The Agrinautica

   It all began with Master and Commander. And that was so good that then there was Hornblower. And then, between audible and amazon there were recommendations of more and more similar series. The weirdly specific genre of dozen-book-series-about-a-protagonist-in-the-Royal-Navy-during-the-Napoleonic-Wars seems to have a surprising number of series in it. I made an excel document because I thought it would be fun to read those that I haven't read already in chronological order bouncing between them, though I had read most of most of the series already by the time I got this idea, and the Master & Commander series is the only one I think I would like to re-read.

   But on any account the books are similar enough in scope that they actually make for easy analysis of what the various writers are doing well or badly.

Jack Aubrey - "Aubrey-Maturin Series" / "Master and Commander Series"
   This is the gold standard of the genre. This series follows Captain Jack Aubrey, and his friend (and Naval doctor) Stephen Maturin who is so thoroughly fleshed out and a character of his own that it's often called the "Aubrey-Maturin Series." The characters are all unique and believable, the descriptions ranking with the highest of literature, the amount of nautical knowledge the author clearly possesses is unbelievably vast. A truly amazing series. Most of Aubrey's actions are actually based on the historical actions of Thomas Chochran, so it can't be said any of his victories are implausible, they basically happened as described. (And by an astounding coincidence I just realized I had last sung its praises in review _exactly_ a year ago!)

Horatio Hornblower
   It's long enough since I read this series that I don't remember the details quite so well, except inasmuch as I didn't like it as much as Master & Commander. In many people's opinion though it seems to possibly rival M&C -- I think it less strives for the kind of high literary heights M&C does and tells simpler more straightforward stories. Whereas Master & Commander begins during a concert and proceeds immediately with a chapter on the outfitting of the ship, which I found to be a geniusly executed maneuver, Hornblower would probably tend to tell any story in a much more straightforward right-to-the-action manner. M&C is for if you want to be carried away by literary genius, however, if you're motto is more along the lines of "never mind tactics just lay her yardarm to yardarm" Hornbower is more straightforward swashbuckling sea adventures. Another contrast I think is that Horatio Hornblower doesn't really have a particularly memorable personality. Googling "Hornblower personality" in case I'd forgotten, it just says "courage and integrity." Those are admirable but not really the makings of a thoroughly rounded character. Jack Aubrey on the other hand is just bursting with personality, he has "courage and integrity" and so much more, including a raft of faults that come front and center almost immediately (a certain nativity towards non maritime matters, brushing people the wrong way with his exuberance, trouble caused by his romantic pursuits). I was rather wondering why Hornblower seemed to have more cultural hold until I compared the publication dates: 1937-1967 compared to Aubrey-Maturin's 1969-2004.

Ramage
   The protagonist of this series is Lord Nicholas Ramage, whom we meet in the first book as a young lieutenant. He is an aristocrat from a seafaring family. His sidekick is an American seaman (his coxswain) on his crew. I read the first book of the series long enough ago that I don't really remember it, but, having caught up with it chronologically while recently reading the Bolitho series, I just read the second book in the series. The writing is clear and the adventures varied and continuous.. but every character has the personality of an exuberant 13 year old, the protagonist's creative solutions often depend on obvious counter-actions not occurring to the enemy or reader, and, for example, while spying in an enemy port random strangers he approaches on the street seem over-eager to just volunteer all kinds of useful information. He greets a fisherman and by almost the second sentence out of said fisherman's mouth he's mentioning where there are forts with guns (because they "scare the fish"), or, similarly, the enemy admiral's gardener can't wait to tell random passersby everything he knows about the admiral's schedule and habits. For these reasons I think it might be best enjoyed by a less discriminating audience, perhaps one that is itself 13.

John Pierce
   The protagonist in this series actually has a background that breaks the mold (nearly) all the others are set in -- he was pressed (forcibly conscripted -- literally kidnapped at night from a pub, an actual practice) involuntarily into the royal navy. Through the course of the series he continues for one reason or another to be pressured into staying in the Royal Navy and even accepting commission as an officer. I had read the first fifteen books of the series earlier and just recently read the 16th. And upon commencing this reading of the 16th I don't know how I made it through the first 15; I'm finding the writing quite tedious: (1) The first two chapters and more are just thick thick exposition of everything that's happened in the prior 15 books, most of which turns out to be barely relevant to the current book, and involves various plots and connivances of lawyers in London, with numerous characters mentioned who don't feature in this book and having forgotten them all since I read the rest of the series it was just an overwhelming amount of thick incomprehensible blathering; (2) I don't know the literary analysis word for this but he keeps instead of saying "[dialogue]" he said the author writes "[dialogue]" was what he had said next or instead of he kicked the door in he writes kicking the door in is what he did next. This kind of thing certainly doesn't help not make it a tedious read. Also I think I can never forgive the protagonist and author for having the protagonist in one of the books enter an enemy camp under a flag of truce and then commence an attack from the inside -- having read a lot of books about the period I feel confident that everyone in the Royal Navy would thereafter consider him a despicable honorless poltroon to be never employed again in any capacity, but in the book his superiors are just like jolly ho good job. Also in for example the most recent book I read (spoiler alert) with a particularly bad crew (mentioned frequently) he captures a much bigger French frigate with no clever explanation other than they somehow just outfought them, somehow, with a smaller less trained crew just kinda won by fiat.

Bolitho
   The protagonist of this series is once again the scion of an aristocratic seafaring family. In general I find the stories well enough written to be worthwhile reading, without feeling like they're written for insultingly-less-discriminating audience as some of the others. Just a few quirks though: the author seems to lack imagination: the protagonist's clever solution to attacking an enemy strongpoint is always to come ashore and approach from behind, and/or the enemy does it to them; he has a fiercely loyal immensely strong crewman sidekick, who then dies and is replaced by a carbon copy character; every admiral he encounters is absolutely falling down incompetent, and the protagonist keeps falling in love with their wives and stealing them away (but then both the admiral and then the wife sadly dies). Another annoying thing is the protagonist's personality seems to be mostly inclined to be cold and snappish to everyone else, which is fine, characters don't have to be likeable, but when the author/narrator doesn't seem to realize they've written a not-super-likeable-personality character it's a bit of a disconnect -- almost every single time another character addresses the protagonist the protagonist responds with the kind of curt snappishness you'd think people would soon learn not to address him if avoidable, and yet the author has so many asides about how much other characters like Bolitho, it starts to feel like he's severely Marie-Sue-ing (that is, tying his own ego to the protagonist). There's a really gratuitous amount of references to nearby minor characters saying how damn impressed they are with Bolitho.

Thomas Kydd
   It's a been a bit of time since I read most of this series, but the one thing that really stuck with me is that the protagonist's sidekick in this one is like a cheap knockoff of the famous Maturin of Master and Commander. That is to say, a philosophical naturalist. But while Maturin is a delightful character full of quirks and authentic philosophical musings which seem perfectly natural in context, "Renzi" of the Kydd series is always spouting disjointed snippits of philosophy that DON'T feel like they fit in context and just acting snooty. It was really offputting. The protagonist, Thomas Kydd in this one is originally pressed into service like Pierce was, and also has the immensely strong coxswain sidekick trope going on.

