Tropics' 999 Challenge.

1. Travel & Adventure
2. Fiction from "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"
3. Geology, Paleontology, Archeology, General Science
4. History, Politics and War
5. Art History
6. Birds & Wildlife
7. Memoir & Biography
8. Humor
9. Books I didn't finish

9. Books I didn't finish

The Life Of Pi - Yann Martel
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
100 Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Marquez
Greene On Capri: A Memoir - Shirley Hazzard
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
The God Of Small Things - Arundhati Roi
My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns To Face His Country, His Tribe, And His Conscience - Rian Malan
The Bridge Of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder (read October 2009)

You have great topics. I will be especially interested to see your reading lists for Categories 1, 3 and 5 BUT I really, really love "Books I Didn't Finish".

I'm interested in your Art History category.

2. From 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Candide - Voltaire
Christ Stopped At Eboli - Carlo Levi
Burmese Days - George Orwell
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
Saturday - Ian McEwan
Slaughterhouse-5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Dispatches - Michael Herr
The Honorary Consul - Graham Greene

7. Memoir & Biography

Travels With Myself And Another - Martha Gellhorn (read February 2009)
The Economist Book Of Obituaries - Keith Colquhoun (read March 2009)
Garlic And Sapphires: The Secret Life Of A Critic In Disguise - Ruth Reichl (read February 2009
Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures At The Table - Ruth Reichl (read February 2009)
Ex Libris: Confessions Of A Common Reader - Anne Fadiman (read March 2009)
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic - Ingrid D. Rowland (read March 2009)
Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life Of The Natural History Museum - Richard Fortey (read January 2009 - treated as a Memoir)
The Year Of Living Biblically - A.J. Jacobs (read May 2009)
Darkness Visible: A Memoir Of Madness - William Styron (read April 2009)
The Orientalist: Solving The Mystery Of A Strange And Dangerous Life - Tom Reiss (read December 2009)

1. Travel & Adventure

From The Holy Mountain - William Dalrymple (read July 2009)
The Naked Tourist: In Search Of Adventure And Beauty In The Age Of The Airport Mall - Lawrence Osborne (read August 2009)
Hydra And The Bananas Of Leonard Cohen: A Search For Serenity In The Sun - Roger Green (read April 2009)
A Voyage Long And Strange: Rediscovering The New World- Tony Horwitz (read June 2009)
No Reservations: Around The World On An Empty Stomach - Anthony Bourdain (read August 2009)
Ghost Riders: Travels With American Nomads - Richard Grant
Passage To Juneau - Jonathan Raban
Saddled With Darwin - Toby Green
Three Cups Of Tea - Greg Mortenson (read June 2009)

6. Birds & Wildlife

The Parrot's Lament And Other True Tales Of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity - Eugene Linden (read February 2009)
Chasing Monarchs: Migrating With The Butterflies Of Passage - Robert Michael Pyle
Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder -Richard Louv (read May 2009)
Life List: A Woman's Quest For The World's Most Amazing Birds - Olivia Gentile (read August 2009)
Carnivorous Nights: On The Trail Of The Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach (read February 2009)
Of A Feather: A Brief History Of American Birding - Scott Weidensaul
The Big Oyster: History On The Half Shell - Mark Kurlansky
Vietnam: A Natural History - Sterling
The Gulf Stream - Ulanski (read September 2009)

8. Humor

The Birdman And The Lap Dancer: Close Encounters With Strangers - Eric Hansen (read December 2009)
Therapy - David Lodge (read February 2009)
Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It - Geoff Dyer (read August 2009)
The Five-Minute Iliad Other Instant Classics: Great Books For The Short Attention Span - Greg Nagan
Farewell My Subaru: An Epic Adventure In Local Living - Doug Fine (read September 2009)
The Dog Who Wouldn't Be - Farley Mowat (read October 2009)
The Bear Went Over The Mountain - William Kotzwinkle
Barrel Fever - David Sedaris (read November 2009)
Then We Came To The End Joshua Ferris (read June 2009)

4. History, Politics & War

The Botany Of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View Of The World - Michael Pollan (read July 2009)
War Journal: My Five Years In Iraq - Richard Engel (read April 2009)
A Byzantine Journey - John Ash (read June 2009)
Seeds Of Change: Five Plants That Transformed Mankind - Henry Hobhouse (read July 2009)
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky (read June 2009)
Panther Soup: Travels Through Europe In War And Peace - John Gimlette (read April 2009)
Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From The Heart Of America - Garrison Keillor (read February 2009)
The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way - Bill Bryson (read January 2009)
Longitude: The True Story Of A Lone Genius Who Solved The Greatest Scientific Problem Of His Time - Dava Sobel (read May 2009)
Are We Rome? The Fall Of An Empire And The Fate Of America - Cullen Murphy (read November 2009)
What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias And The News - Eric Alterman (read December 2009)
The Library At Night - Alberto Manguel (read December 2009)
Dreams And Shadows: The Future Of The Middle East - Robin Wright (read December 2009)

5. Art History

Egypt: 4000 Years Of Art - Jaromir Malek
The Golden Age Of Persian Art - Sheila R. Canby
The World's Most Influential Painters....And The Artists They Inspired - David Gariff
Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Sigueiros - Desmond Rochfort
Still Life And Trade In The Dutch Golden Age - Julie Berger Hochstrasser
The Private Lives Of The Impressionists - Sue Roe
Canyon de Chelly: 100 Years Of Painting And Photography - Donald J. Hagerty
Frida Kahlo And Diego Rivera - Isabel Alcantara (read February 2009)
Sister Wendy's American Collection - Sister Wendy Beckett (read June 2009)

3. Geology, Paleontology, Archeology, Science

The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, And The Amazing Story Of The Powerful River In The Atlantic - Stan Ulanski (read September 2009)
The Field Guide To Geology - Lambert
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing The Climate And What It Means For Life On Earth - Tim Flannery (read June 2009)
Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach (read September 2009)
The Science Of Leonardo: Inside The Mind Of The Great Genius Of The Renaissance - Fritjof Capra
The Future Eaters - Tim Flannery (read September 2009)
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour Of The Beautiful Basics Of Science - Natalie Angier
Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, A Scientist, And A Search For The World's Most Extraordinary Creature - Tim Flannery (read September 2009)
Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey Of A Literary Genius - Kurt Johnson

I hope you won't mind me stealing your "books i didn't finish" category name.. i love it.. and surprisingly, i have 3 books in common with you - life of pi, god of small things and satanic verses..

I think you're really brave with the "books I didn't finish" category. What if you still don't like them? Will you persevere to the bitter end? I have to confess I didn't finish Satanic Verses either. I did eventually finish 100 Years of Solitude even though I'm not keen on magical realism and after a slow start came to really enjoy The God of Small Things.

Ramya and Social Pages: I think I'll begin the new year by targeting two "books I didn't finish" right out of the chute - probably Life Of Pi and Lost In A Good Book. And I do plan to begin again on page one!

Once I've conquered them, I'll reward myself with something especially enticing from my TBR piles.

I haven't read any art history. It sounds like an interesting category.

Like you, I struggled with The Magic Mountain - I got about halfway through and had to give up. I really wish you well with this category - I also didn't finish God of the Small Things but wouldn't try it again, there are so many Indian novels out there. I have read Ghosts of Spain - very good background on the civil war legacy. Driving over Lemons is a fun read.

I won't be further complicating my reading life with a counter; I'm simply going to attempt to read the books I've chosen, but will no doubt do a fair bit of tinkering with my selections. I got off to a slow start in January, reading just two books (while also spending a great deal of time reading on the Net - newspapers, magazines, etc.)

1. The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way - Bill Bryson (touchstones not working)

The author's humorous inclinations prevail throughout this masterful exploration of the origins of the English language. I recommend it.

The original Indo-European languages split into a dozen broad groups. English is part of the Germanic family, which gradually split into three branches: North Germanic, West Germanic, and East Germanic. English belongs to the West Germanic group.

In Japanese, the word for foreigner means "stinking of foreign hair". Germans call cockroaches "Frenchmen". The French call lice "Spaniards". The Romance languages are derived from the Latin vulgate.

