<i>Not Without Peril</i> by Nicholas Howe

I have trouble with some books like this where the author inserts himself to hike in an area or otherwise give their own opinion on the topic when the rest of the work is focused on retelling the stories from a more historical perspective. Here Howe describes a death or near death experience on Mount Washington then in many cases describes where you can find traces of the incident or describes his own experience going there.

Generally the stories of trouble on the mountain are very interesting. Especially the early ones when there were fewer people in the area and the hikers did not have modern equipment. Reading about how they hiked through fluke summer storms and missed buildings by 50 feet was very engaging and remind me why we carry all that extra gear in our bags.

I could have generally done without Howe's interjections. Particular on the story about Jesse and her fall while ice climbing. That was a compelling enough story on its own. I did not need the author's memories of her to get there.

Overall, an okay read. Good for camping and other times when you are pitted---even slightly---against nature.

6/10

<i>Living to Tell the Tale</i> by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I generally liked this book Marquez tells the story of his early life in the same style that he uses in 100 Years of Solitude. I was expecting fantastic things to happen at every turn. Generally, though since this is a story of real life, there were few fantastic occurrences. Despite that, I enjoyed the adventures he told of his early years and the stories that had grown into his family's legends about how both his parents and maternal grandparents had met, courted and married.

Marquez's father is a bit of an enigma. He would leave the family for large amounts of time, then call for them when he had secured a location to open a pharmacy or had otherwise arranged a place for them to live.

As much as a I enjoyed Marquez's stories of living with his grandparents, going to school and otherwise growing up, I struggled to make it through the sections where he was talking about the newspaper industry in Columbia. The stories outside the paper would good---finding a new place to live, the riots, etc., but much of the rest seemed merely like name dropping. He gave lists of people who were important in the industry and who he spent time with, serving little other purpose other than just to list the names.

Overall, I learned a bit about the history of Columbia and enjoyed the stories of Marquez's childhood and personal struggles.

<i>The Bell Jar</i> by Sylvia Plath

I am glad I didn't read this during high school. I think the main character's personal crisis about her education might have been a little unnerving at the time (though probably more so if I had read it after I had graduated from college and not yet found work), since as I read I identified in many respects with the main character and how she performed in high school and college.

I wonder if the "bell jar" she experienced was what we would think of today as a quarter-life crisis---a realization that all this stuff you've spent learning up to now is not how the real world works and much of the stuff you've learned you really can't apply in any meaningful way. I suppose, though that the quarter-life crisis rarely results (though could) in as extreme an action as a suicide attempt and a need to be committed.

Part of the main character's crisis may have been due to the limited opportunities for women as well. She seemed to have two options in her head: be a great writer or be a stay-at-home wife and only one was at all attractive. Once her confidence as a writer was broken there was only the wife option---to a boy she didn't much like, making the option even more unattractive. The bell jar may have been due more the loss of any other option rather than to any real "craziness" on her part.

From the post matter, much of this story was based on Plath's own experience as a young adult. She says in the book that she dreads the return of "the bell jar," which in real-life seemed to return for Plath based on her later suicide.

The narrative is very tight and believable resulting probably from Plath's intimate similarity to the main character. I like how it is told in first person, as it gives insight to why she is acting as she is. That is always fascinating to me, to see the rational side of an outwardly "crazy" person's behavior.

A very enjoyable read.

<i>Torchwood's Another Life</i>

I grabbed this out of the library in the hope that it would keep my Torchwood high going after watching Children of Earth a couple weeks ago. I overestimated the quality of TV adaptations. It wasn't absolutely horrible---the other Torchwood book I grabbed at the same time was---but it really didn't do much in terms of giving the same complex sense of wonder and fear the show does.

Maybe the key is that if a character or a set of characters developed for a TV show and therefor defied more by the actor's interpretations of them, it is difficult to convey their actions entirely as you would see the actors do on the show. Everyone in the audience sees each of the characters differently, so putting down out particular description will not satisfy every reader's interpretation. As a result, there is probably little hope of any adaptations being much good and i should stick primarily to the show and maybe the radio dramas.

Or, I guess I could write my own fan fiction...

