The Penguin Lessons

Michell, Tom. The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird. New York: Ballentine 2017. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Had I been told as a child in 1950's England that my life would one day run parallel with that of a penguin -- that for a time, at least, it would be him and me against the world -- I would have taken it in stride. After all, my mother had kept three alligators at the house in Esher until they grew too big and too dangerous for that genteel town and keepers from Chessington Zoo came to remove them. 

Description:

Probably never does a movie even come close to the quality and depth of the book on which it is based. Films in my mind that are closest to achieving a similar level of quality as their book, in my mind, might be To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck and The Martian with Matt Damon. While these films can't plum the full depth and characterization possible in the books, they do convey the storyline, the tension, the emotion, and the overall impact. More importantly, they encourage movie-watchers like me to seek out the original source material book to answer questions, fill in gaps, and follow tangents only hinted at in the film.

After recently watching the film The Penguin Lesson with Steve Coogan, it tickled my interest enough that I really wanted to read author Tom Michell's own words about his escapades with a South American penguin. Lo and behold, in our local library I found a copy of The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird. I plunged right in and was quickly absorbed into his homey narration.

In 1975, author Michell was an assistant master and resident at an exclusive boy's school in Argentina. While on a vacation in Uruguay and walking along a beach, he noticed hundreds of dark lumps on the shore. These turned out to be dead penguins, recently migrating northward now covered with oil from unloading tankers and washed ashore. Shocked at the sight, he looked closer and found one that was still alive. As he approached it, the penguin, oil-slicked and weak, boldly stood up to defend itself.

Michell decided to try to save it by washing off the oil, capturing the 10lb bird in a string grocery bag and cleaning it in the home where he was house-sitting. Definitely not an easy task, nor a very clean one.

But after the penguin (later named "Juan Salvado") calmed down and allowed Michell to fully remove the oil, the author tried to return it to the ocean. To his surprise, the penguin immediately waddled away from the shore, determined to follow Mitchell wherever he went. 

After several more unsuccessful attempts to set it free, and due to a growing respect and love for this bird, Michell decides keep the bird until he can take it to a zoo. But he first must sneak the penguin back to the Argentine boy's school with him. This ridiculous journey involves adventures with buses and trains, customs inspections, feeding, and of course some very smelly pooping (by the penguin).

This is the action of the first few pages, so I am not giving much away. From here on in, Michell recounts decision after decision he faced about the penguin's food, water, exercise, secrecy, and of course what to do when Michell is away from his apartment teaching and Juan Salvado is left alone. 

We also get glimpses of the people and life in a small town and school in Juan Peron's politically unstable Argentina. Inflation was 100% per month, so Michell was told to spend his entire  paycheck the same day he received it, buying things he didn't even need so he could re-sell them from the school. Otherwise, his money would decrease by 50% the next day.

We meet the people who enter the penguin's life: the school's head of housekeeping who befriends Juan Salvado as one of the students needing her care; the local fisherman who sold Michell the small sprat fish for Juan Salvador; and the school boys who after learning there is a penguin living with a teacher on their grounds, they adopt as a mascot, friend, and confidant. The chapter where a shy, outcast school boy swims with Juan Salvado is absolutely first rate.

The book is delightful, heart-warming, and overall fun to read. Juan Salvado is a star in his new land-locked life, carefully integrated into the lives of every person he encounters. I loved it and hope you find it equally satisfying ...much more so than even that very good movie version of his adventures.

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

  

Montgomery, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus..   

Fascinating up close encounter, study, and even friendship between the author and an aquarium octopus. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Soaring to Glory

Handleman, Philip. Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II. Washington DC: Regnery History 2019. Print.

First Sentences:

Harry Stewart was five thousand feet over the Luftwaffe base at Wels, Germany. His flight's element had been reduced to seven planes when the eighth was disabled by mechanical problems. Still, they would be more than a match for the four German fighters they called out below. 

Description:

I knew virtually nothing about the Tuskegee Airmen except that they were a reknown all-Black division of the Air Force fighting in World War II. Then, I somehow stumbled upon Philip Handleman's Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II. and I was hooked on their story of bravery, perseverance, flying skills, and especially dealing with racism in the air and on the ground.

