W34: Camels!!

Of all the experiences I’ve had with vending machines, I have never been yell at by one. That changed this week.

Book!!

Camels!! is a rather plain looking maroon clothbound book outside of the fact that it was angry about humped mammals for some reason. Yes, angry – excitement and surprise stops with one exclamation mark. The 277 pages were printed on heavy stock, making the book appear denser than it actually was. Written by Daniel W. Streeter, this copy was a fifth edition printed in 1928, which lead me to believe that his feelings on desert beasts of burden were shared by many in the early 20^th century.

Middle East was often confused with Middle Earth.

Camels!!, it turns out has very little to do with actual camels. Much like Lands and People from two weeks ago, the cover was nothing but a tease. From the table of contents, this book appeared to be a text on explaining male mating habits with the two main sections titled: “Why Men Do it?” and “Why Men Do Do It”.  

Do what?

And indeed, this book is a fascinating tale, no doubt a bit exaggerated, about a man on an early adult rite of passage traveling the Middle East whilst fighting/seeking temptation. Halfway into the first chapter, the tone, subjects, and language made it wholly possible that a writer from one of the many men’s magazines that flooded the market a few years ago had written this, printed it out on old paper, aged the book, and hid it in a book store simply to troll anyone who picked it up expecting humped animals. If Hemingway was a 1920s frat boy, this would be his Sun Also Rises.

With lines like “I’ve had my fling. I can’t go rushing about all over the place. I’ve got obligations, man – I don’t know what they are exactly, but I’ve got ‘em”, I was quite surprised the narrator did not present his mates with a case of Smirnoff refreshments to partake in the age-old pastime of brethren icing brethren.

Yes, it is a thing.

Filled with a wealth of anecdotes that straddle the line between far-fetched and sheer absurdity, it was hard to not cry bullshit at every other page. Case in point - a suicide jumper leaps from a bridge and changes his mind when he hits the water, screaming for help. Instead of assisting, the crowd mills about debating his nationality until the police-boat fetched him out of the water… and arrested him for fishing without a license.  

Interlaced between these accounts of his travels, though, were photographs documenting the areas the narrator visits, which was a brilliant device to lend credibility to the tall tales. Eventually the narrator does end up running into the eponymous camels (!!), and promptly rides them into the desert to shoot other animals with disastrous results – “Charged by an infuriated buffalo – touchy animal – all we did was shoot at him.”

Cheetah cat ferret squirrels grow on trees apparently.

The disjointed narrative hops from observation to embellished observation in a very brisk manner that encapsulates the atmosphere of listening to a university friend recount their tale of that time they went on a bender and woke up in Tijuana, but told as if they were pressed for time and yet needed to describe every single detail of their trip.

Much like Australia, everything there wants to kill you.

The prose is dry, sarcastic and rather uncouth, which made it extremely enjoyable to read. With many exchanges playing out like a comedy routine, (“About these camels, the first thing is to get their humps straightened out-” “What do you mean – a little plastic surgery?”) this book was one of the few I have read in many years that ended far too early. Immature and always finding ways to get himself into bad situations, the narrator is the embodiment of my inner child.

Dashed curious.

Book rating: 10/10 (The most entertaining of all the Biblio-Mat books read so far. Humourous and worldly, highly recommended.)

Random quote: “We connected with our camels, sometimes called “Ships of the Desert”, by people who don’t care what they say.”

W33: Not So Wild A Dream

An extended grinding of gears signaled the weight of this week’s Biblio-Mat offering, sending a shiver down my spine. Fortunately, it was not another textbook but a slightly less dry piece of non-fiction. Very slightly less dry.

Downright nightmarish.

Published in 1946, Not So Wild A Dream recounted author Eric Sevareid’s adventures as a reporter during World War 2 in 516 pages of first person prose. The deckle-paged book itself was nicely bound with a classic looking matte dustjacket that contained a full page headshot of the author staring pensively at anyone who happened to flip the book over. While a bit dirty with minor bits of foxing, it had held up through the years fairly decently. Well, physically, anyway.

Staring into your soul. With one eye at least.