Alexander Clay
   This one frustrated me from the start by being very unclear what size vessel they were on (there's a world of difference between a sloop and a 1st rate!), where they were and what the even approximate date was (I eventually figured out they appeared to be participating in the British expedition against Ostend, May 18th 1798 by googling Ostend, which had been mentioned). The ship turned out to be a 32 gun frigate but the fact the author didn't immediately mention this shows immediately a lack of understanding of what's important (read a Patrick O'Brien book, the size of every ship by guns is always the first thing mentioned). And yet, and yet, while being unclear about things like that the author uses character dialogue to explain painfully obvious things like what latitude is and that ships of the era can primarily only fire off to the side -- I mean that might not be obvious to everyone today but he actually has one sailor asking another, while at sea chasing an enemy, like how could they possibly not know that when they're actually on such a ship. What the author does well is that there's actually several point of view characters among the crew rather than the one protagonist ... but there's a lot of tedious dialogue between them -- tedious mainly because the author doesn't seem to realize that in real life nearly everyone talks with as few words as possible to express a thought unless they're particularly pompous. Every one of the sailors is stringing unnecessarily long sentences together that don't get to the point until a dozen syllables in, by which point his mates would probably have wandered off. Also, as in the Pierce book, in the one book of this series I read they also out fight and capture a bigger French frigate with again no explanation other than > ??? > win. OTHER than characters being frequently inexplicably idiots and everyone talking pompously, it's a decent book, but author should definitely devote some time to those things. I however don't think I'll continue reading the series as between the tedious dialogue and insults-your-intelligence explanations I found it a bit tedious.

Merriman Chronicles
   After the above, I was starting to think I might have to draw a line and just steer clear of the lesser-known series, assuming they're lesser known for a reason. Nonetheless when audible recommended yet another to me I couldn't resist. The Merriman Chronicles thus far focuses on Commander James Merriman (but the introduction seems to indicate the whole series will feature multiple generations) in 1792, returning home after the loss of a ship (it seems like perhaps it's meant to come after an earlier book the author never got around to writing?). Numerous of these series have a book in which the protagonist finds himself assigned to a revenue cutter off England's shores combatting smugglers (it always predictably turns out to be the wealthy and well respected local landowner who is behind the smuggling ring). When Bolitho has these adventures I seriously questioned whether I was accidentally re-reading the same book twice but no I was remembering the Kydd version. I'm currently paused in the Ramage series on a book that seems to be that again (Ramage and the Freebooters) because I'm kind of unenthusaistic to go through it all again, it's not my favorite plotline. He does of course have the obligatory common-sailor-sidekick accompanying him, who like in the other books, infiltrates the smuggler's ring. And like the other books as a test has to kill someone. I haven't gotten to the resolution yet but dollars to doughnuts says it's a wealthy respected local figure. So here I am starting a yet even more unknown series that's embarking immediately down a plotline I'm already tired of ... and actually I really like it! It's well written, without the stilted dialogue or overwrought philophizing of some of the others. And, being as I'm listening to it on audible one can never rule out the effect the voice acting has on the work, whether it be to the benefit or detriment. In this case, the voice actor (Nigel Peever) is excellent. And not only that, but the narration is backed by appropriate background noises throughout, which I have never heard done well before but here it is! I looked up the publisher wondering which major publisher was doing such a good job and the publisher is listed as "The Merriman Chronicles." It IS its own publisher?? Like is it self published and the author just somehow arranged such good audio production?? Anyway I recommend this series, I'll definitely be continuing to read it.
   Edit to add, after finishing I do like it, the audible production is great. To a certain degree the plot was as expected kind of predictable to this trope plot but it was better written than some of the others. One little detail that I liked is that they had a midshipmen, always noted for being young and squeaky (they're typically aged 12-16), but while they're usually barely competent (expected for the age), this nervous and squeaky midshipmen exhibits impressive flashes of initiative on several occasions.

William Bewer Series
   What, is this genre truly endless?? This one I haven't even started yet, but audible recommended to me and I note it has the same voice actor as the Merriman Chronicles which bodes well for quality. I don't see a year listed for the first book of this series but according to the blurb it begins with Lt Brewer as an aide to Admiral Governor Lord Horatio Hornblower, whose fictional biography on wikipedia informs me was made an admiral in 1823 and governor 1829-1831 so it presumably takes place then, which is a fair bit later than all the other abovementioned series.

Edit to add: in the 24 hours since I originally posted this I've discovered two MORE similar series! "Adventures of Charles Hayden," and Bliven Putnam (who at least changes it up by being in the American navy, and an "Isaac Biddlecomb" series! Even as a fan of this genre I'm amazed there's so many long series in it!

Edit edit to add: Isaac Biddlecomb
   I've now started the Isaac Biddlecomb series and I'm actually pleasantly impressed with this one. So far the protagonist began as an American merchant/smuggler captain, was reluctant to support the budding American revolution, has had a series of misadventures ultimately ending up at this point pressed into a British warship, which is to say so far it hasn't fallen into any of the familiar trope plots. The writing is good, the characters well rounded, I especially like how the author doesn't make everyone's loyalties hard and fast things but really explores the contending arguments splitting people's loyalties at the time. One thing that's distractingly weird about the audiobook though is the narrator reads every line with that weird distinctive cadence that Captain Kirk is famously parodied for.

Honorable Mention: The Honorverse
   The "Honorverse" series takes place 2000 years or so in the future from present, and is overtly a sci fi space homage to Horatio Hornblower -- it makes literal references to Hornblower and to the fact that the protagonist has the same initials. The protagonist, Honor Harrington,'s career doesn't follow Hornblower's exactly though so much as is as much as possible parallel to Admiral Nelson. That and she has a cat modeled off my own former cat friend Cato. Though the author isn't terribly great at writing unique characters, they all are either resourceful, friendly, plucky protagonists or dastardly, cowardly, scheming bad guys, but other than that I really like the universe (figuratively and literally) the author has created. I do recommend to anyone who has both enjoyed books of the above maritime genre and also enjoys science fiction.

And now, the spreadsheet! As you can see the dates are the Y axis going downward. In bold are the books I've already read. I'm essentially in 1797 with my most recent attempt to read chronologically across series, and Spain has just entered the war on Frances side.




   I made this spreadsheet because I both had this idea to read the books in chronological order even if it meant flipping between series, and also I was very curious to try to figure out if any of the characters crossed paths. Apparently Aubrey and Hornblower were both in eachother's vicinity during the capture of the Spanish treasure fleet on Oct 5th 1804; and a bunch of the protagonists seemed to be around the 1793 Siege of Toulon (probably because it was the first time General Napoleon would have come to particulr notice of anyone, and one of his few campaigns that directly abutted naval action).

   I'm really surprised given the popularity of this genre and the popularity of pirates, there's not a similar series written 80-100 years earlier during the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean. (Obviously there ARE pirate books but they're not as nautical focused as this genre and usually essentially hokey, IMO. Like Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes (barf) (though in his defense it was published posthumously and maybe he'd have improved it but it was never gonna be Master & Commandeer))


   I think tomorrow I'll polish this up and post to Medium in search of a larger audience, so if you have any perspectives on any of these series please share them!

   Let us pick up directly from where we left off, at the airport gate to leave Melbourne, and stressed about whether or not I'd be able to get in to Guinea due to accidentally failing to have my yellow fever certificate with me.

   Sitting nearby in the waiting area was what appeared to be a couple of African descent with their 4 year old daughter, and the precocious little girl was telling another woman "I'm going to Africa!" So I thought I'd be so bold as to ask the man where in Africa they were going.
   "Conakry Guinea"
   "Me toooo!"
   We immediately began comparing notes on the trip to Guinea (there's direct flights from Dubai now!), how things are there, etc. They turned out to be extremely friendly. Not a couple as it happens. The man (Sam) was traveling with his wife's best friend and the latter's daughter.

