Visions Caliban CL by Dale Peterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"We share ninety-nine percent of our genes with chimpanzees, and our relations with them epitomize both our kinship with and our alienation from the rest of the natural world. In this groundbreaking book, a brilliant writer and a great scientists paint an extraordinary portrait of chimpanzees, humans, and our complex lives together since the 1600s, when chimpanzees first became known in Europe and William Shakespeare created Caliban, neither man nor beast but 'honored with a human shape.'
"This vision of Caliban is brought vividly to life by the authors' stories of their personal experiences with chimpanzees, in the wild and in captivity. The humanity of chimps is captured in accounts of their use of tools and medicinal plants, their sense of self, and their devotion to one another -- and sometimes to humans. Our inhumanity toward them is illustrated by chilling accounts of the international chimpanzee trade and of the abuse of chimps in medical research and entertainment. The poignancy of our relationship is revealed in tales of chimps raised as children by humans and then abandoned to laboratories or sent back to the wild, where they mush learn to be chimps again.
"With a cast of characters that ranges from Shakespeare to J. Fred Muggs, Visions of Caliban is a dramatic, entertaining, and affecting investigation of man's relationship to chimpanzees."
~~front flap
This was a very difficult book to read. Poignant, distressing, informative, enlightening. It wasn't what I was expecting at all, having been thrown off the scent by the second portion of the title: "On Chimpanzees and People." I don't know how to talk about this book, really. I came away with a much better idea of the real nature of chimpanzees, and also of their precarious balance on the brink of extinction -- due to the all-too-common causes of habitat destruction and overhunting. It came as a distinct shock to read about how we, in the United States (and other Western European nations) are actively involved in, and complicit in, the latter menace.
The book is very well written, researched and supported in minute detail. I recommend it -- it will broaden your outlook and open your eyes a bit further on how we think about the natural world, and our place in it and our relationship to it.
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
"Frances Mayes -- widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer -- opens the door to a wondrous new world when she buys and restores an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. In sensuous and evocative language, she brings the reader along as she discovers the beauty and simplicity of life in Italy. An accomplished cook and food writer, Mayes also creates dozens of delicious seasonal recipes from her traditional kitchen and simple garden, all of which she includes in the book. Doing for Tuscany what M.F.K. Fisher and Peter Mayle did for Provence, Mayes writes about the tastes and pleasures of a foreign country with gusto and passion. A celebration of the extraordinary quality of life in Tuscany, Under the Tuscan Sun is a fest for all the senses."
~~back cover
My friend Maui Jim told me a long time ago that this was a good book. I thought it strange he would say so, since I somehow had got hold of the notion that this was a romance. I'm not big on romances. But then somehow or other the film is coming up in my Netflix queue, and I decided to read the book before watching the movie -- I seem to get what's going on in the movie better if I've read the book first.
I'm sure all of you are snickering behind your hands -- it's NOT a romance! It's a lovely recapturing of falling in love with a place, needing to and determined to be living there, and how the author and her husband achieved that goal. Reading, you feel as though you're there -- the light, the people, the old stone buildings. It's almost a shock to look up and find yourself in your own home, when just moments ago you were sitting on the patio with breakfast, soaking up the light and the quiet morning sounds of Tuscany.
The only thing I didn't like about the book was its eternal summer, with only a few hasty winter sketches. The author and her husband are both university professors in America, and therefore required to spend nine months here, with the Tuscany house shut up and waiting for them.
Tottering in My Garden: A Gardener's Memoir by Midge Ellis Keeble
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"A gardener of 40 years, Midge Keeble has established six outstanding gardens in her life, meeting the challenges of clay, sand, shade and tired soil. Tottering in My Garden spills over with practical advice and, at the same time, serves as delightful reading to anyone who has ever broken ground with a trowel and planted a seed."
~~back cover
I'm not much of a gardener, but this is a charming and laugh-out-loud funny book. The author regales you with the stories of how each garden came to be, the mistakes made along the way, the pets who adopted them, their children growing up, etc. And all the while she talks about the gardens, how to make them what you want them to be, how to care for the plants, etc. There are several sections entitled "NOTES FOR THE NOVICE" which are extremely useful, and other tips and tricks scattered throughout the narrative.
But it's the narrative itself that's the icing on the cake: wryly humorous, self-depreciating humor about mistakes and miscues, animals on the loose, how not to garden, etc. I enjoyed the information, but I loved the story. And devoured the book almost at one go.
