W15: The Pony Book

This week’s Biblio-Mat book came out without a dustjacket, just a cellophane wrapper, making the random book even more mysterious than usual:

This could be anything. Anything at all.

Picking it up, a thousand thoughts went through my mind on what it could be. It looked to be quite scholarly and the Monkey’s Paw does carry a wide selection of niche academia so perhaps a text on surgical procedures or a history of mental health studies? Maybe even an exploration in philosophical discussion or a study into world geography. I slowly turned the book over.

Yep. Ponies.

Published in 1966, The Pony Book by Jeff Griffin is everything it sounds like it would be. At 287 pages, it is an encyclopedia on everything one would ever need to know about ponies in the 1960s. Outside of preteen girls and mid-19th century socialites, there’s a certain fanatical subculture that this would greatly appeal to. Unfortunately I do not belong to that group.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Outside of them being small horses and a euphemism for the male organ in a Ginuwine song from the mid-nineties, I actually know very little about ponies. The Pony Book quickly rectifies this with an intro chapter that gives the history and usage of the modern pony, painting them as animals that have had many uses in the past but are now primarily bred for shows and harness/chariot racing. Besides the obvious Shetland pony, the book continues on to showcase fifteen other breeds. Fourteen of them look like small horses. The fifteenth is a miniature donkey. It was clear early on that I do not have the eye or appreciation to make a pony salesman.

A part of me also gets a bit hungry when I look at this.

Although the images are in black and white, they are plentiful and the captions offer a lot of detail into what is being shown, making proper use of images instead of using them as filler. But what is most impressive about this book is not only the amount of historical and biological information contained within, but the sheer amount of ownership and cultural information. Many of the photos come with descriptions on the pony and the owners, who seem to mainly fall into two categories – rich aristocratic women and children with rich aristocratic parents. When the pedigree of the owners is longer than the pedigree of the pony the accessibility of the hobby comes into question.

I didn't even have PowerWheels growing up.

The later chapters deal with the purchase and upkeep of a pony. Hand drawn diagrams show what perfect specimens look like as well as what problems one should avoid while purchasing a showhorse. I can proudly say that I am now aware of the symptoms of bowed tendons and sickle-hocks should I have the opportunity to purchase a ‘Mare in foal with foal at side’ at the local pony swaps. There are also diagrams on constructing the perfect stable and the various types of fencing, which appears to be counterproductive as a few chapters later the book goes into training your pony to jump over fences not unlike the ones you have just built to keep it in your field.

If it's not a gift, look to your heart's content.

The training section itself is a wealth of information for those that foresee owning a pony in the future. With clear strategies on teaching a pony the different types of walks, circuits, and jumps, it turns a brand new pony into a show pony in what seems to be a few hours of work with a bundle of sticks. It is also pretty clear that I would make a horrible pony trainer. However, even though it was printed in 1966, I still feel the information contained within is still valid and useful since not much seems to have changed in the last fifty years of pony development. The Pony Book will probably be a relevant guide for ponies until we figure out a way to increase the amount of horsepower in a horse so until we have cybernetic ponies, I will most definitely keep this book on hand in the case that I happen upon a pony auction while strolling the cotton fields with my socialite friends.

Book rating: 8/10 (Really, who doesn’t like ponies?)

Random quote: “Pony people are always a friendly, helpful lot who love to gas about their favorite pastime.” (As anyone who has ever accidentally wandered into the more fanatical sections of a comicon can attest)

W14: Quest Under Capricorn

I did not have high expectations when I saw the book this week, for I am not the sort that readily finds pleasure in reading National Geographics and the cover that fell out of the Biblio-Mat screamed nothing but dated misconceptions.  And then I read the author’s name.

A lesson to set aside budget for cover design.

Quest Under Capricorn is an ambiguous title that could pass for many things – video game, romance novel, fantasy film. In this case it was belonged to a 1963 first edition hardcover recounting an expedition into Northern Australia by the esteemed British naturalist David Attenborough. This man is to nature what Carl Sagan is to space. I had never read any of his books but have seen much of his BBC programming growing up and own all the Life, Planet Earth, and The Blue Planet boxsets. I read the entire book with his voice in my mind.

