A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

If I’ve ever read Tarzan, I don’t remember, so I think this is my first Edgar Rice Burroughs. But A Princess of Mars reminded me a lot of works by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and H.P. Lovecraft. (“Here, let me show off how imaginative I am by describing everything I’m making up in excruciating detail.”)

Imaginative and full of adventure? Yes. Character growth? Absolutely not. The most growth is shown by John Carter’s dog-like protector and his two beasts of burden on Mars.

The way John Carter gets to Mars seems hilarious to me (he goes into a mysterious cave and then he just – is on Mars), but I can’t take John Carter himself seriously. He can do no wrong, there’s never any doubt that he’ll win a battle, and he is never in any serious danger. And of course he Gets the Girl!

The worst thing about this book for me as a reader is the complete lack of humor. Still, I try to imagine myself reading this book in 1912, when no one had ever seen an adventure movie, and most people didn’t travel. Obviously it was popular since he wrote 10 sequels. I’m not moving on to book two but I’m glad to have read it.

The Galesburg Public Library's Tome Raiders book discussion group will have a virtual discussion of A Princess of Mars on 5/29 at 6:00 pm. The book is "always available" through the library’s Overdrive collection. 

https://alliance.overdrive.com/media/784351

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

How have I not read this before? Lovely, lyrical writing that made me pause to admire turns of phrase. For example, in July, as the author waxes poetical about bird song, “We sally forth, the dog and I, at random. He has paid scant respect to all these vocal goings-on, for to him the evidence of tenancy is not song, but scent. Any illiterate bundle of feathers, he says, can make a noise in a tree.”

I loved the almanac structure and how it reflects the changing seasons. For example: “By September, the day breaks with little help from birds. A song sparrow may give a single half-hearted song, a woodcock may twitter overhead en route to his daytime thicket, a barred owl may terminate the night’s argument with one last wavering call, but few other birds have anything to say or sing about.”

“In June it is completely predictable that the robin will give voice when the light intensity reaches 0.01 candle power, and that the bedlam of other singers will follow in predictable sequence."

This is a very birdy book overall, which of course delighted me as a birder. “Distant crows are berating a hypothetical owl, just to tell the world how vigilant crows are”.

I was not enamored of all the hunting, but that’s a sign of the times, and at least even then Leopold showed restraint as a hunter and acknowledged the danger of over hunting. Leopold lamented our use of economic value to determine importance in 1949, and things have gotten much worse in that regard.

“The fallacy that economic determinists have tied around our collective neck, and which we now need to cast off, is the belief that economics determines all land use. That is simply not true.”

Reading A Sand County Almanac left me both awestruck at the beauty of the natural world and melancholy about the disappearance of wild places.

If you enjoy reading about nature and are worried about the future of our wild places, I recommend A Sand County Almanac.

The Galesburg Public Library has A Sand County Almanac in print and as an ebook. The Food for Thought book group will be discussing the book on August 23.

Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons

I run the Galesburg Public Library's book discussion group that meets monthly at En Season Cafe at the Sustainable Business Center. We discussed Stalking the Wild Asparagus this month. This book was published in 1962 and is rightfully considered a bible of the environmental movement and a primer for anyone interested in healthy, inexpensive eating.

I didn't expect to enjoy this book very much, but I was wrong. I found it easy to read and full of interesting tidbits. For example, I learned that the Pecan tree is a member of the hickory family! The author has a familiar, jovial narrative style that was very inviting. The whole group enjoyed reading it and we had a great discussion.

This is a reference book broken into chapters on different wild plants. I love oak trees and particularly enjoyed the chapter on acorns. Reading it made me eager to try candied acorns. Gibbons really knows his subject matter. Just like Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, at one point in his teenaged years Gibbons saved his family from starving by providing food from the wild.

Stalking the Wild Asparagus has held up very well.

Suburbanites "pay exorbitant prices for tasteless greenhouse produce and week-old vegetables from Florida or California, and never realize that they have driven their station wagons past tons of much better vegetables on the way to the supermarket. They feel smugly superior to the rummaging people they passed along the way. Why? There's nothing smart about eating poor food and getting gypped in the bargain, when nature is offering much better fare for the taking." (p. 226)

Substitute "mini vans" for "station wagons" and this could have been written today.

My only criticism is that Gibbons does downplay the challenge of actually identifying some of these plants in the field. On the other hand, he strongly words his chapter about taking care when foraging for wild mushrooms.

I need to get a copy on my shelf before the collapse of civilization because it would certainly come in handy if we had no electricity and limited food sources. If you are interested in alternative food sources and the environment, I definitely recommend Stalking the Wild Asparagus. It is an easy book to slowly read a chapter at a time.

The Galesburg Public Library owns two copies of Stalking the Wild Asparagus (as well as a copy of Stalking the Healthful Herbs). They can be found in the nonfiction section at 581.632 GIB.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

“How did I kill this Thursby? I’ve forgotten.” – Sam Spade

The Maltese Falcon is the Galesburg Public Library's 2015 Big Read title. I had never read it or seen the movie before this year. They were both much funnier than I expected, and I enjoyed them both. About all I knew about noir was from listening to Guy Noir on the Prairie Home Companion, and it has been interesting learning more about the genre.

I read a lot of mysteries and detective fiction and should have read The Maltese Falcon long ago. It’s a quick read with spare text, and I found it highly entertaining.

The library will be hosting four book discussions of The Maltese Falcon in the month of April. Come join us for one of them! 

Thursday         4/9        6:30 pm      Civic Art Center

Tuesday          4/14      1:00 pm       upstairs at the library

Wednesday     4/15     12:20 pm     Carl Sandburg College Library

Thursday         4/30     11:30 am     En Season Restaurant ($10 for lunch)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I first read the classic science fiction work The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams years ago. We just started a science fiction/fantasy book club at the library, and our first discussion will be about Hitchhiker’s.

It’s hard to put into words why this is a classic. It’s got a certain something I can’t capture in words when I try to describe to someone who has not read it why it’s a great book. It has a ridiculous plot, so it’s not that. It has some ridiculous characters too, although exasperated Arthur Dent, reeling from the fact that his home planet of Earth has just been destroyed, is someone just about every person can relate to in some way.

The many absurd aspects of the book are part of the appeal. The suggestion that a towel is “about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” The idea of a spaceship powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive, which causes any number of highly improbable things to happen. The intelligent, contemptuous, depressed robot Marvin. The fact that mice are the most intelligent species on Earth. A race of beings who write poetry so bad it’s torture to listen to it.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide is a very funny book. But it is also a book that makes you think about things. Things like Life, the Universe, and Everything. Conceived as a radio comedy in the late 1970s, it foresaw technology in use today. If you are not a fan of science fiction and fantasy, or if you like your fiction tidy and sensical, you may just not get it. But if you are a sci fi fan and you’ve not yet read it, get it on your “to read” list. (And if you have read it but not lately, maybe it’s time to revisit it!)

If you'd like to discuss the book but can't attend discussion tonight at 6 pm at Alternate Realities, please comment here!