As we near the end of our three months on Mantra, I am thinking about the wide array of books I have read. They are not necessarily ones I would have chosen were I browsing in the library, so this journey has been a reading adventure, outside the box. Without access to a library, I have consumed those books that were left on the boat by the previous owners or ones of some literary merit that I have found in the book exchange at marinas, usually located in the laundry rooms.
The second book I had picked up from the Friends of the Sacramento Library book sale based on the recommendation of my book club friend Pat, who is an avid reader of mysteries, which I am not. I was caught up in the drama from the first page of the classic Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett.
Among the pulp fiction--mostly sappy romances and murder mysteries--on the laundry room shelves I occasionally found a gem. One of these was The Arrogant Years by Lucette Lagnado, a revealing memoir about her own life and her mother's--revealing in terms of 20th century Egyptian history, Egyptian Jews and her life growing up Jewish in Brooklyn. She drew and colored in the outlines of the personalities in her family and her community with compassion and honesty. I learned things I never knew before about a different culture, I was fascinated by her story and her mother's and delighted by her prose. This is a book I would recommend.
I also picked up Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris. On a scale of one to five, I'd give it a three and a half.
Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea was on the boat, so I re-read that, maybe for the third time. It is surprisingly compelling despite the fact that much of it revolves around a single character and his unwavering determination to catch a big fish on the open sea on his own. I also skimmed through One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, another classic novel I had read before.
Peter brought along one of the three non-fiction books about sailing that I read: First You Have to Row a Little Boat by Richard Bode. Bode wrote this book of moralistic stories from his own life as a way of sharing with his children things he had learned about life from sailing. This is a book that is best enjoyed in short sections. I found that I wanted, even needed, to stop at the end of each chapter to absorb what the author had written. As a sailor, I fully understood his vivid descriptions of learning about the wind, the weather and the water and about becoming one with your boat as well as the minute details about such things as parts of the boat, points of sail and trimming the sails. I didn't need any time to understand the parts about boating. But I wanted to take the time to savor, reflect on and internalize the simple truths he eloquently brought up: living in the moment, following your passion, slowing down to get your bearings, trusting in powers beyond yourself. Bode made his points not didactically but by revealing his life experiences with compassion for himself and others. Although he occasionally used other people to reveal the traps we all fall into, the mistakes we all make, the misconceptions we all might hold, more often than not he gently reveals how, in sailing, he made mistakes himself, learned from them and then applied them--either in his youth or later in life--to basic tenets for living a good life. This book is inspiring and it is a gift of wisdom in an unassuming form.
The previous owners, Helen and Gordon, left behind two autobiographical works by sailors--The Water in Between: A Journey at Sea by Kevin Patterson and Flirting with Mermaids by John Kretschmer. I preferred the first of the two. It is the story of a young doctor making a radical decision to buy a sailboat and take off for the South Pacific after a romantic break-up catapults him into doubt and depression. It seemed a bit crazy when the first boat we ever bought was a 62-foot bluewater vessel in 2005, but not nearly as crazy as this man's decision to buy a boat that needed some work when he had absolutely no experience sailing. But it is a great story, filled with details of people and places, and he is a likeable character. Flirting with Mermaids is written by a delivery captain who I found not nearly as likeable becaue he seemed to full of himself. Besides, he absolutely love to be out on the open ocean for interminable day or weeks, and I just could not relate to that!
Helen and Gordon also left two books reflecting their cultural heritage. One, an old hardbound book called The Story of Scotland, published in the first half of the 20th century, seems intended for schoolchildren and is a mixture of myth and history about the people and events of Scotland's past. Not intended to be verifiable history, although much of it is ture, it is a narrative revealing the legend and romance of the nation, meant to inspire pride. Read as such, it is delightful. The book is Scottish Sea Stories, a wonderful collection of short prose. Each story is brilliantly written, with themes of love, loss and adventure. Of course, it wouldn't be complete without a tale of a selkie and a human, and the one included is captivating.
Superfreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner was also left on the boat. I have not read their first book, although it was a sensation, and I didn't know what to expect exactly, although I imagined facts and figures and theories about the stock market and world economies. Instead, I found an entertaining and often humorous recounting of anecdotes and studies intended to illuminate microeconomics, or what factors motivate people to make their decisions. It was a thought-provoking read.
Finishing that, I picked up Longitude by Dava Sobel. This fascinating little book tells the story of the quest for a means to determine longitude at sea, spurred by a reward offered by the British Parliament in the 18th century. It weaves together science, biography and history in highly readable prose. The story it tells is remarkable. The author clearly details the challenges of making the first nautical chronometer, of not knowing longitude on voyages at sea, and of determing the best scientific approaches to solving this pressing navigational dilemma. Added to this is the sympathetic portrayal of personality traits, backgrounds and motivations of the clock makers, astronomers and scientist all competing for the prize money and the glory. The characters and context leap off the page into a riveting and true story.
From history, I moved on to science. Do Whales Get the Bends? was among the books on the boat. Written by a retired marine scientist who became a guest lecturer on a cruise ships, it is a collection of questions and answers about ocean geography, marine life, wind, waves, weather, tides and ships and sailors, divided into consumable chunks and highlighted with graphs and illustrations which help to illucidate complex concepts. It was on my bedstand for a few nights as well as in the pilot house during the day as I read it in bits and pieces.
I finally moved on to Bill Bryson's tome, A Short History of Nearly Everything, a book I had been intending to read for years. I had already completed the first couple of chapters when Paula and Andrew arrived in St. Augustine. Paula gave me another book, a novel by Ian McEwan, The Children Act, and I abandoned Bryson for this work of fiction. I read it in less than two days, compelled to find out what would happen to the main character. Now I am back to science, reading the not-so-short history of everything chapter by chapter. It is full of scientific laws and facts, information on the lives of scientists in various, explanations of theories and proofs--all recounted in an erudite manner yet with a conversational style underlaid with a sense of awe for everything we know and do not know.
Matthew loaned Peter and me two science fiction classics by William Gibson: Burning Chrome, a collection of short stories, and Neuromancer. This is not a genre that I would have picked up myself, and I wouldn't say I'm a convert. It surprised me how many of the stories as well as the novel had subplots around the girl who got away (or died) couched in futuristic vision and the power and perils of advanced technology. The classic Neuromancer, published in the 1980's, is amazing for its insights into AI long before AI was really part of our world. It raises many ethical and philosophical questions, although it doesn't seem to to address the morality of the career choices made by the characters, who are thieves and thugs. The descriptions of moving through the matrix and jacking into others' visceral experiences are vivid. Gibson superbly uses language and pacing to create compelling narrative about characters whom I otherwise wouldn't like. The descriptions of moving through the matrix and jacking into others' visceral experiences are vivid and surreal. Gibson superbly uses language and pacing to create compelling narrative about characters whom I otherwise wouldn't like.
No comments:
Post a Comment