Books: Lost in Shangri-La

Margaret Hastings, survivor

If you are a WWII buff and if you have run out of WWII books to read, Michael Zuckoff’s, Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II, may be just what you’re looking for. Zuckoff managed to find an exciting WWII story that up until now has never been well documented and has turned it into a book that is quite a page-turner. This book is hard to put down and what’s all the more remarkable is that the story is entirely true. Hollywood could not have cast and written a better script: It is 1945. A plane load of 24 sightseers crash in a cannibal invested jungle of New Guinea. Twenty-one are killed on impact. Only 3 survive, two men and a beautiful woman. All are dazed, injured and without anyway to communicate their position. They have no food and their wounds are severe. There biggest fear is Japanese snipers that may be hiding in the hidden jungle valley and the jungle is dense and dangerous. Zuckoff writes, they have “crash-landed in a world that time didn’t forget. Time never knew it existed.” They are soon found by members of the Dani tribe. The Dani have never seen metal and have not yet invented the wheel. They wear gourds to cover their private parts. They believe the Americans are white spirits who have descended on a vine from heaven. They think their clothing is “removable skin.” The Americans fear they are going to be skewered and eaten. At this point Zuckoff skillfully describes the often tense and sometimes comical cultural collision. Eventually American airman parachute in to rescue them. However, the airmen set up camp right in the middle of the warring Dani tribes. The Dani happen to be fighting their own war unaware of the global war that rages around them. The Dani are perturbed to say the least… [I’ll leave the ending for the reader]. However the book includes a lot of other characters other than the Dani and the survivors..Zuckoff does a good job filling in the gaps with background and even some politics. Even so the book flows nicely and is a pleasure to read. This is a story that has it all, adventure, war, tragedy, comedy, and a beautiful heroine. If you are looking for part adventure and part war story, that just happens to be true, this is it. Recommended.

The Librarian Ate Too Many Of These Last Night And Now Feels Ill...

Welcome Summer!

The librarian can be seen 27th person from the left, 8th row.

Books: The Greater Journey

Americans in Paris? No not the lost generation. Think before WWI, before Hemingway. Hmm.. David McCullough’s new book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, covers the years roughly between 1830 and 1900 and those famous Americans who lived in and were influenced by Paris during that time. The group included: Thomas Jefferson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Samuel Morse Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and Harriet Beecher Stowe. But I think McCullough’s greater point here is to show just how that Parisian influence was transferred back through these people to American society, directly effecting American art, medicine, writing, science, and politics. And the influence was profound. And that is the originality this book offers. McCullough doesn’t merely offer a biographical sketch, but takes it a step further showing just how much Paris affected America. This fresh approach makes this book a pleasure to read. And McCullough’s enthusiasm for is topic is contagious. It’s obvious that McCullough believes that history is much more than politics and battles. It seems to him that history is more a symphony of all that is human: music, art, literature, poetry, theatre and science. You will love to getting into the details this book offers, especially if you are interested in Paris or are going there soon. One note however, I read this book in electronic format others have told me the print edition is fabulous because of the quality of the binding and the fine paper used. Recommended.

Sustenance!

A Feast Awaits!

Time Travel: London 1949

Another pic of London circa 1949. Cool huh!

The Ischia Island Mushroom..

Planning a trip here someday.

iPad Apps Recommendations

My iPad

A couple of you have emailed me and asked me what apps I have on my iPad and what do I recommend. Well, here the list of the ones I use the most and why:

The first three are newsreaders:

• Zite This is my favorite app and I can’t live without out it. Really. It’s the easiest way for me to know what is going on in the world. At least what’s important to me. Zite can do that because you can customize it in a big way. You can literally build your own personalized magazine. It’s actually an “intelligent magazine,” and it actually gets smarter as you use it. It notes what type of stories you read, remembers them and then feeds you more. Setting it up is easy. You can choose from predetermined categories, such as: World News, Business, Film etc or you can enter your own category of interest and Zite will search the internet and populate a page with related stories. Say for instance you are interested in Quantum Physics, as I know most of you are. All you do is type it in to the search box and click Done. Now you have a pages of articles that are constantly updated. Some of my categories are: Arts & Culture, Business, Gadgets, Mac, Politics, Science, Technology, Information Literacy, Literature, Reading and World News. I have more, but that kind of gives you an idea of the breadth of a magazine you can create for yourself. The best part is it’s free.
• Flipboard My second favorite app. It’s another “personalized magazine” just as good as Zite, but in a different way. Actually it’s even better in some aspects. First it has a different interface__ look that is. It too searches the Internet for stories that you want to read and it does that in what seems a miraculous way. It’s that Good. (I think this app was picked by Apple as the iPad app of the year). Adding sections to your “smart mag” or “flipboard” as the company calls it is simple. Just click: “Add a Section.” From here you can search a list of topics that interest you and add them to your flipboard.. What makes Flipboard different is that you can have feeds from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Google Reader or whatever other blog that interests you. Maybe like this one.[Hint] Flipboard is also free.
• Pulse Again Pulse does a similar job of gathering news stories from around the web that are of personal interest to you. In Pulse though you can choose “specific sources” to add within broader sections. For example: if you set up a “Tech Section” you can specifically chose what feeds you want to see, such as: CNET, All Things Digital, Fortune Tech, Gizmodo, Techcrunch, MacWorld, Slashgear, Ars Technica, Macrumors, Boing Boing, and Digital Trends. Actually these are the feeds that I read everyday under my Tech Section. I also have sections set up for: Top News, News, and Business. So again you can see you can create a magazine with quite a breadth of sources. And the great part about it is that each section is updated constantly. Again Pulse is also free.