Billed as a “brilliantly written and profoundly moving personal narrative of one of America’s great reporters”, Not So Wild A Dream had a lot to live up to. The first few chapters started well enough, with the author recounting his small town upbringing. Painting a picture of a disenchanted generation trying to find salvation in a post WW1 world, it evoked a setting that felt reminiscent of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath written ten years prior. However, the heartfelt sentiments were slowly dashed as more and more was revealed about the author’s childhood being closer to middle class than poverty line.

The main story about his childhood revolved around Sevareid and a friend attempting to canoe from the Atlantic Ocean waterways into the Pacific Ocean waterways to lend credibility to the Kensington Runestone that was found in 1898. While this journey at first seemed pointless, it did establish the adventurous nature of the author as well as tie in his first paid job as a journalist as they had managed to collect money from a local paper in exchange for weekly updates.

516 pages without a single picture. Throw a guy a bone here.

From here, the next few chapters recollected Sevareid’s adventures living in the wilderness, going undercover as homeless teens to document a boxcar-hopping trip, and fighting against campus authorities when he became accused of being a “campus red”. While entertaining, these anecdotes did not really add much to the narrative outside of showing that Sevareid’s the type of person who won’t shy away from bad situations to get a story.

At this point, about 75 pages in, the tone changes and the book begins to delve into Sevareid’s adventures into World War 2 reporting. While proper due should be given in that the views of WW2 he presented weren’t completely biased, the subsequent four hundred or so pages were extremely dry and boring - he follows army units into warzones, people die, he moves onto the next country. It may be that it was a simpler time back then and the scope of the 1940’s audience was quite limited, but the text most definitely does not hold up in today’s world of in-depth investigative journalism.

Even the credits were long.

While some sections, such as the part on encountering ragged survivors in Italy, painted vivid pictures of despair, most of the journey into Europe did not move past simply saying that war was a terrible thing. The narrative itself jumps erratically, speeding up and slowing down when it’s convenient for the anecdotes, leaving a disjointed feel to the text. The revelations themselves about the war overseas also felt quite tame, which may or may not be a result of modern media bombarding us with harsher stories and revelations into our own worldwide war on terrorism over the last decade. Reading about Sevareid gingerly following the American army through France and Italy didn’t stir up any emotion other than boredom at the lack of immediate danger compared to a stint through the Middle East as a modern war correspondent, which is all quite tragic when you realize the scope of desensitization that we’ve unknowingly accepted.

The highlight of the book, though, came near the end when a Sevareid enters Rome. For some reason there was a postcard from Nassau to New York bearing a postmark of May 17, 1972 tucked into this section. With cursive script detailing the fun the senders are having in the Bahamas, it was an unexpected but much welcomed contrast to the death and destruction happening in the pages it was sandwiched between.

Fine. 516 pages with ONE photograph.

Book rating: 6/10 (Not without its merits but dry as a bone)

Random quote: "Sometimes now it seems to me that my generation lived in preparation for nothing except this war that has ended and which involved my own life so profoundly." (Seemingly applicable to every generation)

W32: Lands and Peoples – Vol: 5

With a heavy thunk, the Biblio-Mat book this week landed hard, revealing an embossed camel on a faux leather cover that stirred up a bit of curiosity of the exotic, but mostly despair at the sheer encyclopedic thickness.

Why is the camel black while the sand is yellow? We will never know.

Lands and People turned out to be a series of which this tome was volume number five, covering ‘Africa, Australia, and Southern Islands’. First published in 1929 with this copy being printed in 1949 and edited by Gladys D. Clewell, a good amount of the 384 pages were filled with photos and 72 of the pages were surprisingly in full colour. The paper itself was a thick glossy stock that gave the images a certain luster not unlike a horribly made business card.

One cannot pick up this book and help but wonder that if volume five was about Africa, Australia, and Asia, what were the first four volumes covering? Short of having individual books on Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, and Austria, it’s a pretty good assumption that the volumes were laid out by importance rather than alphabetical nature, which is reflected a bit in the text.

Casablanca looks nothing like the film.

