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).

 

The Game

Kramer, Jack and Deford, Frank. The Game: My 40 years in Tennis. New York: Putnam 1979. Print.

First Sentences:

 

While I have spent a great deal of my life traveling -- and still do, to my wife's annoyance -- I live a very settled life in many respects. 

Description:

Since attending the Tennis Hall of Fame ceremony last summer at the classic tennis casino in Newport, Rhode Island, my interest has been peaked about the history of tennis, especially the early days of the original rag-tag pro tours and the evolution to Open tournaments. To satisfy my curiosity I went right to the source: writing by the men who led the first pro circuits and eventually championed the switch to Open tennis (where pros could play with amateurs in Grand Slam and other tournaments). Those two men were Jack Kramer (early professional player and pro tour organizer) and Richard Evans (writer, mover and shaker for Open tennis - a link to his book is below). 

 

I started with Jack Kramer (with Frank Deford) and his fascinating, insightful, cocky, and thoughtful account of his life as one of the first tennis professionals, The Game: My 40 Years in Tennis. The famous names of tennis legend just flow out of his story-telling, some familiar and some relatively unknown today. Pancho Gonzales, Bobby Riggs, Don Budge, John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Rod Laver, and Ken Rosewall I knew about. Figures lesser remembered by me, but still great players are fleshed out  by Kramer as his worthy playing opponents and friends: Ellsworth Vines, Pancho Segura, Bitsy Grant, Bob Falkenberg, Gussy Moran, Helen Wills Moody, Pauline Betz Addie, Frank Parker, Fred Perry, and Gardnar Mulloy. Don't worry if you don't recognize some of these players either; Kramer will help you picture them as he weaves them into tournament and travel stories throughout his captivating memoir. And he carefully analyzes them all. And in the end, he lets you know who was the best (besides himself): Don Budge.

It's difficulty to compare players you did see in their prime. But then it's difficult to compare players you did see in their prime, because rarely did two of the best have their best years at the same time 

Kramer played them all. In his amateur days at the L.A. Tennis Club, he developed a serve-and-volley power game, learning to play strategic, percentage tennis which involved using strong forehand and backhand strokes, conserving energy, and never losing his serve. It was "a man's game" as he called it, while his amateur opponents played a more conservative "boy's game." Kramer won ten Grand Slam men's singles, doubles, and mixed titles in the U.S. Championship (now The Open) and Wimbledon from 1941-47, as well as led the U.S to Davis Cup victories in 1946 and '47.

 

At that time, top amateurs survived on appearance money paid under the table by the tournament promoters to assure a good field of players which would attract paying customers.

In the winter the best a top player could make was about $400 a week in Florida...for a good Texas tournament the Number 1 player might get $750, and for the Pacific Southwest in L.A....the top could draw as much as $1,200. 

With no other goals to conquer after winning Wimbledon for the second time and seeking to be paid for his tennis efforts, Kramer joined Riggs' tour of professionals after being offered $50,000 guaranteed or 35% of the gate receipts. The book then focuses on these fledgling tour pros, their lives on the road, the competitions and rugged conditions they faced each night, the uncertain finances, and the players' subsequent ostracization from all major tournaments because they were now paid professionals, not amateurs.

 

Since he played against them all, Kramer is perfectly suited to analyze the major players of that era, both professional and amateur: their personalities, strengths and weaknesses of their games, and the demands on their mental capabilities of grueling competition. For example, he comments on the great Spaniard Alex Olmedo, a dominate figure in the amateurs:

Then Olmedo signed with me, and he could hardly win a set. All of a sudden, from the top of the world to being a stiff -- number nine or ten out of twelve players on the tour...Nothing in the world prepares you for losing day in and day out, and surely it is a hundred times worse to be losing every time when just last week you were the champion. It tears you apart. 

Later, as the Executive Director of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Kramer oversaw the 1973 boycott of Wimbledon, which, in his words, was "the only time in the history of any sport...where the players have boycotted the world championship." This event led to the open tennis era, where previous futile efforts to get the best (pro) players in the same tournament as the amateurs had failed.

