non-Fiction Friday: To Hell on a Fast Horse
I’m still working my way through my epic Five Books in Three Weeks feat. Well, okay, it’s not epic. And it’s not really a feat. I’m sure I’ve read five books in a three week period before. But I’ve never actually set out to.
Ten days to go and I’ve got two books left. It’s doable, but I’m not sure it’ll happen (on account of another Hold Request coming through that I’ve been waiting on for several months. And it’s a Koontz. Thought you’d understand.)
Long story short, I’ve finished my first non-fiction title of the five, in Mark Lee Gardner’s excellent To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West.
The book is essentially a dual biography of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, with the narrative shifting between the two figures at logical points. I admit that in the early going, I had a much easier time getting into the Kid chapters, but as the work progressed I saw that the structure of the book made sense.
The funny thing is that even though I understood the structure, I had a difficult time figuring out why the narrative should continue after Billy the Kid’s death. And then I remembered the whole dual biography thing.
Of course, reading this book brought back memories of seeing Young Guns in the summer before my tenth grade year. I wasn’t yet sixteen, but I had a friend who was eighteen, and he took me to see it. My first Rated-R movie without a real adult along (my friend was legally an adult, but he was just another kid, you know).
For the record, a good deal of creative license was taken by that film, which depicted the events of the Lincoln County War, which just happens to be detailed rather nicely by Mr. Gardner in To Hell on a Fast Horse.
In high school, I took a Lit course titled Frontier Literature, and a History course called Westward Movement, so I’ve long been enamored of the Old West. I’ll have to revisit the genre again soon.
This book was a title pick-up, meaning I saw the title on the New Materials RSS Feed for the Library and had to get it. It really didn’t need a thumb-through, either, given the topic and length of the work. One really cool thing about the book is that though it’s fairly brief (~250 pages), it’s not just a popular history. It’s heavily end-noted for anyone who wants to have that greater detail. As for me, I enjoyed the core narrative and didn’t find myself looking all that much at the end-notes. But it was nice to know they were there.
Next up, Why Does E=mc2 (And Why Should We Care?), by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. (Or maybe a Koontz.)
(non)Fiction Friday: For All the Tea in China
I’m a coffee person. Just thought I’d let you know. And while I diligently limit my intake of coffee in order to stay below the addiction threshold, I really look forward to coffee days. (More about my thoughts on Caffeine Bondage if you care to look.)
Most of the time, on my non-coffee days, I go for a cup o’ tea. And after reading Sarah Rose’s terrific For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History, I’m even more interested in adding some quality tea time to my schedule.
This one came to me off the Washington County Libraries New Materials RSS Feed. It’s another case of The Title Grabbed Me. And I’m glad it did. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of several other books, so I had to return it to the Library and then patiently wait for it to come back in so I could finish it.
As with most popular histories, this one follows the exploits of Robert Fortune, the man primarily responsible for
the huge bunch of industrial espionage pulled off by the British, in stealing Chinese trade secrets and materials and starting up the Indian tea industry.
Not only is the narrative entertaining, but it’s also extremely informative. I love learning something new. For instance, did you know that black and green teas come from the same plant? (Seriously, check Wikipedia, under camellia sinesnis.)
Or did you know that the popular green tea in England in the time of Robert Fortune was dyed green (with iron ferrocyanide and calcium sulfate dehydrate – Prussian blue and gypsum)? The customers wanted a greener tea, and the Chinese gave it to them. Served the foreign devils right for not having discerning palates.
The prologue of the book sets the stage nicely, noting that the British worried that in the aftermath of the First Opium War, the Chinese might decide to get into the opium trade themselves, cutting British profits hugely. England would then not be able to afford tea, and that just could not happen. The solution? Bring the tea to India and cut the Chinese out of that trade altogether.
But it wasn’t as simple as transplanting tea shrubs. That had been tried. The plants weren’t the good stuff, and there were nuances to the cultivation of them that the British simply didn’t know. They needed the good raw material and the expertise to grow it properly.
The book follows Fortune into China, disguised as a wealthy and important Mandarin, complete with hair extensions and a queue. He had to travel deeper into China than any westerner in two hundred years, find the goods, and bring them back safely. And keep in mind, he had to keep the plants and seeds viable in transit from China to India, which in the days before steamships and the Suez Canal took months.
Fortunately, technology was on Fortune’s side when it came to keeping the plants alive. The recent development of the Wardian Case, a forerunner of both the terrarium and greenhouse, made it possible to keep plants alive even aboard ship, which was no small matter considering the jostling and sea spray they usually took while at sea.
Fortune’s mission took three years, and his results were quite mixed, but you know the end of the story. Think of a nice cup of amber-colored tea, and what do you think of? Darjeeling? Earl Grey? Not exactly Chinese-sounding names.