   Had an aisle seat beside an older caucasian couple. It would be my assumption they're just doing something boring like being on a vacation to Rome but last year when I finally talked to my older caucasian seatmate three quarters of the way through the flight it turned out she was on her way to Lagos Nigeria for a development project. So with that in mind this time I greeted my seatmates as soon as we were seated. They were on their way to Rome for vacation.

In Flight Movie Reviews
Woman King - This movie is about the legendary female warriors of the Dahomey kingdrom in West Africa in or around 1823. The plot is kind of a bit full of ahistorical fluff -- in the movie the Dahomey are adamandtly opposed to the slave trade and fighting to end it when in reality the Dahomey under that specific king tremendously _increased_ their participation in the slave trade and it was only under pressure from England that they eventually moved away from it. But other than that it's a fun movie and it's good to see a hollywood movie set West Africa actually striving to do serious justice to the culture rather than have it be some anarchic backwater of simple "natives." One review describes it as "Braveheart with black women" and that seems accurate.
   Also noteworthy that John Boyega, who played the Dahomey king, is ethnically Yoruba, ie, of the people who are portrayed as his enemies here. And it was interesting to me because the Yoruba history I'd read as background for the historical bits of my book as generally from the Oyo / Yoruba perspective, so funny for me as well for them to be cast as the villians. Also, as portrayed here, they come across more like their own enemies the Sokoto Caliphate horsemen than as themselves.
   I give it an A-, it was enjoyable and my only quibbles are with their historical liberties.

The Legion - This movie about a Roman scout escaping an encircled Roman camp and fleeing across the Armenian wilderness pursued by two enemies in order to go ask for help from another Roman general was extremely unimpressive. It felt like I was watching a student film project made by about half a dozen film students (I'm surprised to read now there's as many as sixteen actors in it). I didn't even try not to fall asleep during it and I don't think I missed anything. Looks like the professional reviewers pretty well skewered it too. F

Unknown Richard the Lionhearted Movie Kingslayer - then I tried to watch some Richard the Lionhearted movie that also didn't seem like it was proceeding very promisingly and I was at my limit for bad movies so just went to sleep. Googling it now I find it has 4/10 stars on IMDB, and the first result besides that is a google auto generated "People Often Ask: Is Kingslayer a good movie?" with the answer "Kingslayer is a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly directed film where the plot makes as little sense as why John Rhys-Davies agreed to associate himself with it." sooo I think my initial impression was probably correct and I'm going to go ahead and label it with the F
End Movie Interlude

   Arrived at 5:20am local time in Dubai, which would have been 10:20am in Melbourne, I guess making it only a 13 hour flight.
   Met up with my Guinean friends, who of course were making the same connection as I. Because I'm almost always traveling alone it's kind of novel and fun for me to feel like I'm traveling "with" people and they made me feel like I was part of their little group. In fact I had a very unusually social time in the airport because then a Muslim man approached us, he couldn't speak English but it was clear he couldn't figure out where his flight's gate was so I went off with him in search of his proper gate until he found some Arabic speaking people to help him. Anyway took off about two hours later.



   Flight would be bound for Dakar after Conakry and wasn't full. I was kind of anticipating most of the passenger would be onward bound to Dakar but (spoiler alert) it seemed like roughtly half got off in Conakry in the end. I would have had a seatmate but the cheeky woman moved to an unoccupied seat in the front row of the section, which I'd just heard the flight attendant tell someone else they'd have to pay $100 if they wanted to upgrade to it ahaha. So I had the aisle seat, empty seat beside me and a young man by the window spoke no known language (which is to say not English or French), and didn't deplane in Conakry.
   As the flight was all day time, and had the same set of movies of which I'd already seen all the ones I wanted to watch, I just read my book(s).

In Flight Book Reviews
In Trouble Again by Redmond O'Hanlon -- I had greatly enjoyed reading his later book set in the Congo, and in this one he is traveling by boat through the Venezuelan Amazon. Again I loved his mix of well portrayed characters, beautiful descriptions, and interesting all around setting, observations of natural history, etc. I think I slightly preferred Congo Journey for its tighter Heart of Darkness style plot arc of descent into near insanity, but no complaints about this book, I quite liked it. Finished the book ... great I haven't even arrive yet and finished one of the two books I brought with me. And I like this book too much to discard it, want to keep it on my shelf / loan it to other people, so guess I'll be carting it around now.

Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmon O'Hanlon -- Started this earlier book by the same author. In this one he is in 1983 making his first of what as we know would later be several ambitious expeditions. I'm only a few chapters in and I can tell his writing at this early stage is much less evolved than it would later be. He seems to be hurrying along in his prose, and makes some jokes I felt rather fell flat, but that's not to say it's a bad book at all. In fact it's kind of fun to have witnessed his development as an author through the course of his books. Anyway, I'm not very far in so that's all I have to say about this one so far.

   But in general I think O'Hanlon might be unseating Paul Theoroux in my opinion as the best travel writer, though I just wish he had written more books! It's only these three and one more on a trawler in the North Atlantic.
End Book Review Interlude



   I expected we would just fly more or less straight west across north Africa but we instead took quite the detour north over the Mediterranean. I kind of expected maybe we'd avoid flying over Sudan but looking at the specific route we took I can only guess we were also trying to avoid flying over Libya and Mali as well. And you'd think this would have been planned in advance but then we arrived over an hour late so who knows. As it happens, sometimes like on the Mel-DXB leg, I don't look at the in flight maps but as I was just reading I had he map open the whole time so I'd look up at it every so often and be like "okay we're crossing over Alexandria now huh." "well look there's Malta now. Are we headed to Europe??"
   And also, don't forget, this whole time in the back of my mind I'm a little stressed about what will happen when we get to Guinea in terms of being able to get in without the yellow fever certificate.

   So by and by finally we landed. 3pm local (2am Saturday Melbourne, having left my house at 2pm Thursday). Last year they were checking temperatures and covid vaccination certificates just at the end of the boarding bridge but not so this time (also masks are being worn now by a handful of people but no longer either required or worn by a siginificant number of people). Rather than wait for my friends, I hurried along thinking it might take me awhile to deal with passport control. Proceeded directly to the woman in the "arrival visas" kiosk, who last year had been sullen and difficult and had extracted a bribe from me (by cleverly telling me I needed to pay, rather than actually asking for a bribe, I only realized later I'd already paid for the visa). But this time she waved me away saying "no marshe pas!" which to my very basic understanding of French seemed to be "don't walk" and made no sense -- though now I look it up and apparently it means "do not work" (though I wasn't wrong, marche does walk on its own). So I just went to the passport stamping kiosk and handed the woman there my passport and the paper showing my visa approval. Rather to my surprise she simply stamped the paper and the passport and waved me through.
   Last year not only had the first lady asked me a bunch of questions and made a big deal about issuing a visa, but then the person at hte passport stamping kiosk had ALSO grilled me on things like the address and phone number of where I was staying and my hosts and generally also made himself difficult. But this time and after all that stress I blew through passport control in probably a matter of seconds. Needless to say she didn't ask about a yellow fever certificate.
   And then I ended up waiting around for my friends, they were among the last off the airplane. As we exited the terminal they were met by their joyous families. My ride was a spot late due to traffic but by and by they came and collected me, took me to the hotel. Another difference I noted from last year was a very heavy policy presence last year. There were armed soldiers loitering menacingly in the airport last year, one had to squeeze past them on the narrow walkway out which was kind of intimidating, and then in the drive across town one would see them very visibily present in many places -- as I noted last year I even saw things like a heavily armed policeman (/ military? well I think they're "gendarmes" which are literally both police and military) savagely thwack a motorcyclist for not coming to a stop fast enough. The police presence was overwhelming and imminently menacing. I don't know if the political situation has in general improved here -- they still have the unelected military leader who took over in a coup -- but just from the first day's observations the military/police presence doesn't seem as overwhelming and menacing.