 

He also has strong opinions on such wide-ranging topics as:

• The Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs - "Riggs...figured [after he beat Margaret Court] he could beat any of the dames without training...he completely miscalculated Billie Jean, who has always risen to the occasion; 
   
• World Team Tennis - Could never succeed on the grand scale it sought because tennis is too much an individual sport; (Note: Riggs and Kramer tried to form a similar WTT league in 1950, but "arena owners had no interest since there were not enough name pros to stock a league.")

• The then-new metal racquets - A marketing advance, not a competitive one;

• Practice techniques - Kids today never practice to improve their weaknesses, What they call practice is really just warming up.

It's a fantastic book, full of tennis history, personalities, competition, and opinions from the man who lived them during those early professional days. Highly recommended for anyone interested in any aspect of tennis and the people who shaped in on and off the court. 

 

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

  

Evans, Richard. Open Tennis: The First Twenty Years, the Players, the Politics, the Pressures, the Passions, and the Great Matches

   

Inside view from Evans (who was a key participant) about the background, negotiations, administrators, directors, and players involved with making tennis tournaments open to professionals and amateurs alike.

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).

 

Special Post - Sources for Books

Situation: 

I was asked by friends recently where I find my eclectic assortment of interesting books. They, too, want to identify not just something popular from the list of New York Times Bestsellers. They would like ongoing resources to consistently dangle titles in front of them, books which are quality reads with interesting characters and challenging, funny, or transporting plots. They want something out of the ordinary, something they actually will look forward to picking up and reading. 

 
My Solution:
 

Four years ago I wrote a Special Post - Resources for Finding Great Books, but now need to update the electronic newsletters portion. Below are some free email newsletters chock full of brilliant, quirky, and certainly tempting books that I use to learn about new and old titles. 

 

These free book review lists below may appear daunting in number, but don't worry. You can just skim their postings and book lists as you wish, usually a very quick process for me. 

 

Just give them your email address and sit back to watch your In-box fill up with titles and quality reviews of books soon to be published, currently under the radar, classics from the past, and loads of other book-related articles. It's exciting to have emails come into you life almost daily with enticing books to pursue. I read the first sentences of books that interest me using library copies or through the Amazon "Look Inside" link to the book's first pages. Easy to judge quickly and winnow down to the ones that really interest me by my quirky standards. You can do it too.

 

Happy reading.

Fred 

Click here to browse over 465 more book recommendations by subject or title

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

 

_______________________________________________________________________

Free Book Review Newsletters
(Click on any title to read more and sign up for email postings)

BookBrowse

This newsletter from librarians also provides a longer list of titles with reviews than other book sites, but these books all seem deliciously enticing due to the quality of synopsis and praise they receive. 

 

Booklist

My most-used go-to list to discover top notch list of book recommendations from librarians, often before they are available to the public. Often organized by themes (Thrillers, Non-Fiction, Book Clubs, Romance, etc.). 

Book Marks

Literary Hub's site for book excellent book reviews on a huge variety of topics.

 

BookPage 

Extensive list and reviews from readers as well as some libraries of books they are currently reading. Print copies are usually available in public libraries.

 

The Cottage Bookshop

Probably the newsletter I most look forward to, this monthly posting covers books I usually haven't heard of, yet are always intriguing.

First Look Book Club

Brief excerpts for about-to-be-published books from Random House.

 

Gramercy Books

Have to put in a plug for my local indie bookstore here in Columbus, Ohio, Gramercy Books. Always something interesting to suggest in the way of book titles, gifts, author events, and an overall general good feeling about reading and books.

 

The Guardian Bookmarks

Great reviews of newer books, plus lots of general book-related commentary, articles, links, and discussion. Very good site to stimulate loads of ideas and thoughts.

 

LibraryReads Newsletter

Top ten books of the week that "library staff across the country love." What could be better?

LitHub Weekly 

Very extensive, eclectic, and sophisticated newsletter chock full of articles, essays, book recommendations, and other book-related items. 

 

New York Times Newsletter

Still a great resource for new books, but the newsletter contains many more articles, interviews with authors, and general book-related items.

NPR Books Newsletter  

Fewer book recommendations but great reviews, articles, and comments from NPR readers.

 

Penguin Books Newsletter

From the UK is this unique newsletter reviewing books, offering author interviews, and links to fascinating articles of literary and unusual book-themed nature.

 

RJ Julia Just the Right Book

This tiny but completely well-stocked bookshop in Connecticut is world famous for having a great selection of books. Of course, their newsletter introduces readers to wonderful books and gifts from their store.