<i>The Futurological Conference</i> by Stanislaw Lem

This is very different from Solaris in tone and topic. Solaris was brooding and rather lonely, whereas this book was frenetic and very crowded. The title---The Futurological Conference---is used as only a device to get us to a dystopia based on hallucinations.

The idea of mind control---very specific mind control---using aerosol drugs is pretty frightening. One section where the main characters were discussing the reason for over population, they noted that everyone thought progress was going well on the space bases because the information they were told included an aerosol for naivety. With no way---and with the drugs no desire---to check, the bases on Jupiter never did, and were never going to, exist.

So, instead of just the standard government pulling the wool over the eyes of the citizens, you have the corporations pulling the the wool over the eyes of the government. Not even the people in charge---or who you think are in charge---know the truth. I guess it is the ultimate in lobbying.

I enjoyed the book, especially the dystopian section, which was quite different from the others I have read. The style was tough to get into at first, but as the story started out so outlandish, I couldn't stop because I wanted to find out just where it would end up.

<i>The Elephant and the Flea</i> by Charles Handy

I think I found out about this book from Slate when they were doing their pieces about memoirs quite a while ago. It had ended up on our Paperbackswap list and showed up in the mail.

Handy did something that very few people were doing in the early 80s---he went portfolio (aka freelance). He did it at a time when everyone was still quite happy to work for large, slow moving corporations---elephants. He notes that he was ahead of the curve, as was his wife who was doing this long before he was. Many more people at the time he wrote the book (2001) were working as fleas (jumping from assignment to assignment, contract to contract, job to job). One number that he quotes is that by 1996, 67% of British businesses had only one employee.

Since this experience sounds compelling based on the self quoted sales figures of his business books, I anticipated Handy's writing to be compelling. While it wasn't unreadable, nor uninteresting, it wasn't quite what I thought it would be as Handy tended to meander his way through his stories, focusing in on bits that did not tend to mesh well with other bits. For example, thoughts on the speed of modern communications were tacked on to a more on message section covering the influence of the Internet on the economy.

There were two parts of the book that I found very interesting and would have liked to read more about. The first is Handy's experience working for Shell in the 50s and 60s. That was an elephant of the elephants. He told how Shell employees did everything. No contracting of cooks, janitors or anyone else. An employee living overseas was given all elements he needed to live there including domestic staff and recreational outlets (Shell cricket or rugby teams) not to mention the expected help with housing and schools. It sounded like one was given a great life and ushered through the management structure as an expected result of long term employment and not rocking the boat. I would hvae been very interested to hear more about this sort of life and the experiences of others inside Shell and other elephants.

The other section that was very interesting was about how Handy and his wife divide their lives to support each others' livelihoods. For six months of the year, his wife is acting as his administrator as was as working on her background research for her photography books and works. During the other six months, his wife is actively doing photo-shoots and he helps her by editing her books and supporting her shoots while he works on research for his books and talks. It is a great strategy and they are able to chunk their time well and each work on their own passions while supporting those of the other. Very cool.

Overall, a pretty good read with some neat ideas and observations here and there, though it does not come together very well as a whole.

<i>The Art of Teaching</i> by Gilbert Highet

I picked this book up after reading an ask.metafilter.com post about teaching methods. Overall, there was little new to me here, though there was much codification of what I knew intuitively. That was was helpful, as it says to me, yes, you are going about it the right way.

So, some of the guidance includes clarity and preparation: make sure you know your material, know how it will be split up and can present it in a clear manner. Another is patience with those who you are teaching, as all topics are not equally understandable to all students. A final one (though not of the complete list) is to lead the students to discovery and stimulate their curiosity by enjoying the subjects and the presentation and by staying dynamic in the class.

Highet present these pieces of advice in an appealing way, using personal anecdotes, some findings of studies and experiences of others (including well-known writers). It gave a dynamic presentation of the information, but caused me to lose the thread of the discussion in some cases.

This is a book to take notes from and is definitely not written int he modern self-help manner with the outline dominating. While such a structure might be helpful in this book to communicate the points, there would be much lost from the dynamism. The book would do well with a summary chapter that gives the details in an abridged form for later reference, as was done in How to Read a Book with much success.

While I won't look to own a copy of this book, I may come back to it again for reference.