Lands and People: V5 actually touches on a good deal of geographic areas but didn’t get too in-depth into many of them. Perhaps it was the ignorance of the time or perhaps it was editorial preference, but many entries seemed too short for the scope of what they were trying to cover. With chapters ranging from Morocco to Malaysia to New Zealand, there was a lot of breadth. With chapters called “Among the Cannibals and Pigmies of the Congo”, “Pearls of the Orient”, and “Sunshine Isles and Savages”, there was also a lot of old school mildly racist sensationalism.

Pretty sure the kid's doing it wrong.

Each chapter began with a brief history of the country along with geographic facts and paints a vivid image of the land at the time. While some part were no doubt exaggerated, the book does not shy away from the darker elements that may be glossed over in travel books, such as the long descriptions of slaves on the streets with their eyes plucked out for theft. The images themselves were interesting in that they didn’t outwardly glamourize the countries, but also did not try to skew life in the area and simply provided a view into everyday life there.

Except for the actual pics of glamour.

The Egypt section was particularly of note for images as the majority of the photographs in this section focused on the ruins and excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Being first published in 1929, the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 was presumably still fresh in people’s minds and this volume of Lands and People no doubt was still greatly fascinated by this.

Bad mojo even looking at this.

The marvels of Egypt were followed by a look inside Nigeria, Congo, and Zimbabwe, which carried a different tone of showing the natives in their daily lives in the wilderness versus the life in the developed areas. This section had more photos and descriptions on a spectacle bent but did not outwardly force an opinion of the living conditions of the people that seems to exist in so many accounts of foreign lands in modern day media. If this section was written today, it would not be surprising to read about how western society is, or could be, changing their lives for the better.

Disappointingly, though, the section on Madagascar did not give any attention to the flora and fauna of this interesting country. The sections on Malaysia, Jakarta, and the Borneo also eschewed this, sharing just two images of a tarsier and an orangutan in the fifty-eight pages dedicated to these lands, which felt like a missed opportunity to explore the ‘lands’ part of Lands and People.

Not even a lemur.

The last section explored Australia and New Zealand, starting with the metropolitan areas then moving into the wild to show the lives of the indigenous people there. While the natives of Australia were glossed over quickly with nary a mention of didgeridoos, New Zealand’s Maoris did get their own section explaining how their cultures differed.

While the book was not the most accurate given the discoveries and transformations of the past eighty years, it was still interesting to see how western civilization saw the “savages” back in the day. In addition, it did stir up some desires to travel to these parts of the world to see how much has changed and how much has stayed the same, which is exactly what a good geography book should do so despite it being a lengthy tome, it was still a worthwhile read.

Book rating: 8/10 (A bit dated but still invokes wanderlust)

Random quote: “He looks warlike enough with his sper and dagger and shield, and it is no wonder that men of his tribe make exceptional soldiers. His great mop of hair has earned for his tribe, as it has for the Baggara people, the name of ‘Fuzzy-Wuzzy’.”

W31: Wood’s Natural History

With an exceptional lightness, this week’s Biblio-Mat offering was a fast and entertaining read as it was a study on the study of the evolution of natural history.

Aging un-gracefully. Both inside and out.

Printed in 1912, Wood’s Natural History was interesting in that it was published long after the author, Rev. John George Wood, had died, yet it did not appear to have been updated or edited since the initial creation of the piece. Also, it was a relief that Wood is the author's name and I did not receive a book documenting the growth of lumber as was first presumed.

The book itself was a well-aged and stained crimson clothbound hardcover that was surprisingly light. Measuring 12cm x 18cm x 2.5cm, it weighed less than a granola bar. Much of this probably had to do with the fact that the 144 pages were printed on incredibly cheap acidic paper. Barely a century old and it was already crumbling on the slightest page turns – a reflection of the knowledge contained within.

Prehistoric? Straight up 90's Grunge, I say.

I grew up reading a lot about nature and animals as they’ve always fascinated me in being reflections of the exoticism of the distant reaches of our planet. Wood’s Natural History was written with the same scope of sensationalism and wonderment, but after the first twenty pages it was obvious the information was horrendously outdated. On the plus side, though, there were bountiful illustrations accompanying almost every page that made for a fun game of guessing which animals the artist had actually seen before.

Dolphins: only seen in nightmares.