The main bringer to Britain of literacy, and Christianity, was St. Augustine, who traveled there with forty missionaries in 597. The English language has changed dramatically over the centuries. It was considerably influenced by Viking raiders and, later, by the Norman conquest of 1066. During this latter time, dialects prospered and multiplied.

We have some forty sounds in English, but more than 200 ways of spelling them (e.g., the "sh" sound - sugar, passion, ambitious, ocean, champagne).

English is full of bobbytraps for the unwary foreigner. However, it is one of the world's great growth industries. There are now far more students of English in China than there are people in the United States. However, in the United States, approximately one in five people don't speak English in the home.

2. Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life Of The Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey.

Wonderful book! Richard Fortey's breezy, good-humored descriptions of the eccentric characters toiling away within the museum are a joy to read. I've taken voluminous notes, this being a library loan. The author's specialty at this famous institution was that of trilobites, the study of which took him to the Arctic island of Spitzbergen, with its Ordovician rocks. He retired in 2006, but still works without compensation.

Amidst the absorbing scientific facts presented, the reader learns that the forensic entymologists who study dead piglets as they are eaten by maggots are habitually cheerful; that experts on weevils, toads, or brachiopods have surprisingly lustful tendencies (evidenced by tryst-ready mattresses on the floor in the hidden recesses of that department).

3. Therapy - David Lodge

This brilliant tragi-comic novel about the author's middle aged crisis, unsuccessfullly assuaged by a variety of therapeutic dabblings, was a joy to read. A British Woody Allen? Should we be laughing at a 58-year-old man attempting illicit sex while wearing a red knee bandage and an elasticated elbow bandage? Absolutely!

4. Frida Kahlo And Diego Rivera - Isabel Alcantara

Brief, beautifully illustrated account of the tumultuous relationship of these two icons of 20th century art.

On this "Virtual Diego Rivera Web Museum" site one can watch a video of the stunningly attractive Frida and Diego together:

http://diegorivera.com/index.php

5. Garlic And Sapphires: The Secret Life Of A Critic In Disguise - Ruth Reichl

Before becoming the editor of Gourmet Magazine, Ruth Reichl famously alternately charmed and horrified readers in her role as food critic for The New York Times. Having already achieved fame and notoriety before moving to New York, it was necessary for her to create elaborate disguises while critiquing famous restaurants there. These successful and amusing escapades are humorously - and, yes, deliciously - described in this book.

I've never been a "foodie" and have never eaten in a famous restaurant. However, back in the 70s, while living in the woods in Oregon and eschewing beef, pork and poultry, I was inspired to read each and every back issue of Gourmet Magazine available at our local library. Jay Jacobs, the magazine's food critic then, amazed me with his elaborate descriptions of sumptuous meals.

There is now speculation that Gourmet Magazine may not survive our current economic downturn!! It is, however, expected to continue online.

Speaking of which, Gourmet's Diary Of A Foodie episodes from PBS are available online:

6. Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures At The Table - Ruth Reichl

I read this book out of sequence as it was written prior to Garlic And Sapphires.

At age 39, successfully working her way up the food critic ladder in California, Ruth Reichl is not only full of expensive food and wine; she is also full of herself. Readers with pathetically thin, fine, mousy hair (such as mine) will feel really, really envious of Ruth's. Although she frequently alludes to its unruliness, I sense that she is fully aware of its ability to attract notice. Nor is she shy about letting the reader know that men find her alluring ("I felt beautiful and charming"). Upon being sexually attracted to two worldly men, she uncharacteristically tears off her clothes and engages in complicated, clandestine trysts while still married to the philandering, increasingly unavailable Doug.

One gorges vicariously throughout the book as Ruth schmoozes with California's "foodie" cognoscenti (Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, and M.K. Fisher), and dashes off to Thailand, China, France and Spain to participate in complicated gustatory experiences, most of them involving large quantities of expensive wine. I was left wondering if the incorrectly identified armadillo served to the group in China was actually dog meat.

Ruth Reichl is a truly engaging writer and a very successful woman. I do wish that she (and everyone else) would refrain from eating shark fin soup. My heart ached for her and Michael when their adopted infant daughter Gavi was tragically returned to her birth mother.

"Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love."

(Song of Solomon, 2:5)

Hi!
Being an art historian in training, I love your art history category. You have a very interesting list there; I'll keep an eye on your thread!

Great reviews of the Ruth Reichl books. I love everything she writes. You'll have to finish up with Tender at the Bone which, in some ways, is the best of the three.

Love all your categories. It's great to see someone else reading a bunch of nonfiction. I look forward to mroe of your excellent reviews.

7. Carnivorous Nights: On The Trail Of The Tasmanian Tiger - Mittelbach

Why do I keep torturing myself by reading about human-caused extinctions?

Nevetheless, kudos to charming young American travelers, Margaret Mittelbach, Michael Crewdson, and their famous artist friend Alexis Rockman, who endeavored to travel to Tasmania in 2005 in the quixotic hope that a few remaining thylacines (a.k.a Tasmanian tigers) might still exist in some neglected corner of that besieged island.

The thylacine was a large, nocturnal, carnivorous marsupial, with a striped back and a pouch that faced backward. It became extinct on the Australian mainland thousands of years before that continent was settled by Europeans, but it survived on Tasmania until the early 20th century, approximately 130 years after settlers arrived with their sheep, dogs, traps and guns - and their propensity for destroying the animal's habitat. Bounty hunters pursued it relentlessly. The last animal died in a zoo in 1936. The species was officially declared extinct in 1986. And yet there are those who still longingly search for it.

Tasmania still hosts a plethora of unusual creatures, many of which are nocturnal - pademelons, wombats, Tasmanian devils, platypus, quolls, wallabies, kangaroos, betongs, echidnas. Caution is required while driving in the countryside at night lest one contribute to the roadkill census.

Alexis Rockman is famous for his paintings which illustrate the treacherous relationship between man and nature. He proved to be the ideal travel companion to the two naturalists who invited him to accompany them. Mellowed by a generous supply of the island's marijuana, he was inspired to improvise with natural pigments such as wombat scat and dehydrated leeches mixed with his own blood. The book's numerous illustrations are a testament to his skill.

8. The Parrot's Lament And Other True Tales Of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, And Ingenuity - Eugene Linden

In the preface to this book the author writes:

"How we treat animals in captivity reflects on our view of ourselves and our humanity. How we treat wild nature gives us insights into whether we are going astray in our dealings with the rest of the natural order."

Anthropomorphism - imposing human motives upon other creatures - is generally frowned upon in the scientific community.

This noted environmentalist and author of several other important books here recounts numerous first-hand experiences of veterinarians, field biologists, researchers and trainers whose observations clearly demonstrate that loyalty, love, trust, heroism and yes, DECEPTION are manifested in other creatures, great and small.

Chimpanzees are adept at warfare and cooperative hunting. They make tools (e.g. crack nuts with stones). In captivity baboons and chimpanzees have become skilled at using computers and have been shown to have remarkable memories. Gorillas use words (sign language) in symbolic ways. They - and numerous other animal species - have playful instincts. They also grieve. Controversy continues to surround Penny Patterson, the developmental psychologist who has spent decades working with the world-famous gorilla, Koko, and who also believes that another gorilla, Michael, described to her through sign language how his mother was killed and he was captured in Africa. The psychologist Irene Pepperberg taught the African grey parrot Alex to correctly identify numbers as high as six.

Orangutans are regarded as the superstars of zoo escapes. One noted individual, Fu Manchu, was eventually made an honorary member of the American Association of Locksmiths. Orangutans are incredibly strong. Each finger is like a human hand in terms of strength. This - and their remarkable resourcefulness - continue to create numerous problems for zoo keepers.

As to whether or not zoos have created problems for orangutans...........It is painful, indeed, to contemplate the deprivation and torture endured by countless animals that have been captured and relegated to zoos over the centuries. And now, as the pressures of human population continue to degrade natural habitats, zoos may prove to be the last refuge of our wild brethren.

Your description of Carnivorous Nights is really tempting. Scott Weidensaul covers some of the history in The Ghost with Trembling Wings and I've always wanted to know more.

Thanks for posting ... I'll keep checking back as I'm really intrigued by The Birdman and the Lap Dancer as well as your various chaco-related titles. Craig Childs' House of Rain was in the top three books I read last year.