   Otherwise, at the same hotel again. Just chillin here (well it's 36c/98f out so maybe not exactly "chillin") Saturday (today) and then tomorrow I depart for up-country.

   I recently finished reading the fourth of four related books, and now I will review them!

Unaccompanied Females in Norway; or, the Pleasantest Way of Traveling There, Passing Through Denmark and Sweden - I had first come across people making fun of the title on Twitter, being as the first part of the title, of which was the only part therein given, could be read as a kind of creepy guide to the unaccompanied females of Norway, but of course it's not that; and being a fan of travelogues, history, and Norway, I had decided to order it on Amazon forthwith. It's written be a young woman traveling with her mother in Norway in 1857. While it's not Paul Theroux or Patrick Leigh Fermor, it is written with enough attention to detail and context to make for an interesting read. The anonymous author is evidently a bit upper-class, one gathers from her comparisons to more luxurious lodgings and to other travels she's done, but is charmingly game to be lodged in haylofts in remote farmsteads. It portrays a country of bucolic rural life, in which habitations are often quite far apart, the local farmers seem very friendly, and there seems to be a surprising amount of tourist traffic (not like traffic jams but that they encounter other people just touring about as they are). I'm not sure I'd quite recommend the book if you're looking for your next thriller but if you fancy a window into a bygone rural idyll its a pleasant read. Ii give it a solid B



Three in Norway (By Two of Them) - Three young men, also from England travel to Norway in or before 1882 (which is to say it's published on that date. I suppose the same can be said about the date of the unaccompanied females), to spend the summer fishing and hunting reindeer. Like the unaccompanied females, class distinctions aren't examined but by having such copious free time and money to easily employ a handful of locals as servants / trackers / porters all summer we can deduce they aren't out-of-work-newsboys. Though, like the women, only moreso, they're perfectly happy to spend their time essentially camping in shelters they've constructed. I'm not familiar enough with Norwegian geography to have immediately recognized the location of placenames, and I'm not sure any other than the larger towns cropped up in both books but I got the impression they were in about the same area, and/or it sounded essentially similar. One feature that crops up prominently in both books are the mountain "saeters" which appear to be communal shelters built up in the mountains used by locals who are up there seasonably with their herds and traveling huntsmen / tourists. It seems they're free for use by all comers and it sounds like quite the social experience, a bit like staying in a hostel.
   What I like most about this book though is that it is a rare example of a book written in first person plural. And it genuinely feels like the two of them wrote it together, seemlessly giving both's perspectives on events where they might diverge, and most amusingly of all, casually making fun of both of them. One gets the impression they had an agreement not to delete, or were just too comfortable and easygoing to care to do so, any teasingly satirical portrayal of themselves by the other. Where the one female writer of the prior book seemed good natured but rarely dabbled in actual humor, this book has some passages that really make you smile and laugh as you can feel the jests the boys are making of eachother. Aside from the barbs they aim at eachother, the authors employ satire and the humorous turn of phrase very effectively throughout. Their primary interest is in fishing and hunting, which aren't actually interests of mine, through roughing it in the Norwegian wilderness is.
   I'm not so into reading ebooks and/or books on my computer but it appears this book is available as such; The same two authors seem to have written another book A Ramble in British Columbia (and apparently mountains in British Columbia have been named after both of them, see note at previous link); and one of the two authors has written an additional book about Norway: Peaks and Pines: Another Norway Book.
   As with the above, if the subject matter is within the wheelhouse of what you're into it's a good read. I'd give this one an A, and if I happened to come across either of their other books in physical form I'd happily acquire and read them.



Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the dog) - this is seemingly the most famous/successful of these books, and I had read somewhere was directly inspired by the above. In this one three young Englishmen take a boat up the Thames in 1888. It's a lighthearted adventure, in which most of their most adventurous experiences are the result of them being rather more along the line of idle gentlemen than outdoorsmen and not particularly competent at boat handling or things such as not getting into fights with swans. Significant portions of many chapters are actually very extended tangental asides by the author, more along the lines of humorous essays sparked by some thought. It rather reminded me of the style of a stand up comedian, and I rather think the author missed his true vocation -- there's some biographical details at the end and I see he did try his hand at the stage for awhile, it's just bad luck stand up comedy probably hadn't been invented yet. Personally, personally, I found his attempts at humor often struck me as overwrought and trying-too-hard. It was interesting to read also in the note at the back (spoiler alert) that the trip is apparently fictional, though based on a boat trip he went on with his wife. Though I'd imagine a lot of the actual incidents mentioned either did happen on that trip or he'd heard about happening to friends. Among the particularly remarkable windows into life-at-the-time, fairly casually the protagonists find a dead woman floating down the river. I mean they do seem to be a bit struck by the occurrence but its not like today where that would be a trip-stopping occurrence. In their case they find that other people have already notified the authorities so they continue on their way.
   I give it a B- (just less than the unaccompanied females on account of that trying-too-hard feel of its jokes -- though according to Wikipedia "the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty" so maybe you'll enjoy it more).



To Say Nothing of the Dog - is.. was.. well I was expecting it to be more of an homage to its namesake, but it really has very little to do with it. fauxklore put me on to it after I'd mentioned the above book in a previous entry. A future time traveler (in 2057) travels back in time to 1888 and travels by boat down the Thames, passing the protagonists of the above book at one point. The protagonist of this book has read the above book and overtly references it a number of times, but their river journey is a relatively small portion of the book. The rest of the book was entertaining enough, but I guess I never recovered from a failure of management of expectations, as I'd expected more of an homage. Actually what it's more an homage to is classic murder mysteries a la Agatha Christie or Poirot, both of whom are explicitly mentioned. Not that there's a murder, rather the driving plot element is a search for a missing McGuffin, the mysterious and famously banal "bishop's birdstump"
   Other notes about this book included that, having been written in 1997, it references a fictional "great plague" that occurred in 2018, which feels like it had been quite prophetic. And also I was a bit annoyed with the execution of the romance of the protagonists, which (spoiler alert), a potentially mutual interest was kind of hinted at earlier on but then in the last chapter or two it just suddenly went from unresolved romantic tension between coworkers to of-course-we're-getting-married. As a bit of a hopeless romantic I don't terribly mind a well executed love story... this was not that.
   It also seemed to me to be science fiction with a prominently deist bend. The time-stream itself has intent, corrects itself with seemingly conscious cleverness and everyone is clearly fated to do whatever it is they are fated to do. That doesn't quite fit with the infinite anarchy of my cosmology.
   I give it maybe a C+ or B-- if I can. It wasn't bad, it was well enough written (it "won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999, and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998."), cleverly woven together even, just if I'm going to read science fiction I prefer it not to be deist, and if I'm going to read an homage I prefer it to have more parallels to the original. If one's into mystery novels and approaches the book as an amusing specimen of that genre one probably wouldn't be disappointed.

   So up until recently I think my only familiarity with Sherlock Holmes other than the pervasive cultural references was having read one story in middle school and seeing (one of two?) recent major movies. But it turns out that (all of?) Sherlock Holmes is available on Audible for free with basic membership, 62 hours in all. Having now listened to this I can now say I've read all of Sherlock Holmes. Okay I just realized it doesn't contain the 12 stories included in "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes."
   I can confirm that while all parts of the phraseology "It's elementary my dear Watson" are things Holmes frequently says, he in fact never does say that exact phrase.

