One for the Books

Queenan, Joe. One for the Books. New York: Viking. 2012. Print

First Sentences: 

The average American reads four books a year, and the average American finds this more than sufficient.

Men who run for high office often deem such a vertiginous quota needlessly rigorous, which is why they are sometimes a bit hazy on what Darwin actually said about finch beaks and can never remember which was Troilus and which was Cressida.

I am up to speed on both. Yet I find this no cause for celebration, much less preening. For though I read at least a hundred books a year, and often twice that number, I always end up on New Year's Eve feeling that I have accomplished nothing.

Description:

Book readers are a select group of humans. Bibliophiles are in an even smaller, more passionate sub-species of this group. And then there's Joe Queenan, author of One for the Books. 

In this intelligent, fascinating, and sometimes wacky book, Queenan describes all aspects of his existence as a passionate book reader, including his preferences and dislikes in authors and topics, bookstores, and libraries, as well as strong opinions on borrowing/lending books, writing notes in books, and finishing a book. 

Queenan estimates he is actively reading thirty-two books at any given time. He admits to having read between 6,000 - 7,000 books in his lifetime, broken down into about 150 books a year not including titles he reviews for newspapers and magazines. Of course, he never speed-reads a book as "that would defeat the purpose of the exercise, which is for the experience to be leisurely and pleasant." 

We learn he uses several techniques to select a book: by its book jacket design; by the the blurbs written on the back cover by writers he respects; and even by its length (once spending a year reading only short books). And he favors reading books where a reviewer has used the word "astonishing" to describe the work, but refuses to read any book with that same word occurs in the title (e.g., The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation).

At his age (60 something), he calculates he could read "2,138 books" before he dies, therefore he must be careful about what titles he will consider reading in his years left. He has time for "500 masterpieces, 500 minor classics, 500 overlooked works of pure genius, 500 oddities, and 168 examples of first-class trash." 

This means, of course, there are books he knows he will never read unless he is paid to do so. His black-listed books include anything recommended and loaned to him by friends, books on current affairs, biographies, inspirational themes, books written by businessmen, and anything electronic. 

Also eliminated from consideration is anything written by an author involving a character Queenan knows to be a lover of the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Cowboys, Duke University basketball, University of Southern California football, or Manchester United soccer team. Such people are beneath contempt and certainly not worth his time to read. 

What books he loves, he LOVES. He admits to skipping work for a week to "lie on the sofa and read ten Ruth Rendel novels." After discovering Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop, he immediately bought and read all of her works, as he did with Henning Mankell and his Kurt Wallander Scandinavian detective novels.

His strong opinion reveal a love and devotion to books that are inspirational and jaw-dropping at the same time, such as his future reading goals (e.g. reading one book a day for a year, re-reading all books in his collection that he has already read twice, reading only books picked off public library shelves "with my eyes closed," etc.). Other reflections are more poetic including the serendipitous pleasures he experienced via print books vs. electronic books.

Queenan is a confident, intelligent, and discerning reader, When he praises one of your own personal favorites like Philip Roth's Great American Novel or Huckleberry Finn, you feel a smugness that your taste in reading has passed a test of some sort. 

However, it is admittedly deflating when he denigrates a book or author you enjoy, as he does for To Kill a Mockingbird (one of the school-assigned "featherweight homilies"), P.G. Wodehouse (a "poncey aristocrat who played footsie with the Nazis"), and David Benioff's City of Thieves (because the narrator/survivor of the siege of Leningrad eventually emigrates to the US and becomes a Yankee fan).  

I loved this book and Joe Queenan for his cleverness, his obsession, his high-quality writing, and his unwavering standards of what should and should not be read. If you love reading about books and looking for new titles to pursue, One for the Books is a fantastic world to explore. 

Happy reading.


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sankovitch, Nina. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading  

The author tries to deal with her grief for her sister's death by committing to read a book a day and then write a review of each for her website (readallday.org). Great bibliography of the books she read as well as insight into how books and memoirs can help deal with sorrow.

Basbanes, Nicholas A. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books  

A wonderful history of book collectors and their collections, delightful in its portrayal of the quirks, passion, and overwhelming commitment to purpose shown by this bibliophiles.