The great thing about this book, apart from being of a nice length (a bit past 200 pages), is that Sarah Rose delves into a couple of brief vignettes about tangential issues like the Chinese stance on emigration and the Coolie Trade and the ultimate downfall of the British East India Company after the First Indian War (spurred, by all things, by the kind of grease used on ammunition packets for the Enfield Rifle).
As a popular history, you’re not getting a bunch of boring narrative, bloated with footnotes and endnotes. Instead, you get to follow Mr. Fortune through his very perilous journey.
The end of the book discusses the impact of tea on British Society. It’s interesting that something the British stole for themselves became such an integral part of their lives.
Makes me want to go brew a cup. And as I have a nice packet of loose leaves and a steeping wand, I might just do that.
Next up, we’re back to fiction with The Castle of Llyr. And then I might take a week or two off from book reviews, since both of the other books I’ve got from the Library are tomes.
Wordful Wednesday: Lost to the West
I’m certain that without the Internet I wouldn’t get as much reading in. Or at least I don’t think I’d read on quite as diverse a range of topics as I read now. I still get recommendations from friends, from bibliographies of other books I read, and from the Cursed Library New Materials RSS Feed (a good thing which prevents me from doing much of my own choosing), but it sure seems like, these days, I get a lot of recommendations from other bookish blogs.
I first saw mention of Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization, by Lars Brownworth, over on superfastreader.com. And it certainly would’ve been nice to be a super-fast reader, because interesting and gripping as the book was, it wasn’t exactly speedy reading. And I’m not really sure why not.
I love to read both fiction and non-fiction, and my favorite topics in non-fiction are science and history (and History of Science is a particular favorite). Both history and science books are awesome because they make me feel smarter and dumber at the same time. Mostly I feel dumb that I didn’t already know more about the topic.
Everyone learns about the Byzantine Empire in school, right? I know I certainly did, though I haven’t had a world history class since (wow!) 1987 or so. Double wow there. It all goes back to the fact that I did a 3:2 transfer program to get my engineering degree. Since we future engineers were only going to be experiencing three of the normal four years of George Fox College’s offerings, the powers that be decided we shouldn’t waste time on trivialities like Western Civ and U.S. History or, for that matter, Bible 101. No, instead, we few, we lucky few, got to take upper-division electives in the humanities and Bible.
(This isn’t really a complaint here. In Bible, particularly, I loved the classes I took – Writings of John, Life of Christ, and Christian Classics were awesome. And I got my Bible 101 from LeTourneau University after I transferred.)
So I got to choose either Psychology or Sociology, had to take both Ethics and Intro to Philosophy (both of which helped me discover my love of writing), and the History class I chose was England to 1688. By the way, I enjoyed the class quite a bit.
(Looking back, I’m really glad I studied Engineering at a liberal arts school. Because Intro to Music and Survey of Art were really cool classes. Even if we engineers enjoyed adding an ‘F’, guess where, in Survey of Art. Psst…it was right before the only ‘a’ in the course title. Don’t tell my mother.)
You know what I love? When I completely hijack an otherwise well-intentioned book review to just yammer on about something in my past. Blogging is awesome.
Anyhow, I knew something about the Byzantines, because I’d had Mrs. Gaffney’s Honors World History way back twenty-three years ago (sob!), and I even read Stephen Lawhead’s Byzantium back in college, which wasn’t even fifteen years ago!
All that being said, I knew nothing about the Byzantine Empire And now I do. I know that Justinian was a pretty remarkable dude, Belisarius was an amazing military commander, the Comnenis brought things back from the brink, the Fourth Crusade was a tragedy, and being the Byzantine Emperor must’ve been a pretty cool gig, apart from the fact that the severance package usually involved being poisoned, blinded, or strangled with a bowstring.
But more than any dry facts I may have learned in reading this book, I learned to admire the Byzantines and to be thankful for what they did, preserving what became known as the Western Tradition even while being normally thought of as The East.
Because, really, what would’ve become of Western Europe without Constantinople? In short, it probably would have ceased to exist during the Dark Ages. At its most vulnerable, it probably would have been attacked by the Bulgars, or the Khans, or the Turks. But with Constantinople there, a brilliant and wealthy target, all the big guns seemed to aim there. And most of them were pushed back.
Of course, Byzantine power waxed and waned a fair bit, and some of the Emperors weren’t worth the air they breathed. But others brought them back from the brink and managed to save the remnants of Greek and Roman culture so they could be passed on later. And even the final fall of Constantinople did good for the Christian West. In their exodus from the failing empire, the population carried copies of classical works into the West (which had been Lost to the West).
In short, even though I seemed to struggle to get through it, this is a terrific book and highly worth reading. And I need to read more histories. (Heh…but I already started another.)
Next up…no idea really. I’ve started five books, and I’m pretty sure I know which three I’ll finish first, but can’t make an educated guess as to which will pull me in for a quick finish.
