stuff - History is much more interesting when told to you through the eyes of it's witnesses.
Chapter 21
Five Christians quartered on the coast came to the extremity of eating each other. Only the body of the last one, whom nobody was left to eat, was found unconsumed. Their names were Sierra, Diego Lopez, Corral, Palacios, and Gonzalo Ruiz.
Chapter 23
THE ISLANDERS wanted to make physicians of us without examination or a review of diplomas. Their method of cure is to blow on the sick, the breath and the laying-on of hands supposedly casting out the infirmity. They insisted we should do this too and be of some use to them. We scoffed at their cures and at the idea we knew how to heal. But they withheld food from us until we complied.
Chapter 35
They said that a little man wandered through the region whom they called Badthing [Mala Cosa]. He had a beard and they never saw his features distinctly. When he came to a house, the inhabitants trembled and their hair stood on end. A blazing brand would suddenly shine at the door as he rushed in and seized whom he chose, deeply gashing him in the side with a very sharp flint two palms long and a hand wide. He would thrust his hand through the gashes, draw out the entrails, cut a palm's length from one, and throw it on the embers. Then he would gash an arm three times, the second cut on the inside of the. elbow, and would sever the limb. A little later he would begin to rejoin it, and the touch of his hands would instantly heal the wounds.
Read the Wiki Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvar_N%C3%BA%C3%B1ez_Cabeza_de_Vaca
And, should you be stuck finding the book read it online here: https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Journey_of_Alvar_Nu%C3%B1ez_Cabeza_de_Va/RMQRAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover or here: http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/cdv/rel.htm