The Lost City of Z

Grann, David. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. New York: Doubleday. 2009. Print

First Sentences:

On a cold January day in 1925, a tall, distinguished gentleman hurried across the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey, toward the SS Vaban, a five-hundred-and-eleven-foot ocean liner bound for Rio de Janeiro. 

He was fifty-seven years old and stood over six feet, his long arms corded with muscles. Although his hair was thinning and his mustache was flecked with white, he was so fit that he could walk for days with little, if any, rest of nourishment. 

His nose was crooked like a boxer's and there was something ferocious about his appearance, especially his eyes. They were set close together and peered out from under thick tufts of hair. No one, not even his family, seemed to agree on their color -- some thought they were blue, others gray. Yet virtually everyone who encountered him was struck by their intensity: some called them "the eyes of a visionary."  

He had frequently been photographed in riding boots and wearing a Stetson, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, but even in a suit and a tie, and without his customary wild beard, he could be recognized by the crowds on the pier. He was Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, and his name was known throughout the world.

Description: 

Colonel Percy Fawcett definitely is a man to be reckoned with and a character worth reading about, especially in the capable hands of author/researcher David Grann. His book, The Lost City of Z, promises adventure, travel, exotic locales, and personal quests, some of my favorite topics.  

By the early 1900s, the age of exploration was closing. There were few undiscovered places left for an adventurer to explore and make a name for himself. Percy Fawcett's chosen territory of expertise was the Amazon jungles of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. His goal? Discover an ancient, unknown civilization and their city of gold, the fabled El Dorado (the Lost City of Z) mentioned by early Spanish historians.   

Fawcett researched the ancient accounts told to the Spanish conquerors by local Indians about a king who "slathered himself in gold and floated on a lake gleaming like a ray of the sun....while his subjects made offerings of gold jewelry, fine emeralds, and other pieces of their ornaments."  To Fawcett these accounts were the siren calls he had to answer, taking it upon himself to broaden the knowledge of an unknown land and hopefully reap the fame and recognition that accompanies such an achievement. 

Grann uses the paper trail of articles, maps, and diaries left by the explorer to slowly unravel Fawcett's research and exploits, revealing "the last of the great Victorian explorers who ventured into uncharted realms with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose."  

The Lost City of Z offers a riveting story of a man driven by ambition and dreams played out in an unforgiving environment. Grann skillfully shows Fawcett's sheer force of will in expedition after expedition into the unknown jungle, many lasting years, then watch him emerge at the conclusion of each journey half dead but ready to re-enter on another quest.

I will not spoil the answer as to whether Fawcett discovers his civilization and fabled city. This adventure tale is enough to keep anyone reading to the final pages. And what better recommendation is there for a book than it cannot be put down or abandoned until the very end? 

Happy reading. 


Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
 

Adams, Mark. Turn Right at Machu Piccu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time  

The desk-bound author sets out with a modern-day Fawcett as his guide to walk the routes of Hiram Bingham in order to re-trace that explorer's search for the fabled city of gold in Peru, with very humorous and serious adventures along the way. (Previously reviewed here.)

Drop Dead Healthy

Jacobs, A.J. Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print

First Sentences:

For the last few months, I’ve been assembling a list of things I need to do to improve my health. It’s an intimidatingly long list. Fifty-three pages. Here’s a sample:

•   Eat leafy green vegetables
•   Do forty minutes of aerobic exercise a day
•   Meditate several times a week
•   Watch baseball (lowers blood pressure, according to one study)
•   Nap (good for the brain and heart)
•   Hum (prevents sinus infections)
•   Win an Academy Award (a bit of a long shot, I know. But studies show Oscar winners live three years longer than non-Oscar winners.)

Description:

Don't we all want to be just a bit more fit, lose a couple of pounds, be smarter, see better, hurt less? Well, so does A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, only he wants it all.

After compiling his 53-page list of improvements he wants to make in himself, he methodically organizes his areas for change by body part or function. Stomach, heart, immune system, brain, teeth, back, and eyes all need work. He also intends to improve his lower intestine, hands, bladder, butt, and even the inside of this eyelids ("for a perfect night's sleep").  

Drop Dead Healthy documents his full-out assault to become the best in every area. He (and his ever-patient wife and family) allow two years to complete this complete make-over.

Each chapter details his efforts on a specific body over one month. Self-improvement techniques come from his consultations with professionals, personal research, and his own common sense. 