9. Travels With Myself And Another: A Memoir - Martha Gellhorn

This absorbing book - recounting some of her "worst of" travels - was my first encounter with this extremely resourceful, strong-willed, intelligent, globe-trotting war correspondent. Of particular interest is her description of difficulties endured when, while reporting for Collier's Magazine, she and her then-husband Ernest Hemingway traveled to Hong Kong, Burma and Japanese-occupied China in early 1941, just months before the U.S. was drawn into the worldwide conflict. "Impoverished" cannot begin to describe the circumstances in which the peasantry lived in these regions.

I'm surprised that she would undertake overland travel across the entire expanse of equatorial Africa (west to east) in 1962 with so little preparation and only the vaguest notion of the difficulties that she would face, most notably in Cameroun. I also wonder why she would show up in Moscow in July (1971), wearing winter clothes. Her account of the soul-numbing effects of Russian communism is chilling. I was amused by her descriptions of the alleged spiritual vacuity of the hippies that she met during an otherwise pleasant sojourn in Eilath, Israel.

I plan to read a great deal more by and about Martha Gellhorn. On-line obituaries relate that she died in 1998, allegedly by suicide, just short of her 90th birthday, following a long struggle with cancer. Years earlier, botched cataract surgery left her nearly blind.

10. Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From The Heart Of America - Garrison Keillor

Checking in with CNN this afternoon, I was horrified by the frightening visages of both Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as they delighted an adoring audience with their virulent right-wing shtick during CPAC 2009 (Conservative Political Action Conference). I didn't linger long (thanks, but I hear these diatribes on talk radio).

Fortuitously, I happened to be in the midst of reading Garrison Keillor's heartfelt tribute to "do-gooder" Democrats and to the character-building experiences of his Minnesota childhood much influenced by the virtues that he believes reside within that party. He reminds readers that he was a grateful beneficiary of public education at a time when golden opportunities beckoned to children of laborers, farmers, bus drivers, postal workers. After graduating from high school in 1960, imbued with his extended family's work ethic and strong moral values, he went on the University of Minnesota and later, fame and fortune as an endearing chronicler of simpler times.

Of today's political climate (Bush Administration - 2004) he writes:

"To the hard-ass Republican tax cutter ............, human misery is all a fiction, something out of novels, stories of matchbook people. He's doing fine, so what's the problem? He is oblivious. George Custer knew more about the Sioux than this guy knows about the world around him."

"When you wage war on the public schools, you're attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You're not a conservative, you're a vandal".

Thank you, Garrison Keillor.

11. The Economist Book Of Obituaries - Keith Colquhoun

The British have long been noted for their lively and occasionally irreverant obituaries, especially those featured within the pages of the Daily Telegraph and The Independent. For most of its history, The Economist had no obituary page. In 1995 that changed. Just one individual would be featured in each issue, someone who had led an interesting and thought-provoking life. And as it turned out, that individual need not have been human. Alex the African Grey parrot, Science's best known parrot, who died on September 6th 2007, aged 31, was honored with a tribute to his inquiring mind and endearing personality.

The 200 obituaries contained here encompass a broad spectrum of the famous and infamous - Jean Bedel Bokassa, the cruel dictator of the Central African Republic; the crew of The Columbia Seven who died when the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up in 2003; Princess Margaret, "an authentic living royal with a happily uninhibited streak"; the contentious, mysogynistic American writer, Norman Mailer; the indefatigable "amateur" traveler Eric Newby; Pierre Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister who presided over violent Quebec separatiste incidents and kept the country together and who was regarded as an exciting politician to the world at large.

And now I know that Miriam Rothschild thought that fleas were beautiful and worthy of serious study; that Sue Sumii, until her death in Japan at age 95, spent most of her life exposing "the idiocy" of that country's class system and marshalling sympathy for the untouchable class known as burakumin; that Sun Yaoting, the last eunuch to serve China's last emperor, died in 1996 at age 93.

12. Ex Libris: Confessions Of A Common Reader - Anne Fadiman

Sesquipedalian - given to or characterized by long words.

With interest flagging in a book that I was currently reading, I retrieved this one from my gigantic TBR pile and was instantly transported by Anne Fadiman's revelations about her figurative and literal family. Imagine growing up in a household of 7,000 books! Her father, Clifton Fadiman, was a famous writer, editor, critic, and noted intellectual. Her mother, Annalee Jacoby Fadiman, was a World War Two war correspondent for LIFE and TIME (on-line TIME article about her (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796845,00.html) . Not surprisingly, Anne became a superb wordsmith herself. Her acclaimed book, THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN, is about Hmong families, uprooted by war in Laos and resettled in the perplexingly foreign milieu of Merced, California .

In the process of reading EX LIBRIS you may, as I have, find yourself visiting the on-line J. Peterman catalogue http://jpeterman.com/ , "googling" the author and discovering that she is a breast cancer survivor, resolving to read Orwell's HOMAGE TO CATALONIA and Laurie Lee's A MOMENT OF WAR.

13. The Face Of War - Martha Gellhorn

A collection of this courageous American war correspondent's reportage, beginning with the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, continuing with the unspeakable carnage of World War Two and the belated liberation of concentration camp survivors, then on to the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy, the insanity of the Vietnam conflict, the vicious El Salvadoran Civil War and the thwarted aspirations of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

"When I was young I believed in the perfectibility of man, and in progress, and thought of journalism as a guiding light. If people were told the truth, if dishonor and injustice were clearly shown to them, they would at once demand the saving action, punishment of wrong-doers, and care for the innocent. Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth. The guiding light of journalism was no stronger than a glow worm."

Martha Gellhorn aspired to be a guiding light.

14. Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic - Ingrid D. Rowland

Giordano Bruno, a brilliant Italian philosopher and seeker, was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. He believed that the earth revolved around the sun and that the universe was infinite. He also held opinions about transubstantiation and the Trinity that were contrary to Catholic doctrine. Nor did he believe in the divinity of the Virgin Mary. He was held in prison for seven years and given numerous opportunities to recant, but refused.

He began his education at a Dominican monastery in Naples, completed his novitiate, and became a priest at age 24. While there he honed his skills as a teacher of mnemonics, but became increasingly a focus of official concern for having removed images of saints from his room and for reading unsanctioned books. Eventually he fled, abandoned his Dominican habit, and spent years traveling through Europe, teaching, writing books, at times occasionally enjoying the protection of powerful patrons. However, his strongly expressed opinions often proved his undoing, and he was frequently required to move on.

It was after his return to Venice that he was denounced by the nobleman who had invited him there and he was turned over to a tribunal of the Inquisition.

I have been enjoying your reviews. They convey a strong sense of the books themselves as well as your response to them. Not to mention the entertaining variety of the books you have been reading. Thanks.

15. Hydra And The Bananas Of Leonard Cohen: A Search For Serenity In The Sun - Roger Green

I was instantly intrigued by this title while browsing in a used book store.

After it became widely known that the Canadian poet Leonard Cohen lived, loved and wrote on the Greek island of Hydra intermittently during the '60s and 70s, legions of his admirers made pilgrimages there, myself among them. Strangely, my backpacking visit there in 1982 coincided with a filming episode of the TV series THE LOVE BOAT. One morning I was surprised to spot the "captain" and friends down at the harbor. Linda Evans, another star of the program, was also rumored to be on the island, but our paths never crossed. No sign of Leonard Cohen, either.

Roger Green, a published British poet, first came to the island in 1993 to teach English. He was still there in 1999, when, to commemorate the advent of the new millenium, he wrote a poem cleverly entitled "Fun de Siecle", to be sung to the tune of Leonard Cohen's famous song "Suzanne". As it happened, Leonard Cohen's ex-lover, Suzanne, (who apparently was not the Suzanne of the song, altho' she is the mother of his two children) was present at the outdoor restaurant when he performed it. It was then that she learned that the author's rented apartment looked down upon the yard of the house that she and Leonard once shared and in which she continues to reside intermittently.

Mr Green has written an engaging account of his associations with the island's permanent and temporary inhabitants. A few "bedraggled and forlorn" banana plants growing in Leonard Cohen's wife's yard become a frequent focus of his musings and a source of controversy between Suzanne and individuals entrusted to their care. Enchantingly, the reader learns that the Latin name for banana is musa sapientum ("Muse Of The Wise). And yet, how to account for the term "going bananas"?

http://picasaweb.google.com/pocomas11/BananaFlower?feat=directlink

What a great post!