38 BW photos, 5 in full colour. Waiting on the HD release.

Contrasting with last week’s Scandinavia, Quest Under Capricorn is everything a travel book should be, and more. Recounting a journey to Northern Australia, Attenborough weaves in modern life, culture, history, and adventure together seamlessly while peppering it with bursts of humour. Starting off in Darwin, he makes no apologies on the ruralness of the city and sets the tone of the book – to explore the places that tie the past to the present. For even though the town is small and has not kept up with progress in the rest of the world, it was still vastly important technologically as it was the entry point of the underwater telegraph cables into Australia. Along with a cameraman and a sound engineer, he treks the surrounding areas to explore and document the culture and histories of the small towns and aboriginals that still live off the land. 

The part of Australia where only 70% of things are deadly

The first section of the journey has Attenborough embarking on a quest to film buffalo up-close. After meeting an endearing butcher his team encounters setback after setback, ultimately concocting a grand scheme of using a car to herd a stampede of buffalo towards the tree they were hiding behind to get a close up shot. It’s as dangerous as it sounds but at the last moment it was foiled by a flock of heckling cockatoos. Yes, that is the type of stories this book is full of.

While the first few sections dealt mainly with the flora and fauna of the land, the later sections are the ones that shine for he delves into the lives of the citizens of Darwin and the aboriginals. The characters he meets are the true heart and soul of this book as they are so unique and eccentric that one would think they were made up if not for the photographs. In one story he meets a British expat that is the epitome of polite anti-socialism, living along in the middle of nowhere playing classical violin all day. In another he befriends an aboriginal who is so gracious he ends up secretly giving him a tribal relic, a giant didgeridoo named “the Roaring Serpent”, which he has to smuggle out by stuffing it in a light aircraft. Along the way he also encounters a man who is being paid by the government to watch over a dock and catch the lines of visiting ships… who refused to catch the line of his ship as it was visiting.

The giant tribal didgeridoo. Worshiped by many, except the guy that gave it away.

Punctuating these adventures are short snippets of the history of the land told through fascinating anecdotes, such as the problem of the setting up of the telegraph network being hampered by aboriginal hunters stealing the ceramic transistors atop the telegraph poles to make spearpoints, which was solved by having tourists throw their empty glass bottles at the foot of poles as they journey through to give the hunters a better material. These brief windows into the past show a different side of the rich history in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining and the book was an extremely fast read.

Either Australian totem poles or a man just trolling the visitors.

What was refreshing about this book though, is that it makes no judgment on the people that live in these environments. Unlike expositions that skew the perspective of the subjects to paint them either in a pitiful existence or a human spirit triumphing over great odds sort of way, it is just a window into the daily lives of people living the way they do an ocean away.  It is a true exploration of life in a different culture, but then again, one would expect nothing less from Attenborough.

Book rating: 9/10 (a delightful read that holds up beautifully after fifty years)

Random quote: “These buffalo sound rather bad-tempered,” I said in what I hoped sounded like a nonchalant tone. “What does one do to avoid trouble?” “Shoot ‘em,” said Alan, draining his glass.

W13: Scandinavia

The Biblio-Mat knows what you want but often gives you something related in the most facetious way, which is part of the reason I love it so. Feeding the fire on this notion is the fact that I had wanted to take a trip for the Easter weekend and wanted a book on travel to whet my appetite for wandering a new city (in this case Montreal) so the Biblio-Mat gave me a travel guide. Unfortunately it was a 255 page travel guide. On Scandinavia.

Everything one needs to know about Scandinavia, unless you're visiting there.

Scandinavia by Eric De Maré, published in 1952, is billed as a travel guide and remains very relevant today, on account of it having very little to do with vacation activities. Seventy percent of this text recounts the history of Scandinavia while twenty percent goes into detail about the architecture contained within and ten percent follows the journey of the author through the countries. A one percent margin of error contains the information that might actually be important for the standard tourist.

This was the most useful part of the book.

