S5: Modern Voyages of Discovery, Vol. 2.

This submission was actually not so much a submission for the blog as it was a donation of a book.

At least it was small...

Book: Modern Voyages of Discovery, Vol. 2

Submitted by: Random kid.

Caught up in the moment of watching others in the store use the machine, a lil boy of twelve or so put in his toonie and received this boring-looking tome. He was not pleased. I’ve seen this happen once before where a mother and her two elementary school-aged kids ended up playing the Biblio-Mat slots. She received a book on flowers, her son received a book on horses, and her daughter received a book on accounting in the early 1900’s. This boy that received Modern Voyages of Discovery, Vol 2 didn’t have the same disgusted look, though, and instead of sulking away, he just handed it me and said he didn’t want it.

At least it looks nice on a bookshelf.

Funny enough, this pocket-sized book actually turned to be pretty interesting upon closer inspection. The weathered indigo cloth cover looks fairly mundane but the edges have a faded psychedelic pattern that may have been metallic at one point. 

Hopefully I don't get mercury/lead/copper poisoning.

Opening it up, the 356 pages are in amazing condition as it turns out the book was printed in 1830. 

The only illustration in the whole book.

Written by a Rev. Dionysius Lardner who also had enough suffixes to fill out a dozen business cards, it is the second volume of Modern Voyages of Discovery, which recounts all the important journeys and discoveries of the new world. Flipping through it, I’m going to guess it’s pretty much a collection of different conquests and “liberations”.

Half those titles could've been made up and I would never know.

Anything with Ponce de Leon can't be all that boring.

It's not conquest, it's "liberation".

Sadly, if the kid had actually kept this book, I think he would’ve actually enjoyed it since it reads very similar to The Swiss Family Robinson. Just goes to show that you can’t always judge a book by its cover. (Sometimes you need to look at the edges as well.)

Received an interesting book from the Biblio-Mat? Submit it to submit@therandombookmachine.com

W47: A Short History of the Irish People

A few months ago I went drinking with an Irish friend and his football teammates. My only recollection of that night was being surrounded by drunken Irishmen recanting the history of their country and trying to convince me that the Irish first arrived to Isle of Man by riding flying rocks across the sea. Not a metaphor for something, but actual rocks that floated through the sky. Being heavily inebriated myself, it made sense at the time so this week’s Biblio-Mat book was an interesting follow-up to that history night.

Scholarly!

It was fitting that A Short History of the Irish People had a green cover, but what was surprising was the presence of the dustjacket. Despite the sun-fading, the paper jacket was in amazing condition for a book published in 1921. In addition to stating that this was the second volume of the history, the cover also provided a synopsis on the book, which was an interesting idea since there was more than enough room on the inside flaps. Written by Mary Hayden and George A. Moonan, this was a scholarly look into the backstory of Ireland that sold me based on design principles alone. However, the title was a misnomer as my definition of a ‘short history’ is something that fits on the back of a pamphlet or restaurant menu, not a 572 page text.

Kind of wished this was the Mediaeval Ireland one.

Having studied Gaelic literature in my undergrad, I was familiar with the rich and very violent history of the Irish people so was therefore quite excited to dig into this book. Unfortunately, it turned out that part two of A Short History of the Irish People covered the years from 1603 to the ‘present’, which in this case meant 1921. Outside of the Great Famine and the establishment of Northern Ireland, I knew very little about this particular time period and even less on why this specific year was chosen for the volume split instead of a more rounded number.

Cúchulainn this ain't.

It turns out that 1603 marked the end of the Nine Years War which drove out the Earls of Ireland and replaced them with a new government structure that essentially put them under English rule. From here it was a lot of hopscotching through numerous political events, culminating in the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921. It was pretty clear from the beginning that the authors had a bias to the history, as any scholar of their nation would, and at times there seemed to be some pretty heavy resentment and bitterness to the events that unfolded under British rule.

To be fair, he was actually insane.

The chapter on the famine itself was fairly short at four pages but presented a damning critique on not only how the government handled it, but also on how it was represented in the press at the time. For an event as significant as this, though, the entry in the book felt short and seemed to gloss over most of it, choosing to view the political landscape more than the cultural one, which seemed strange for a history book.

While the text wasn’t a dry read, it also wasn’t very exciting. Being written in the style of a school textbook, it was more informational than colourful. What was a fun read though, were the pencil scribbles and notes in the margins providing running commentary on the events as they unfolded. My educated guess would be that one of the previous owners of this book was an Irish nationalist of sorts.

Also reads like my love history...

Another entertaining deviation from the straight history were the sections on the literature of the period. Although these spanned only a few pages, they did provide some insight on what was big in each of the centuries A Short History of the Irish People covered.

Isn't 'War on learning' pretty much every high school class?