   It's hard to give an objective review because I was expecting and holding it to the very highest standards. But by and large it pretty much held up to this highest level of scrutiny with just a few things I could hold up as quibbles (in one of the last stories, for example, he leaves the unconcious Ms Carfax in the care of a guy who appears to be stalking her, whom she appeared to have fled from?!). The one overall criticism I'll hold up though is that they seem to thoroughly subscribe to the theory that people's internal moral state is readable on their outward appearance, though even this can be explained as a failing by Watson who already knows the outcome at the itme "he" is writing the stories and is allowing his bias to effect how he's describing peopl. But still it's a weakness of the works. The bad guy is always someone described as looking unsettling. The one twist on this, used often enough to become an in-universe cliche, is that a few times there's a big burly savage looking bearded man who at first seems to be the culprit but it later turns out that he's roformed from a rough life and was just himself trying to prevent harm from befalling the woman in the story. Oh and the Adventure of the Norwood Builder was painfully obvious and it defied belief that Holmes seemed to act like it was hard to figure out.

   Also, confirmed what I had already heard, that canonically Holmes retires to beekeeping.


   And somewhere in the forewards or (midwards?) included in the collection between the books by Conan Doyle it was mentioned he wrote some historical fiction novels that HE considered his best work though they've been largely forgotten compared to his more famous work. Indeed, they only have a few dozen ratings on audible each compared to the thousands each of dozens of versions of the Holmes stories have, but I love historical fiction so will now embark on his lesser known Sir Nigel!
   Okay I wrote all the above yesterday but no one reads anything on a Sunday so hadn't posted it yet. I'm now about eight hours into Sir Nigel and... it's really really cliche knight errant stuff. It's uh, so far extremely unimpressive. And the abovementioned equating physical appearance with moral character is downright able-ist with the first real villian being a crippled knight whose crippled status is abundantly made to be a sign of his evil.

   This past weekend I once again took the six hour train trip to Eastern Victoria, this time for my friend Billie's 30th birthday party. That was fun but I came here to write book reviews. In fact, on my return trip she gave me back all the books I had loaned her to read, having read them, so I returned like a mobile library with six books in my knapsack (4 returned books, the book I brought to read, and a book she has loaned me to read).


Geldof in Africa
   I had picked up this book somewhere since someone's collected travel writings about Africa sounded imminently interesting to me. I'm not terribly enjoying it but muddling through. And trying to put my finger on exactly what I'm not enjoying about it, since it has many characteristics of good writing, such as nice turns of phrase, good descriptions, thematic structure. Some (other) writing fills me with a fear I can't possibly write as well as what I'm reading, reading this fills me with the fear that my writing might be as uninspiring as this.
   I think a major problem is that it's a collection of short pieces ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages and as far as I can tell zero effort has been made to tie it all together. I often wonder if there is any rhyme or reason to the order. Is it chronological? It's not organized by country because it bounces back and forth. Is there some thematic order I haven't yet grasped?
   Another problem for me I suppose is right from the get go it's written from the perspective that you already know and admire Bob Geldof, know what he's famous for, why he's in Africa, and apparently are familiar with mundane details of the London underground. Since I had never heard of Bob Geldof, this came across rather wankerish to me. There's a picture on the cover of him staring off into the distance... wankerishly. I mentioned this Geldof to someone and they said "oh he did Live Aid," which I suppose is admirable. I googled him and wikipedia said he was the lead singer of a rock band I'd never heard of that was popular at the height of the punk rock movement. Having been rather a punk myself I thought maybe this might earn my respect and pulled up some of his band's top hits on youtube ... and it in no way conformed to what I think of as punk rock, was rather sickly sweet crooning like cats in heat with bubblegum for brains. So no, knowing something about him didn't increase my esteem at all.
   The theme for most of the pieces seems to be how dangerous, sad, and unfortunate life in Africa is. Granted he was traipsing about thirty years before I was and I have no doubt there were terrible things afoot, I feel like surely this could have been balanced by some less dire glimpses at African life. As it is, even though he never says anything that could be construed as racist against Africans, the collective impression I feel like would fuel racist views that the continent is on a whole just a giant "shit-hole." He generally blames all their ills on European/American involvement and generally derides all aid and charity work by anything other than liveaid* (which he doesn't actually really mention). I too would say yes most Western governments have been terrible to Africa and a lot of aid work can be looked at pretty cynically, but the unsaid implication that he alone sees through all this is kind of wankery.
   When he's not talking about what a shit-hole it is or heaping shit on other charities he's sharing out of context little snippits about what a badass he is chillin with Somali warlords.
   So yeah, in conclusion, I guess he made his money with his music/television career / tax dodging in Mauritania, I suppose he wasn't trying to win fame or money through writing a best seller here, he just thought he'd publish a mish mash of stuff he had written so good for him I guess. But literarily speaking it fills me with existential dread that I might come off like him.

   *and it's worth noting that Live Aid raised funds for the Ethiopian famine and gave those funds to the Ethiopian Derg government that was causing the famine ... well a small amount was siphoned off to buy weapons for the TPLF fighting the Derg (as thoroughly explained in my recent podcast!). Charities make occasional mistakes, I understand that, which is why it's worth evaluating their activities cynically while keeping in mind that they do mean well. But this kind of downright stupid lack of understanding of the context of the problem is exactly the kind of thing he spends much of the book sarcastically deriding every other charity for so it all seems a bit rich.



Personally I think this is one of the more wankery cover design ideas one could go with for a book about your time in Africa

Patrick Leigh Fermor - A Time of Gifts & Between the Woods and the Water
   My current writing teacher put me on to Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was "Britain's greatest living travel writer during his lifetime" and I had never heard of him either. I'm clearly not very plugged in to post-15th-century English culture. As wikipedia goes on to say, he's like "a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene." And indeed, he appears as a character in the 1957 film Ill Met by Moonlight not as a travel writer but the war hero he also is (he organized and successfully executed a mission to kidnap a German general in Crete in WWII).
   The two books of his I recently read are two parts of a journey he took in 1934 on foot through Europe from Holland to Constantinople. He wrote about it decades later from his journals, so the writing looks at the journey through the retrospective lens of the coming calamity of WWII. The rising nazism of Germany and fascist movement in Austria contrast with the kindness of strangers and bucolic scenes of every day life. His descriptions are poetic, precise, and full of awareness of the context of the moment in time. Traditional dress and culture in Eastern Europe is recited with a detailed intimacy simultaneous to a wistful nostalgia knowing it would all be seen wiped away by war.
   I gather his family was somewhat well-to-do, his father was a Sir So and So Fermor, distinguished geologist, and his mother was "daughter of [someone apparently worth naming in a wiki article]," and his original intention was to live like a hobo during his journey, but he somewhat accidentally befriends a German or Austrian count living in a castle at some point relatively early in the journey, who sends him off with a letter of introduction to the lord of the next castle over, who does the same, so he ends up spending most of the journey staying in castles being hosted by grafs and margraves. This could come off wankerish if it weren't for the fact that he remains humble, often mentioning its not how he expected to be traveling, feeling a mild guilt for not traveling in the style he had intended to (and one really can't blame him for taking the opportunity), and he does absolutely insist on adhering to his intention not to travel by car or train except in extraordinary circumstances. He mostly goes from castle to castle by foot even with rides in cars proffered, though he's not against riding in barges or by horse.
   Sadly he died before he finished the third and final installment of the journey. It was published posthumously from the draft manuscript but I couldn't get my hands on that. Indeed, this "greatest British travel writer" seems to only have three works available on Audible (which is by far usually the easiest way for me to access works).
   But anyway, in conclusion, in complete contrast to Geldof this was some really good inspiring and enjoyable-to-read travel writing. I hope I can find more of his writing.
   By an amusing coincidence I mentioned this book to my mom and she was like "oh dad and Maria [my sister-in-law] were just talking about that book." Yes, it turns out, and I'm pretty sure I hadn't put them onto it, they happened to also be reading this book published in 1977 & 1981 at the same time as me. What a funny coincidence! We're an accidental book club!