While not bone dry, it the sheer length of it decided that it would make a better read during my trip instead of before it, seeing how there was a six hour drive between Toronto and Montreal. Unfortunately this plan did not take into account that I would be travelling with an attractive and interesting French girl so it was read at night between reading modern Montreal travel guides, which gave a glaring contrast to what Scandinavia was missing.

No info on food, but if you needed to recite a Swedish refrain...

Split into three parts for each of the three main Scandinavian nations, this book had a section each on Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Each section begins with a very in-depth look at the history of the country, starting from prehistoric times (5000 B.C). Fifty or so pages later the subject shifts to the culture of the country, and how it came to be. The sections for Sweden and Norway were interesting, if for nothing more than the insertion of random artworks, music scores, and umlauts, but the section on Denmark left a bit to be desired since the cultural discussion lead back to the inspection of the history of the country. Instead of concentrating on what Denmark is like, the author chose to delve on what happened to it.

Everyone loves the Scream.

Interwoven in the later parts of each chapter, though, is the recounting of the trip the author took across each country. It meanders quite a bit as tangents into the history of the country fly off left and right, but it is still entertaining in how little time is spent seeing attractions versus admiring the geography. Not the landscape, mind you, but the beauty of how towns and rivers are laid out, which were somewhat already covered by the maps preceding each chapter. The long descriptions on various forms of architecture also seemed redundant since the best quality about this guide was that it had ridiculously high amount of photographs of buildings.

Just like Montreal, if you squint at it from a distance.

This is not all to say that the information in the book wasn’t interesting, just that it was fairly useless for any tourist that wasn’t a scholar of Scandinavian history. The important aspects of a travel guide, such as where to eat, what to see, or how to say “Where is the bathroom?” in the native tongues were missing, but I guess sometimes having no information on a guide is better than having incorrect information such as, say, on the closing time of the Montreal Botanical Gardens resulting in a certain Biblio-Mat blog-writing tourist getting locked in and having to scale a turnstile and two eight-foot fences to get back to civilization.

Book rating: 6/10 (At least the maps were useful)

Random quote: “The purpose of travel, a modern writer has declared, is to obtain ecstasy. That is one of those wild, sweeping generalizations which are helpful, if not entirely true.”

W12: Roma

It has always been my intention to incorporate some style aspect of the books I get into my reviews so when this week’s Biblio-Mat offering dropped out, I could not have been more excited.  In part because it lets me try something different, but mostly cause I had a lot going on this week and really didn’t have time to plow through another 200 page text.

Not pictured: Taxi Scams and Tourist Overcharging.

Titled Roma – Foro Romana Palatino with the byline of ‘Fotografia ANDERSON’, the book was simply a collection of twenty postcards of the Roman Forum bound between two thin pieces of cardboard by a piece of string. It’s undated but I would guess it was from around the 1950s based on the quality of the images and the printing style.

There’s really not much to say in a review outside of the pictures looking nice so I decided to walk around a ten minute radius of my place and create my own album of postcards, complete with handcrafted binding and perforations for each page (I get carried away easily). Since the Roma book was all images of the Roman Forum ruins decimated by age, I decided to snap pics of the Toronto waterfront marred by new developments. This city seems like it is perpetually in construction mode. 

The complete book in a slideshow can be found here.

Full size pics of the originals can be found here. 

Had no gold ink so graphite will have to do.

 

Book rating: 7/10 (Encyclopedia-worthy photos)

Random quote: "Vendesi a li______ senza soprapprezzo" (Stamped on cover, parts of the third word rubbed off...)

W11: Locomotive Management

It was a small thunk this week from the Biblio-Mat, but the spoils were grander than the heavier fare of the last few weeks - a thin text with a heavily textured and embossed hardbound cover in immaculate condition that was just begging for a crayon rubbing.

For size reference only.

While the cover is embossed with “International Library”, the spine itself read “Locomotive Management”. However, the table of contents reveals that this thin text actually contained two separate books in one binding. The first is “Locomotive Management” by A. B. Carson, running at 92 pages, followed by “Heat and Superheaters” by J. W. Harding, at 66 pages. Being printed in 1942, the construction of the book is a work of art in itself. The pages are neatly printed on extremely thin stock (180 pages are less than a centimeter thick), yet the ink does not bleed through. Blue stippled edges and marbled teal inner coversheets add to decadence, but it is the stamped and textured navy blue cover that gives it an air of authority and antiquarian splendor. Being about trains is pretty cool as well.

