December 27, 2004
A New Shelf Buddy
For a long time, my copy of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm led the life of an outsider in my library. The trouble was that I could never quite figure out where to put it. Yes, it's a sea story, but it's a lot more than that, so it really didn't fit in with my other maritime books. Yes, it's a current events/human interest story, but I didn't really have any others on the same topic (Man's struggles with Nature). And yes, it's an examination of natural phenomena. I suppose it could have gone with a couple of David Attenborough's Living Planet series books I picked up somewhere for the kids, but again, the fit just did not seem right. Thus, Perfect Storm remained isolated, a stranger in a strange land.
Well no more, because the Missus gave me this nifty little gem for Christmas:
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, by Simon Winchester. The perfect stable companion for the Junger book. I think the two will be very happy together.
That is, of course, once I finish reading Krakatoa and actually put it on the shelf. But at the rate I'm going, that won't be very long.
UPDATE: How odd that I should have started reading this book on this day, of all days.
Posted by Robert at December 27, 2004 11:24 AM
Just don't start reading Revelations, Robert, please. Stick to Wodehouse. :-)
By the way, I haven't read Krakatoa, but Simon Winchester's "The Map The Changed The World" is a good read.
"Krakatoa" is an excellent read--as are most of Winchester's books. The coincidence is certainly startling, but intimations of mortality are not to be shunned.
Posted by: John at December 27, 2004 12:39 PMYou want strange...I just finished State of Fear in which the bad guys try to set off an underwater earthquake in order to produce a tidal wave. The book goes into quite a bit of detail about the cause and effects of tidal waves.
Posted by: babs at December 27, 2004 04:21 PMI keep my copy of The Pefect Storm alongside my copy of Into Thin Air and Into The Wild, both by Jon Krakauer. I highly recommend Into The Wild - about a guy from my high school (graduated between my sister and me) who decided to give up his college degree and inheritance to explore the US on his way to the wilds of Alaska.
Posted by: jen at December 27, 2004 06:17 PM
Robert, I think you need a section of your bookshelf called "Cruel, Cruel World." I have one. I keep "Into Thin Air" there, as well as my seven-book Donner party collection.
