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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Only about half way through (a slender, unfortunately abridged version), but as I bought it today that isn't so bad. It's terrific. The author, Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming), is off in or around 1933 in search of the Fawcett expedition that vanished in Brazil in 1925.
I've read a similar account in The Lost City of Z, the book, and was intrigued when I found this closer account. It's excellent.
Excerpts:
"W made amicable and expansive gestures with our arms. We grinned. We put on every semblance of delight; "Ticanto" we cried. We had been told it was the thing to say. "Ticanto," we cried with desperate geniality, wondering what it meant."
- This upon meeting a possibly hostile tribe
"Alas the alligator is a fraud. His formidable reputation -- as empty as his skin, which mountebanks formerly hung in their booths -- is, like that skin, a hallowed device of quackery, a trick to fire imaginations which have to take the tropics on trust."
- This on alligator hunting.
"Beyond that, and forty feet below it, was the river; a river half a mile wide and more: a river so big, so long expected, and so phenomenal in every way that it seemed hardly possible to have come on it so suddenly, to have no more warning that it was waiting for us round the corner of those palms than we should have had of a dog's dead body in the road: a river fired and bloody in the sunset: a river that we loved instantly and learnt at last to hate. we gaped at this river. There was exaltation in the air."
- On first encountering the Amazon.
It's so far a great book, wonderful (although abridged) reading, and curious to note the author (like Speke in the search for the source of the Nile) died in a hunting accident. How common can that be?
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Interesting. Some curious ideas curiously woven together (they make sense later) - and self-referential, it's inspired me to do a little research (fact checking? It's made me curious is all).
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In which the author makes the case that Sir Francis Drake sailed as far North as Alaska in his circumnavigation of the globe. He makes good arguments and I for one am convinced. Well researched, well written, (although academic in tone), enjoyable even if you disagree with the author's conclusions because, quite frankly, Sir Francis Drake was a fascinating fellow in a very curious world.
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It had a kind of cool cover, I thought I recognized the author - Ian Rankin - ("didn't he write...?", I said to myself, and then: "I'm sure I've heard good things....") and so I began to read it. It's good to keep a toe in on the contemporary literary scene. And the reviews on the back jacket were excellent, but it was really the title and cover that got me...
Did I say literary? Oooops.
It's a detective story. And it adheres to almost all of the stereotypes I have about detective novels. Who, really, reads this stuff? I'd give this read a 5-O Ooooops rating.
Link: Ian Rankin's Official Website, Wikipedia on Ian Rankin.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Now it is of the period - 1719 - 1720, and adheres to almost all of the ridiculous conventions of the time - disguises, secret rendezvous, the replacing of one party with another in bed, coincidences and mistaken identities, in terms of plot it is not even slightly plausible - not even for the period.
But such is the time.
On the other hand Eliza Haywood was the first novelist to endow her female characters with the same motives and desires as the male ones. Which makes it exceptional. And, add to that her way of putting the most eloquent speeches in their mouths and you have some curious speeches indeed:
"And are you that dull, cold Platonist, which can prefer the visionary pleasures of an absent mistress, to the warm transports of the substantial present?" The Count was pretty much surprized at these words, coming from the mouth of a woman of honour, and began now to perceive what her aim was...
Curious. File next to Chesterfield, Laclos and Casanova...