   And speaking of travel I recently discovered this song I really like, called "The Wandering Song," purely as a poem I think I would like the lyrics and you should listen to them. But also it's a good song:

The Original Series
   Hark! Last night I achieved a cultural accomplishment 66 hours in the making! I have watched the entire Star Trek Original Series. As a fan of science fiction I'd felt for awhile like it was something I should do. I fondly remember watching The Next Generation in the 90s. Since that time I haven't been as fond of the later Star Trek frenchises, but the cultural references to the original series always seemed perplexing yet authoritative, like references to Egyptian hieroglyphs only a very erudite egyptologist could understand. I wanted to be in on these arcane secrets, and verily, I have looked upon these ozymandian works ... and may have despaired if I hadn't started to have it on the second screen while doing other things. Anyway, like the tourist's quick perusal of the Sphinx's mysteries whilst eating at the pizza hut across the street, let me give you my general observations:

   It begins with a "I'm not used to having a woman on the bridge" comment in the first five minutes by then-captain Pike. Certainly anchors it firmly in the sixties right there from the start! One of my favorite classes in college was actually a Soviet film class, which I liked because all the themes were so clearly a product of their time and place (the hero was always a humble worker and themes focused on the group effort), and altogether the whole Original Series was just as much distinctly of the 60s. Themes almost obsessively hit on the triumph of human emotional intelligence over "cold logic," whereupon it was Spock's role to be the foil. It's a real testament to him as an actor that he became so beloved considering he was essentially the fall guy in many episodes. I was annoyed because often what he was claiming to be "logical" and our "heroes" disagreed with was actually clearly illogical and the "right" decision should have been arrived at by his logic anyway. And in at least one episode he ends up in charge of the Enterprize and does so incredibly badly at it for "lack of emotion" that it was really painful to watch and I felt very bad for him and angry at these idiotic writers.
   The theme of over half the first season's episodes seems to be that they've stumbled upon a hyperintelligent race with godlike powers who looks exactly like humans but wants to test our protagonist's heroic benevolence yet again. I felt this same plot conceit was starting to get really old but by the last season they had more interesting plots.
   It's really true that Kirk gets with a woman in nearly every single episode. If an attractive new bridge ensign walks in in the first scene you can sit back and say "oh I guess there will be no attractive alien to seduce in this episode, it will be this girl," and sure enough he smiles leeringly at her and makes some comment about never seeing her before and you know it's on. Again, very interesting insight into a culture where apparently it was laudable for the big boss to be flaunting his sexual sovereignty over all in his domain. Watching from the vantage point of this day and age one just keeps thinking of the rampant HR complaints he would be getting.
   Kirk spectacularly overacts everything. I know this is kind of a meme but seriously he's a terrible actor. And a sub-theme of the series that seems to grow as the series goes on is that Kirk is a smarter better commander than anyone else can possibly be and even if he's not the one writing the scripts it starts to seem kind of tediously self-congratulatory.
   As mentioned, eventually I just had it going on my second screen because the slower pacing of shows back then and plots that I sometimes found annoying made it tedious to try to give it my full attention but I did want to get through all of it.

The Next Generation
   Towards the end of my OST watching really I was just chomping at the bit to get into TNG, of which I had fond memories. And as I'd only caught the tale end of it really, the likes of "Tasha Yare" were just an obscure name from history for me, I wanted to know how does it begin?? As such, I've watched the first episode now and intend to continue on through the series.
   Observations on the first episode: Wow Picard is really kind of a hardass in the beginning. He comes across as stern and scary, though he can turn a sudden smile which is all the more valuble because he was just scaring the bajeezes out of a subordinate. And unless they do a sudden turnaround in episode 2, so far it doesn't look like he's just putting on a scary act to scare the new crew but actually was more stern and scary in the beginning.
   Counselor Troy is like third in command, right after Riker? I don't rememeber the latter episodes all THAT well but I feel like her relative importance must have gone down later, because I remember as more of a background support character and I think Data or someone was the third in command.
   Also no one has gratuitously angered the contemporary HR gods or otherwise seduced any green alien women, though Riker and Troy have been eyeballing eachother something fierce. I guess by 1987 they had figured out that workplace romance is supposed to involve thoroughly mutual desires, unrequited angst, and possibly consummating any acts off-screen on your own time. They also imply the two had a history, which also makes workplace angst more understandable.


And here's a totally unrelated picture that didn't fit in the Dominican Republic entry but I liked it and every entry needs a picture so here it is!

And the Travel Writer From Hell
   Er, I mean "Do Travel Writer's Go To Hell?. After the Bounty I decided to leave the South Pacific for a bit and wander in the darkness of, say, dark ages Europe with John Gardner's Grendel, which I remember hearing about years ago like it was something special. I found it kinda stupid, full of overwrought attempts to be really deeply philosophical. Usually I choose my books based on recommendations or having seen references to them or heard of them but the next one just popped up on the usually terrible Audible "you might also like" list, a book about an aspiring travel writer's first gig, subtitled "A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism." Being very interested in travel writing it sounded interesting, and having just read the Foraging Afar book that was also kind of about one man's voyage into the world of travel writing, maybe it would fit into my usual pattern of reading books on similar themes for comparison.
   It can be hard to judge an audiobook separately from the quality of the narrator, though Grendal had been read by the same narrator I had just been lauding for reading Don Quixote and Typee, and yet even he couldn't make me like Gardner's book. In the case of Do Travel Writer's Go To Hell, the narrator is pretty uninspiring. He reads in kind of a monotone and yet when he comes to what should be a deadpan suddenly he finds the enthusiasm to read it like the "applause" sign has just been turned on, turning what might have been funny into a an eyerolling groaner. He does do varying accents better than _I_ could do a variety of accents, but even there while quoting an Australian it weirdly veered Irish in the middle. So in sum the narrator isn't helping (so if you're using audible and are on the fence about a book narrated by Paul Boehmer run the other way).
   The tone of this book is pretty well established by about the third sentence when he says "and I laid more than my share of fetching local women" or some such. Like, well, okay, that's a crass way to put that but okay. The book begins with the authorho living in Manhattan working for a predatory wallstreet firm like a douchey chadling, when while medatating on the office's conference room table he gets an email from Lonely Planet offering him a gig with advance payment to go to northwest Brazil to update the guidebook. He promptly quits his job, breaks up with his girlfriend of years so cavalierly I am convinced he must be a psychopath, and embarks on a two day drug fueled bender in New York City which he describes every minute of. This girlfriend of several years, he talks up the relationship for two or three sentences, followed by "but really the relationship was [here the narrator pauses for dramatic effect right before very enthusiastically and cheerfully saying the word...] GARBAGE!" and other then a sentence or two explaining how the break up happened (over the phone) she is never again mentioned.
   I'm not going to dissect every part of his book but the first sentence about actually being in Brazil has him waking up next to a naked blonde stewardess there. What I think is noteworthy about this is his editorial decision to start with that rather than leading up to it. Romance and salacious adventures in travel can be good reading, I'll readily recognize that, but starting with the pursuit of her would make more sense to me. To start with her already "conquered" is emblematic of putting braggadocio over narrative. She's not a story element, a goal he as a character pursued, she's a trophy, a tribute to the glory that is the author on the road. Anyway he then gives us a play by play of 48 hours of drug addled binging in Rio (in which, in case there was a chance one didn't fully see him as a megadouche, he sleeps with another girl while this first one is waiting for him back at their room. She then flips out and of course he acts like she's a psycho).
   What's most perplexing is the rave reviews this book has gotten from some major publications, with New York Times saying "A comic rogue who seems to have modeled his life and prose on Hunter S.Thompson's… I could not get enough of the most depraved travel book of the year." and things like "The best-written, funniest book of travel literature since Phaic Tan." ... but what's interesting is in contrast the reviews on goodreads.com more frequently roundly deride the book.
   And to it's credit it's well written enough that I keep reading to see where this goes. I'm actually only about 40% of the way through it (but on day 3 of his countdown to his deadline 60 days away so I guess his pacing becomes more compacted after the beginning), though after perusing some of the reviews, spoiler alert, he apparently continues to mainly binge drink and womanize. And apparently he created quite a scandal because he freely admits he plagiarized or made things up in his travel guide. Looknig at his list of publications I see he has also written the Lonely Planet guide to Venezuela. Oh great.
   But as far as comparative literature goes, Blomstedt in his book did also seem to mention drinking to excess any time his narrative abutted an evening, and being badly hungover any time the morning was mentioned. I had felt Blomstedt shied away a bit too much from mentioning romance we can only deduce was there. Looking back at my own entries I do mention for example meeting and pursuing a beautiful young lady on occasion but generally don't mention waking up beside anyone because that's crass, not actually important to the narrative, and I rather feel disrespectful to the person involved. To trumpet to the world the finer details of one's "conquests" in a published book as Thomas Kohnstamm has done requires a psycopath's disregard for the dignity of all involved.
   But at least by comparison to both these two in terms of alcohol consumption and nights spent partying, my own travels are incredibly straightlaced and mundane, full of going to bed early and never, ever, missing breakfast!