There are only two times in my life where the notion of locomotives has piqued my interest. Once when I was five and my parents took me on a train ride for the first time and the second when I read Trainspotting in first year university. Having a lack of heroin and incomprehensible words, this book spoke to the five-year-old part of that wonderment.

There are no sections on public toilets in Scotland.

The first book, “Locomotive Management”, went into detail on the care and operation of the various types of steam-powered trains, down to when to stop for water and how to tell if your coal is burning properly. Truth be told, it was so detailed that I could not tell if operators went to school for this or if simply picking up this book is certification enough, as after ninety pages I felt so confident in being able to run a 1930s train that I walked to the roundhouse outside the Steam Whistle brewery to persuade someone to let me try. Turns out most places do indeed require a formal education of sorts and climbing locomotive relics making whistle sounds is also frown down upon.

Okay, I lied. With a cover like that, how could you NOT do a rubbing?

The second part of the book, “Heat and Superheaters”, deals with the more technological advancement of heating steam hotter than regular steam is capable of getting. With detailed diagrams and theory explanation, it convinced me that this was the future. Well, as much as the future in 1942 was going to bring. When the various equations and tables recounting the different properties of steam in different pressures came around, I found my mind wandering a bit to the applications this would have in present day. The conclusion was that if I had access to these superheaters, I would probably be able to steam my vegetables in thirty seconds instead of having to wait the full four minutes on the stove.
 

More complicated than the actual time tables.

The saving grace in this second book came in two forms. The first being a section breaking down the meaning of heat, which was very interesting as it is something we take for granted that everyone understands yet it isn’t something most people can easily describe. A friend asked me to explain time a few weeks ago and I was at a loss for words as outside it being a dimension, I could only explain it to people who already understood the qualities of time. In the same way, when the book asks what is considered heat, outside a strictly exothermic/endothermic scientific energy explanation I couldn’t think of anything else. Harding delves on this for half a chapter and cements that heat is a relative term that only exists only through comparison to a benchmark, usually our own body temperatures, which fluctuates and is therefore cannot be depended on to describe energy. A most interesting piece of debate that could be argued for or against. The second saving grace was the gatefold drawings. Regular illustrations are interesting, but foldout drawings make my inner five-year-old giddy with delight.

Like a hidden surprise for literary nerds.

Book rating: 9/10 (useful if you ever plan to train-jack a 19^th century locomotive)

Random quote: “A blow-off cock is generally located on each side of the firebox, at or near the lowest point of the mud ring, but in some cases one is placed in the center of the mud ring at the front of the firebox.” (Okay, maybe this text does speak a little to the Trainspotting side of my wonderment)

W10: Hold the Line

Vince looked at the machine with a curious smile and welcomed the break from receiving non-fiction books from the Biblio-Mat but this musty youth novel was almost disintegrating in his hands as he picked it up and he wondered if it would hold out for a complete read through. Like the main character, though, it would later prove to be more resilient than it first appeared.

The fabled dolphin jump play.

Flipping through the 235 pages of Hold the Line brought back fond memories for Vince as the 1929 young adult novel by Harold M. Sherman had similar trappings as Fury and the Mustangs, the first book he had ever received from the Biblio-Mat. He was much surprised to find that the dust jacket for this hardcover had held up very well for a book of this age and foxing was quite minor considering the paper quality.

While not being a great fan of spectating the sport of American football, Vince had always enjoyed the stories and films that were centered on it, to the point of watching Gridiron Gang four times in succession while adjusting the acoustics of his new home theatre system. The 1920s vernacular and sentence structure only added to the charm of the situation.

Although not enough as the Rock would have.

Like every sports tale, Hold the Line was no exception to the tried and true story arc of an underdog finding their courage push beyond their limits to win the game that matters most to the team. What was unforeseen to Vince, though, was how little conflict was present. Following the story of Judd Billings, an uncoordinated, shy, runt who was weak at heart on account of being raised by his mother instead of his father (it was the 1920s after all), living in the shadows of his brother Bob, the high school football legend who had recently left for college. Just as Vince begun to wonder at the types of obstacles Judd would have to overcome, he turns into brilliant scholar, learns to be a fearless athlete, becomes the most popular kid at school, and scores the winning touchdown of the big game in the span of 60 pages. Wonders of wonders!

