Slowly but surely I'm updating the Current Reading list here to show you what I'm actually reading. I just added Journey to the High Southwest to that list. This is a really good travel book, as may be evidenced by its having gone through eight editions. It covers the Four Corners area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah (not in that order), as well as Santa Fe. We traveled extensively in the Four Corners area last fall - see albums at my Facebook page - and we visited New Mexico again in late March, spending two nights in Albuquerque and a night in Santa Fe. We found this book helpful in Albuquerque, as it steered us to the old Plaza area, to La Hacienda restaurant, and to great birding at the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park.
More later.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label travel books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel books. Show all posts
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Monday, October 6, 2008
Knight's Reading List VI: June 2007
I haven't posted one of these in a while. I think it's about time to remind people that one of my primary activities is, and always has been, reading. I read a lot, I read widely, and some of what I read is pretty ephemeral - mystery novels, fantasies, and so on. But even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes, and I sometimes come up with a good book.
In June 2007 I finished only six books, but a couple of them were extraordinarily good.
2 June: Stanley Portny, Project Management for Dummies. 2007. xviii + 366 pages. Begun on 4 May 2007. I like the "for Dummies" books, and doggone it! this was a pretty good one.
4 June: Nicholas Falletta, The Paradoxicon. 1983. xx + 230 pages. Begun on 2 June 2007. Interested in logic? Interested in strange, mind-twisting paradoxes? Interested in how paradoxes helped to develop the theory of logical thinking? Then this is a terrific book for you. It's a collection of paradoxes, with solutions when they are soluble. Of course it includes the riddle of "Who shaves the barber?", a paradox that changed modern thought. This is a lot of fun.
9 June: Gore Vidal, Lincoln. 1984. 657 pages. Begun on 12 May 2007. I read this book at the same time as the next one. They're both about Abraham Lincoln. They're both solidly based in good historical research. They were in some ways complementary, as when I used the maps in Kearns Goodwin's book to retrace the movements of Vidal's characters. But Vidal uses the power of fiction to fill in the gaps in the historical record, and leaves us a fascinating portrait of a great man, surrounded by rivals and enemies, and eventually brought down by them. They killed Lincoln, but they couldn't defeat him.
15 June: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals. 2005. xix + 916 pages. Begun 20 May 2007. This history is a welcome addition to the enormous volume of Lincolniana and Civil War histories. Goodwin's focus, like Vidal's, is on the personalities and interests of the men in Lincoln's cabinet, and the women who loved them. This book has some excellent illustrations, but Goodwin's descriptions of these personalities penetrate behind the paralytic photographs of the day.
23 June: John McPhee, Uncommon Carriers. 248 pages. Begun 18 June 2007. I note that I got through the 248 pages of McPhee's Uncommon Carriers in just six days. This is a collection of seven essays about transportation workers, and the systems within which they work. McPhee rides with a long-haul trucker, travels up the Illinois River on a tugboat pushing a raft of barges, and retraces Henry David Thoreau's canoe trip on the Concord and Merrimack rivers. McPhee is a terrific essayist. Gay Talese, in his introduction to a volume of The Best American Essays, mentions that McPhee came up as one of the "new journalists." I've read several of McPhee's books, including Annals of the Former World and The Founding Fish, and his technique is always the same: he finds someone who works in a field, and lives with that person, drawing out the individual life, the career it represents, and the subject matter upon which that career depends. Always worth reading, often surprising, sometimes touching.
30 June: Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent. 1989. 314 pages. Begun 20 June 2007. Bill Bryson spent twenty years living and working in England. Then he came back to the United States, and started to relearn his native land. In this book Bryson describes his travels from Iowa around the United States, visiting and sometimes revisiting various quarters of the country. He stays away from the coasts, preferring to travel the inland roads, through the small towns and rural areas of the country. This book invites comparison with William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways, written fifteen or twenty years earlier.
In June 2007 I finished only six books, but a couple of them were extraordinarily good.
2 June: Stanley Portny, Project Management for Dummies. 2007. xviii + 366 pages. Begun on 4 May 2007. I like the "for Dummies" books, and doggone it! this was a pretty good one.
4 June: Nicholas Falletta, The Paradoxicon. 1983. xx + 230 pages. Begun on 2 June 2007. Interested in logic? Interested in strange, mind-twisting paradoxes? Interested in how paradoxes helped to develop the theory of logical thinking? Then this is a terrific book for you. It's a collection of paradoxes, with solutions when they are soluble. Of course it includes the riddle of "Who shaves the barber?", a paradox that changed modern thought. This is a lot of fun.