And what does he try? He walks on a treadmill while typing this book (and reaches over 1,000 miles before it is completed); dons a bike helmet when walking to safeguard against accidents; wears 3-D glasses to do "weight training for the eyes;" takes a juice cure; joins a laughter club to relieve stress; and explores how much sex is needed to optimize his aerobic capabilities. 

Progress is monitored each month for basic changes to weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, pulse, miles walked, etc.  But Jacobs also includes off-beat highlights such as, "Cans of steel-cut oatmeal consumed this year;" "Times unsuccessfully attempted to switch to green tea;" "Number of yoga instructors who have been surprisingly rude to me;" "Minutes singing per day;" "Frog calls memorized to keep my brain sharp;" ... well, you get the idea.

It's a wonderful mash-up of the scientific and the ridiculous, as he researches and then willingly incorporates into his life any strategies that might improve his health. "The trick," he says, "is to avoid quackery at the same time  as maintaining childlike enthusiasm for innovation."  

Serious? Definitely in his purpose, plan, and willingness to try anything and everything. Comedic? Of course, and delightfully so as we follow him from body part to body function, expert to quack, with varying degrees of success.  

Best of all, he writes in an engagingly dead-pan style that simplifies complex issues about our bodies into terms he (and we) can grasp.  I love his intensity, his curiosity, his commitment to improvement, as well as his candor in sharing every thought, every detail of this quest.

And I did learn a lot about the body and what I actually can do to make improvements myself. 

Happy reading.


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

 

Jacobs, A.J. Mr. Know-It-All   

The same author attempts to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from Volume A to Volume Z, carrying readers along with him, letter by letter, in his quest for knowledge and trivia. Fantastic!

The Orchardist

Coplin, Amanda. The Orchardist. New York : HarperCollins. 2012. Print

First Sentences:

His face was as pitted as the moon.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and thick without being stocky, though one could see how he would pass into stockiness; he had already taken on the barrel-chested sturdiness of an old man. His ears were elephantine, a feature most commented on when he was younger, when the ears stuck out from his head; but now they had darkened like the rest of his sun-exposed flesh and lay against his skull more than at any other time in his life, and were tough, the flesh granular like the rind of some fruit.





Description: 

Sometimes an author can make me care so deeply about the characters portrayed in a book that I becomes totally engrossed with them, their decisions, their activities, and the people they encounter. Amanda Coplin is such an author as she wonderfully proves as her debut novel, The Orchardist.

Set in the late 1850s, the book follows the life of William Talmadge, an orchardist who raises apricots, apples, and other fruit on his farm in an isolated valley in Washington. Talmadge has run the orchard alone after the death of his mother and the mysterious disappearance of his sister during their teenage years. His life and orchard move steadily forward with little change over the years - until two young, pregnant girls stumble onto his property.

Jane and Della are spotted by Talmadge one afternoon, looking like two startled young animals at the edge of his forest. Over the next weeks, they watch him distrustfully from a distance, and only grudging sneak out from their hiding spot to accept the food he leaves for them. They refuse to speak to him, sleep only in the forest, and secretly follow him as he tends to the orchard. 

Eventually, their babies are due and Talmadge along with the town's herbalist/midwife must finally be brought into their lives. Gradually, their' past unfolds, revealing the dark world they are fleeing. Talmadge is soon faced with decisions, whether legal or not, that will affect the futures of these girls and himself, a truly good man facing people and situations which challenge everything about his previous world of his orchard.

Additional other strong characters are sprinkled into this world: Caroline Middey, childhood friend of Talmadge and herbalist; Clee, the silent Nez Pierce horse wrangler who hunts, trains, and sells wild horses; and Michaelson, the man who holds the key to the dark history of the girls and who wants to take them away from the orchard. Michaelson's arrival into Talmadge's world touches off events that affect all characters and set in motion the actions each person must take in response.  

Coplin's writing style and plot slowly and inexorably drew me into this world and its inhabitants until I cared so deeply about each person that I became a part of Talmadge's world, living in his time and environment with him and each character until their emotions and actions became deeply rooted in me. 

A wonderful book.

Happy reading. 


Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Haruf, Kurt. Plainsong  

Simple, quiet book of two elderly bachelor brothers cattle ranching in Colorado who find their lives completely changed when a pregnant girl stumbles onto their world.

