September 2009 - Page 2 of 3

Alligators and Crocodiles

by John and Deborah Behler

In the middle of reading The Long African Day, a passage about Nile crocodiles caught my interest. I know little about them, so I looked through my shelf and found another book specifically about these aquatic reptiles. Alligators and Crocodiles is an overview of all the crocodilian species: two kinds of alligators, six species of caiman, thirteen different crocodiles and the two gharials (an animal I never heard of before). The book is full of stunning photos- some of the large gators and crocs look very sinister and remind me that crocodiles are an ancient species that existed alongside dinosaurs. Others, especially the young caimans, strike me with the beauty of their patterned scales, and their fierce toothy grins. Although the book clearly explained the difference between alligators and crocodiles I know I still couldn\’t distinguish the two even if they were floating side by side!

I learned lots of interesting facts- did you know that the temperature in a crocodilian\’s nest determines what sex the hatchlings are? and they are dependent on heat to aid digestion- if their body temperature falls too low, the digestive enzymes don\’t function. I didn\’t know that while crocs can snap their jaws shut with great force, the muscles that open the jaws are relatively weak, and can easily be held closed with a rope or thick rubber band! or that some species dig burrows into mud banks, or that mother crocs are quite maternal, assisting their hatchlings to dig out of the nest, guarding them and sometimes carrying them about in her jaws. While I still find crocodiles and their relatives fearsome and unattractive beasts, I have to admit they are fascinating animals, successful predators well-adapted to their aquatic environment. There\’s a lot more interesting information on crocodiles and alligators in this book, although sometimes I felt that it was crowded out by all the stats on conservation (a trait it shares with the Pandas book, and probably the other one I have of the WorldLife Library, Killer Whales).

Rating: 3/5 72 pages, 1998

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

The Old Country

by Mordicai Gerstein

Long ago, in a land simply called the Old Country, a young girl went after the fox that was stealing her family\’s chickens. She found herself deep in the forest, in a strangely magical place where the animals could talk. The animals demanded proof that the fox was guilty, and quickly arranged a trial where a spider was the judge, and the jury a crowd of birds. Although her grandmother had warned her never to look long into the eyes of a fox, she did- and found herself transformed into the fox\’s body, while the beast ran off with hers. Of course she set off at once to get her own shape back, but it\’s a hard task. For one thing, although she can speak to all the animals, people no longer understand her, only hear a fox\’s yapping. For another, her country is being ravaged by war, and her own family uprooted by the violence and suspicion. Her only hope is the assistance of a silly chicken, her pet cat who wants to be a lawyer, a bear that escaped from a circus and a shape-shifting forest sprite. Together they must navigate the horrors of war while seeking to find her family and convince the fox to trade places once again. By the end of the story, experiencing life in the fox\’s body has profoundly affected the girl, and she is surprised to find that choices she once thought were clear are now difficult to make. The Old Country is a wonderful meld of fairy tale and fantasy elements, a story of wartime survival and one little girl\’s search for herself. It\’s a bit grim at times, but a lively and captivating tale.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 130 pages, 2005

More opinions:
Fis-hing for Anthea
Collected Miscellany

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Juvenile Fic

No Room in the Ark

by Alan Moorehead

This book describes the author\’s various safaris to view wildlife in Africa during the 1950\’s. I really enjoyed reading his vivid descriptions of the weather, landscape and animals- especially incidents where he came into closer contact with the wildlife. One night a hyena snuck into his tent and ate his leather boots right from under his cot! Not so nice was reading his descriptions of the various native tribes- he only praised those that had tall, slender people, and spoke in really insulting and derogatory terms of others whose appearance did not please him, especially the pygmies. Some of the animals were also recipients of his prejudice- his party found wild dogs so distateful that they threw stones at them to drive them away. There is one chapter specifically about poaching operations- especially ivory- and another on how the Masai\’s needs for land to graze their cattle conflicted with wildlife. One of the most interesting sections of the books described a hike his party took into the foothills of Mount Muhavura in hopes of seeing moutain gorillas. He mentions some pioneering researchers- Carl Akeley and Jill Donisthorpe- whose names were new to me, as the fame of later scientists like George Schaller and Dian Fossey has eclipsed them. The final chapter is about his trip down the Nile, where I found a very interesting passage about which books are good to read while on vacation in Africa!