9 June: Gore Vidal, Lincoln. 1984. 657 pages. Begun on 12 May 2007. I read this book at the same time as the next one. They're both about Abraham Lincoln. They're both solidly based in good historical research. They were in some ways complementary, as when I used the maps in Kearns Goodwin's book to retrace the movements of Vidal's characters. But Vidal uses the power of fiction to fill in the gaps in the historical record, and leaves us a fascinating portrait of a great man, surrounded by rivals and enemies, and eventually brought down by them. They killed Lincoln, but they couldn't defeat him.
15 June: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals. 2005. xix + 916 pages. Begun 20 May 2007. This history is a welcome addition to the enormous volume of Lincolniana and Civil War histories. Goodwin's focus, like Vidal's, is on the personalities and interests of the men in Lincoln's cabinet, and the women who loved them. This book has some excellent illustrations, but Goodwin's descriptions of these personalities penetrate behind the paralytic photographs of the day.
23 June: John McPhee, Uncommon Carriers. 248 pages. Begun 18 June 2007. I note that I got through the 248 pages of McPhee's Uncommon Carriers in just six days. This is a collection of seven essays about transportation workers, and the systems within which they work. McPhee rides with a long-haul trucker, travels up the Illinois River on a tugboat pushing a raft of barges, and retraces Henry David Thoreau's canoe trip on the Concord and Merrimack rivers. McPhee is a terrific essayist. Gay Talese, in his introduction to a volume of The Best American Essays, mentions that McPhee came up as one of the "new journalists." I've read several of McPhee's books, including Annals of the Former World and The Founding Fish, and his technique is always the same: he finds someone who works in a field, and lives with that person, drawing out the individual life, the career it represents, and the subject matter upon which that career depends. Always worth reading, often surprising, sometimes touching.
30 June: Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent. 1989. 314 pages. Begun 20 June 2007. Bill Bryson spent twenty years living and working in England. Then he came back to the United States, and started to relearn his native land. In this book Bryson describes his travels from Iowa around the United States, visiting and sometimes revisiting various quarters of the country. He stays away from the coasts, preferring to travel the inland roads, through the small towns and rural areas of the country. This book invites comparison with William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways, written fifteen or twenty years earlier.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The Bible on the Ground
I have a book called A Traveller in Rome, by H. V. Morton. It is a very good travel book, first published in 1957. (I have a 2002 paperback reprint from Da Capo Press.) There are two other Morton travel books I would like to have: In the Steps of St. Paul and In the Steps of the Master.
I was reminded of these today when I ran across and article in Slate by David Plotz. This link http://www.slate.com/id/2181864/entry/2181865/ is to the first of the series of articles on travelling around Israel finding Biblical sites. The one I first read today was the fifth in the series, and it was about day spent finding sites associated with Jesus. In particular, there is a nice account of Plotz' visit to Capernaum, "Jesus' own town."
I took a lot of photographs, mostly in the form of slides, when we lived and travelled in Turkey. At some point I took a selection of them, featuring sites mentioned in the book of Acts or otherwise of interest to Christians, and assembled a slide show for a Biblical tour of Turkey. (Not only are a lot of New Testament sites in what is now Turkey, but my personal choice for the location of the Garden of Eden is along the road between Malatya and Elazig, a path I travelled a number of times.)
I am reading the Bible, and, as always when reading a book with included maps, I'm checking out the maps as I go. I am also reading James L. Kugel's very good book How to Read the Bible, which I am beginning to think is a "must-read" for anyone interested in biblical history. And I think David Plotz' series in Slate is a nice addition to the literature of "walking the Bible."
By the way, I think I've heard of a book or TV series, or both, called "Walking the Bible." Comments from anyone familiar with this material would be welcomed.
I was reminded of these today when I ran across and article in Slate by David Plotz. This link http://www.slate.com/id/2181864/entry/2181865/ is to the first of the series of articles on travelling around Israel finding Biblical sites. The one I first read today was the fifth in the series, and it was about day spent finding sites associated with Jesus. In particular, there is a nice account of Plotz' visit to Capernaum, "Jesus' own town."
I took a lot of photographs, mostly in the form of slides, when we lived and travelled in Turkey. At some point I took a selection of them, featuring sites mentioned in the book of Acts or otherwise of interest to Christians, and assembled a slide show for a Biblical tour of Turkey. (Not only are a lot of New Testament sites in what is now Turkey, but my personal choice for the location of the Garden of Eden is along the road between Malatya and Elazig, a path I travelled a number of times.)
I am reading the Bible, and, as always when reading a book with included maps, I'm checking out the maps as I go. I am also reading James L. Kugel's very good book How to Read the Bible, which I am beginning to think is a "must-read" for anyone interested in biblical history. And I think David Plotz' series in Slate is a nice addition to the literature of "walking the Bible."
By the way, I think I've heard of a book or TV series, or both, called "Walking the Bible." Comments from anyone familiar with this material would be welcomed.
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