Just about exactly a year ago (2018/07/16), in the above cute and cozy little library room of an airbnb in a small town in northern California, I came across the following book:



Which at the time I only saw the day we were leaving the airbnb but more recently I remembered it just as I was finishing the recent book about Mungo Park's travels in West Africa in the 1790s. I found Crossing the continent on audible and started it just after the Mungo Park book.

The book is about one Estaban de Azemmour, sold as a slave in the Moroccan town of Azemmour to Spaniards, he is taken on one of the first expeditions to explore Florida and the gulf coast of the future United States. Of 300 that begin the expedition a mere four survive (Estaban, his legal owner, and two other Spaniards), wandering eight years later in northern Mexico where they finally encounter a Spanish slaving expedition.

One source for information about this journey is a book pubished shortly after by one of the Spaniards, Cabeza de Vaca (which amusingly means "cow's head"), but this is filled with wild exaggerations that cannot be true and clearly de Vaca gives himself credit for nearly every accomplishment. The author tempers this account with the official government reports taken at the time the survivors were debriefed, as well as other surviving letters and accounts. The other significant source is the other Spaniard, Dorantes de Carranza, who also takes upon HIMself credit for every accomplishment. The author argues, convincingly in my opinion, that being as in nearly all these disputed cases of credit the one common denominator is that Estaban is clearly present and involved and uncredited with anything, Estaban was the real hero of the expedition but the Spaniards felt free to take credit for anything he did. Of particular note, towards the latter part of their journey Estaban always went ahead of the others to scout the way and arrange things amicably with the Indians they were going to meet, which he always seemed to accomplish superbly, so it seems to me he must have been very good at this exploring and diplomacy.

Also of note, at one point when they seem to be most of the way back they suddenly begin going the wrong direction (following the Rio Grande inland instead of continuing south along the coast). This seems baffling from the assumption they just want to get home, no one could be so bad a navigator as to mistake heading inland to the north-west as better than going down the coast to the settlement you hope to find on the coast ... but the author surmises that Estaban didn't actually WANT to return to being just another slave among the Spanish as opposed to the very free and valued life he was living, and the others lacked the ability to compel him to continue in a direction other than his choosing at this point. And what's more they had to go with him -- he had become the dominant decision maker.

Eventually they do run into a Spanish slaving expedition, possibly a bit by accident. A few years later Estaban is sent off as guide on a second expedition. He soon begins scouting ahead and relaying messages back with indian messengers, which seems like it could be all part of the expedition leader's plan, but soon he never is actually catching up with Estaban but Estaban is continuing to lead him along with tales of being "almost there" to the reputed cities of gold. The author suspects this is leading of the expedition on was to make the expedition thoroughly lost and far from home before he himself went missing. Eventually they do reach the pueblo they were trying to get to, which turned out not to be made of gold but... they are told the inhabitants have killed Estaban and many of his possessions are in evidence. It seems a sad end to this tale.

BUT, the author points out that almost none of the witnesses at the time would actually put to paper that he was known to be dead, just that they were told he had been killed. And the author strongly implies, and I tihnk it's plausible and would like to think it's true, that he knew spreading the story that he'd been killed would be the best way to never be pursued. And then, I like to think he lived happily ever after somewhere free among the native americans.

The author's writing is clear and readible but I did find he had a tendency to go off on tangents taking place thirty years earlier or later following some character that was just mentioned, which could be disconcerting and sometimes gives it a rambling feel. I could wish it had been arranged better in that aspect. In particular, he begins with the expedition's final encounter with the slaving expedition and return to "civilization," but this isn't a normal in media res beginning in the heart of the action, it's beginning with the denoument and continues for a number of chapters before actually getting into the fateful expedition.

On numerous occasionas the author puts forward arguments disputing the conventional belief about a thing, and I find his arguments are often persuasive. He seems preoccupied in the beginning though with arguing Estaban is not a native of the village he was bought by Spaniards in but actualy a sub-saharan African. I find this unconvincing, and it seems to hinge on that when the Spanish wrote "black arab" they could have meant arabized black. Personally I'm not terribly sure why it matters so much.

I think this could make a really good movie. The first African-American trying to survive in the Americas, having experiences with the native americans that are sometimes positive and sometimes negative, but they come off as the complex non-cliche humans that they are. Spaniards that... probably almost entirely come across as bad guys and braggarts. Unite the American theatre audience in backing the "American" protagonist and native people's against the exploitive Spaniards. It could be fun to begin the movie in flashback form with Cabezo de Vaca telling someone about some dramatic aspect of the adventure with flashback to him being heroic, then the scene suddenly changes to Dorantes telling the same story and a flashback of him being the hero in the same scene and then it fades into what _really_ happened.

So I recently downloaded this version of Treasure Island on Audible, because, as I mentioned, I having stumbled across some of Robert Louis Stevenson's other writing I thought I should revisit his most classic. From the getgo something seemed a bit off. After awhile I put my finger on the most noticable thing -- there were no "he said" "he growled" "he muttered" prefixes before speech, though this recording used multiple voice actors to make it clear who was speaking clearly the original written form must have noted in text who was speaking. So maybe they just deleted the speech directions as redundant with voice actors, which annoyed me but, okay. But as time went on it still just, seemed a bit off. The writing seemed really uninspired. Keep in mind though I was entirely listening to it as I drove so when most annoyed and suspicious I couldn't investigate. When I tried after arriving at a destination I couldn't pull up the full information on it on my phone. Finally I remembered while at home and googled up the exact version I was listening and sure enough, not prominently displayed but hidden at the end of the summary it does say "Audible Originals UK are excited to announce this reimagination of Stevenson's coming-of-age story that will captivate all of the family." Re-imagining! Y'arrrgh!