16. Panther Soup: Travels Through Europe In War And Peace- John Gimlette.

This is the third book I've read by this peripatetic British author, a master of detailed historical digging beneath the service. Previously I followed him along rather breathlessly and with great interest as he explored the idiosyncratic histories of Newfoundland Theatre Of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland And Labrador and Paraguay, At The Tomb Of The Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay.

In 2004 his attentions turned to the European theater of operations during World War Two. The idea for the book was apparently planted by a chance meeting with an 84-year-old American tank battalion veteran, Putnam Flint. As a young soldier in 1944 and 1945 his tour of duty began in Marseilles, France, continued on through Dijon, Alsace, Lorraine, Paris, into Germany, then through the Alps into Austria. The author convinced Mr. Flint and a son to accompany him on a retrospective journey through these hard-won regions, searching for vestiges of the campaign and noting the changes that over time have transformed the region from a scene of almost-unimaginable destruction to one of peace.

The title of the book, "Panther Soup", refers to the mud churned up by the battalion's tanks as they confronted formidable Nazi defenses.

Until now I was ignorant of General Patton's famous pronouncement:
"A soldier who won't fuck won't fight". The author spent perhaps a tad bit too much time researching the opportunities that became available for these pursuits in liberated Paris.

Otherwise, he provides the reader with unforgettable reminders of humankind's unassuaged propensity for destruction, as well as our ability to rebuild and move on. Ironically, many American soldiers who fought the Nazis were descendants of German immigrants.

17. Darkness Visible: A Memoir Of Madness - William Styron

In 1985, then aged 60, the famous author William Styron was hospitalized for seven weeks with symptoms of severe depression, including suicidal ideation. The profound suffering that he endured both prior to and during this essential intervention are described in excruciating detail.

As an R.N. (now retired) who spent years working in psychiatric milieus, I can attest to the challenges involved in shepherding these individuals from despair to normalcy. tortured as they are by insomnia, a profound loss of self-esteem, and an acute fear of abandonment.

In the author's case, medications and talk therapy were of no benefit as they were initiated long after the symptoms became severe. His extended hospital stay kept him safe from the very real threat of self-harm while the symptoms gradually dissipated.

The origins of the author's predisposition to depression may well relate to his father's similar struggle and to the loss of his mother at age 13.

William Styron grew up less than 100 miles from the area of Virginia where Nat Turner's tragic slave rebellion began and which he chronicled in The Confessions Of Nat Turner. His own paternal grandparents had been slave owners.

He is perhaps most famous for his novel Sophie's Choice, about a Polish, non-Jewish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp.

18. War Journal: My Five Years In Iraq - Richard Engel

Heartbreaking reportage from blood-soaked Iraq by a determined war correspondent - a courageous, credible witness whom I have followed with great interest on NBC since the beginning of the U.S. invasion in 2003. Unlike the bureaucrats esconced within the Green Zone, Richard lived and reported in the Red Zone despite ever-present danger and several near-death experiences. He was 29 years old when he arrived there, well-prepared, fluent in Arabic, having lived in Egypt for years.

Important points made:

U.S. troops have NEVER been fighting anyone in Iraq linked to 9/11 despite the Administration's best efforts to convince them - and us - of such. They have, instead, been "kicking the wrong jihadist ass in the wrong country".

After thirteen centuries of Sunni predominance, Iraq is now in control of Shiites.

Iran - a Shiite country - had the most to gain from the U.S. invasion.

The invasion of Iraq made Al-Queda much stronger.

Al-Jazeera coverage (so maligned by the Bush Administration) was most often accurate.

Bremer's decision to dissolve the Iraqi armed forces was crazy. The U.S. treated senior Sunni army officers as criminals and peasants. Bremer was a catastrophe as a civil administrator.

Despite a sharp decrease during the "surge", sectarian violence continues and has recently increased (see news coverage, April 2009).

19. Creating Nature In Watercolor: An Artist's Guide - Cathy Johnson

I first became an admirer of Cathy Johnson, author of 33 books (many of them on art) when I read The Nocturnal Naturalist: Exploring The Outdoors At Night many years ago.

Much time has passed since I last dabbled in watercolor, but this book has inspired me to try again. Organized by habitat (desert, mountains, prairie, etc.), it encourages the reader to create a field journal.

Checking the proposed titles in my "999 Challenge", it's evident that I was wildly optimistic. Clearly, I need to immediately stop reading book reviews and get focused.

That book on Giordano Bruno sounds like a great read. I'd never heard of him before, but now I see that there are several books about him and by him. Thanks for introducing him!

20. Longitude: The True Story Of A Lone Genius Who Solved The Greatest Scientific Problem Of His Time - Dava Sobel

John Harrison was an accomplished young carpenter and a self-educated amateur clockmaker from Yorkshire, born March 24, 1693, who devoted his life to constructing a marine chronometer, an accurate timepiece which could be used to determine longitude aboard ships. Existing clocks were of no use on the high seas due to problems created by temperature, pressure and humidity. Whereas during The Age Of Sail, latitude could be assessed by such instruments as the astrolabe and the sextant, east to west "dead reckoning" was fraught with danger, manifested by countless shipwrecks, drowned crew, and lost cargo.

The Earth takes 24 hours to complete one revolution. One hour is 1/24 of its spin, or 15 degrees. For every 15 degrees that one travels eastward, the local time moves one hour ahead. Similarly, traveling west, the local time moves back one hour for every 15 degrees of longitude. Therefore, if we know the local time of two points on earth, we can use the distance between them to calculate how far apart these places are in longitude, east or west.

At the equator, 15 degrees stretches fully 1000 miles. North or south of that line, however, the mileage value of each degree decreases. One degree of longitude spans 60 nautical miles (68 geographical miles).

In 1714 the English Parliament passed The Longitude Act, offering a prize of 20,000 pounds to anyone who could successfully build a clock that would accurately tell time at sea.

After meticulously producing five timepieces (identified as H-1 through H-5}, John Harrison was belatedly recognized in 1773, although he was never officially awarded the full prize by The Board Of Longitude.

Although he continued to rely upon the "lunar distance" method, Captain Cook successfully used a copy of H-4 for navigation during his second and third voyages.

Harrison's rival, Nevil Maskelyne, fifth astronomer royal, made every effort to discredit him. Fortunately, King George III became Harrison's mentor and intervened with the Board on his behalf, but even so he received only a portion of the prize, and not until he was nearly 80.

21. Last Child In The Woods - Richard Louv

Compelling call to action, urging parents and educators to recognize the importance of connecting their children - and themselves - with the natural world. Whereas many baby boomers had some experience with rural life via a grandparent, such is not the case with their thoroughly urbanized, technologically focused offspring.

The author lives in San Diego County which has the dubious distinction of being home to more threatened and endangered species than any other county in the U.S. Incredibly, not ONE of the 43 school districts offers a single elective course in local flora and fauna. The desert habitat to the east has been deeply scarred by countless tracks of ATVs, dirt bikes and dune buggies. Nature has been invaded by people who care nothing about it.

Today's children are over-scheduled (e.g. soccer games supervised by over-achieving parents) and subject to many unwarranted fears. Violent crime coverage dominates local television news ("If it bleeds, it leads"). Needless to say, these concerns are warranted in some urban neighborhoods, and so children stay indoors, languishing in front of the television or computer. Few urban neighborhoods have parks. Apartment dwellers are often utterly bereft of outdoor play areas in a natural setting, such as along a stream or in an overgrown vacant lot (soccer fields don't count). Meanwhile, the incidence of childhood obesity continues to rise.