Scotland: An Intimate Portrait by Geddes MacGregor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
"Now a modern classic, Scotland: An Intimate Portrait is an introduction to the soul of Scotland for the millions who have visited this enchanting land and come away wanting to know more that the guidebooks tell us. With wit and warmth, Geddes MacGregor examines his homeland's traditions, history, eccentricities, and contradictions, offering a portrait of Scotland as only a native can. Golf, kilts, clans, tartans, whisky, and other things quintessentially Scottish are described in loving detail. There are sections on local speech, literature and songs, kings and queens, religion, education, and nationalism.
"Described by the New York Times as 'useful and endearing,' Scotland: An Intimate Portrait is indispensable for tourists, armchair travelers, people of Scottish descent, or anyone with a curiosity to know more about this beguiling land."
~~back cover
This is indeed a very informative book! The author very methodically covers just about every aspect of Scotland past & present. A very basic book -- there's too much to know about Scotland to get it all crammed into 235 pages. I read it through, & learned some things I didn't know. But the book didn't capture me -- I was never dying to get my chores done so I could go back to reading it. All that being said, I do recommend it if you're going to Scotland, or wanting to know more about the country.
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Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
"Those who have followed beloved barrister Horace Rumpole's career have heard frequent reference to the Penge Bungalow affair but have never known the details of the famous case that established his reputation. Now in this sensational full-length Rumpole novel, Mortimer at last relates the particulars of Rumpole's first case, some fifty years ago when he was but a youthful novice at the Old Bailey.
"Two Second World War heroes have been murdered, and the son of one of the victims has been charged. The judge is intent on hanging him. Old Wystan -- the head barrister and father of Hilda -- seems to have given up the game. But something about the evidence bothers Rumpole who, defying all precedent, takes over the defense and comes through triumphantly, winning the attentions of Hilda -- unaware she will one day become She Who Must Be Obeyed."
~~back cover
I finally need to admit it: I'm just not a fan of John Mortimer, or Rumpole. I realize that the Rumpole character is a send-up or iconoclastic, intelligent, unkempt people who nonetheless are quite good at their profession. The setting of course is a send-up of judges, prosecuting barristers, and the law itself. Nevertheless, the whole thing seems murky and convoluted to me. And I've just watched the first season, and didn't care much for it either.
But if you like this style of thing, it's wonderfully well written, and you'll enjoy it.
Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country by Joe Queenan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
"This book is an attempt to make clear that there are things about Britain that delight me (Chelsea Pensioners, cows on the commons, Edward VII, Keith Richards), things that appall me (Chelsea football supporters, cows on canvases, Edward VIII, Cliff Richard), and things that mystify me (why anyone would listen to English morning radio, the House of Lords, the way people dress once they turn thirty, basically, the entire society). For the truth is, the Brits have always baffled me."
"One semitropical Fourth of July, Joe Queenan's English wife suggested that the family might like a chicken tikka masala in lieu of the customary barbecue. It was this pitiless act of gastronomic cultural oppression,coupled with the dread of the fearsome Christmas pudding that awaited him for dessert, that inspired the author to make a solitary pilgrimage to Great Britain. Freed from the obligation to visit an unending procession of Aunty Margarets and Cousin Robins, as he had done for the first twenty-six years of their marriage, Queenan decided that he would not come back from Albion until he had finally penetrated the heart of limey darkness.
"His trip was not in vain. Crisscrossing Old Blightly like Cromwell hunting Papists, Queenan finally came to terms with the choochiness, squiffiness,ponciness,and sticky wicketness that lie at the heart of the British character. Here he is trying to find out whose idea it was to impale King Edward II on a red-hot poker -- and what this says about English sexual politics. Here he is in an Edinburgh pub, seeking to pinpoint the connection between Edward I's pitiless 1297 invasion of Scotland and Paul McCartney's pitiless 1977 recording of 'Mull of Kintyre.' And here he is, trapped in a Gloustershire concert hall with an Eagles tribute band named Talon who secretly resent that they are nowhere near as famous as their evil nemeses, the Illegal Eagles. At the end of his epic adventure, the author returns chastened,non the wiser, but encouraged that his wife is actually as sane as she is, all things considered."
~~front & back flaps
It started out innocently enough, but then rapidly deteriorated into the sort of book you want to throw against the wall. (I didn't, because I want to trade it in, and my local USB has an intransigent attitude towards books in pieces.) The author was snide, snarky and snotty about most everything he came across, and most of the people as well. I hope he kept his opinions to himself while he was there, or else US/UK relations were set back an untold number of years, and new meaning given to the concept "Ugly American".