All this, of course, resulted from a letter Judd had received from his brother telling him that the key to success is to simply get better at everything. Feeling a tinge of sentiment and fraternal affection, Vince decided that why he too would send his younger brother a note of support. “Get better at everything. I believe in you, old chap.” he wrote in his electronic mail. “Are you drunk? Dude, it’s only 1 pm…”, his brother replied back. He’ll come around, Vince told himself. He’ll come around.

The rest of the book was entertaining to Vince, but ultimately it lacked the substance he was used to. Judd moves off to college to take his brother’s place on the team and the chapters following the move eschew actual football playing to recount his hijinks as a new student thrown in with the seniors. Unlike most stories about freshmen, though, every chapter has him coming out ahead, down to the hazing rituals that backfire. At the 90 page mark he arrives at college and wins over his new roommate.  On page 110 he is accepted onto the team after showing his kick. At 120 he bests the local tavern’s untamable donkey. 130 shows him out-pranking the team bully. 150 has him rescuing five people from a fire. From that point it started to get far-fetched. If the book was a hundred pages longer, Vince was sure Judd would cure world hunger and colonize the moon.

But could he have remembered Polly's name?

When the book finally moved to the big game, though, Vince found himself entranced as he usually does in these situations. This book was clearly published before the era of losses with heart being considered victories so he knew Judd would prevail. But even though the final college game used the same plot device as the high school game, the ending none the less contained an unexpected twist that carried it beyond what has become the standard Hollywood fare.

Book rating: 8.5/10 (Rudy, this is not. But uplifting nonetheless)

Random quote: “Bully work!” complimented Bob, warmly, “Your first tackle was a peach!”

W9: The Civil Engineer: His Origins

Growing up, my Chinese parents have always ingrained into me that they would support whatever career choice I decided on in life, whether it’s doctor or engineer. This week’s Biblio-Mat book is as close as I will come to fulfilling that.

It has been around the engineered block a few times.

The Civil Engineer: His Origins, by not a single author but a collective (the American Society of Engineers), is not a pretty book. Published in 1970, it looks every bit the part of a late sixties paperback from its low quality microscopic print to the vintage scuffed cover.

True to its title, the book opens with the origin of the word engineer and spends the rest of the 106 pages elaborating on the long prestigious history of the craft. While not bone dry, engineers aren’t really known for their comedic styling, probably because humour and collapsing bridges generally do not go hand in hand. This is quickly reflected in quoting every single modern dictionary’s definition of the word ‘engineer’ in the first chapter. Certain parts, like the explanations of engineering principles are interesting but other sections, such as the six straight pages on the beauty of arches, left much to be desired.
 

Lesson on arches: they're made of bricks and curve around.

Having lived in more than a few structurally unsound places through my university career and the first few years out of it with a BA in English Lit, I have the utmost respect for engineers but through the book, though, there is an undertone of ostentatiousness where the authors hint at the Society of Engineers being a sort of secret elite organization not unlike the Freemasons or the Stonecutters. Perhaps in the 1970s it may have been seen as such but the continuous name dropping of supposed prestigious members of the society dragged on for much too long.
 

I now have a wealth of outdated knowledge on surveying tools.

What was also beyond my comprehension was the fact that every third page had footnotes that were half a page long. It was always my assumption that the people who are in charge of keeping city infrastructures standing and functional would be knowledgeable in the area of layouts and space planning. 

An average footnote in this book.

An above average footnote, also in this book.

The illustrations themselves were also placed in awkward positions. The images of surveying tools, for instance, all came before the chapter explaining the tools. Cart before the horse, or in this case, the keystone before the bricks? (There were many many pages on arches.)

Book rating: 6/10 (At least the ancient history portions were interesting)

Random Quote: "I take pleasure in furnishing the best information I have as to the origin of the word 'engineer'"