January 2018
DAYS AND NIGHTS OF LOVE AND WAR Eduardo Galeano
NOTABLE BOATS Nic Compton
FLIGHT TO ARRAS Antoine de Saint-Exupery
THE SANDS OF TIME: A History of Hilton Head Island Margaret Greer
1688: A Global History John E. Wills, Jr.
FORTUNE’S FAVORITE CHILD Christopher Maurer
THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER William Styron
A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW Amor Towles
THE BERLIN STORIES Christopher Isherwood
BEOWULF translated by Seamus Heaney
THE BOYS OF SUMMER Roger Kahn
A SHORT WALK IN THE HINDU KUSH Eric Newby
LOST ISLAND James Norman Hall
THE SUCCESSOR Ismail Kadare
THE GREAT GAME Peter Hopkirk
THE GENERAL C. S. Forester
THE GOOD SHEPHERD C. S. Forester
BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS William W. Warner
The Hilton Head debacle and the World Cup have seriously cut into my reading time. Also I have only made a single three day passage and I always read more at sea.
This is a great World Cup.
Seven of FIFA’s top twelve ranked teams have already been eliminated and an eighth, Chile, did not qualify.
Those out include 1. Germany 4. Portugal 5. Argentina 8. Poland (9. Chile) 10. Spain 11. Peru 12. Denmark.
And I just watched 61st ranked Japan almost defeat 3. Belgium.
Excellent.
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I don’t often go to parties, but there was one a week ago for one of the original couples in this building who are moving away. At one point I said, “The problem is that there are too many of us on the planet.” Everyone, except Carol, thought I was making a joke and laughed. One reason I don’t much go to parties.
In the last book on the above list, BEAUTIFUL SWIMMERS, about crabbing on the Chesapeake Bay, William Warner said forty years ago that the problem with the bay was too many people.
That book won the Pulitzer Prize back then and describes a hard, admirable, independent way of life that I expect is now largely gone. I, who am not a fisherman much less a crabber, learned a lot from the book and highly recommend it. I thank Ron for sending me a copy.
The current issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC has an article about the approaching extinction of many species of sea birds whose world wide population has been reduced by 70% since records began being kept in 1950. Of 360 species of sea birds, 110 are in crises.
The two greatest threats according to the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC are induced predators, such as mice, rats, cats, and commercial fishing techniques that kill birds inadvertently. These techniques, such as long line fishing, can be modified so that they do not catch birds, and some nations have done so, but two/thirds of the world’s commercial fishing vessels are from China and Taiwan which do not care about sea bird mortality.
Ingested plastics are a third.
The GUARDIAN recently ran an article headed: Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals.
‘Last Born’ is looking better all the time. And I’m not even thinking of our Hilton Head neighbors. Well, maybe a little.