Shelf Awareness 

The top twenty-five books of the week as selected by book dealers, publishers, and librarians. Also includes author interviews, games, and links to reviews for unusual books, book-related articles and events of the week. (Sent twice weekly, but isn't overwhelming).

 

Simon & Schuster Books

Extensive list of books from the publisher with high-quality reviews. Also, you get a free e-book when you sign up for this newsletter.  Woo-Hoo!

Vintage Books

A offshoot of Penguin Books, this newsletter offers more obscure books that have proved to be delightful reads for me.

 

The Washington Post Book Club

Lengthy, but not overpowering, list of book recommendations for highly interesting titles, articles, and author interviews. Very well-written in all aspects. Need a subscription to the WP, but I use the newsletter to get ideas of up-and-coming, high-quality books

 

My First Hundred Years

Murray, Margaret. My First Hundred Years. London: William Kimber 1963. Print.

First Sentences:

I always think that an autobiography should begin with some account of the forebears and immediate family of the writer so that one can understand some of the early influences which have affected the writer and have helped to make him what he is. My ancestral tree is a very short one going back to only one set of great-great-grandparents, about two hundred. I have quite undistinguished lineage...

Description:

I sought out Margaret Murray's autobiography My First Hundred Years after reading The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilivie, and discovered Murray was a contributor of more than 5,000 entries to the original Oxford English Dictionary. The words and definitions she sent to the editors (after the call went out to the general public for assistance in finding new items), focused on India where she was born and spent much of her life, as well as her field of Egyptology and also witchcraft. Better still, I found OED contributor Murray had written her autobiography at age 100, something I felt would be extremely interesting to peruse.

And she did not disappoint. Her memory is remarkable for a centenarian (or for anyone for that matter), and her writing style exquisite: free-flowing, descriptive, chatty, and full of interesting details of life as a woman archeologist in that very new field.

Born and raised in Calcutta, India, to wealthy parents, Murray was educated in London where she became interested in archeology, a class she only had taken on a whim. The professor, Sir William Petrie, a pioneer of the new field of Egyptology, took Murray under his wing. She edited and illustrated his writings, eventually accompanying Petrie to Egypt as a site nurse. There she absorbed his methods and discoveries at various sites and soon grew to be a qualified archeologist in her own right. She became a teacher of Egyptian linguists and translator of hieroglyphics at the University of London.

What I loved about her recollections was her attention to details and personal feelings. She related memories of the visit to India of the Prince of Wales, where attending Maharajahs competed to out-dazzle each other in their dress. For example, the Maharajah of Patiala wore a coat with "fronts, color, cuffs, and hem embroidered with gold thread and peals, [and] round his neck he wore at least four graduated rows of diamonds, the longest reaching nearly to his waist."

Her early home life included eating with small silver cutlery (larger ones were never adopted by her father) and, at the end of the meal, having the visiting servants of the invited diners carefully frisked for any valuable spoons they might have pocketed. Her mother encouraged a broad education without focus on a single subject, a technique that so limited Murray's brilliant sister Mary she never could focus on one skill and thus was unable to rise to her potential in piano, mathematics, or language. Murray also recalled tales of the horrific Indian Mutiny as related by her grandmother.

As an Egyptologist, Murray translated inscriptions found in tombs, uncovered a major temple to Osiris constructed by the Pharaoh Seti I, and was the first woman to unwrap an Egyptian mummy. 

Murray later became an ardent supporter of women rights and suffrage, including pushing for acceptance of women in academia and archeology. She expanded her on-going interest in folklore to include witchcraft, a topic on which she wrote many books as well as the entry for the Encyclopedia Britannica on that topic.

Hers was an amazing life, one that is now available to lucky readers to delve into the world of nineteenth century India and twentieth century (and centuries-earlier) Egypt. I was totally fascinated to "listen" to her recall story after story, detail after detail, of the worlds she knew and was eager to share. A lively, lovely story of an important woman's world and achievements. 

 

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

  

Ogilivie, Sarah. The Dictionary People.    

Carefully details the lives of those people from the general public who contributed words, definitions, and sources for terms to be included in the original Oxford Dictionary. (previously reviewed here)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 465 more book recommendations by subject or title

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