\”In these circumstances one reads books in quite a different way. Not only do you make a re-appraisal of them, so that those which before seemed good now sometimes seem trivial; inevitably the actual experiences that happen to you on your journey get mixed up with the book you chance to have before you at the moment. And the results are often bizarre…\”

He goes on to briefly discuss various genres and which make a good fit with the safari atmosphere. His final conclusion? \”In the end Jane Austen may be the most rewarding.\” So all you Jane Austen fans, you must make the experiment of reading one of her novels next time you travel in Africa, and tell me if you agree with his assessment!

Rating: 3/5 …….. 227 pages, 1957

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

wondrous words

from the past week\’s reading. These new words I came across while reading The Marsh Lions:

Internecine– \”…. which prevents the lions from wasting their energies in senseless internecine warfare.\”
Definition: fatal to both side, mutually destructible

Volplane– \”At once his keen eager eyes picked out the inert shape on the ground, and he began his own stupdendous fall to earth, the wind hissing through his primary feathers as he vol-planed out of the blue.\”
Definition: to glide towards the earth (in a plane) with the engine cut off

Gralloch– \”For long periods he would disappear altogether, patrolling the outer reaches of his territory, until the gralloched corpse of a young impala dangling from one of his larder trees announced his return.\”
Definition: to remove the entrails of (especially a deer)

Kopje– \”The kopjes are very old.\”
Definition: a small hill rising up from the African plain

Ineluctable– \”Her nostrils drew in a tangle of ripe odours: geese and reedbucks, buffalo dung, rotting flesh, lion, grass, wildebeest and the black ineluctable reek of the Marsh itself.
Definition: unavoidable, inescapable

Corsair– \”Mysterious, elusive, enigmatic, they were the restless corsairs of the wide grass oceans.\”
Definition: a pirate, or a swift pirate ship

Vernal– \”The sound of the grass was in the wind, and its rank vernal smell was everywhere.\”
Definition: occurring in the spring, or fresh and youthful

Alate– \”All over the plains, their mounds and mud chimneys erupted, releasing hordes of winged alates into the waiting mouths….\”
Definition: having wings, or wing-like extensions

Riparian– \”There she grew up, a fierce recluse, keeping to the dense riparian forests…\”
Definition: on the banks of a river

Pronk– \”Some of the territorial bucks began to pronk, bouncing away in stiff-legged alarm.\”
Definition: to jump straight up

for more wondrous words, visit this meme\’s host Bermudaonion

I did want to write a book post, as I just finished No Room in the Ark. I have new words from that one, too, but not looked up yet. Either my head is too achy to think straight, or the cold medicine is making me sleepy- I\’m not up to writing well, now. All the BBAW posts are putting me in a whirl. Maybe next year…

9/19/09 Edit to add: here are the ones from No Room in the Ark:

Grenadilla– \”…we entered hot groves of semi-tropical fruits, oranges and grenadillas, pineapples and bananas.\”
Definition: fruit of the passionflower vine

Cafard– \”But it was not enough to beguile loneliness, to keep the cafard at bay.\”
Definition: this is a French word, and I think it means depression or apathy

Propinquity– \”This propinquity was altogether too much for one of our drivers who had not before this ventured far outside Nairobi.\”
Definition: close in time, place or relationship (in this case, close to a lion)

Intransigence– \”And the issue was still further confused by the fact that the Masai, perhaps because of their very toughness and intransigence, are rather admired by white men in Africa…\”
Definition: stubbornly refusing to compromise

Tags: wondrous words

bookmarks giveaway

win a free African genet bookmark!
Time for a giveaway!

I made these two bookmarks featuring the African genet. They\’re drawn with pen and ink and painted in watercolors. Edged with cream-colored ribbon and signed on the back (yours truly).

So this week there will be two winners! One for each. If you\’d like a genet bookmark, just leave a comment here to enter the giveaway. Open until tuesday 9/21, to anyone anywhere. (Make sure there\’s an easy way for me to contact you, in case you win!)

Happy reading.

Tags: giveaways

A Thousand Acres

by Jane Smiley

This was my first book for the Random Reading challenge. A few days ago I made a list of all the titles in my TBR stack, and plugged it into random.org. The number that came up was 40- A Thousand Acres. I found it at a library sale once, picked it up because I enjoyed Moo. I was expecting A Thousand Acres to be different, but not that it would be boring. Without the wry humor that permeated Moo, there was not much to keep me interested in this book. The setting is a thousand-acre farm in Iowa, a farm carefully built up from swamp to success by generations of the Cook family. When the patriarch of the family retires, he suddenly leaves the farm to his three daughters, dividing up the land. Caroline, a lawyer in the city, doesn\’t want it. Rose is bitter and outspoken, Ginny (the narrator) more compliant but harboring her own hurt feelings. They all have issues with their father and his rigid schedule, coldness towards his family, scorn of outsiders. Another key figure is Jess, a draft-dodger who returns to the community after fourteen years\’ absence. He brings new ideas about how to do things. That contrast interested me- the new methods versus traditional, or the smaller farm that did just enough to get by and be content, compared to all the other farmers who competed to have the biggest, and most profitable farm. But I didn\’t care about any of the characters, so I was unable to follow them through the story, to find what disaster and tragedy was looming. I put it aside at about 120 pages.