I was firmly intending to give this book no stars at all, since there is no star designating "HATED it!" And then I came to the final pages:
"... there is a personal Albion that belongs tome that no English citizen born in more recent times can ever know. I remember Stonehenge before the fence got put up around it, when you could simply drive up in the middle of the night and stand speechless before the mysterious monoliths. I remember the miner's strikes that caused Edward Heath's government to collapse. ... I remember that Carmella's Place in Nailsworth used to be called Tubby's, and that the plumbing didn't work under that name either. I remember stone pubs in Paganhill that were so frigid you had to already be drunk just to stay warm enough to take off your gloves and pay for your next drink ... I remember a pub in Dursley with a ceiling so low that my dart once deflected off the roof into the bull's-eye, much to my brother-in-law's disgust. I remember another freezing pub in Paganhill where my brother-in-law and I got doused in ice cold water by a drunken prankster who claimed to be aiming at somebody else, but Tony insisted on finishing our game of cribbage with the soaking cards because he four fives and a queen with two kings in the box and wasn't likely to get another hand like that for the rest of his life. ...
"Much of the Britain I love has disappeared. Edwardian pubs have been torn apart and remodeled to look Tudor; even in the dainty Cotswolds people rarely say things like 'Excuse me, old cock, could I borrow that stool?' anymore. But enough of the old Britain remains. ...
"There isn't anything in the world better than riding a London double-decker bus. There isn't a more beautiful place in the world than the Embankment at sunset. There is nothing more stirring than the Houses of Parliament illuminated at midnight... I have often said that if I had to pick a city to live in the rest of my life it would be Paris, but if I had to pick a city in which to spend the last day of my life it would be London. One chilly evening, I called a friend in New York to gloat that I was standing in the shadow of Nelson's statue in front of the National Gallery right beside St. Martin-in-the-Fields as Big Ben struck midnight, and he had the misfortune to be elsewhere. You cannot put a price on these things, and if you did, it would not be nearly high enough.
"I left London for New York the day after the Queen Mother's funeral. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people lined the streets. The service was broadcast over enormous speakers lining St. James Park; the silence was breathtakingly visceral. People were not afraid to weep openly ... After the funeral, the Queen herself motored past; it was the second time I had seen her in the past month. She had just lost a sister, now her mother. ... At the very end of the service, the Coldstream Guards, the Highlanders, and all the rest marched past in their amazing, resplendent, and very strange costumes. There were kilts, bagpipes, massive furry hats, battered tiger skins ... The British may have lost their empire, but they still know how to put on an impressive show. The ancient pipes filled the air with the tunes that had petrified enemies from Bunker Hill to Bengal. The pipes sported the very stiffest of upper lips. ... I did not want to be anywhere but Britain.
"As the last of the pipers disappeared toward their headquarters near Buckingham Palace, and I gazed over the sea of teary-eyed Brits, I felt the same way I did whenever I heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, that it was hard to believe that I had been lucky enough to live in the same solar system as such a remarkable human being. The English inspired a similar sense of affection and awe. They were, by turns, mad, hilarious, exasperating, unpredictable, peculiar, courageous, thrilling. The Brits were the very best mankind had to offer; if the planet was ever to host a more fascinating race, then the rest of us were in for a real treat. ... Standing in the park as the drone of the bagpipes receded into the distance, I was reassured by the though that there would always be Highlanders, there would always be Coldstream Guards, there would always be the queen, there would always be an England.
"The alternative was simply not acceptable."
Impossible to read that with a tug on your heartstrings. And it certainly redeemed the book.
(Q authors aren't that easy to come by, which explains how this book wound up in my TBR pile.)
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The Perfect Summer England 1911, Just Before the Storm by Juliet Nicolson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago, when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. In the summer of 1911 a new kind was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. At a debutante charity ball where the other girls came dressed as as white swans, the striking Diana Manners made a late appearance as a black swan. The Ballets Russes arrived in London for the first time and people swarmed to Covent Garden to see Nijinsky's gravity-defying leaps. But cracks in the social fabric had begun to show. The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes; led by the charismatic Ben Tillett, the Southampton Dockers' Union paralyzed shipping in the south, causing food shortages. The young Home Secretary Winston Churchill worried in his diary that 'all the world is changing at once.'
"Through the tight lens of four months, Juliet Nicolson brings that portentous summer into crisp focus. Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources, The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered story of how, day by cloudless day, a nation began to lose its innocence."
~~back cover
This was indeed a "brilliant, lucid, entertaining and fascinating" book. Like Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men, I had expected this book to be a somewhat dry recital of facts and figures, slightly boring -- a book to be waded through rather than read. Instead, I could hardly put it down. It's not fiction, but it reads as easily and charmingly as good fiction does. The author cleverly selected people and events to give an accurate picture of the end of the Edwardian age, juxtapositioning them for the most contrast and continuity.
In many ways, these times are a mirror of those we live in today--the poor working long hours at menial jobs and unable to make enough to live on; the rich living lives of unbridled luxury and frivolousness. We can but wonder whether the Occupy movement will ever gain enough support to compel changes, as the 1911 strikes did.
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