A Short History of Nearly Everything

2012.03 — A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (2003)

The title of this book by best-selling author and noted American-with-a-British-accent Bill Bryson might be amended to A Short History of Science. While Bryson does indeed investigate everything from the Big Bang down to the machinations of mitochondrial DNA and all stops in between, alongside everything are the stories of the men and women who have brought this knowledge to light. Primarily, in fact, what we have is a short history of modern science, with most of the science coming from no earlier than the mid-17th century.

In any event Bryson’s Short History is a very enjoyable book, wherein he presents his complex subjects in a manner readable to the lay person (i.e., me), without dumbing anything down. Early in the book he states that much of science deals with figures both infinitely large and infinitesimally small, and that his aim is to deliver it to the reader in a digestible way, spelling things out rather than using scientific notation whenever possible, and using analogies rather than bald numbers (Bryson thankfully never uses “football fields” as a unit of measurement, but he does tell you for example that if you wove all the DNA in a single cell out in one continuous thread it would stretch from the Earth to the Moon multiple times).

The Wapshot Chronicle

2012.02 — The Wapshot Chronicle, John Cheever (1957)

It is perhaps a Freudian slip that when I typed the title of the book to begin this review, I mistakenly typed it as The Waspshot Chronicle. Maybe I’m being too harsh on what is at the end of the day a rich and interesting book, which as the title says chronicles the lives of a well-to-do family in mid-20th century rural New England. While the characters themselves are something less than likeable (likewise the setting, belying the Norman Rockwell stereotype I hold of the place), Cheever’s writing is masterfully wrought and thoroughly engaging.

The first hundred or so pages are fairly prosaic as the author uses plenty of evocative but not overdone imagery and apt metaphor to place the setting and the characters in the reader’s mind. Cheever’s dialogue is most often indirect, but when he uses direct quotes they are in dialect that feels spot on and unobtrusive. We meet the oddball family and become involved in the gradually thickening plot.

Triumph

2012.01 — Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, Jeremy Schaap (2007)

The title says it all, really, as our author the estimable Jeremy Schaap tells the story of Jesse Owens’ astounding victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

I was a little disappointed in the tone of the writing, at least through the first part of the book, which briefly recounts Owens’ childhood and in more detail his college track career. I’m familiar with Schaap as a good sports writer — one of the best in fact, and a fine successor to his widely respected father Dick Schaap — and perhaps my expectations were a little high. Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. In any case there is a definite rah-rah Hallmark Card feeling to the early parts of the book, emphasized by the sometimes corny dialogue Schaap puts into the mouths of his protagonists.

Beyond feeling like I was being urged by the author to root for Owens (and honestly, why would I need such urging? Owens is an iconic figure in American and world sports history, and anyone picking up this book surely does so at least partly out of sympathy with him and a distaste for the Nazis), I got exactly what I wanted from the book, which was a detailed account of Jesse Owens qualifying for and competing at Hitler’s Olympics.

Book Log 2012

1. Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics — Jeremy Schaap (2007) [review here]

2. The Wapshot Chronicle — John Cheever (1957) [review here]

3. A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson (2003) [review here]

4. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon — Frederik Pohl (1980)

5. From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek‘s Dr. McCoy — Terry Lee Rioux (2005)

Book Log 2011

I didn’t open a book “with intent” this year until sometime in late August. I cannot explain why but I just did not feel like reading, which was sort of worrying since I’ve been a voracious reader all my life. I finished Trout Fishing In America right around the New Year, and since I did not include it in my log for 2010, I’ve included it here.

Once I did start reading, I managed to get some pretty good books in before the year’s end. The best book I read this year was the one I just finished last night, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s examination of Dust Bowl migrant farmers. If you have never read it, do. If you have read it, read it again. I hadn’t read it since college about 15 years ago, and it is much better than I remembered; in part because I think I’m a better reader now than I was then (more practiced in critical thought and close reading, and more appreciative of well-crafted writing), and in part because it speaks directly to a lot of the things that I have been thinking heavily about lately: suffering, economic equality, cruelty, generosity, etc. It has been called communist propaganda but I think it would be more accurately described as Humanist propaganda. On top of the grand themes, Steinbeck is a master of prose, able to both construct a large and intensely believable plot and cast of characters, and stick the emotional knife into the reader and twist it to maximum effect. Most classics are classics for a reason and The Grapes of Wrath is a perfect example of this.

I am making an effort to consume more non-fiction, and while I didn’t get the 1-to-1 ratio of fiction-to-non that I’d aimed for, five of the 14 books I read were non-fic, all of which were edifying if not always entertaining. Eating Animals made me continue to look hard at what I put in my body (which currently constitutes a vegetarian diet and may ultimately end up closer to vegan…did I just write that?); 1491 and Mornings on Horseback broadened my deficient knowledge of New World/American history (I know more about the Peloponnesian War than the American Civil War, sadly); and Fear and Loathing: Campaign ’72 and Consider the Lobster helped me realize that there are great authors writing non-fiction (I knew about Hunter S. Thompson, but Lobster is the first David Foster Wallace book I’ve read, and he is a simply brilliant, gifted writer).