 

Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart Jr, is the subject of this biography, one of the last surviving airman from this squadron. Author Handleman, through interviews, articles, research, and personal contact with Stewart, ably tells this rich history from the first Black aviators, through the formation of the Tuskegee squadron, (the 332nd Red Tails), and post-war lives of these men up to the present day. 

 

It's such a rich, obstacle-laden history as Black men look to the skies and flying for the thrill as well as the escape from the prejudice they faced on the ground.

[They] saw the sky as a medium inherently devoid of the artificial barriers erected by one class of men to block another. The law of the air, their thinking held, is fair and equitable; it applies uniformly without exception to all people regardless of race, color, creed, gender, ethnicity, ancestry, and national origin -- for it is not man's law but nature's law.

Notable Black fliers included aerial display barnstormer Bessie Coleman who went to France in 1921 for training as no US programs would accept a Black woman; James Banning and Thomas Allen who flew transcontinental in 1932; Chauncey Spencer and Dale White flew a two-seater biplane in 1939 from Chicago to Washington DC to publicize the cause of Black aviation.

 

Young Harry Stewart grew up in 1930s New York watching the airship balloons, biplanes, and test airplanes from the nearby base, as well as working on model airplane kits and watching films featuring WWI dogfights. Told by a school counselor that  "Colored people aren't accepted as airline pilots," he later found an article in 1941 (as the War clouds hovering) that said "the Army would start to train an all-Negro flying unit: the 99th Pursuit Squadron. He dropped out of school when he was accepted into the program, only a few days before he was to report for his draft induction.

 

Soaring to Glory carefully follows Stewart through his pilot training and eventual World War II missions. Hardly any military personnel or brass welcomed them:

Major General Edwin J. House of the 12th Air Support Command...claimed that the consensus among his fellow officers and medical professionals was 'that the negro type has not the proper reflexes to make a first-class fighter pilot.'

Handleman also noted that:

An earlier 1925 Army War College memorandum asserted that blacks are 'by nature subservient' and 'mentally inferior.'

The Tuskegee Airmen and Stewart were motivated to prove these bigots wrong. During one of his 42 combat flights, Stewart shot down three German planes. The Squadron later handily won a national military aerial competition that highlighted flying, shooting, and bombing skills. 

Returning to the US was a return to the same world of prejudice and closed doors. His 332nd Fighter Group Squadron was stationed in Lockbourne Air Force Base outside of Columbus, Ohio, the first air base not under the supervision of white officers. During that period, Stewart wa forced tobail out of his plane, landing in the backwoods of Appalachia (Butcher Hollow, to be exact, home of Loretta Lynn). There he found kind mountain people who cleaned his wounds, gave him moonshine to ease the pain, and helped get him to a doctor. Fifty-seven years later he returned to see his new friends there and to serve as Grand Marshall of the Van Lear Town Celebration parade.

 

After leaving the military, Stewart found commercial airlines such as Pan Am and TWA, while advertising for former military airmen, told him there were no openings him as a pilot. At Pan Am, he was told by their personnel manager:

"Mr Stewart, I'm sure you can understand our position. Just imagine what passengers would think if during a flight they saw a Negro step out of the cockpit and walk down the aisle in a pilot's uniform."

But the book is about Stewart's dreams, his striving, surviving, and triumphing in the face of incredible odds. From US segregation and bigoted people to German fighter pilots to closed-off jobs, Stewart kept working, going to night school for an engineering degree, and achieving success in major corporations in his undying efforts to carve a life for himself and his family. He was even presented, along with the other Tuskegee Airmen, with the Congressional Gold Medal, even shaking the congratulatory hand of Senator Robert Byrd, a former KKK member.

 

It is a book full of history, both shameful and glorious, through the life of one man and his race. Terrifically written, with interesting stories and information about our country and its pilots on every page. The joy and skills involved in military flying, the danger of the missions, and the camaraderie of these Black pilots reveal what an vital role these men played during the War.

 

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

  

Dahl, Roald. Going Solo.   

Early diary entries and commentary from the author Roald Dahl on his World War I. aviation career when flying a plane was as dangerous as facing an enemy pilot. Brilliantly written. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Food for Thought

Brown, Alton. Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations. New York: Gallery Books 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

I am sitting in front of a bowl, a spoon a box,and a bottle, and I'mbeginning to break out in just a wee bit of a cold sweat.