22. The Year Of Living Biblically - A. J. Jacobs

Improbable as it may seem, this is largely a light-hearted romp through the Old Testament by a secular New York Jew, bestselling author of The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest To Become The Smartest Person In The World. There are said to be 613 principles of law and ethics contained in the Torah. For an entire year, A.J. Jacobs attempted to follow as many of these precepts as possible, including stoning adulterers (he playfully used pebbles). He let his beard grow long, cut his hair but not his forelocks, bought a harp and a staff, and wore only white. He prayed for ten minutes three times a day. He participated in Kaparot, an ultra-Orthodox ritual slaughter of chickens on the night before Yom Kippur. He ate fruit only from trees that are at least fiive years old. He sampled crickets. Who knew (not me, certainly) that in New York it's possible to hire a Jewish fiber specialist who will come to your house and examine your clothing for "mixed" fibers - a cotton/polyester blend is a definite no-no in conservative Judaism. He reminds us that execution was once mandated for adultery, blasphemy, breaking the Sabbath, perjury, incest, bestiality, and witchcraft.

Additionally, the author investigated of a few of the more visible Protestant denominations, such as the evangelicals, the creationists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Amish. He visited Jerry Falwell's Liberty College, the Creation Museum in Kentucky, and an Amish bed-and-breakfast. He hunted down a faith-driven Arkansas snake handler. He was inspired by the Red Letter Christians, whose focus is on poverty and peace, as demonstrated by Jesus.

As for the edict "Be fruitful and multiply", he became the father of twins while writing the book, siblings for his pre-school son.

In the end he speculates that the Bible may be the most mistranslated text in history. And he points out that everyone practises cafeteria religion. EVERYONE. And, as when in a cafeteria, it's important to make healthy choices. Compassion, for instance.

23. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky

Coincidentally, I am reading this book as President Obama visits the site of a Nazi concentration camp.

As a young girl, Irene Nemirovsky and her wealthy Jewish banking family fled to France from Russia in 1919 following the Bolshevik Revolution, during which their property and fortune had been confiscated. In France, where the family once again enjoyed success, Irene grew up to became a celebrated novelist and a member of the upper echelon of society.

The Nazis invaded France in 1940 and as time passed, virulent anti-Semitism placed increasingly rigorous restrictions on the Jewish population. Irene, her husband and two children sought refuge in the village of Issy L'Eveque. It is here where she wrote the two brilliant novellas comprising Suite Francaise, "Storm In June" and "Dolce". The first concerns the panicked flight from Paris to the countryside upon the pending arrival of the invaders. The second focuses on village life under the watchful and relatively benign eye of young German soldiers.

As of 1942, all Jews were required to wear a yellow star on their clothing. Jews had long since been removed from all elected bodies, upper ranks of civil service, judiciary, military service, teaching, newspaper reporting, etc. Irene continued to write as she felt the noose tightening. Poignant handwritten notes reveal that she had plans to write three succeeding novellas, to be titled "Captivity", "Battles?" and "Peace?", a Tolstoyesque undertaking of 1000 pages.

Tragically, she was arrested by Nazi-enabling French police on July 13, 1942 and taken to Pithiviers, a concentration camp near Orleans. From there she was transferred to infamous Auschwitz, where she was died several weeks later. Her husband, whose heartbreaking letters pleading for her well-being are included in the book's appendices, was taken away and met a similar fate several months later.

Despite perilous circumstances the Nemirovsky's children, aged 5 and 12, managed to elude capture, safeguarded by a family friend and hidden away in convents. The youngest, Denise, who had long watched her mother as she wrote, saved the manuscripts which she had thought to be a diary. For decades it remained unread by her or her sister as they felt that delving into it would be too painful. Eventually, in part due to Elizabeth, the older sister, having becoming an editor in a publishing house, they agreed to submit the notebook to a group documenting wartime memories. Denise, however, decided to first copy it herself and sent it to a publisher. Sixty-four years after her mother's death, we are privileged to have Suite Francaise.

>47 tropics: I enjoyed The Year of Living Biblically quite a bit! Not only the unintentional humor (his wife and the chairs was priceless - I admired her thoroughness), but also the comfort that he got out of the project. I think mostly because he didn't really expect to get anything but a sort of "look at all the silly rules!" thing out of it. It was good for him to see the advantage the Sabbath had on him as a person and the impact it had on his family. His revelation that there was freedom in having choices removed was an interesting perspective as well.

I'm also with you - the overwhelming message of compassion was definitely a good one. It was quite clear that everyone's cafeteria-style included a healthy side of that!

>46 tropics: Great review of Last Child in the Woods, a book I recommend to everyone I know who is interested in education or the environment. It covers so many important topics. Sadly, I think Bill McKibben in his preface to Early Spring by Amy Siedl may see it all too clearly:

"(Amy Seidl) is one of the very first to grapple with what it means--what it feels like--to come of age in a world spinning out of kilter. Maybe we'll be the last generation too--maybe our children will grow to expect flux, or more likely they will decide to pay as little attention to nature as possible, in the way that we rarely choose our friends from among the terminally ill."

A pretty depressing thought but it really caught my attention.

24. A Voyage Long And Strange: Rediscovering The New World - Tony Horwitz

With great interest I've followed along in Tony Horwitz' footsteps in three of his previous books, Confederates In The Attic, Baghdad Without A Map, and Blue Latitudes. I'm a fan.

In this book the author sets out to visit the areas "discovered" by the early explorers as they made their rapacious way throughout the Americas. He begins at L'Anse Aux Meadows, a bone-chilling, remote outpost of Newfoundland, where Vikings established a tenuous and ultimately unsuccessful foothold as early as 985 A.D., having hopscotched their way in open boats from Norway to Iceland to Greenland. On the shores of Newfoundland they are said to have killed the first natives that they met, apparently without provocation. This, sadly, was the beginning of a trend which would be repeated elsewhere by the Portuguese (in South America), the Spanish, the English, and the French.

Although we have designated Columbus Day as a national holiday, this explorer never set foot on North America. Ponce de Leon was the first European to land on what is now U.S. soil (Florida) in 1513. Columbus did, however, initiate settlement on the island of Hispaniola (present day Dominican Republic and Haiti), in so doing driving the indigenous Taino to extinction.

Given that we now live in the desert Southwest and have traveled extensively in Mexico, the conquistadors' explorations are of special interest to me. Their ghosts still linger. On several occasions we've visited the Spanish colonial town of Alamos in the State of Sonora where Coronado is said to have camped in 1540. We've passed through Ures, as he did, where
horses can still be seen tied to hitching posts. We've spent an afternoon in dusty, time-worn Naco on the U.S.-Mexican border. We've camped in the Coronado National Forest. And last September, passing through a volcanic region in New Mexico that the Spanish called El Mal Pais (The Bad Land), we visited El Morro, a huge headland with a life-sustaining natural oasis at its base. Countless passersby over the centuries have carved their names in this sandstone cliff. including the conquistador Juan de Onate who in 1598 led 400 soldiers and settlers north from Mexico. He would later avenge a nephew's death at the hands of local Indians by sending soldiers who slaughtered and mutilated hundreds.

The conquistadors were ruthlessly ambitious, armed entrepreneurs, driven by gold and God, conquest and conversion. The Spanish crown granted licenses to explore and exploit the new lands that had been "discovered" in the late 15th, early 16th century. They kept careful records of their atrocities, which is why we are aware of their terrible deeds. And which Tony Horwitz describes for us in dismaying detail.

A Voyage Long And Strange is another BIG book. History tends not to be a popular focus of study (which is why we never seem to learn from it, as recent events have borne out), but I can't imagine anyone not being affected by the compelling manner in which it unfolds within these pages.

25. A Byzantine Journey - John Ash

This is a richly detailed travelogue, via bus, taxi and on foot, wherein the reader is introduced to the remaining vestiges of the Byzantine Empire in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) and Anatolia (present day Turkey). These vestiges are largely the ruins of hundreds of exquisitely ornate churches that once dominated the landscape. John Ash, an accomplished English poet and writer (now living in New York City) has pursued a lifelong interested in Byzantium, especially its architecture. He has led tours to some of the sites described and has also been prominently featured in British documentaries.

In 286 A.D. Diocletian divided the Roman Empire into eastern and western halves, each with its own emperor. The eastern empire evolved into the Byzantine Empire. In 324 A.D. Constantine united the eastern and western empires and established his capital in the old Greek city of Byzantium, which he renamed. Theodosius I was the last emperor to rule both the east and the west. He embraced Christianity, which became the State religion.

