Remarkable Works I've Read

[skip.knox]

I've read some remarkable stuff of late, so I thought I'd remark on them. Feel free to kick in your own.

First up, Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Dana. Yeah, I know. I refused to read it in high school, too. Just as well, as it would have been wasted on that good-for-nothing.

Now, though, I am fascinated. His narrative is clear and strong--a much easier read that most any other book from the 1830s. His experiences are unforgettable, from throwing animal hides off a 400 foot cliff, to climbing masts in a snowstorm. Rounding the Cape. At night. With icebergs.

Some images stand out. The Sandwich Islanders who lived in an big oven built by Russian traders at Santa Barbara. A casual mention of Wood Island (now Alcatraz) and in general what the San Francisco Bay was like before ... well, before San Francisco.

Dana was a keen observer not only of the natural world but also of people. He has memorable descriptions, but he also talks of how sailors behaved, or how the Indians of California, or the Spaniards there, or the Americans behaved. How, for example, sailors would never say they were afraid, no matter how horrific it was to be a hundred feet up in the sails in high winds, or as fifty-foot waves swept the decks; but that they would always make light of it because to take it seriously would be to make the terror more real.

There were passages where I started to skim, sure. But there were far more passages I lingered over, re-read, recounted or even read aloud to my wife. I very much recommend this book to a wide range of readers: for a good adventure story, for a fascinating look into a specific historical corner, for anyone who appreciates a mastery of prose.

 

[Aldarion]

but that they would always make light of it because to take it seriously would be to make the terror more real.

You find that in all dangerous lines of work... be it soldiers, firefighters or medical staff, black humor is aplenty.

And thanks for this. Another work on my to-read list!

 

[pmmg]

I had not heard of this one.

In my school days, there were a lot of stories to choose from. I recall skipping To kill a mocking bird, the red badge of courage, the scarlet letter, a wrinkle in time, lord of the flies, white fang, Huck Finn....but not Two Years Before a Mast. I did eventually read all of those and liked them all (Well, not wrinkle in time, that one I did not like). But I would not have enjoyed any of them at the age I was in school.


Somewhere along the way, I read Moby Dick. I thought it would be a great adventure about an insane Captain after a treacherous white whale...but boy was I mistaken. So much of that book is just about whaling, whaling vessels, sailor types, how to butcher a whale, and what was valuable and what was not, it barely has the Ahab story in it. You want an education on whaling, there's your book.

 

[Incanus]

I read 'Two Years Before the Mast' about 15 years ago or so. I enjoyed it for much the same reasons Skip did.

 

[Jackarandajam]

You find that in all dangerous lines of work... be it soldiers, firefighters or medical staff, black humor is aplenty.

And thanks for this. Another work on my to-read list!

I'll second this. We used to sing Freefalling by Tom Petty as we climbed out on top of a wind turbine to do something particularly sketchy.

Now on my list too, thanks skip.knox

Remarkable pieces I've read recently... Notes from the Underground by Dostoesvsky.
Horrible. Exact. Couldn't look away.

 

[Karlin]

In the same line of thought, I've read the following rather obscure memoir, from 1852:

ADVENTURES OF A SOLDIER WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. BEING THE MEMOIRS OF EDWARD COSTELLO, K.S.F.

Edward Costello. Adventures of a Soldier, Written by Himself / Being the Memoirs of Edward Costello, K.S.F. Formerly a Non-Commissioned Officer in the Rifle Brigade, Late Captain in the (Kindle Locations 10-12). Kindle Edition.

Amazing narrative. Language is a bit dated for some reason, but worth it

 

[Queshire]

Ah ha....... I fear my standards for remarkable are quite a bit lower than most...

 

[Jackarandajam]

In the same line of thought, I've read the following rather obscure memoir, from 1852:

ADVENTURES OF A SOLDIER WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. BEING THE MEMOIRS OF EDWARD COSTELLO, K.S.F.

Edward Costello. Adventures of a Soldier, Written by Himself / Being the Memoirs of Edward Costello, K.S.F. Formerly a Non-Commissioned Officer in the Rifle Brigade, Late Captain in the (Kindle Locations 10-12). Kindle Edition.