Description:

I been a long-time fan of Alton Brown and his goofy, informative cooking shows such as Good Eats (16 seasons) and Iron Chef America (13 seasons). These television entertainments provided even non-cooks like me an entertaining introduction to the wonders and science behind preparing delicious food.

Now Brown had created a book, Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations, chock full of his memories and wide-ranging thougts about his career with food. 

These short essays cover such diverse topics as "Biscuiteering," "Bad Day at the Bakeshop," "Luau from Hell," "The Turkey Man Cometh," "The Sip of the Civilized" and "Cooking: The Final (Marriage) Frontier." In other words, Brown shares everything running through his mind, from making the perfect martini to cooking hacks, as well as his disastrous introductions to Cap'n Crunch cereal and s'mores.

It is not a book of recipes, although he does share his Horcrux meal (something that contains a part of him), the perfect martini (stirred, not shaken), and a few other tips on meal preparation and tools. And believe me, he has strong opinions. It is not a How-To book, but more of a collection of his rambling thoughts.

Here's a sample from inside his brain:

• The Son of Blob story about the discarded bread dough Brown had put into the restaurant dumptster that expanded to gigantic size and oozed out of the metal container;

• The first bite of a Cortona, Italy pizza which was so delicious that he used it to define his life "before the bite and life after the bite....To say it was just six simple ingredients would be like saying Pollock's Autumn Rhythym is just four colors of paint";

• He self-taught himself to cook in college to "lure" plan to woman to be interested in him. First, he will give her a simple, cheap meal (spaghetti and meatballs). Then, if all goes well, a second invitation to a slightly more costly one (coq au van). Finally, a third meal to close the deal with an expensive serving (sole florentine au gratin. Unfortunately, his first date cancelled at the last minute and he thoroughly enjoyed the meal by himself;

• [Note: About that seduction-through-meals-plan] - Brown states, "I harbored no illusions of actually bedding anyone; a bit of hand-holding on the sofa or a good-night kiss would have ranked as a major victory." He only cooked one more meal to win a woman's affection and burned the spaghetti, but won her heart and she eventually married him]; 

• "The word chef when preceded by the adverb yes becomes a subtle yet effective form of "f**k you." 

• He conceived of a new type of cooking show to be "a juxtaposition of unrelated forms" based on the style of Julia Child (practical), Mr. Wizard (science), and Monty Python ("laughing brains are more absorbant');

• The theme song for Good Eats was, at Brown's insistence, catchy and only 10 notes long in order to be used in the new 1997 cell phones and their customizable ring tones;

• Eating with chopsticks helped him lose weight;

• To get youngsters to eat food they refuse, just tell them they can't have any of it anyways because it is adult food;

• Once after sampling a soup on Iron Chef America" that contained oysters (which he is allergic to) he threw up repeatedly on the set and ended up in the ER.

I could go on and on with engaging tidbits from Brown, but I'll leave the rest of the discovery to those who read his book in full. Haven't laughed out loud at a book in a long time, so as you can tell I really enjoyed his behind-the-scenes stories, quips about life, and of course, cooking advice/failures/triumphs. 

Read it even if you don't know anything about food or its preparation, but love delightfully written stories that will definite make you at least smile and msybe even laugh out loud as I did.

 

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

  

Pepim Jacques. The Apprentice.   

The autobiography of the chef who popularized French cooking in the United States. Includes his recollections about his French training, apprenticeships, and first restaurants, all told in his clear, personal writing style. Highly enjoyable, even for non-foodies. (Previously reviewed here.)

 

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Going Solo

Dahl, Roald. Going Solo. New York: Penguin 1986. Print.

First Sentences:

 

The ship that was carrying me away from England to Africa in the autumn of 1938 was called the SS Mantola. She was an old paint-peeling tub of 9,000 tons with a single tall funnel and a vibrating engine that rattled the tea-cups in their saucers on the dining-room table.