Fiction Friday Night: Brighty of the Grand Canyon
I just realized (just counted, actually) that I’ve included fifteen read-alouds on my reading list this year. There are actually quite a few others I read to Ethan that I didn’t count because of their failure to meet my fairly low standards of length/difficulty.
The latest one that counted was Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a 1953 book by Marguerite Henry, detailing the adventures/legend of a burro named Brighty (after Bright Angel Creek).
(Marguerite Henry wrote several books about a horse called Misty. You may be familiar with those titles. I think I was aware of them.)
The book was a gift from my mom, who visited the Grand Canyon just this year. As a description of the Canyon in its pre-National Park days, the book succeeds rather well. As an adventure, it’s a bit disjointed.
The book starts by introducing Brighty and Old Timer, an old prospector. Before long, Old Timer and Brighty meet a shady stranger who is unambiguously The Bad Guy. But Old Timer is too trusting and shares the secret of a terrific stake he’s just made (a rich copper deposit).
Then Old Timer is murdered, and there’s really no mystery about whodunnit, and Brighty is left to fend for himself. Which, of course, he does rather well, having never really depended on Old Timer for anything but some treats and a few back scratchings.
Soon thereafter we’re also introduced to Uncle Jimmy, a renowned mountain lion hunter, and also to the sheriff of the county, both of whom pledge to bring the killer to justice.
And then we don’t hear anything about the search for the murderer for about a hundred pages. Instead, the narrative focuses on Brighty’s activities in the years that follow the murder. We learn what Brighty does in the summer and what he does in the winter. We learn that he’s a tough customer, when he manages to fight off and kill a mountain lion. And we learn what he thought of the Other Side of the Canyon after a bridge was built across the Colorado River (Teddy Roosevelt makes a few appearances during this part).
Eventually the Bad Guy resurfaces, and there’s a bit of trouble and some scuffles and some difficulties, none of which I’ll divulge.
I won’t say Ethan and I didn’t enjoy it. It’s somewhat difficult to connect with a non-human character who doesn’t talk, and I totally blame animated movies for that! (BTW, as an aside, why was The Incredible Journey remade with talking animals? The old version had to be better, though I’ll admit I didn’t see the new one.)
But the fact that Brighty was a real character made it interesting, and as I mentioned, the history is fascinating. And the descriptions of the Canyon and its surrounds made me want to see it again. And maybe go on one of those trail hikes with donkeys.
Next up…I’m not certain, because two holds just came through at the Library, and the final Crichton book was on the Best-Sellers rack and I picked it up. We’ll see if I can focus on just one of them.
Wordful Wednesday Morning: The Girl Who Ran
One of the things I’ve long thought was cool about homeschooling is that all the teaching materials are in my house, and I stand a fair chance of actually (gasp!) learning something. Now, I’m sure that all parents are surprised at the things they’ve forgotten that their kids are just learning (hence, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader). But I think the condition is particularly acute with homeschoolers.
At this point in our homeschooling experience, I’m mostly the nighttime read-aloud dude. And the library-book-procurer. And the baseball thrower and catcher (sometimes catching one on the spine).
I’m loving the read-alouds, because I get to learn something new almost every time.
Our latest read-aloud was Naya Nuki: Shoshoni Girl Who Ran, by Kenneth Thomasma. The story follows Naya Nuki, a young Shoshoni girl and friend of Sacajawea who was taken captive by an enemy tribe during the Shoshoni Buffalo Hunt (which took them into enemy territory), along with her more famous friend.
Both girls, among others, were taken on a long trek (a thousand miles, give or take) and made slaves of the other tribe. While Sacajawea apparently made 
peace with her fate, Naya Nuki focused on planning her escape. For the entire trip, she noted landmarks to help her find her way (the Missouri River was a major help in this).
Once they came to their destination, Naya Nuki worked hard in order to gain trust, and then began gathering materials she would need for her long return trip, including a buffalo skin and knife.
The story of her arduous return trip after her escape is very inspiring, as she was attacked by bears, nearly died of some kind of illness, and struggled to find enough food to make it home.
The narrative is interesting, because there is rarely any dialogue. This is expected, of course, because for a full three quarters of the book, Naya Nuki is entirely alone.
One quirk of the book was the frequency of occurrence of Naya Nuki’s name. It appeared in practically ever other sentence. Now, I understand that using “she” over and over again would get tiresome, and I may not have noticed the frequency of the name if I hadn’t been reading it aloud. But it was still somewhat strange.
By the way, the book notes that we have actually no idea of Naya Nuki’s real name, because her name was changed after she returned home. Naya Nuki means “Girl Who Ran.”
The Epilogue mentions the joyful reunion of Sacajawea and Naya Nuki, and excerpts Meriwether Lewis’ journal describing the event.
In many ways, Naya Nuki’s story is more interesting and inspiring than Sacajawea’s.
Once again, Ethan was riveted by the story. I sometimes wonder if I could read baseball box scores to him and he’d still beg, “just a little more!”