Starting with quadrumana, the now obsolete classification of primates with four hands, and moving to carnivores to quadrupeds to rodents to water mammals then to birds, the book presented quick snippets of facts and observations into various species of animals that appear to be half grounded in research and half in hypothetical explanations based on what someone saw somewhere some time ago. Some of the information, such as there being only one species of Hippopotamuses, could be forgiven as old world ignorance, but other “facts”, such as Polecats sucking the blood of its victims and only eating brains, made for a lot of entertaining passages.

The descriptions themselves were a mess of stitched together entries that ran into each other. The book was broken up into the different categories of land mammals, water mammals, and birds, however, there were no breaks inside these sections. Three paragraphs on Otters were followed directly by a paragraph on Brown Bears without as much as a line break. This made paying close attention to what one read paramount as if you didn’t catch the switch in animal, you’d be wondering why Sloths were trying to survive winter by eating eels and frogs while spraying predators with their glandular excrement.

Stranded out of water? Oh the hu-manatee!

Another issue with the descriptions was that they were disproportionate. Some animals, like the Skunk, had a page and a half of information about their living habits and their uses while other animals, like the Weasel, had a literal two lines of description - “The Weasel is the least of this tribe. It wages unrelenting war on rats and mice.”

Did this really need a page and a half?

The best aspect of the book, though, was that it was written by a Reverend for children to learn about the various types of animal out in our magnificent world, and every other animal entry talked about how one goes about killing said animal and what happens when they die. Among the things I’ve learned:

- Orang-outans climb trees and build a nest to die in when they’re mortally shot.

- Hunting Tigers on elephant back is hard so pitfall traps are ideal.

- Spider Monkeys will still hang upside down by their tails when killed.

- You can shoot Elephants multiple times in the head and they still won’t die.

- When you kill a Sperm Whale, make sure to extract the precious spermaceti and ambergris inside their cranial chamber. (However, the book does not offer an explanation of what spermaceti or ambergris actually was.)

At least lil Cora Rice will know to aim for the eyes while taking a shot.

It was definitely an enlightening read, but for a different reason than originally intended. As a book on natural history, it actually gave more insight into the history of natural history. Who knows, maybe in a hundred years the future generations will look back on the cutting edge texts of today and wonder how we ever believed the outdated information we were given now.

Probably not, though.

Book rating: 7.5/10 (Unintentional humour is the best kind)

Random quote: “When he is young it is quite small. As he gets older it grows bigger. And by the time that he reaches his full size it is three or four inches long. Naturally this long nose gives him a very strange appearance.” (But only when he’s excited)

W30: Book-Prices Current

This week’s Biblio-Mat book was a bit surprising in that the subject matter was so relevant it was a wonder why I hadn’t received a book on this earlier.

Note to self: Don't name anything "current".

As the title suggests, Book-Prices Current was a book on the current market value of books. Edited by F. Partridge, it was published in 1940 and covered the book auction sales from October, 1939 to August, 1940. With a dark greenish-blue waxed cover and decently thick binding, it felt heavier than its 507 pages suggested. An ex-libris from the Mills Memorial Library at McMaster University, it gave good insight into book collecting and what the trends leaned towards back in the day. 

Pennies on the dollar would be my guess.

The first few pages before the title page were actually advertisements for not only other books, but publishers and rare booksellers as well, which is not surprising since there are usually relevant ads in most trades. What was surprising, though, was that the first ad was actually selling the Book-Prices Current book itself with a tongue in cheek self-referential description.

Shameless.

Sadly, the humour stopped after that and jumped into a small intro that talked about a few highlight sales from that year:

- The first being a Library of books on Angling by Arthur N. Gilbey which fetched £4,126 16s. 10d., the equivalent of £195,250 after adjustment for inflation.

- The second highlight was £1,600 for a first edition set of I. Walton’s Compleat Angler, which translates to £75,720 in today’s money.

- Number three was £170, the equivalent of £8,000, paid by a Mrs. W. H. Robinson for a copy of Dame J. Berner’s Booke of Haukyng, Huntyng and Fysshyng.

The conclusion? People in 1940s Europe spelled things funny and really loved their fishing and hunting books.