You might ask, why do you read three different news readers? I don’t know. But I’m harmless.

• iBooks and Kindle App I have both, but prefer iBooks. I like the interface better. On the other hand Amazon at this point has many more books. But iBooks is catching up. iBooks is a bit more expensive if you purchase a book, but offers a more generous preview, sometimes as many as 150 “iPad pages.” So far I have read about 20 books since I got my iPad. Most out of copyright books are free and this is good for me because I like to read a lot of old stuff. But I have issues. Some of the electronic books I have read include: The Greater Journey, hope to review this soon, John Adams, iWoz, Life of Johnson, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, The Case for Books, and Stanley:The Impossible Life. iBooks and the Kindle app are free.

This list is getting a bit long so I’ll shorten things up. Sorry.

• The Weather Channel I’m a weather buff and need to know it all the time. This app is still the best for weather, but does have annoying commercials that flash across the top and bottom and different times. Offers customized weather casts and videos. I also have Weather HD, but haven’t had that much time to play with it. The Weather Channel app is free.
• QuakeWatch I need to know where things are shaking. And this is the app. Incredible. Updates constantly every time the earth shakes. It’s amazing. It lists earth quakes by size and location then connects you to the USGS for a detailed report. Also include are tsunami warnings. I’m addicted to this thing. Free.
• Bing for iPad News, maps, movies, trends, finance. It’s all here in a fantastic interface. A Microsoft product that actually works. That’s amazing. Also free.
• Dictionary.com Sometimes I need to look up a word. Free.
• Pages Apple’s word processor for the iPad. Full featured and fantastic. Much better than Word. Perfect for the iPad.
• Economist When I feel like putting on “airs” I read this. Seriously though. It’s the best news magazine out there and the free app gives you a good selection from each weeks magazine. Real good. Free unless you want the whole “enchilada.”
• NASA Perfect app. Well done. Large wealth of information. Love this app also. Plan to review it separately. Free.
• Star Walk I love astronomy and this is the best astronomy app out there for regular people. Makes cool sounds when you push buttons. The information provided about the universe is unbelievable. Will review separately. Costs money. So be willing to pay up.
• Angry Birds Yes I play it. And enjoy it. And I’m not ashamed.

I have many more apps on my iPad, but these are the ones I use the most.

Dinner!

Whale Shark sizing up dinner off the Yucatan peninsula.

The Librarian Is Looking For Beach Front Property Like This. Let Me Know...

Podcast: re: Joyce

I came upon this podcast while browsing in iTunes. It’s been around for a while, but apparently I missed it. I tend to miss things, big things, but that’s another post. If you ever wanted to understand James Joyce’s Ulysses this is the podcast. It’s called: Frank Delaney’s Re: Joyce. The podcast by veteran broadcaster Delaney is meant to commemorate Joyce’s mighty novel. And mighty the novel is, if you ever read it, and also quite hard to understand__at least for me. But there is something about the language of Ulysses that is intoxicating and if you don’t understand all the arcane references and allusions used you sense you should. But is Ulysses worth the effort? Yes. And now Delaney makes it easy. Every week Delaney gives about a 5 to 10 minute essay and explains the book sentence by sentence. He claims he will take you through all 375,000 words if necessary. But why? According to Delaney, Ulysses has “diamond mines of references. It’s compassionate, tender, moving and funny.” And he means to show you the full brilliance of the novel. In case you’re worried he does not dumb things down. Every podcast is done with eloquence, understanding and humor. Also given is some background on the book and biographical information. Delaney says: “Ulysses is often called the world's most famous and most irritating novel - irritating because it's deemed so obscure and inaccessible. I maintain that it's none of those things.” Of course Delaney is also the author of the book: James Joyce's Odyssey: a Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses. Written in 1981. So he’s been doing this “Joyce thing” for a while. One thing to think about though before you commit, one critic called Joyce’s novel, “the foulest book that ever made its way into print”

Aww..Mother And Child...