The Byzantine Empire has had a long and complicated history. Its defining characteristic was its symbiotic relationship between Church and State. The Emperor was God's chosen representative on earth. Monasteries were powerful institutions in their own right, possessing enormous landholdings where they maintained Scriptoria, with skilled writers and copyists. It is through their efforts and those of other Byzantine scholars that 40,000 out of 55,000 ancient Greek texts were preserved.

The State was a profoundly exploitive institution, dependent upon the labor of millions of rural people across the Empire. The central government and the aristocracy competed for control of rural labor and agricultural production. The burden of taxation fell mostly on the peasantry. While the poor lived in rudimentary dwellings with earthen floors and thatched roofs, the elite lived in sumptuous palaces. Constantinople's Great Palace (which no longer exists) was the residence of God's vice-regent on earth. It was begun by Constantine the Great and over the centuries grew to become a vast glittering stage set.

My appreciation of the archeological sites described by John Ash was greatly enhanced by the following PBase site: http://www.pbase.com/dosseman - Dick Dosseman's beautiful collection of photos.

26. Then We Came To The End - Joshua Ferris

I chose this book because many reviewers led me to believe that it was "hilarious".

It isn't, although there's this:

"We worked with some fat, simple people, and the hideously ugly walked among us as well."

CELEBRITY DEATH WATCH, breast cancer, a child's brutal murder, and her mother's profound sense of loss. Not funny.

Nevertheless, I do admire this young author's writing style, especially his clever use of the first person plural. And I was impressed by his ability to capture our attention with his descriptions of the minutiae of cubicle life in an advertising agency high atop a Chicago office building on The Magnificent Mile.

The last two sentences are an intriguing puzzlement.

27. Three Cups Of Tea - Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Like countless other readers, I was deeply moved by Greg Mortenson's ceaseless efforts to build schools for girls in the remotest regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Despite the steady drumbeat of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S. media, Greg has inspired thousands of school children to share their good fortune with the rural Muslim poor in distant lands through this ongoing program: http://www.penniesforpeace.org/home.html

Initially, beginning in 1995, Greg spent many frustrating years attempting to secure sources of reliable funding. Eventually, a 2003 article in Parade Magazine triggered an outpouring of donations from well-wishers and placed him firmly in the public eye.

As a useful adjunct to the book, images available on the Internet include the rope bridge crossing the river at the village of Korphe, where Greg recovered from his near-death experience after failing to scale K2 (Google KORPHE, then go to "images"). It was through his efforts that it came to be replaced with a cable bridge over which building supplies could be transported and construction begun on the school. Many other images are available of schools in various stages of construction, children absorbed in their lessons, etc.

28, Sister Wendy's American Collection - Sister Wendy Beckett

It saddens me that Sister Wendy Beckett, aged 79 and in failing health, is said to have retired from leading her adoring audiences through famous art galleries, something that she began doing in 1992 in England. She is surely one of the most best-known and best-loved art critics. Here in the U.S. we have come to know her most memorably through the PBS series "Sister Wendy's Story Of Painting" and the associated book by that title.

Sister Wendy's American Collection is another beautifully illustrated volume featuring works that she chose to remark upon during a 2000 visit to six highly regarded American art museums:

The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York
Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston
Art Institute Of Chicago
Cleveland Museum Of Art
Kimbell Art Museu, Fort Worth
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

29. The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing The Climate And What It Means For Life On Earth - Tim Flannery.

Tim Flannery, an Australian internationally acclaimed scientist and conservationist, makes clear the threats facing live on Earth as they relate to climate change.

Most importantly, he describes ways in which we as individuals can reduce our carbon footprint, which can be calculated at https://climatefriendly.com/

Coincidentally, I read this book shortly before a bill addressing climate change narrowly passed in the U.S. House Of Representatives with very little Republican support.

30. From The Holy Mountain - William Dalrymple

An intriguing and disheartening blend of travelogue and history by an accomplished Scottish writer who in the summer of 1994 set out to follow in the footsteps of John Moschus, a Byzantine monk who traveled extensively (and with great difficulty) through the Middle East in the 6th century, visiting numerous monasteries, and summarizing his journey in The Spiritual Meadow. This courageous undertaking was attempted at a time when the Byzantine Empire was an increasingly dangerous place, threatened from the west by Avars, Slavs, Goths and Lombards; from the east by nomadic desert raiders, and by Sassanid Persia. Monasteries were coming under attack; monks were often murdered or sold into slavery.

The reader is reminded of how fortunes rise and fall, and how civilizations continue to be trampled underfoot by succeeding ideologies. What was once a thriving Christian presence in the Middle and Near East is now a mere shadow of its former self. The Armenian bloodbath carried out in Anatolia during and after World War I is especially horrifying and remains a contentious issue today, with Turkey defending itself in the face of international condemnation. Also troubling to contemplate is the ceaseless turmoil resulting from the creation of Israel which displaced and marginalized many thousands of Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian.

We are, sadly, still largely tribal in nature, often implacably so.

31. The Botany Of Desire: A Plant's Eye View Of The World - Michael Pollan

The apple, the tulip, marijuana, the potato - four plants that man has tweaked to his advantage, disseminating their genes far and wide.

Read the chapter on potatoes before sitting down to your next helping of mashed, fried, baked. Ask yourself, could these tubers still be too toxic to eat? Is it wise to trust Monsanto?

You will pity the poor schmucks back in the '70s who smoked only "homegrown" marijuana leaves once you've been apprised of the superior sensimilla product produced by rigorous hybridization efforts undertaken in the Pacific Northwest in the 80s which combined the most desirable traits of cannabis indica and cannabis sativa. The author claims to have read Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene while high on marijuana. Try to envision this.

Imagine the North American landscape into which the first whites insinuated themselves in the 17th century, a continent without apple trees and the bees to pollinate them. A land bereft of cider, apple jack, and pie.............

Be astonished at the temporary insanity which gripped Holland in the 18th century during "tulip mania" while you also give thought to modern parallels.

32. Seeds Of Change: Five Plants That Transformed Mankind - Henry Hobhouse.

Were I an administrator within the American educational system, I would strongly advocate that this insightful book be introduced to all high school history students.

The plants discussed from a historical perspective are quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, and the potato. Enslavement, exploitation, and unbridled greed are themes that figured largely in the lucrative trade of sugar, cotton, and tea. As many as 20 million blacks were kidnapped from Africa and shipped to the Americas during 440 years of the slave trade, their forced labor being vital to the sugar and cotton industry. Perhaps 20% died aboard ship.

Nowhere else have I read as dispiriting an account of the suffering of the Irish.

33. The Naked Tourist: In Search Of Adventure And Beauty In The Age Of The Airport Mall - Lawrence Osborne

Early on in this book the author writes "I love cities. Or rather I am inclined to be an urban tourist". He claims to have stayed in 1,034 hotel rooms in 204 nations. No reason, then, to wonder how he has become so bored and jaded, estranged from and made uncomfortable by the natural world. He does have a keen eye for prostitutes. After lingering far too long in Dubai, Calcutta and Bangkok, he redeems himself to me by plunging into the heat, squalor and primitiveness of the Andaman Islands and, later, western New Guinea (the latter destination largely bereft of hotel rooms, wretched or otherwise). There, in the midst of darkly sinister forests, he accepts the local provender of birds' eyes, mice legs, and cooked brush turkey eggs containing the distinct outlines of fetuses. He joins the locals as they snack on live sago palm grubs and learns how to use them to remove ear wax. He discovers that his hosts are kind, hospitable, and "capable of more humor than the French" despite their almost complete lack of knowledge of the modern world. He plunges naked into rivers where crocodiles lurk, repeatedly, albeit futilely, cleansing himself of mud and sweat. And then he flies back to New York City, where I'm assuming that he will not be reading what he describes as "the odious National Geographic" while preparing for his next trip. Nor do I suppose that he will be educating himself about the birds of New Guinea, which a birder such as myself would be thrilled to see, but which he apparently did not notice.

Nevertheless, on my own vicarious journey I will now find myself happily Googling information about Yali pygmies, penis gourds, the Kombai tribe's obsession with witches, Creutzfeldt-Jacobs Disease among the Fore people, and much, much more. But first, I need to get back to the current issue of "National Geographic".

34. Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It - Geoff Dyer

Once again I've been disappointed by reviewers who proclaim that a book is "laugh-out-loud funny" when it is not. This one is a collection of essays by a yoga-eschewing, Generation X-er elaborating upon his drug-fueled world travels. A self-described intellectual, he writes that he's spent the last 15 years "dragging the same burden of expectation from one corner of the world to the next"........ "I am not interested in memories"......."I don't have a camera"....."I was in the twilight, the long autumn of my psychedelic years"....."I have achieved very little in my life". It's only when he is stoned that he feels part of the landscape.

And yet, despite his predictable travel destinations (Angkor Wat, the beaches of Thailand, Bali, the annual Burning Man event in the Nevada desert) I enjoyed his intellectual musings, as while contemplating the ruins of Leptis Magna in Libya, he realizes that civilizations eventually end up as vestiges of nouns, verbless, essentially, because all but the action of decay has ceased. Brilliant!

35. Life List: A Woman's Quest For The World's Most Amazing Birds - Olivia Gentile

Phoebe Snetsinger, one of the world's most famous and venerated birders, died in a car accident on the island of Madagascar in 1999, 18 astonishing years after being diagnosed with metastatic melanoma, at which time she was told that her situation was imminently terminal. She was sixty-eight years old and in pursuit of yet another elusive species, the Helmet Vanga, when she was killed. For thirty-four years after abruptly developing an interest in birding while rearing four children in Missouri, she had tirelessly (and often dangerously) traveled to all of the earth's dwindling habitats, amassing an astonishing life list of 8,674 birds out of a possible total of 10,223 species, or 84.8 percent of all living birds. She is celebrated for being the first person to reach a total of 8,000 species. So all-consuming was her obsession with the wonders of avian life that she missed a daughter's wedding and her own mother's funeral. Despite the trauma of being gang-raped in New Guinea, she defiantly returned to that island to continue her quest.

Of special interest to me is that she located her 8,000th species, a Gray-Necked Wood-Rail, skulking in mangroves in San Blas, Mexico, a poor coastal fishing community which my husband and I have visited several times, and where we kayaked most recently in December of last year. Checking my list, I see that I found "my" Gray-Necked Wood-Rail in 1998 in a swamp in Tikal National Park in Guatemala.

As for me, my current life list stands at a paltry 857 species, most recently having been updated by a chance sighting of a small flock of white-winged crossbills foraging in an apple orchard in northern Utah. Who knows what I'll see next?

Olivia Gentile is to be commended for her exhaustive research in bringing to fruition this absorbing biography.

Phoebe Snetsinger's autobiography is titled Birding On Borrowed Time, published in 2003.

36. No Reservations: Around The World On An Empty Stomach - Anthony Bourdain

I'm a fan of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on the Travel Network (check Monday listings), even though he and I aren't kindred spirits. While he worries about "creeping vegetarianism", I lament that so few of us have embraced a diet that places far fewer pressures on the Earth's resources. I haven't eaten eaten beef, pork or lamb for 34 years. As we follow along behind him in his travels he can usually be found gazing fondly at piles of meat awaiting grilling or frying.

He hates "hippies, skateboys in dreadlocks, ferries, and serial killers" (this revelation prompted by a stay in the Pacific Northwest), but seems to connect effortlessly with the citizenry in remote locales, perhaps aided in part by his boundless appreciation of regional alcoholic beverages. Unspoiled natural beauty and magnificent vistas bore him, but he loves traveling in rice-growing cultures. He does appreciate a clean, modern toilet. Japan's are the best, apparently, Uzbekistan's among the very worst. Iceland, in his estimation, may be the most boring country on earth.

This book is a companion to his television show and consists mostly of photographs, with short essays introducing the featured countries that were visited. Not to be missed in either the book or the TV series is the crew's harrowing stay in Beirut, Lebanon during Israel's bombing campaign against Hezbollah targets there.

37. Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure In Local Living - Doug Fine

Delightful account of this young author's conscientious efforts to "live off the grid". He buys a 41-acre ranch near Silver City, Mexico, where he immerses himself in the complexities of going solar, installing a windmill, fueling his truck with used grease from Chinese restaurants, gardening in a very dry place, and raising goats and chickens. Problems ensue, all of which are faced with tenacity and humor.

His continuing adventures can be followed at www.farewellmysubaru.com

38. The Future Eaters: An Ecological History Of The Australian Lands And People - Tim Flannery

I missed the three-part Australian documentary series based upon this book, the reading of which is a major, mind-boggling undertaking. Fortunately, the series is available on the Web.

This famous Australian scientist provides the reader with a disturbing account of the impact that humans and dogs have had upon the flora and fauna of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and New Caledonia. He also takes us on an inconceivably long journey back in time, when Australia lay within the Antarctic Circle. It continues to move north at a rate of approximately 7 cm per year.

The earth is about 4.6 billion years old. Fossils found in Australia have been dated to an age of 3.8 billion years.

Surprisingly, marsupials evolved in South America during the Tertiary period (65 million to 2 million years ago) and are thought to have made their way to Australia via a land bridge across Antarctica to Australia.

Humans first arrived on the shores of Australia about 60,000 years ago, at a time when large herbivores such as the diprotodon, the largest known marsupial that ever lived (weighing up to two tons), roamed the continent. It and other megafauna coexisted with humans until about 25,000 years ago, when they became extinct. The dingo, which was introduced by Aboriginals about 3,500 years ago, is thought to have been responsible for the extinction of the thylacine and the Tasmanian devil.

Whereas the Aboriginals over time became finely attuned to their environment, the white settlers who began to arrive in the late 1700s went on to introduce an unsustainable way of life not in keeping with the continent's poor soils and limited water.

39. Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, A Scientist, And A Search For The World's Most Extraordinary Creature - Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery entertained this thought during one his numerous fossil digs in the wilds of Australia as he held the 50,000 year-old ankle-bone of a giant extinct kangaroo:

"The gulf of time will consume you if you linger over it too long - it will break down your morality and your essence, so that you, like the extinct kangaroo, will only fuck and eat and sleep, until you too join the black mud."

Wow!

The author has lived an endlessly fascinating life. He first became obsessed with kangaroos during a lengthy 1975 motorcycle trip across the country. He later went on to become one of Australia's most famous scientists. He continues to immerse himself in important fieldwork and to warn us of continuing environmental catastrophies brought about by our own ignorance and hubris.

An aerial survey of the Australian continent in 2004 revealed the existence of at least 57 million kangaroos of the four largest species - the red, the euro, the eastern, and the western grey. Astonishingly, most Australians have never seen a kangaroo in the wild. Nor cared to, I fear.

40. Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach

Interesting insights elaborated upon re medical and forensic science uses of human cadavers, their utilization having evolved over time from callous disregard to today's more civilized standards, when universities such as UCSF actually hold memorial services for the willed bodies.

Deeply troubling to me are descriptions of the cruel exploitation of animals, demonstrated by, (as just one appalling example), Doctor Robert White, neurosurgeon, who has performed head transplants on living dogs and monkeys.

The cover of the book features an excerpt from an Entertainment Weekly review:

"One of the funniest and most unusual books of the year.......Gross, educational, and UNEXPECTEDLY SIDESPLITTING."

Sidesplitting? I don't think so.

41. The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, And The Amazing Story Of The Powerful River In The Atlantic - Stan Ulanski

I first became intrigued by the Gulf Stream, the southern arm of the North Atlantic gyre, while reading Pat Conroy's novel, THE PRINCE OF TIDES.

In addition to being an avid sports fisherman, Stan Ulanski is also a professor of geology and environmental science at James Madison University. In this well-researched book he describes the powerful influences, past and present, of this mighty ocean "river".

Ponce de Leon "discovered" the Gulf Stream in 1523. Its waters, which are very clear and transparent, are distinctly visible from space. As it passes by the east coast of North America, moving in a clockwise fashion and about 60 miles in width, its waters are 15 degrees warmer than the surrounding ocean. Because it brushes the Florida Keys, it has been responsible for numerous shipwrecks on the reefs there. As it moves north it can be found about 80 miles off Cape Cod and about 200 miles off the coast of Maine.

If you're interested in marine biology, curious about the atonishing migratory journeys of bluefin tuna, the history of 16th-18th century explorers and pirates, then this is the book for you. Intrigued by sailors' accounts of the Sargasso Sea? Ever wondered about phosphorescence? Read all about it here.