Description:

Roald Dahl's autobiography, Going Solo, proves again that a reader does not have to know anything about a topic or situation to become totally immersed in the action. Dahl, the well-known author (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, etc.) had another much different life prior to his literary career: that of an World War II RAF fighter pilot. Going Solo recounts his memories starting with his 1938 voyage from London to Tanganyika as an 20-year-old inexperienced agent for Shell Oil through his three-year enlistment and training as a pilot in Egypt, including his aerial battles in Greece, and finally his return to his home in England.

 

Dahl puts the reader right inside his mind: a confident, curious, sometimes reckless youth driving all over Africa to meet with Shell clients and take orders. We sit with him on these desert trips as he marvels at the fearless animals he sees which completely ignore him. His favorite activity is to walk among a herd of giraffes, wandering among their legs and calling to them as they indifferently continue with their grazing of trees.

 

He never lost his fear of African snakes, however, and recounted several encounters with both deadly black and green mambas. (He carefully notes learning the difference between "poisonous" and "deadly" snakes), but continually avoids both.

 

After volunteering for the RAF, Dahl joyfully takes readers up into the air during his training flights in the two-seater Tiger Moth bi-plane. 

We could loop the loop and fly upside down. We could get ourselves out of a spin. We could do forced landings with the engine cut. We could side-slip and land decently in a strong cross-wind...and we were full of confidence.

But he had no actual air-to-air combat training before being sent to Greece to engage German planes. He had to learn to fly modern Hurricanes (which he had to cram his 6'6" body into a cockpit with his knees against his chin). Readers again are inside his mind during each dangerous mission: thinking his thoughts, sensing his emotions, and feeling his pain both physical and emotional for the loss of fellow pilots, civilians, and even German enemies. 

 

Flight after flight in Greece, his 15-airplane squadron is hopeless outnumbered by the hundreds of German bombers and fighter planes on missions nearby. Dahl flies 3-5 missions a day trying to protect Allied boats unloading cargo, ammunition, and supplies. He is forced to fly his plane directly at the enemy fighters since his machine guns are fixed in his wings and could only shoot straight ahead, albeit through the rotating propeller, a phenomenon Dahl could never understand.

Each flight is perilous. Once completed, he and his meager squadron wait back at their home runway to see which of their fellow pilots return and which did not make it back. He maintains his fearlessness in flying into incredible situations and, with the exception of one horrific crash, emerges in one piece each time.

As you might surmise, I was totally engrossed in this book chock full of Dahl's adventures and thoughts presented in his clear, straightforward, yet gripping writing style. Highly recommended for lovers of personal memoirs of flying. 

(Note: This is the second book in Dahl's autobiography series. The first book, Boy recounts his early childhood, while Going Solo picks up where Boy ends.)

 

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

  Markham, Beryl. West With the Night: A Memoir.   

The autobiography of Markham, the woman pilot raised in Kenya who became the first female commercial pilot and air mail-carrier in Africa, as well as the first woman to fly non-stop from Europe to America. She was a friend to Karen Blixen and Denis Fitch Hatton (depicted in the film Out of Africa). Most importantly, this memoir is beautifully written, full of life, adventure, and challenges. It was highly-praised by Ernest Hemingway who said Markham "could write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers." (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Voices and Silences

Jones, James Earl and Penelope Niven. Voices and Silences. New York: Scribner 1993 Print.

First Sentences:

Early in my awakening memory, two grown men lean on a rail fence talking about livestock. It is spring of 1935. Since I am only four, they seem very tall to me.


Description:

Seems I've been in the auto-biography reading mood lately, so with he recent death of the actor James Earl Jones, naturally I hunted up his personal memoir, Voices and Silences, and was tremendously impressed. Not only is his recalling of his life story honest, intriguing, and thorough, Jones is a wonderful writer (along with co-author Penelope Niven) who tells his history with a confident, clear voice. (I only wish there was an audiobook with him as the reader. What a narrative voice that would be).

Since I knew nothing about Jones beyond his acting roles, it was fascinating to learn of his upbringing. Abandoned by both his father (to pursued an acting career) and mother (a mentally unstable person prone to wandering away from home for days), he was relocated from Mississippi to a farm in Michigan and raised by his grandparents.

 

Soon after joining this new home, he began to stutter, an affliction so great that he simply did not speak for eight years, from age six to fourteen. Teachers accepted his silence and tested him through his written answers. Eventually, a teacher discovered Jones had composed some poetry and asked Jones to read something of his in front of the class. Surprisingly, Jones found he could read lines of writing perfectly without a stutter, thereby opening a door to script-reading and acting.