Amazing narrative. Language is a bit dated for some reason, but worth it

That reminds me, I lately received a copy of The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight, Opened, first published 1669.
It's a really fascinating collection of recipes from the time, I wanted it for the mead and metheglin recipes.
The fairly long introduction, a biography of the author, is hysterical.
It reads like someone was given a large amount of very unflattering information about the man and then told to make him sound like a god or there would be hell to pay. It gushes to comical levels, comparing him to all the greatest people of the time, with these occasional little asides that reveal the true nature of things, "don't listen to all the people who say...."
Anyway, more funny than remarkable, but the recipes are fascinating. "Chicken boiled in oxes bladder" and so on.

 

[skip.knox]

Here's another recent read. It's called "Accidental Flight" by F.L. Wallace and was originally published in 1952 in Galaxy magazine. I stumbled upon it in a collection book entitled Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #2, which contains a few very good ones. I mention this one because it is strikingly unusual.

First, though, a word about Galaxy. Gosh I miss those magazines, and its neighbors, cousins, and rivals. There were delights everywhere, from the covers to the loglines and titles, to the stories themselves, to the letters to the editor and entries from the editors themselves. With Galaxy in particular, there was the additional delight of the Galaxy Reader, which was an annual collection of the best of the magazine. I first encountered Galaxy in a library in the form of the Third Galaxy Reader and the Fourth Galaxy Reader, and so on. Notwithstanding current efforts, and with all respect to their usually thankless and consistently profitless dedication to quality, the current generation is poorer for the loss of print mags.

Anyway, about Wallace's story.

It's well-written of course, or it never would have made the mag. But the premise is almost unique. The main characters are called "accidentals" and they are all significantly disabled in one way or another. One is armless, another legless, a third can neither speak or hear and cannot communicate in any discernible way, while a fourth is not just grotesquely obese, she grows continually and has to be kept in a careful acid bath to eat away the flesh. These and others are kept on an asteroid that is ostensibly a hospital but is really a prison. The story concerns how they escape and then don't escape and then do. The events turn very much on their physical challenges and how they manage to steal a starship and then steal something even bigger.

It's a solid story; I wouldn't call it brilliant. But to focus a science fiction story so heavily on physical disabilities, and to make them so unusual (both in form and in origin) struck me. I had to look up Wallace. I would have claimed I was fairly knowledgeable about the SF writers of the 50s and 60s, but I didn't know him at all. I wanted to share this story in part because it was so striking, but also as a way of mentioning Galaxy and the world that has gone by. As the poet says, over a long time ago.

 

[Karlin]

A Canticle for Leibowitz! Walter M. Miller. A classic. If you haven't read it- do so.

 

[Finchbearer]

One book I think about all the time, that astounded me with every turned page was Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. It is a book made up of various investigations and interviews, mainly following defectors now living outside of North Korea. What made this book so compelling is in fact the format in which the book is written, where Demick makes it feel like an incredibly well thought out dystopian novel. Real life is stranger than fiction after all. The book follows six people throughout the course of their lives, with each chapter following each individual. I was left desperately wanting to know ‘what happens next’, reminding myself that these are real lived experiences and not fictitious accounts.

We follow the individuals as they become disillusioned with the regime, and the book climaxes when we find out how they came to leave the hermit kingdom with death defying accounts of escape. We also see what life is like afterwards for some who now live in Seoul, the USA, China or elsewhere. The book was written in 2010 and so there are some harrowing accounts of the famine that occurred in the early 1990’s. We are are told of people resorting to chewing on mouldy corn and even old leather shoes. A homelessness epidemic, and countless orphans. The dystopian world in which North Korean people exist is perpetuated throughout the book as each individual talks of mistrust of work colleagues, neighbours and even family members. The need to perpetuate the lie is confounded in the fear of the terrible consequences if they should be found out as deceivers of the regime. Having to show visible and over exaggerated emotions at the key events, at death of Kim Jong Un, where the paranoia of being watched at every turn changes the way they think, live and breathe.

 

[skip.knox]

A Canticle for Leibowitz! Walter M. Miller. A classic. If you haven't read it- do so.

Read this as a youngster and was much impressed. I may need to revisit.

 

[Mad Swede]

I've mentioned this book before here on the forums, but the book the made the biggest impact on me was Astrid Lindgren's Bröderna Lejonhjärta (in English, The Brothers Lionheart). Even now, nearly fifty years after I first read the book, it still moves me. For a childrens book it really is remarkable, in that disease, death, tyranny, betrayal, and rebellion form the backdrop of the story against which are contrasted love, loyalty, sacrifice, hope, courage, and pacifism. You can see it both as a story with religious symbolism and as a realistic story where events form part of a (literally) fevered imagination. The book also, in an odd way, links back to and builds on the many Swedish legends and folk tales. By that I mean that the story is very evocative and has some fairly deep themes in the form of yearning for comfort, affection, loyalty and freedom. For me it's the best book Astrid Lindgren ever wrote.

 

[skip.knox]

PITFCS (pronounced however you see fit)
It has been a few years since I read this thing. I cannot pretend it is great writing, but it certainly is remarkable. I chose the wording in the Subject line with care.

The letters are an acronym. They stand for Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies. An absurd name for an absurdist group, for it was a fanzine for professionals that somehow managed to get contributions from a number of published science fiction writers of the day. The day being around 1958 into 1961.

In its mimeographed pages (oh purple ink of fond memory) you can find missives from Brian Aldiss, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Algis Budrys, John W. Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Avram Davidson, Gordon Dickson, Harlan Ellison, Harry Harrison, Damon Knight, Fritz Leiber, Frederik Pohl, Eric Frank Russell, Kurt Vonnegut, and Don Wollheim. Among others. The letters are sometimes cranky and sometimes embarrassingly gross, but taken together they offer a remarkable look at the profession at the time.

It got scanned at some point and can be bought as a single pdf file (over 300K pages) for about ten bucks. Or you can search that acronym and see chunks of it reproduced here and there (including one that has copies of the original mimeographs). I bought the book (from ReAnimus Press). It's clumsy to read, but I'm glad I have it.

 

[pmmg]

It would be neat to read and see how it matched to today. But 300K pages?....um.....

I wonder what they would think today of the SFWA?

(And I always liked to way the mimeograph paper smelled.)

 

[Jackarandajam]

Somewhere along the way, I read Moby Dick. I thought it would be a great adventure about an insane Captain after a treacherous white whale...but boy was I mistaken. So much of that book is just about whaling, whaling vessels, sailor types, how to butcher a whale, and what was valuable and what was not, it barely has the Ahab story in it. You want an education on whaling, there's your book.

The first and last quarters are the story everyone knows, the middle half is hilariously boring. Someone should have revoked his right to use the word "monomania" at about the 90th usage at least.
I remember one bit where the different cries of the sailors from different parts of the world are being listed;
"... and the Swedish sailors..."
"... and the Dutch sailors..."
"... and the Spanish sailors..."
"... and the Portuguese sailors..."
"... and the French sailors..."
"... and the German sailors..."
I think he quotes an entire sermon at one point too?
That's one book that I'm honestly proud of myself for making it through.

 

[Ban]

Reading that Moby Dick is about the minutiae of whaling and sailing makes me want to read it. I'd love an education on both. Here I thought it was just a generic adventure

 

[pmmg]

Mr. Melville will appreciate that.

 

[Ban]

Perhaps he shall from above. I'll raise a toast to him when the time comes. I am joking a little, but I do indeed appreciate it when a work of fiction has educational use and works hard to immerse the reader into a character's profession, life and/or craftsmanship. A book I love is Butcher's Crossing, and one of the reasons why is that John Williams takes the time to explain how a buffalo hunt worked. From the preparation, to the journey, to the violence and to the skinning. There's a balance to be struck, but I don't mind if that balance is lopsided to more rather than less detail.

 

[pmmg]

I think it was the buffalo that would just stand in a field and keep eating while the guns were going off. The one right next to them would fall over dead and they would do nothing. It cant be much of a hunt. Maybe a chore....