It might have been my mood that spoiled the book, though. Just when my foot is almost better, I caught an icky headcold and now my head is all stuffy. Not very good for certain kinds of reading. So I might hold onto this one, to try again later.

Abandoned 405 pages, 1991

More opinions:
Literary Lounge
Panorama of the Mountains

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, General Fiction

Sunwaifs

by Sydney van Scyoc

This is a really bizarre sci-fi novel. It\’s set on a strange world where interplanetary colonists struggled to overcome local plant life. Wild creeping grass strangled their crops, proliferate moss spores struck the people and livestock with a form of intoxication that drove them into madness. Then a sunstorm affected pregnant women with its rays, and thousands of the resulting newborns died of birth defects. The six that survived had some strange mutations- one had healing powers, one could see the future, one could commune with birds, another with the plants, etc. They were shunned by the community, and grew up wild and solitary, tended by a few nurses. At the point where I left off (about fifty pages in), they had started sneaking out of their cottage to run wild through the fields and forest, to spy on the \”pilgrims\” and frolic under the influence of the moss dust. I like the way Scyoc writes, and I picked up this book because Daughters of the Sunstone intrigued me and I wanted to read more by her. But Sunwaifs was just getting a little too crazy for me, and I didn\’t want to continue.

Abandoned 214 pages, 1981

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Fantasy / Sci Fi

The Marsh Lions

The Story of an African Pride
by Brian Jackman

This book wasn\’t what I expected, but I still enjoyed reading it. I thought it was going to be all about one lion pride, and I thought it was going to be about a particular lion pride I\’d seen in a tv documentary, that had adapted to hunting buffalo in the water when their marsh flooded during the rainy season. I don\’t think they are, but I found a website about a BBC documentary that filmed lions in this same area, apparently some years after the events chronicled in the book. In the book, Scar was a young lion in his prime, whereas on the Big Cat Diaries, he is an older lion recently pushed out of the territory by the new males coming in.

The Marsh Lions is more than just a book about lions. It\’s about the whole panorama of African wildlife living around the Musiara Marsh, on the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. It\’s the product of five years that Jonathan Scott spent photographing animals in the Masai Mara, keeping detailed notes about their behavior and interactions. He later collaborated with Jackman to have the book written and published. Not only does it tell the story of shifting dynamics among four different lion prides, but that of many other animals as well. Rhino, hippos, elephants, mongoose, zebra and many others are mentioned in the pages. One chapter follows a young wildebeest calf on its first migration journey, another tells of the vain efforts of a cheetah to raise cubs, loosing one litter after another. Yet another part of the book unfolds the story of the last pack of wild dogs to roam through the area, their numbers dwindling down until there\’s so few left it looks like they might not recover. With descriptive language and accurate details, the reader follows along on a midnight hunt with a hyena clan, circles the skies with the buzzards and vultures, hides in the brush with the reclusive leopard. Unlike most books I\’ve read about African wildlife, this one doesn\’t have much to say about conservation or how wildlife is affected by humans. Instead, it\’s simply a broad picture of the animals\’ lives, accompanied by lots of photographs illustrating the events described.

Rating: 3/5 224 pages, 1982

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

“National Velvet”

by Enid Bagnold

This is a story set in a small English village in the 1920\’s. Its protagonist is a teenage girl named Velvet, the local butcher\’s daughter. Although her father does well, she has lots of siblings, so there isn\’t enough money to indulge in her dreams- owning a horse. But when a horse considered a local nuisance- a black and white piebald with one blue eye who is constantly jumping fences and running about the streets- gets puts up for a raffle, Velvet wins. In another stroke of unexpected luck, an elderly gentleman becomes aware of her love for horses, and leaves her five ponies in his will. Now Velvet is the sudden owner of six horses. She and her sisters ride the ponies in small local gymkhanas, with various success. Then, inspired by a comment of her father\’s assistant who is an ex-jockey, Velvet gets the idea to train and enter the piebald in the most difficult and competitive equestrian event in the country- the Grand National steeplechase. There are several problems to overcome: her horse is wild and untrained, she\’s too young to enter the race, and at the time only men were allowed to participate, as it was considered too dangerous for female riders. Velvet is determined, though, and won\’t let any of these things stop her from pursuing her dream.

