Wilfred Thesiger (author of the book self is currently reading, Arabian Sands) has a magnificent eye for the vivid and telling detail. He undertook his journey of an area known as “the Empty Quarter” — “four hundred waterless miles” — in 1946 or 1947; self is very struck by the fact that not once during his extensive travels does anyone he encounters make so much as a mention of the war just ended. Here is his description of the scene around “the well at Manwakh” (in the area of (more…)
Tag: travel books
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It is a little past 2 p.m. in the Western hemisphere. In the little corner of earth self happens to occupy at this moment. This is turning out to be another good day, dear blog readers. Not because self has been (more…)
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So, thank God it is still summer. Yes, son has returned to San Luis Obispo, but there are still tons and tons of things that self can find to occupy her time, in the remaining weeks!
For instance, in the summer self’s reading takes on a new intensity and focus. It took her almost a month to get through a biography of Florence Nightingale (Gillian Gill’s Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale), because she could never read more than a page before acquiring a new thought.
A few days ago, she finished the Nightingale biography and began reading Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands. Thesiger is a wild man: he hates civilization. He wants to go where no man has gone before: the endless, trackless wastes of desert Arabia. Of course, it helps that he began his odyssey before the Second World War, when eccentric Britishers were still able to go about without interference from government authorities.
Thesiger is a very evocative writer. He can even make facts about locusts interesting, as witness the following passage:
In Saudi Arabia . . . I saw densely packed bands of hoppers extending over a front of several miles and with a depth of a hundred yards or more, and yet he told me that these were only small bands. I knew that with favourable wind locusts can cover enormous distances, but I was amazed when he told me that swarms can breed in India during the monsoon, move in the autumn to southern Persia or Arabia, breed there again, and then pass on to the Sudan or East Africa. Some of these swarms cover two hundred square miles or more. Eventually disease attacks them and they vanish as quickly as they had appeared. Then for a time there are no more desert locusts in the world, only solitary grasshoppers.
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Four hours of sleep, tremendous eyebags. Today, must exercise extreme caution to avoid being sighted by friends, neighbors, and, most important, students.
Checked e-mail religiously over the weekend, saw no missives from little darlings, must not yet have seen their grades, which I posted late Saturday evening, after returning from viewing of terrible Apocalypto movie with hubby.
Computer absolutely loathsome this morning, hardly deserves to be referred to as a “computer” when could not manage to peck out more than one sentence at a time before freezing. Re-started 17 times. Cursed passionately (Not, however, with as much profanity as the young woman I beheld in the Redwood City Library yesterday who screamed and yelled F—! F—! F—! at each stab of the return key. Library patrons, however, the soul of patience: no one even so much as glanced up from their computer screens. My heart, however, was thudding painfully in my chest.)
Eventually, son vacates the premises and I am able to log on from his computer. Such dedication I have for you, loyal blog readers! Following, the list of books I am interested in reading after perusing the New York Times Book Review‘s annual list of best books of the year:
FICTION
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children
Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity PhysicsNONFICTION
Danielle Trussoni’s Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir
Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Rory Stewart’s The Places In Between
Kanlaon 