So I pulled up another version and made sure it was true to the original and listened to the remainder of the story in that version. What a difference! The re-imagined version kept some of the original speech, but also deleted or simplified a lot, and added a lot more so it could turn more narration into speech as befits a radio-drama which it was more like. It did keep narration but only that which couldn't possibly be turned into dialogue, and generally across the board it simplified the reading level to a much simpler form. Don't get me wrong, as a beloved story of children, I don't fault their decisions to simplify it for a presumed younger audience and adapt it more to radio-play style, I'm just a bit salty that they hadn't made that more clear. As far as reading it as a fan of good literature they had cooked nearly everything good out of their version. It was kind of an interesting exercise though seeing the difference between the writing of a epicly good writer compared to boiled down uninspired writing of the exact same thing.

On The Road
   When I was a mohawked teenager and my disreputable friends used to hang out at the local coffee shop every evening, back before it was bought by starbucks, one of these characters used to carry around a copy of Jack Kerouac's On The Road as if it was some sort of bible. The group was the usual mix of people who desperately wanted to be artists of some kind, even if just in spirit. Some may have had the spark, but many of whom would never be more than poseurs. Somehow Suzanne's carrying about of the Kerouac book like some kind of totem didn't inspire me to read it but I vaguely assumed it must contain some truly mystical stuff.

   Looking for what to read next with my reading-ears on audible the other week I remembered this book and gave it a listen. And a fair bit of the wind was taken out of the shellacking I was about to give it when I thought I'd read what Wikipedia tells me the critics say about it before having a go myself, and reading the plot summary I realize somehow I must have thought it was over about 40% of the way through, or my brain just stopped listening, because I swear I have no recollection of the happenings of parts 3 - 5.

   So now with the caveat that I may have only read parts 1-2, I was frankly fairly disappointed. It countained no beautiful descriptions, poetic observations, epic wisdom.. as a travelogue it doesn't really hold any value as he seldom describes things around him much. Reading the plot summaries it sounds like maybe the protagonist might come to some realizations towards the end but throughout what I read its just like the rambling wanderings of a young guy with irresponsible friends and bad money management skills. ::shrug:: I really don't know how I somehow thought I was at the end when I apparently wasn't. It sure did seem to end randomly.


Travels With A Donkey In The Cevennes
   After finishing that, or at least thinking I had, and feeling very unsatisfied, I looked in my Audible wishlist of titles I'd previously tagged as interesting and came across Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes, which I recalled having been mentioned as a pre-20th-century travelogue (takes place 1878). This short book I found to be everything Kerouac was not, vivid descriptions, insightful humor, well crafted philosophical observations. It was so good that I thought immediately to look up other works by the same author, whose identity I hadn't really registered. Somehow the name didn't even register when I clicked on it, until I saw "Treasure Island" and "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde" listed and was like oh OH it's THAT Robert Louis Stevenson!
   Maybe I should read Treasure Island again, I think my dad read it to us as a bedtime story when my brothers and I were wee? And one is always vaguely familiar of various cartoon or tv versions of it but reading this latest work of his reminded me that he IS a really good author and it might be time to revisit the original of the source of most of our current pirate cliches.


The Rihla
   Next up, I think I had been inspired to google historical travelogues. This brought me into awareness of muslim traveller Ibn Battuta who traveled as extensively as Marco Polo just about 30-60 years later (1325-1354), and wrote extensively about it in a book known as the Rihla, which wasn't fully translated into English until ... 1994. The book was not available on audible but I ordered it on amazon. We've come a long way since 1354 but I still can't magic his book into coming to me, like many books it wasn't available on amazon Australia and had to be shipped to my parents house in California from whence hopefully they will dispatch it to me presently.


The Travels of Marco Polo
   Following this vein, it's been bothering me for awhile that Marco Polo himself is someone we all vaguely know in a general sense traveled a lot and wrote about it... but has anyone read his travels?? So I conjured up what seemed the best version of Marco Polos Travels on the audible -- there didn't seem to be any strictly direct translations but this one was a retelling of his travels with discussion of what he said about every place, which I was relatively content with. He had quite the interesting life. I kept thinking they should make a tv series about his life, then I remember that they did and I found it kind of disappointing. The netflix series, in my opinion, fell victim to the frequent problem of low budget and/or failure of production vision that it made everything seem close together and overly simplified and more soap opera esque.


And randomly here's a picture I took on Friday from not far from where I live

One Second After
   After that I was just perusing audible recommendations or something and came across the description of a book about what happens in a small American town after America is hit with an electromagnetic pulse weapon which shorts out all electronics. Well this sounded just like my cup of tea -- I love interesting takes on post-apocalyptic situations and creative explorations of the ramifications of unusual weapons. Well as soon as it started with a forward by Newt Gingrich I began to suspect I'd walked into a doozy. And then I realized "with a forward by Newt Gingrich!" was written across the cover almost bigger than the title (selecting books on audible its easy to not pay too much attention to the cover). So this wasn't merely the-kind-of-book-that-would-have-a-forward-by-Newt-Gingrich, it was the kind of book that would very proudly broadcast that.
   That being said, the book isn't terrible, but it's so full of unimaginative Norman Rockwell America cliches that the author actually references Norman Rockwell twice in like the first chapter, and its full of things that will surely give republican readers huge stiffies, such as all the protagonists being veterans, the bad guys all being druggies, lots of good guys with guns, hippie-types being referred to with condescending pity .... I keep wanting to roll my eyes and think of it as verging on republican pornography. I think the protagonist even has a mild Oedipus complex for his mother in law. There's some stuff to unpack here.
   But I haven't thrown it out the proverbial window yet because other than reading like propaganda it moves along and I'm curious to see how they handle the disaster. They've had some weird interpretations of what they think their American duty is so far, in my opinion, and being as at the point in the book I'm at they're 10 days on and still fending for themselves, I think the author is being willfully ignorant of the fact that by this point unless the rest of the world has also been blasted they'd probably be being visited by either European aid forces (but wouldn't that wilt the gop-boners!) or an invasion force of whomever did it (not yet determined). And also our heros with guns are somehow bullying the nearby much larger town, which seems to be stretching credulity in ignoring the fact that the nearby much larger town would have many more guns and resources and would easily impose its will on them. If anyone happens to have read this book, "One Second After" ("Pulse" would have been such a better name, considering literally nothing happens in the one second after!), I'd love to discuss my building stock of disagreements with it with you (:


Keeping Up With My Career-Twin!
   My career twin has published a book. That's right. There's another guy, who I believe is around my own age, who travels the world doing beekeeping and writes about it. William Blomstedt had contacted me after my Beekeeping in Ethiopia article was published in the American Bee Journal in 2012. He's been a regular contributor to the venerable ABJ, while I haven't submitted anything since. Well the realization that he's just published a book, Foraging Afar about his travels around the world with bees made me realize I really need to get on the stick. That and, while a mention years ago that ABJ was "tired of" stories about beekeeping abroad had been the reason for my lack of effort in that area, I had recently heard they were back into it. So I recently contacted the editor and... they said the editor who had been so enthusiastic on the subject had already been canned ... but he still expressed an interest in an article about my project in Kyrgyzstan.
   A lot of things in the ABJ are very dry. Oddly I haven't actually read one of Blomstedt's articles, they all seem to be in issues that I miss. But I'm gonna try to put as much of the best traveloguing magic I can into it while still balancing it with enough technical discussion to keep them satisfied! The ABJ has a circulation of probably several thousand and actually paid me $300 for my other article, which more than the intrinsic value of said money makes it really feel validating as serious writing.