National Velvet is one of those books I almost missed falling in love with. It sat on my shelf for five or six years, and twice I tried reading it, giving up within the first twenty pages, finding it dull. But I think it just takes the right mindset and appreciation, for the third time I picked it up I fell in love with the story. It\’s not just about a girl who loves horses, it\’s also a story about growing up, about living in a large family, about life in a small coastal English village. Velvet\’s family is full of interesting characters and family dynamics. The sisters squabbling, keeping secrets, banding together against outsiders (or their parents). The obstinate little brother who makes the funniest remarks, so like any toddler with his fits of tears and fury. The solemn authority of their mother- who once won a medal for swimming the English channel but obscures her former glory in bustling housework. The at-first mysterious figure of Mi, the butcher\’s assistant, who doesn\’t speak of his past until the sudden influx of horses into the butcher\’s field can\’t help revealing his interest and knowledge of them. And besides her involvement with horses, Velvet has other trials- she\’s prone to fits of nerves and anxiety, she has to wear a gold bar wedged between her teeth to correct something (I had braces for six years, how I could relate!).

This is a wonderful book, and I wish I could find more reviews to point you to. Most of the ones I came across online were of various film adaptations, which changed the story somewhat- making Velvet an orphan, making the piebald her only horse, or a beautiful well-bred horse instead of the awkward unruly creature he was (potential hidden in an unlikely form!)

Rating: 4/5 …….. 288 pages, 1935

More opinions at:
Puss Reboots
The Brick Post
anyone else?

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Classics, Juvenile Fic, Past Reads

The Cats of Lamu

The Feral Cats of an Exotic African Island
by Jack Couffer

The Cats of Lamu is a beautiful book. Its author was vacationing on a small island off the coast of Kenya when he became interested in the local feral cats. He thought they looked like cats depicted in ancient Egyptian art, and was more intrigued when he learned that these cats had been on the island for hundreds of years without intermingling with other breeds. This book is the result of several years he spent living on Lamu island, studying and photographing the cats.

I first picked this book up in a San Francisco library because it has such gorgeous photos. The story is fascinating as well. Couffer describes how he first fell in love with Lamu, the island culture and his interactions with the natives (most who viewed him as slightly a crazy but harmless foreigner). There are some interesting and amusing stories that have nothing to do with the cats- like that of a local meuzzin who would sing the evening prayers next door to their garden, always studiously ignoring them as politeness required. Couffer and his wife wished to make contact with this man and let him know how they appreciated his beautiful voice, despite the fact that they were not Muslim, did not speak his language, and local etiquette frowned upon even making eye contact. They found a way to do so, and it made me smile. Another story tells about an elderly European woman who had come to the island to enjoy the tropical climate during her retirement. Being a cat lover, she was quite friendly with Couffer. One day by chance the locals came to think she could predict the future, and labeled her a witch. She enjoyed playing up this new status, until a neighboring hotel owner, getting rid of nuisance animals, was rumored to have drowned one of her favorite cats. Then she took her role as village witch seriously and made some threats, with a suprising outcome.

Most of the book however, is about the Lamu cats. Couffer watched the cats as often as he could, followed them around and took notes on their behavior. He came to recognize dozens of individuals, mapped out their territories and speculated on their family relationships. He found that most of the cats lived in groups like lion prides, associating together and sharing food resources- especially the ones that lived on the beach and ate the offal from the fishermen\’s daily catch. Whenever he had a question, he sought the answer. Local chickens roamed freely about the village- why did the cats not eat the baby chicks? Dogs did not live on the island- how would a Lamu cat react to meeting one? Why did the cats eagerly take advantage of some foods- the twice-yearly flight of termites- and ignore others- the hundreds of fiddler crabs on the beaches? How effective were the cats at rat control? The local people did not view the cats as pets, for the most part ignoring them- but was there more to their relationship than that? One of the more interesting chapters describes several well-meaning animal welfare groups that stepped in to vaccinate and sterilize the cats in order to improve their condition, and how that affected not only the cat population, but the sanitation of the town as well. (He was able to keep them from treating cats in his core study group to compare effects on treated populations and one left entirely alone). Couffer examines all these things (and more) with equal curiosity and insight, describing his findings in a casual, eloquent manner. It\’s a delight to read his book, and linger over the beautiful photographs.

Rating: 4/5 156 pages, 1998

some photos of Lamu cats at:
Feline Meanderings

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Re-reads

Month: September 2009

RATINGS / SUBJECTS: