Thinks [er, that would be THINGS] have been tediously quiet on the Fiction Vs. Nonfiction Smackdown front.
I seem to be suffering from a sustained bout of ADD these days, or else homeschooling the Junior Member of the Household and teaching one college class have taken up the major portion of my mental energy. Or maybe it's the endurance training program, as I'm scheduled to swim the 4.4 mile Great Chesapeake Bay Swim next June. 4.4 miles doesn't really sound like much, but imagine lying down and crawling it on your belly and you get a better idea. Of course, you have the water to push against, so it's not REALLY like belly crawling four miles over land. But you do have to get into some kind of Zen place to go the distance, as suggested by this NYT article.
Meanwhile, back in new nonfiction:
Diane Ackerman, Sex, Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body.
PW says: Just as Michael Sims does in his planetary guide, Apollo's Fire (Reviews, June 11), science journalist Ackerman (Notes from the Shore) uses a single day as a narrative framework for examining a wide array of scientific information, but she has chosen a much more intimate subject: the human body. Starting with a 5:30 a.m. wakeup call and working through to the wee hours (with a pause for a restorative midday nap), she explains the complex details behind some of the body's most basic functions. The day is a somewhat arbitrary structure for topics that could be discussed at any time (she holds off on exercise until the late afternoon, for example), but the arrangement is never obtrusive, and Ackerman's prose is inviting. While she doesn't offer a radical new perspective on the human body, she does provide a steady stream of interesting information on things like the tiny hair cells inside the cochlea that enable us to hear even the briefest of noises, and the aphrodisiac allure for women of the odor of men's underarm sweat. All in all, Ackerman offers an pleasant day's diversion.
Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The Word as Stage. Shakespeare gets the Bryson treatment, and PW says it's a good match:
Considering the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about Shakespeare, relatively little is known about the man himself. In the absence of much documentation about his life, we have the plays and poetry he wrote. In this addition to the Eminent Lives series, bestselling author Bryson (The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid) does what he does best: marshaling the usual little facts that others might overlook—for example, that in Shakespeare's day perhaps 40% of women were pregnant when they got married—to paint a portrait of the world in which the Bard lived and prospered. Bryson's curiosity serves him well, as he delves into subjects as diverse as the reliability of the extant images of Shakespeare, a brief history of the theater in England and the continuing debates about whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon really wrote Shakespeare's works. Bryson is a pleasant and funny guide to a subject at once overexposed and elusive—as Bryson puts it, he is a kind of literary equivalent of an electron—forever there and not there.
Judith Heimann, The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Heroes, Heroic Tribesmen, and the Unlikeliest Rescue of the World War II. Favorable nods from Kirkus and The Wash. Post, among others. I'm thinking of starting a running contest: "Saddled with the Most Egregious Subtitle." Mind you, in my experience the subtitle is usually not the author's fault. Here's the book description:
November 1944: Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead they found themselves unexpectedly facing a Japanese fleet—and were shot down. When they cut themselves loose from their parachutes, they were scattered across the island’s mountainous interior. Then a group of loincloth-wearing natives silently materialized out of the jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the hostile Japanese occupiers? Or would the Dayaks risk vicious reprisals to get the airmen safely home? The tribal leaders’ unprecedented decision led to a desperate game of hide-and-seek, and, ultimately, the return of a long-renounced ritual: head-hunting.
A cinematic survival story that features a bamboo airstrip built on a rice paddy, a mad British major, and a blowpipe-wielding army that helped destroy one of the last Japanese strongholds, The Airmen and the Headhunters is a gripping, you-are-there journey into the remote world and forgotten heroism of the Dayaks.
Scott Weidensaul, Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding. Global climate change (as reported by this Science Daily story) and habitat destruction bode ill for birds, and the cat lovers and bird lovers are duking it out in the NYTimes (for the record, the feline member of the household was moved permanently indoors last spring, and though he clearly pines for the great outdoors and his physique is developing a distinct resemblance to a bolster pillow, there has been a uptick in birds and small mammals taking advantage of my slowly-moving project in transforming my green space into a native-plant-abundant, creature-friendly habitat. I can't swear the chipmunks are actually thumbing their noses at the cat with his face pressed against the window, but there does seem something pointed in their manner of frolicking about in plain view, on which practice I would advise them to remember that hawks like to hang out in the neighborhood too). Anyway, about the book. PW says:
Weidensaul (Return to Wild America) traces bird watching in America from colonial times to the present, when powerful binoculars and other sophisticated technologies have revolutionized the sport. He entertainingly describes many early naturalists who shot and collected birds, including Mark Catesby, John and William Bartram, some military men and an intrepid woman named Martha Maxwell. By the late 19th century, when entire bird populations had been decimated for sport, food and the millinery trade, formidable society ladies began demanding avian protection, the Audubon Society was created and recreational birding, featuring binoculars instead of guns, was born, aided by the emergence of field guides like Roger Tory Peterson's. Today, says Weidensaul, there are millions of birders in the United States, and the sport has entered a new phase, emphasizing competitive birding, lists, rarity chasing and Big Year records. For Weidensaul, this is not a good thing. He finds that people who concentrate on competition and listing often forget the enjoyment of mere observation and the importance of conservation. A naturalist and federally licensed bird bander, he is passionate about birding. His vivid descriptions of his own experiences should send many a reader out of doors to look for the small, contained miracle that is a bird.
And one more from the natural world:
Peter Thomson, Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal. PW says:
Environmental journalist Thomson, founding producer and senior editor of National Public Radio's Living on Earth, combines introspection with objective reporting in this engaging account of his six-month pilgrimage to Siberia's Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest and supposedly purest body of fresh water on earth. Thomson includes everything from thoughts about his failed marriage and his relationship with his brother and fellow traveler James to colorful impressions of the people he meets as he documents his quest, shattering the myth of the lake's reputed capacity to cleanse itself. Researchers tell him that the air and water are full of thousands of tons of pollutants and contaminants from Baikal's paper mill and nearby farms, industry and power plants. Tiny filter-feeding shrimp do cleanse the water, but in the process they move the contaminants into the food chain and concentrate them, so the fish eaten by the people living around Lake Baikal now pose a serious health threat. Nevertheless, many Russians continue to believe that the waters of the Sacred Sea are pristine. Thomson's book is a lucid and sobering reminder of the destructive effects human activity has on the planet.
Comments