Hamsun, Knut. Growth of the Soil  

Fictional narration of a Norwegian farmer and his family as they slowly develop untamed land and struggle with the everyday challenges of farming and relationships which allow them to survive.

Young, Carrie. Nothing to Do But Stay  

Strong, warm, and endearing memoir written by a daughter about her mother's true life struggles to survive alone and later raise a large family on her North Dakota farmland in the early 1900s.

Booked to Die

Dunning, John. Booked to Die. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1970. Print

First Sentences: 

The phone rang. It was 2:30am.

Normally I am a light sleeper, but that night I was down among the dead. I had just finished a thirteen-hour shift, my fourth day running of heavy overtime and I hadn't been sleeping well until tonight. A guy named Jackie Newton was haunting my dreams. He was my enemy and I thought someday I would probably have to kill him. When the bell went off, I was dreaming about Jackie Newton and our final showdown.

Description: 

These first sentences may sound like a million other cheap thriller detective stories chronicling the inner thoughts and actions of a hard-boiled cop, but hold on a minute. Cliff Janeway, the Denver police homicide detective in Booked to Die, is quite a different breed. 

While he may look and occasionally act like a Clint Eastwood-style cop, demonstrating early on that he is not someone to be messed with, Janeway has another side that separates him from other cops. He reads. And he collects rare books.   

OK, now you got me. A murder mystery involving books is catnip to me. And Booked to Die delivers the goods. Solid action, memorable characters, interesting location, and of course lots of references to books, book collecting, and books worth reading. I am in heaven!   

Booked to Die is the engrossing first book in the "Bookman" mystery series by John Dunning which introduces the complex figure of Cliff Janeway, a homicide detective working for the Denver police. 

Here is a man torn between his tendency towards violence against law-breakers and his intelligence as a book-lover. He harbors a secret desire to quit his police job and open up a rare book store. So, when Janeway's investigation and eventual showdown with a local thug does not exactly go according to police procedures, he quits the homicide division to enter the world of rare book dealing.   

Now the fun starts. Opening his own store proves a challenge as he deals with fellow book dealers and book scouts, those odd characters who rummage around Goodwill stores and other locations with cheap used books in hopes of discovering hidden gems to sell to bookmen like Janeway.

But he cannot leave his past behind. When one of these book scouts turns up murdered, Janeway reluctantly gets involved.

In the twisting course of his investigation, Janeway uncovers a world of suspicious characters: rival dealers, seedy book scouts, and a reclusive rare book owner, each with a unique life and idiosyncrasies based on a passion for books. Of course, Janeway must seek information and answers from all of them.

Author Dunning, himself a rare book dealer, skillfully weaves into the plot the ins and outs of the bookseller's world. He shows Janeway learning how to evaluate and price books, sell items he would rather keep for himself, the "points" (mistakes) in certain editions that make them more valuable, the war between libraries and book dealers, and how not to woo a woman. Heady stuff for book fanatics like me!

Booked to Die details Janeway's two separate hunts: one for a killer and one for valuable books. The thrill of the chase and the satisfaction of discoveries along the way for both pursuits makes this a thoroughly compelling experience for any mystery fan and book lover who enjoys a gripping story with crisp writing and unique characters. 

And the best part? There are four more books in the "Bookman" detective series. Bet you cannot stop with reading just one!

Happy reading. 


Fred 
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you and you want to read more Cliff Janeway bookdealer/detective mysteries in order (more enjoyable in my opinion, but not required), be sure to check out:

Dunning, John. Bookman's Wake 

(Second book in the series.) Former cop turned book seller Cliiff Janeway explores the twisting, dangerous trail of a mythical rare book, the people who will pay anything for it, and the mysterious deaths of the book's creators.

Bibliography of all of John Dunning's works

The Solace of Open Spaces

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Viking. 1985. Print

First Sentences: 

It's May and I've just awakened from a nap, curled against sagebrush the way my dog taught me to sleep -- sheltered from wind. 

A front is pulling the huge sky over me, and from the dark a hailstone has hit me on the head. I'm trailing a band of two thousand sheep across a stretch of Wyoming badlands, a fifty-mile trip that takes five days because sheep shade up in hot sun and won't budge until it's cool. Bunched together now, and excited into a run by the storm, they drift across dry land, tumbling into draws like water and surge out again onto the rugged choppy plateaus that are the building blocks of this state. 