After this intro, the book jumped straight into 507 pages of nothing but auction records. Having collected comic books since I was in elementary school, I was already quite familiar with the format of trade price guides thanks to The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. Unlike standard price guides, though, Book-Prices Current gave in-depth descriptions of each book as each entry was an individual sale.

Not unlike reading a dictionary.

Reading through the entries, some notable sales included:

- 1859 first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection sold for $130 USD ($2100 after inflation). Current 2013 market value: $45,000 - $130,000.

- The super rare 1924 first edition of Hemingway’s in our time sold for $20 USD ($323 after inflation). Current 2013 market value: $36,000.

- 1816 first edition of Austen’s Emma in 3 volumes sold for £5 (£240 after inflation) on three separate occasions. Current market value: $10,000 - $30,000.

As an avid collector of rare books, I was intrigued by the possibility of looking some of pieces of my library up. Unfortunately, most of my collection consists of contemporary editions and as expected, none were found in the Book-Prices Current records. However, if this book is any indication, picking up rare books is a sound investment strategy, which is why visiting The Monkey’s Paw regularly has kept my bank account in check.

My favourite scores: 1910 copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1902 Roycroft edition of Self Reliance.

Book rating: 7/10 (Great historical values for reference)

Random quote: “Demy 8vo, bound in blue cloth, and printed on good paper, with fine margin for notes.” (The Book-Prices Current entry on the Book-Prices Current book)

W29: Elementary Italian Grammar

I had thought last week’s book was the most non-descript looking text that I would ever receive but this week’s Biblio-Mat offering took it to a whole new level.

I almost felt bad for judging it by its cover. Almost.

As I picked up the small worn green clothbound book with the lettering faded away on the spine, I shivered. Past experience has taught me these kinds of books turn out to be either textbooks or incredibly boring novels. I was not wrong. Elementary Italian Grammar, written by Joseph Louis Russo, was a 342 page textbook published in 1929 that taught, well, elementary level Italian grammar.

New edition as of 1929.

It’s funny that a week ago a friend and I were discussing learning languages and she had said that she wanted to learn Italian as it was “the most beautiful language in the world”. Having once dated an Italian girl that was angry all the time, I strongly disagreed. Unsurprisingly, the Biblio-Mat decided to chime in. Coincidentally, another one of my good friends is actually in Italy this month for a wedding and could have probably used this book to get by.

The preface of Elementary Italian Grammar laid out Russo’s interesting theory on teaching languages. He sees it from a practical standpoint and sets out to present as few rules and as many exercises as possible, which is something I would have expected from a traveler's guide as textbooks usually concentrate on teaching the theory behind the practice. Indeed he goes against this outright with examples and exercises being presented first then followed by the rules and explanations. As the type of student that thrives on learning how and why things work, I did not find this method optimal.

At least the pictures were pretty neat.

What were useful, though, were the exercises themselves. Ranging from simple fill in the blanks to matching words to images to build vocabulary, these created welcomed diversions from the tables of text to be memorized. An added touch, though, was that some of the previous owners of this book had filled in some answers as well as scribbled various notes in the margins.

I hope whoever had this first knew what they were doing.

Also of note were the photographs of various historical Italian figures and places scattered randomly throughout, which reminded me of the Roma book received from the Biblio-Mat months before.

A country frozen in time. According to the pictures, anyway.

In terms of pronunciation lessons, the book was quite well-rounded in using a variety of English words to help isolate the sounds of Italian vowels. Skipping the dictionary phonetics in favour of using common words as examples did help a lot, however, learning from a book will never be as accurate as actually conversing with a native speaker so I would place my pronunciation at a preschool level at best. Another helpful section of the book was the vocabulary at the back. The last 53 pages at the end contained not only an English to Italian dictionary, but an Italian to English one as well. In a pinch, this would at least let a person fumble their way through ordering a meal in Italy.

The point-at-a-menu method will still always win out.

To be honest, this was not a terrible book as far as language textbooks were concerned. However, I am currently trying to pick up French again and the similarities of the two Romance languages overlapped too much to properly decipher in one reading. Reading this through in a week also did not leave a lot of time to absorb the knowledge, unfortunately, so after 342 pages the only grammatically correct sentences I can form without looking at the vocabulary section are quite useless:

- Non parlo con nessuno.