My first and greatest love remains fiction, specifically novels. Whether pulpy sci-fi or big meaty lit-class stuff, I love a novel, and I read some good ones this year. It turned out to be one of the first books I ever read, The Hobbit, that helped me get back into the rhythm of reading this year after that inexplicable eight-month hiatus. I normally read quite a bit of sci-fi, but this year the only thing I read from that genre was Man Plus, well-written 1970s psychedelia with a sense of humor and a sense of horror. All the Pretty Horses is top notch (though the best thing I’ve read by Cormac McCarthy is still Blood Meridian), and J.G. Ballard’s Crash is disturbing on both a psychological and a visceral level (but still worth reading!). I got a few lulz out of the Tarzan book I read (review linked below). The most disappointing books I read this year were The Thin Man and The Nigger Factory, in both cases because I expected them to be so much better.

So here’s the list for 2011. As I said I finished The Grapes of Wrath last night, and this morning I began reading Triumph, Jeremy Schaap’s book about Jesse Owens at Hitler’s Olympics, which will be the first book on my log for 2012.

1. Trout Fishing In America — Richard Brautigan (1967)

2. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again — J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

3. Consider the Lobster and Other Essays — David Foster Wallace (2005)

4. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 — Hunter S. Thompson (1973)

5. Crash — J.G. Ballard (1973)

6. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus — Charles G. Mann (2005)

7. All the Pretty Horses — Cormac McCarthy (1992)

8. The Nigger Factory — Gil Scott-Heron (1972)

9. Man Plus — Frederik Pohl (1976)

10. The Thin Man — Dashiell Hammett (1934) [review here]

11. Eating Animals — Jonathan Safran Foer (2009)

12. Jungle Tales of Tarzan — Edgar Rice Burroughs (1919) [review here]

13. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt — David McCullough (1981)

14. The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck (1939)

Jungle Tales of Tarzan

#12 — Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1919)

Jungle Tales of Tarzan is a collection of short stories and the sixth book in the Tarzan series, but it is curiously set in between two chapters of the original novel, Tarzan of the Apes.

I needed a palate cleanser after reading something quote unquote heavy. I enjoy pulp fiction, whether it’s noir, adventure or (most often) SF or whatever, and among the unread books in my queue was this mass market paperback I’d bought last year at Powells for a buck. I’d never read any books about the famous Ape-Man, and so I thought perfect, let’s enjoy some silly adventure stories. Hitherto the only thing I knew about Tarzan was that Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller played him in the movies, and I only knew that because I’d been once or twice to the park in central Florida (read: swamp) where they were filmed.

So anyway, it turns out that Tarzan is a huge asshole.

The Thin Man

#10 — The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett (1934)

The Thin Man had a few nice moments but was overall disappointing, especially when compared with Dashiell Hammett’s best known work The Maltese Falcon. Hammett was a good writer, but this seemed bored and perfunctory. I didn’t care about the intricacies of the plot (a noir murder mystery) and I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters (socialites, cops and lowlifes in NYC), even if some of them were a little interesting. The book ends with a four-page dialogue wherein protagonist Nick Charles tells his wife and sorta sidekick Nora, in elaborate detail, whodunit and howdunit. With the last sentence of the book Nora replies, summing up how I felt about the book: “That may be,” Nora said, “but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory.”

Weirdly it was the last novel Hammett wrote, though he lived another 27 years after its publication.

Eagle Creek

Boot Blog #11. July 18 2011 — Eagle Creek

Capping off Audrey’s three-day birthday weekend, on Monday we drove out to the Columbia Gorge and hiked along Eagle Creek.

Volunteer Diary: 7.6.11 — Harvest Share

Today I went to Lewelling Elementary School in Milwaukie, to help with the Oregon Food Bank’s Harvest Share program, whereby fresh produce is provided to hungry families.

I’ve been volunteering at OFB for more than a year now, sorting and repacking donated and salvaged foods to be distributed later at soup kitchens and local hunger relief agencies. I’ve been wanting to do something closer to those distribution points, to help actually get the food into the hands of those who need it, and when I got an email from OFB asking for Harvest Share volunteers, I took the opportunity.

Champoeg

Boot Blog #12. July 4 2011 — Champoeg State Park

With no plans for Independence Day, and no desire to waste this brave new summer weather, Audrey and I drove to unincorporated Marion County for a hike among the ghost towns of Champoeg and Butteville.

It was a blazing hot day (well, 80 degrees is hot for western Oregon anyway), all sunshine and blue skies. We got a late start, but arrived at the park at about 11am and commenced to hike.