Because of my muteness, I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint,

After high school and a short army career (where he read Shakespeare plays in his off-hours), he decided to try to pursue acting, using the GI Bill to attend The American Theatre Wing in New York City.

 

To get enough money for living, he reconnected with his father and together they refinished floors, worked as janitors, and made sandwiches at a local diner. For summers, he joined a summer theater to perform for tourists and lived in the theater's "haunted" bell tower to save money.

I was twenty-four years old. I had given up all the certainty I had ever known -- farming, the university, the Army. I knew acting was risky business. I did not let myself dwell on the difficulties all actors face. I simply set to work, as hard as I knew how to work, at the acting classes, and the menial jobs that kept me fed while I studied. I did not know what else to do but to work, and trust that with work and time any talent I had would come out.

Jones performances with the American Theatre Wing were noticed by Joseph Papp and Lee Strasberg. Strasberg had taught the Method Acting technique to Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and many others. Jones unsuccessfully auditioned to take Strasberg's acting classes for seven years. Later, in talking with Strasberg, the teacher explained that he and Elia Kazan felt:

There were actors such as George C. Scott and me who, by following their own particular drumbeat, had already found an effective technique....Rather than pull them back and teach them the Method, they said, "We'd better let them go on their own paths."

In 1966, Jones bumped into Papp on the sidewalk and was offered a small part in Henry V for Papp's brand new Shakespeare Festival, "Shakespeare in Central Park," a series of free outdoor plays for the public.

Roles started to flood in as more and more directors saw Jones perform. Meanwhile, he and his father, while had never really reconciled, found common ground discussing the character and motivations of Shakespeare's Othello, the Moor of Venice. It was a role Jones' father had studied for years and readily gave his opinions to his son prior to James Earl playing that great role for the first time.

Othello, like me,, like my mother and like my father, was a stranger in a strange land....My father had never played Othello in a major production, but as I studied the role with him, I was apprenticing to a master, although an unfulfilled master.

It was fascinating to read Jones' thoughts about taking on new roles, some of which were unsuccessful (Paul Robeson and Nat Turner) as well as the ones in which he triumphed (Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope, Lenny in Of Mice and Men, Othello). He praises actors like Jane Alexander (she called him "Jimmy Jones") who played opposite him in his breakout Broadway role in The Great White Hope, and his other leading ladies, two of whom he married, who had played Desdemona to his Othello. 

 

Jones is analytical over every aspect of acting, from directors to scripts to messages that he felt the plays should project. For example, he discusses why, in his mind, the theatrical version of The Great White Hope was so powerful and successful while the movie, a popular film that earned him an Academy Award, had changed the original script so much to make his Jack Johnson character and therefore the film a failure.

 

As he aged, the long runs of plays became too much for Jones. He then turned more to television and voice acting. 

In the early days of my television career, I seemed to be typecast as a doctor, a detective, or a tribal chief....In one of my more memorable scenes [on Tarzan], the Supremes appeared clad demurely in habits, playing African nuns. I appeared more flagrantly attired in the stereotypical loincloth and feathers assigned to the African tribal chief. For reasons now obliterated from my memory, the script called for the nun-Supremes and the tribal chief to sing "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." And we did, habits, feathers, loincloth, and all.

By now you can certainly understand that I loved this book, learning about James Earl Jones' background and his rise to fame; about the acting profession; the challenges he faced; his relationships with fellow actors and the public; and his role as a Black man with a powerful voice. I am all in for this book and hope that others who enjoy this wonderful man's acting will pick it up for a look. You certainly will not be disappointed.

Acting can never really be taught. It must be learned in a thousand ways, over and over again. Learning to act is ongoing, a lifelong process, and the responsibility rests with the actors....The challenge is not intellectual, but emotional: how deeply in tune you are with the emotional, imaginative planes of being.

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

Wilson, Victoria. A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True: 1907-1940.   

A towering biography about one of film's most versatile actresses. Highly-detailed, but so full of interesting people, conversations, films, and behind-the-scenes dealings that the book flies by. Highest rating.  (previously reviewed here)

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).