- Mi mostri le tovagliolo!

- Il mio asino ha pelliccia verde.

- Voglio comprare un'arca.

Perhaps in another point in life I will pick Italian up, but it would only be to read The Divine Comedy in its native language.

This would seriously be my only reason.

Book rating: 8/10 (A respectable language book that was teaching the wrong language)

Random quote: “Drill in idiomatic expressions.” (Should probably explain them first)

W28: Land of the Long Day

From the Biblio-Mat this week came a maroon book that suggested a novel. In the suffocating humidity of the Toronto summer, it turned out to be a welcome psychological escape.

Doubled as a fan a few times.

Clothbound with gold lettering, Land of the Long Day, published in 1956, was a 257 page recounting of author Doug Wilkinson’s experiment to live with the Inuit on Baffin Island. While non-descript, upon opening it did contain an interesting surprise – sandwiched between the cover and the first page was a piece of the original spine of the dustjacket. In addition to gleaning some insight on what the cover once looked like, it also functioned as a fitting bookmark.

24 hours long, if you can believe it.

As I write this post it is close to midnight and still 30 degrees Celsius. Reading about the frigid north in this weather created more than a twinge of envy for the author dealing with the cold for the Canadian mentality has always seemed to be wishing for winter in the summer and pining for summer in the winter. Thankfully, the book had more to offer than descriptions of frigid landscapes. It also had pictures.

Winter was harsh, but summer was in tents! (Sorry.)

Supplemented by both colour and black and white photographs, Land of the Long Day revealed itself to be much more interesting than first thought. Beginning in media res with a mysterious narrator living with an equally mysterious Inuit family, the first chapter dove right into a seal hunt, describing in vivid detail how one would track and harpoon a seal. While it wasn’t thrilling in the sense that the narrator was ever in danger, the prose was well written enough to stir up excitement on whether he would get the seal or not. Suffice to say, I am now confident that if I were stranded in the arctic with a harpoon and a seal, I would not starve to death.

Chapter two introduced what the framework of the story was. Up until this point I had assumed that this was fiction, however, the narrator clarified that it was actually a research piece. Developing a curiosity about life in Northern Canada, Wilkinson decided to live with an Inuit family for a year to document their world. My first thought at this point, of course, was that it would be the written equivalent of Nanook of the North, however Wilkinson actually referenced the film midway through the chapter and stated that he intended to go deeper than superficial coverage, and indeed he succeeded.

Staying with a man named Idlouk and his family, Wilkinson adopted the lifestyle fully, participating in hunts and trading. Free of judgment and open to trying new things, it did feel like a research piece that presented events and knowledge as facts instead of spectacle. In addition to describing the Inuit culture, he goes on to explore the flora and fauna of the north, covering all the wildlife that they had seen and promptly killed.

Bear was pretty majestic, until they shot and ate it.

The most interesting subject covered, though, was the interaction between the Inuit and white society. At the time this book was written, the north wasn’t the hostile barren unknown it was a century ago and numerous posts had been set up. Even in the 50’s the Inuit were conflicted between embracing modern conveniences and keeping tradition, but most had already progressed to hunting with firearms and utilizing technological advances, acquired from fur trading, for more comfortable living.

 

Funny enough, a few weeks ago I read a Vice magazine article on a giant international fur auction that takes place in Ontario once a year. It was one of the few venues where you can purchase a polar bear pelt legally, starting at $10,000. The $5.00 per pelt asking price in the book seemed like a bargain, even with inflation taken into account.

One day this will prove to be useful.

A few terms that are not often used anymore, namely ‘eskimo’ and ‘primus’, dated the book a bit but overall it had a modern feel to it. Chalk it up to great writing to keep a reader engaged in information that had now become common knowledge taught in elementary schools.

Book rating: 8/10 (A history lesson wrapped in a fun read)

Random quote: “She is my friend, who has given me food and shelter on countless nights, has repaired boots and mitts torn on the hunt; but I wish she would die, for until she does no one with her is safe.” (The ice ain’t the only thing that’s cold…)