Category Archives: Books
The Wild Places
Another quote from the ever adroit Robert MacFarlane on maps that I’ve been pondering lately. “Before it was a field science, cartography was an art: this was the first thing I had understood. We are now used to regarding cartography as an endeavor of exacting precision, whose ambition is the elimination of subjectivity from the…
Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt lived a life that was both remarkable and well documented, so there is no shortage of literature on the man. A few that I’ve read are Edmond Morris’s authoritative trilogy which can’t be beat for thoroughness, Theodore Roosevelt in the Field by Michael Canfield predictably focuses on Roosevelt’s exploits as a naturalist and…
Another man’s treasure
The other day, I stopped by JPL’s library to pick up a book. Yes, I still go to the library an occasion to get real physical books, and when I do I try to make a point of browsing the shelves to see if anything catches my eye. The librarians must have been doing some…
The Living Mountain
“Yet to listen is better than to speak. The talking tribe, I find, want sensation from the mountain – not in Keats’s sense. Beginners, not unnaturally, do the same – I did myself. They want the startling view, the horrid pinnacle – sips of beer and tea instead of milk. Yet often the mountain gives…
Landscapes
I relatively recently discovered a sub-genre of nature writing that focuses on place or landscape writing. I find that focusing on landscape strongly appeals to my own topographic inclinations and reflects the way I think about the world. Of these landscape writers, I haven’t come across any better than Robert Macfarlane. I’ve been working my…
Maps as stories
Two of the most memorable books I’ve read in the last few years are atlases. Together they are part of an exciting trend I’ve noticed, the use of maps not just as a source of information, but as a storytelling medium in their own right. Obi Kaufman’s California Field Atlas is a book like no…
Timshel
Sometimes I read books for an entertaining story, other times to gain factual knowledge, and only rarely because the book reveals something significant about the human condition. “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck falls into the final category. The semi-biographical work is essentially an exploration of free will in the context of good vs evil…