These Two Galápagos Turtles Go For A Sunday Walk.

The Librarian's Dessert

Where Do These Stairs Go?

To the library, no doubt

Books: The Indian Clerk

Thanks Paul for recommending the Indian Clerk, by David Leavitt. This is not a book I would have chosen on my own as math terrified me when I was in school. The right side of my brain never worked properly. I even picked a major in college, journalism that is purposely designed for “math idiots.” And I’m proud to say I knew quite a few. And for you math lovers, I know, “math is beautiful.” So I approached the Indian Clerk ready to put it down as soon as I encountered a quadratic equation: ax^2+bx+c=0. But I actually made it through right to the last word. I kind of glanced and glared over the equation parts and I’m sure I missed a lot, but I think I got the gist of the story, at least the important parts, the relational parts, the tension between the true life characters of British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Indian genius and mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. In 1913 Cambridge don Hardy receives a letter from Ramanujan filled with 9 pages of equations. Fascinated Hardy and his colleague J.E. Littlwood, conclude Ramanujan must be a genius and plead with him to come to Cambridge to work with them. Ramanujan arrives and the story proceeds from here told entirely through Hardy’s perspective. Through it all we see their relationship moved along by brilliant mathematical triumphs, illnesses, honors, sexual repression and emotional distress. This book has much to offer, especially to gay readers, but it also has quite a few faults. I think the problem is that David Leavitt had a tremendous amount of interesting material to work with; a power relationship, suppressed homosexuality, racial prejudice, the vestiges of British imperialism in Indian, etc, but Leavitt just couldn’t make it all gel enough to move the story along at a reasonable pace. And this is where the book falters. I think all the good ingredients of the recipe [plot] weren’t given the proper emphasis and weren’t put in at the right time__ if I may posit a bad analogy. Don’t get me wrong. I think this book is worth reading. Leavitt does a wonderful job recreating the rarified world of WWI era Cambridge. It’s just I thought it could have been better. This was difficult material to work with. The characters had an intense inner life, but a dull outer appearance. However, couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the dialogue in the book: When Ramanujan lay dying, G.H. Hardy tells him that that the taxi he rode over in was number 1729, "a rather dull number." Not so, responded Ramanujan, it's the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.” Wow is that romantic or what?

Back In The Day When Librarians Could Wear Cool Hair...

Wow when I saw this guys hairdo I knew he had to be a librarian__but seriously Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was an immense intellectual force in the 17^th century, a mathematician, a scientist, an engineer, a lawyer, a philologist, a philosopher, a logician, a historian, an acquaintance to nobility and yes a librarian. Librarians commanded a bit more respect back then. A similar regard can be seen for Johann Winckelmann founder of modern archaeology, influential art historian and also a librarian. But Leibniz was a true polymath with a mind similar in character to Isaac Newton. Both are given credit for independently developing infinitesimal calculus. [This is a type of advanced ciphering done by librarians.] Leibniz also made contributions to metaphysical philosophy where he developed the idea of “monads,” According to Leibniz, monads are "substantial forms of being" which are eternal, indecomposable, individual and subject to their own laws. The ontological essence of a monad is its irreducible simplicity. [Librarians often have a lot of time to ponder such things.] He also developed the idea of mv², an idea similar to kinetic energy. He was a profound moralist and devoted considerable intellectual and diplomatic effort to healing the breach in the Church caused by the Reformation. But most dear to librarians is Leibniz’s work in library science. He was a librarian at the ducal libraries in Hanover and Wolfenbuettell. To house the 100,000 volume collection Leibnitz helped build what is considered the first building explicitly designed to be a library. Because he developed the ideas for an empirical database and an indexing system he is considered one of the founders of modern information science. No librarian nor philosopher for that matter has had as much influence on the laws of state, ethics and politics. Leibniz ideas and theories are spread throughout a vast array of publications, most of which are written in scholastic Latin, French and German. Quite a guy__but the main point of this rambling post is that librarians used to get a lot of respect. I only need to emphasize this because it is unfathomable to the modern mind that a librarian could have any respect. But in regard to respect__ that hairdo…

Aspirations...