Description:

Sometimes the title of a book can be an indicator of its quality just like its first sentence. Any author who can create the phrase, The Solace of Open Spaces, offers the hope of a story worth hearing, one written in an imaginative, poetic style. This particular title promises a description of the healing peace found in a vast, quiet setting, and its author, Gretel Ehrlich, delivers on this promise with this memoir of her years in a small town in mountains of Wyoming.

In The Solace of Open Spaces, Ehrlich paints a quiet, but deeply intense portrait of the people and environment she encounters in Self, Wyoming, population 50, in the late 1970s. Originally in Laramie to make a film for PBS on sheepherders, she experiences a personal crisis which compels her to stay and recover by living and working alongside these same sheepherders and ranchers. 

Knowing nothing about this kind of life, she observes  and slowly absorbs the physical and mental ways of survival from these long-time sheep men and women living in the isolation of the Wyoming mountains.

Over the months, she learns to rope and ride, to pull lambs from ewes during difficult births, to live outdoors, and even to herd sheep alone in sub-zero weather. And she soon finds "living with animals makes us redefine our ideas about intelligence." 

It is the people who make the strongest impressions. From the heavy drinkers to the drifting cowboys (often the same men), from women struggling to keep families together to ranchers moving tens of thousands of sheep to spring pastures, these individuals pull us into their lives. Facing harsh weather, isolation, and economic difficulties, they know "it's not toughness but 'toughing it out' that matters in this environment." 

Ehrlich find the cowboys she works beside to be unlike the popular image of the strong, silent, heroic individualist. These are men who must work as a team with other cowboys, horses, dogs, and sheep to accomplish huge tasks or just to survive. They are only silent "when there is no one else to talk to." And when one rides off into the sunset, it's because "he's been on horseback since four in the morning  moving cattle and he's trying, fifteen hours later, to get home to his family."

Ehrlich is a contemplative, poetic writer of her own emotions as well as a keen observer of the people and land around her. Her descriptions are spare, honest, and beautifully written, providing an episodic, yet thoroughly enveloping narrative about a world and people rarely portrayed. From meteor showers she observes at 2am from the bed of her pickup truck to the rodeos watching her friends ride, her descriptions are of real people doing real work and living in a real environment that is as hostile as it is beautiful.

It is a an impassionate, yet compelling world she describes, one filled with strong people.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddled, eddying, gleaming, still.

Yes, such a world and people are very much worth reading about, especially when portrayed by a skilled observer and writer like Ehrlich. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
 

Ehrlich, Gretel. A Match to the Heart: One Woman's Story of Being Struck By Lightning

During her life in Wyoming, Ehrlich is struck by lightning. Her memoir of that experience, both physically and mentally, are unique, revealing and compelling. Fantastic reading.

Young, Carrie. Nothing To Do But Stay

Memoir of a woman settler on the plains of North Dakota as told by her daughter in a warm narrative that shows the strength and character of the people who faced tremendous challenges and joys in this life in the early 1900's.

Houston, Pam. Cowboys Are My Weakness

Stories of men and women and their relationships in the wilds of Colorado told by a romantic, untamed, no-holds-barred storyteller.

Sutton

Moehringer, J.R. Sutton. New York: Hyperion. 2012. Print

First Sentences: 

He's writing when they come for him.

He's sitting at his metal desk, bent over a yellow legal pad, talking to himself, and to her -- as always, to her. So he doesn't notice them standing at his door. Until they run their batons along the bars.

 






Description: 

Willie Sutton was a real bank robber in the Roaring 20's through the 1950s, but what a bank robber he was. He was different from other gangsters: a dapper figure who employed costumes (hence his nickname "Willie the Actor") of delivery boys and policemen to convince staff to allow him to enter banks before they were open to the public. Although he brandished guns, he rarely resorted to violence during his jobs. He was a hero to the public who despised banks during those years of multiple financial depressions. In all, he stole more than $2 million from banks, real money in those days. 

But it wasn't all a romantic romp in the park  He did spend over half his life in jail. 

And when Sutton was finally paroled in 1969 from his life sentence in Attica Prison, he gave only one final interview, spending his first day of freedom revisiting the places of significance in his life with a single reporter and a photographer. The article from this interview was published in The New York Times, but shed little new light on Sutton's life.

