This was my favorite childhood book and rereading it 50 years later I know why I loved it so. This story of Buck, a St. Bernard-German Shepherd mix, sThis was my favorite childhood book and rereading it 50 years later I know why I loved it so. This story of Buck, a St. Bernard-German Shepherd mix, stolen from his California home and sold into the Yukon as a sled dog, is beautifully written and the transformation of Buck from a pet to lead sled-dog to a creature at home in the wild is surprisingly moving since I don’t read books about animals usually. It’s listed as YA, but I think readers of any age would love this classic.
“And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the cold, and dark.”
I loved Some Rise By Sin so dropped everything to read What We Leave Behind as soon as it arrived. I liked it very much, even though it is less a capeI loved Some Rise By Sin so dropped everything to read What We Leave Behind as soon as it arrived. I liked it very much, even though it is less a caper and more a mystery.
We meet up with Sammy and Facey as they are evading the Royal inspectors to bring contraband fish into a Portsmouth harbour. It’s two years since they left London and Sammy and Rosamund are married and teaching at the John Pounds school and they own a bar. Facey is still Facey. The three friends are are in high spirits because young Pure John, who Sammy and Rosamund have taken on as their son, is coming back from his time at sea. When Pure John doesn’t show up the story begins.
The whereabouts of Pure John take Sammy, Facey and Rosamund back to London where they are forced back into business with the comically despicable Mr. Pimlott and Mr. Chuffington who want a famed black diamond in exchange for Pure John, but London is under siege from Asiatic Cholera and the gem was buried with one of its victims. As the former resurrection men and Rosamund attempt to retrieve the stone they become embroiled in a bigger mystery.
As with Some Rise By Sin this novel is character driven with authentic dialogue and cultural references that plant it in early 19th century London.
I recommend both of these books, but read Some Rise By Sin first.
I read this during the 16 hours my family and I waited in the hospital waiting room for the birth of my most recent granddaughter. It was a good book I read this during the 16 hours my family and I waited in the hospital waiting room for the birth of my most recent granddaughter. It was a good book for a long wait.
Told in first person by a medic on a team in the 1930s attempting to scale Mt. Kanchenjunga, a Himalayan mountain more deadly than Mt Everest. The men are following the doomed route taken decades years earlier and the subject of a book written by one of the survivors in which he claimed they left no companions on the mountain, but that claim isn’t true and it’s becoming clear to the narrator and the Sherpas accompanying the troupe that something is not right, something on the mountain is unsettled. The creeping dread and isolation from freezing weather, snow storms, white outs, crevasses, the constant danger, and what was unseen were visceral. ...more
A surreal indictment of the erasure of old women in patriarchal culture explored in a novel that is wild, fantastic, and fun. Thelma and Louise have nA surreal indictment of the erasure of old women in patriarchal culture explored in a novel that is wild, fantastic, and fun. Thelma and Louise have nothing on Marian and Carmella.
Salman Rushdie did it again. He wrote a fantastic epic that captured all of humanity. This story of the 247 year life of the magical Pampa Kampana andSalman Rushdie did it again. He wrote a fantastic epic that captured all of humanity. This story of the 247 year life of the magical Pampa Kampana and the dazzling kingdom she whispered into existence in 15th century southern India is full of adventure, intrigue, battles, love, greed, beauty, jealousy, pride, benevolence, bigotry, equality, sex, art, poetry, religion, science, philosophy, all of it, it’s all here. This is man who wrote Midnight’s Children and I loved it. ...more
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