Highly recommended.

42. The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Farley Mowat

A delightful, humorous reminiscence of the author's seemingly idyllic 1920s childhood in Canada in the company of Mutt, a most unusual dog.

Essential reading, even in adulthood.

43. The Bridge Of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder

The author won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel in 1928. Thus far I have failed in my efforts to locate a list of other contenders, but remain curious as to who they might have been.

In the early 1700s, Brother Juniper, a Francisan monk in Lima, Peru, witnessed five people falling to their deaths from a rope bridge that suddenly collapsed into a deep ravine. This incident led him to seek evidence of divine justice for the incident, to reassure himself that God's alleged retribution was not arbitrary. Instead, his efforts resulted in his being burned at the stake as a heretic.

Although the lives of the five accident victims are skillfully entwined, I'm unclear as to what made this a prize-winning book. I wish that Thornton Wilder had made the indigenous poor a central focus, for example, the horrific, profoundly exploitive conditions in the mines of Potosi (mentioned only peripherally) instead of the pretentions of the Spanish colonial elite.

44. The Sleeping Buddha: The Story Of Afghanistan Through The Eyes Of One Family - Hamida Ghafour

This is the eighth book about Afghanistan that I've read since 2002, all of them nonfiction, and all of them disheartening.

Hamida Ghafour was two years old when, in 1981, following the Russian invasion, she was uprooted from Afghanistan along with her upper class parents and older brother. Eventually, after living for several years as refugees in India, the family made its way to Canada. In early adulthood Hamida became an accomplished journalist for Canadian newspapers, later for the London Daily Telegraph. Both her journalistic efforts and a desire to seek out her roots led her back to Afghanistan. Her book is an absorbing account of her family's lineage within that country's tragic history. as well as an astute assessment of the ongoing political/societal maelstrom of which the U.S. and NATO have become a seemingly inextricable, counterproductive part.

45. Traces Of An Omnivore - Paul Shepard

Be advised that this esteemed Professor Of Ecology has been described as "formidably intellectual". I would agree that no attempt was made at popularization, which is unfortunate.

This book is a collection of the author's essays which are considered by some to be more "accessible". Perhaps so, but speaking for myself, I was frequently in need of assistance from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary in order to unravel the meaning of totemic, comity, cynegetic, numinous, metonymy, heuristic, synatgmatic, theriology, anomie, ontal, chthonic, autotellic, to mention a few. Quite a tough slog.

What the author is apparently saying (and this of course is all too true) is that we modern humans have become increasingly divorced from nature and from our remote origins in Pleistocene "wildness". This is in part because the Western world's religions have espoused the dogma of human uniqueness, a separateness from "The Others". Humans continue to demand control over rather than compliance with the natural world. Ours is an essentially unecological stance, with modern medicine's adherence to the ideal of the preservation of life at any cost, and its blindness to catastrophic human over-population and the loss of other species through habitat loss. Agriculture can be regarded as the most environmentally abusive activity perpetuated by the human species. Science as it is now taught does not promote a respect for nature. We have become world eaters and world destroyers, erroneously believing that omnipotence will come through technology.

I was charmed by the author's unexpectedly lighthearted, yet insightful "Letter From An Old Crow", a letter "written" by one crow to another, remarking upon the silly habits of the human race.

46. Barrel Fever: Stories And Essays David Sedaris

Having read and loved Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day, this collection proved quite disappointing. The first two essays, in particular, were entirely too "over the top" for my delicate sensibilities. And what, pray tell, is funny about the thoroughly grotesque "Seasons Greetings" baby-in-the-washer-and-dryer episode?

47. Are We Rome? The Fall Of An Empire And The Fate Of America - Cullen Murphy

Well, no, "we" aren't Rome, but there are indeed some troubling comparisons - an increasingly restive and marginalized population, an overextended military, and implacable foreign enemies who possess the ability to attack us on numerous fronts, including within our own borders.

48. The Bird Man And The Lap Dancer: Close Encounters With Strangers - Eric Hansen

I became a fan of Eric Hansen years ago after reading Motoring With Mohammed and Stranger In The Forest: On Foot Across Borneo. Both will forever remain important additions to my library. In The Bird Man And The Lap Dancer, a collection of travel essays, his descriptions glow, as usual, with charm, wit, and insights into the human condition, foreign or otherwise.

49. The Orientalist: Solving The Mystery Of A Strange And Dangerous Life - Tom Reiss

Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew, was born in October 1905 in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, an oil-producing region that would be torn apart by revolution. The author traces his remarkable flight from persecution via horseback, clever disguises, and his genius for reinventing himself. While Lev's own story is completely absorbing, the reader also learns a great deal about the Bolshevik Revolution, the "Great Powers", the First World War, and the rise of Hitler.

Highly recommended.

#77 I don't normally care for biographies, but this does look fascinating so I'm going to give it a try.

I'm also taking note of The Orientalist and will probably add it to my tbr list.

50. What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias And The News - Eric Alterman

Kudos to Eric Alterman for writing, in 2003, (some of the right-wing pundits mentioned have since died):

"Who among the liberals can be counted upon to be as ideological, as relentless, and as nakedly partisan as George Will, Bob Novak, Pat Buchanan, Bay Buchanan, William Bennett, William Kristol, Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, Charles Krauthammer, Paul Gigot, Ben Wattenberg, Oliver North, Kate O'Beirne, Tony Blankley, Anne Coulter, Sean Hannity, Tony Snow, Laura Ingraham, Jonah Goldberg, William F. Buckley, Jr., Bill O'Reilly, Alan Keyes, Tucker Carlson, Brit Hume, CNBC's roundtable of the self-described 'wild ones' of The Wall Street Journal Editorial page, and on and on?"

Who indeed? They most assuredly will not be found on Fox News.

51. The Snake Charmer: A Life And Death In Pursuit Of Knowledge - Jamie James

http://www.snakecharmerbook.com/

Most of us who are not herpetologists would probably never have heard of brash young Joe Slowinski, PhD. had he not died from the bite of a Many-Banded Krait while leading a grueling scientific expedition into the rain-sodden forests of northern Burma (Myanmar) in 2001.

Jamie James has written an aborbing, thoroughly researched biography of someone who became obsessed with poisonous snakes at an early age and who was not deterred from what eventually became a successful career in this field after being bitten by a rattlesnake as a teenager.

I also commend the author for educating the reader about some of the most poisonous snakes on the planet. Now I know that the King Cobra, the world's longest venomous snake, reaching 15 to 19 feet, is capable of raising fully 1/3 of its body above the ground, becoming tall enough to stare into one's eyes. That horrifying fact may be more than I cared to know, but I won't forget it.

And the next time I see a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake in our yard (a fairly common occurrence here in southern Arizona) I'll remember it was Jamie James who informed me that male snakes possess a PAIR of penises which inflate when inserted into the female and that in some species, such as the Western Diamondback, couplings can last up to twenty-five hours!

52. The Library At Night - Alberto Manguel

Having finally come to rest in rural France, this remarkable man - a true internationalist - has written this important tribute to the written word while surrounded by his personal collection of thousands of books. He poignantly reminds us of the tragedies that have befallen libraries, great and small, known and unknown, since man first aspired to formulate ideas, document events, and preserve them for posterity.

He also reassures those among us who fear that we may never conquer the entirety of our to-be-read-shelves by writing:

"I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me until the end of my days."

As will mine, I hope.

Curious to learn more about the author's background, I found this, a touching article about his Russian grandfather's youthful impressions of Istanbul as he awaited passage to South America, having fled Tsarist Russia:

http://www.wan-press.org/article3181.htm...

53. Dreams And Shadows: The Future Of The Middle East - Robin Wright

This acclaimed journalist, who for the past thirty-five years has traveled widely throughout the Middle East while covering a dozen wars and revolutions, engagingly shares with readers her insights into the changes that have swept the region since the end of the colonial era, since the creation of Israel, and more recently, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Her blog, an analysis of international affairs and current crises can be found here:

http://robinwrightblog.blogspot.com/

I have most of Shepard's books, but not this one. I have it on my list to read.
Good to see it on your list.