What really went on during that Christmas Day interview among those three men? No one knows as all the principals are now dead. But what might have happened, what might have been said, and what might have been revealed at the sites they visited is imagined in Sutton, a highly engrossing history/novel by J. R. Moehringer. 

Sutton follows the bank robber on that day-long exploration of his haunts in New York City. From Sutton's birthplace to the jewelry store of his first job, from the spot where he met Bess (the woman of his dreams), to the jails that housed him, Willie and his two companions drift through the city revisiting his past.

Readers are taken inside Sutton's head to hear his private memories for each site, the people, the robberies, and the repercussions. Sutton's recollections, however, stand in stark contrast to what he actually tells the reporter.

Exactly what really happened and what are only Willie's colored remembrances? 

This is a fascinating, well-paced book about one man's reflections on the world of people and banks and the forces that brought them together to chart his destiny.

Happy reading. 


Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Moehringer, J.R. The Tender Bar: A Memoir 

Captivating and endearing memoirs of a boy who spent his formative years in a local bar, talking with the patrons, learning and experiencing life, love, and adulthood.

Never Cry Wolf

Mowat, Farley. Never Cry Wolf: Amazing True Story About Life Among Arctic Wolves. New York: Atlantic-Little Brown 1963. Print 

First Sentences:

It is a long way in time and space from the bathroom of my Grandmother Mowat's house in Oakville, Ontario, to the bottom of a wolf den in the Barren Lands in central Keewatin, and I have no intention of retracing the entire road which lies between. Nevertheless, there must be a beginning to any tale, and the story of my sojourn amongst the wolves begins properly in Granny's bathroom.

Description: 

Can a book deal with a serious topic (depletion of caribou herds by arctic wolves in Canada) in a completely off-beat manner? In the hands of a quirky biologist like Farley Mowat, of course. 

In Never Cry Wolf, he engagingly recollects his adventures as a newly-hired naturalist for the Canadian Wildlife Service and assigned his first task: find out why the arctic timber wolves are decimating the caribou population in the Baffins of Canada, gather information, and then "curb the carnage."

So off he flies to the frozen wilds armed with his plane load of government issue wolf traps, tear gas grenades, smoke generators, seven axes, 4 gross of mousetraps, and a communication radio with 6 hours' worth of batteries. Also smuggled aboard were 10 gallons of 100% grain alcohol (for preservation of specimens) and 15 cases of Moose Brand Beer, contraband which could be mixed together into a "positively ambrosial" concoction. 

Once left in the frozen nothingness, even armed with this elixir, the first howls of a wolf pack send him scurrying for protection under the canoe, "wishing I were a pregnant Eskimo." Don't ask.

Having no experience with wolves, Mowat relies on his wits to locate and study these creatures up close and personal. He gamely tries personal experiments to test the validity of each hypotheses based on what he sees, including living solely on a diet of field mice (to see whether wolves could possible exist on rodents alone) and moving his body in circles in bed to prove this wolf technique helps one drop off to sleep better (an activity he laments later proved to be unpopular with lady friends).

Throughout the book he leads readers on adventure after misadventure, experiencing with him first-hand this environment, its people, and its wildlife. Interactions with native Inuit, visiting hunters, and, of course, the Canadian home office provide numerous instances of bewilderment, humor, scientific observation, bureaucracy, and well-intentioned pursuits.  

His observations change all preconceived notions of wolf behavior, diet, family structure, hunting range, and their relationship with caribou.   

Never Cry Wolf is a book I have recommended for years to adults, children, teens, seniors - anyone looking for a well-written, humorous read on a serious topic set in an exotic local. Mowat is a prodigious writer on a huge variety of topics that can be scientific, humorous, historic, heart-breaking or sometimes all of the above  But by far the best place to start is with Never Cry Wolf.

Happy reading. 


Fred 
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, there are many others available by Farley Mowat, both humorous and serious. Be sure to check out:

Mowat, Farley. The Snow Walker.  

Tales of the Inuit people Mowat lived with in the Canadian wilderness over many years, as told in their voices to relate stories of the individuals and actions, as well as legends that make up their culture. Highly recommended for great writing, powerful stories, and memorable people.

Mowat, Farley. The Dog Who Wouldn't Be. 

Recollections and humorous tales of the author's early boyhood with a dog who rode in cars with goggles and could climb ladders. Great for reading to children as well.