The biggest surprise, though, came halfway through the book where an envelope was lodged between the pages. Opening it up, it was a perfectly preserved subscription card, Christmas card order form, and envelope to The Atlantic Monthly Company from 1947! Founded in 1857 by a group of writers that included one of my most revered authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Atlantic Monthly was a magazine that had been printed monthly for almost a hundred and fifty years before changing into The Atlantic, one of my favourite magazines. Still being printed today, it was quite amazing to find a piece of this history randomly in this book. 

Most awesome surprise I've had in any book to date.

Book rating: 8/10 (Interesting but nothing Wikipedia couldn’t tell you)

Random quote: “They still talk about it here in 1942” (written in pencil next to the section stating that future generations of Parnell’s countrymen will remember him)

W45: Darkness and Dawn

This week’s Biblio-Mat book came out with the heavy thunk that was usually accompanied by the sight of a textbook but instead out dropped a work of drama… that was loosely based off of textbooks.

Finally, a good piece of fict- Oh.

Dawn and Darkness was a small book but a lot thicker than it appeared to be. At 594 thin pages, it fell on the longer side of Bibio-Mat books but at least it looked impressive. With a navy clothbound cover, gold foil embossing, and gilding on the top edge, it had a regal vibe to it that, if nothing else, will at least make my bookshelf look more sophisticated. The interior pages were so thin they showed a bit of the text from the other side and the first quarter of the pages had heavy foxing, though, which was unfortunate but not surprising for a book of this age. Written by F. W. Farrar and printed in 1892, this particular edition had a book plate from the Manchester Diocesan Board of Education stating that it was part of an annual prize awarded for teachers of religious knowledge in 1891.

Curious to know what the other parts of this prize was.

Despite the length, Darkness and Dawn was a fast read. It was a re-imagining of various scenes of the life of Nero from ascension to pitiful death and all the misery in between, which made for an entertaining book for people who are amused by chaos and despair. Needless to say, I loved it. The preface stated that the author researched the life of Nero intensively and used surviving knowledge of the emperor as the framework to his story to make it as accurate as possible, but it actually read more like a fantasy novel than history book. What was missing, though, were illustrations and etchings that seemed to go hand in hand with books of this nature from the 1800’s.

The foxing, though, did fill every other page with abstract art.

The most interesting aspect, though, came at the beginning of each chapter where Farrar opened with a quote or reference from other works that related to the chapter. These snippets were presented in their original languages and usually followed with a translation below, which set the tone well for the chapter.

The tone was pretty much hatred in every chapter.

For those not familiar with Roman history, Nero was the emperor probably most known for fiddling while Rome burned. This, of course, was an exaggeration as he simply lounged around fawning over the flames and singing odes to the fire but never actually picked up any instruments. Regarded as a cruel and tyrannical emperor that offed anyone that looked at him funny, he is often overshadowed by his uncle Caligula, mainly because Tinto Brass never made a film about him.

Cruel? Maybe. Fabulous? Definitely.

The book begins with Nero coming to power through the death of his great-uncle Claudius, who was also his stepfather (it was a different time). From the first few pages he was already painted as a spoiled brat that looked down on everyone, including said uncle, and spent his time scheming and tormenting others.  However, it played out in this version that his mother was the one who poisoned Claudius so that Nero could replace him on the throne. The plotting and execution was quite well written and read better than most thrillers today, especially since there were a lot of throwbacks to the beginning at the end that made the small details much more significant.

The following chapters depicted various scenes of Nero’s reign. While a good chunk of it centered around his half-brother Britannicus and his half-sister Octavia, who was also his wife (it was a very different time), much of the book followed the struggle of power between the Tolkien-level ensemble of characters and showcased the sheer amount of deceit and backstabbing in Roman politics.

Cause modern politics is so clean.

Funny enough, for the infamous great fire scene, Nero was presented almost as a sympathetic figure. Sure, he enjoyed seeing the city in flames and was fascinated by the inferno, but the citizen’s accusation of him being the one who set the fire felt like a witch-hunt that targeted a naïve boy who just happened to have a borderline sexual fixation on bright red and yellow colours.

Weaving countless storylines together, the book drew on a lot of imagined interactions that paid off in real events. As this was based on real life, there were a lot of deaths as none of the characters could be rescued from the history books. What resulted was an intricate tale of plotting, power struggles, incest, murders, royal schemes, and vengeance. I half expected a crazy blonde girl to show up at the end with three dragons since this might as well have been Game of Thrones without the Starks. Seriously, Nero was pretty much this kid:

Admit it, you can't wait to see him die.

Book rating: 8.5/10 (If all history books were written like this there would be a lot less sleeping at school)

Random quote: “They began to dig the grave, and he whined out, ‘Oh. What an artist to perish! What and artist to perish!’” (I’m determined to use this at least once in my lifetime)

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)