Hilton Head Island: frozen in time; books; 3Dless

In case you have not read the introduction to my main site recently, which I expect likely, here is some of the first part:

Note:  This site is created using iWeb which Apple has not supported for years, so be advised that it may become frozen in time without warning.

…

There is something to be said for publishing on paper.

That has now happened.

When I tried to upload ‘The Joy of Small Boats’ I was unable to connect to my site.  Despite repeated efforts by the support team at Machighway, which hosts the site, and myself over the past two days, I still can’t connect.  I expect the problem is that iWeb has become corrupted.  I have kept an old MacBook with the Mojave OS just for iWeb because the application will not work on any more recent OS.  There may still be a way, but upon reflection I am not sure I want to.  There is enough on 

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/webbchiles.html

to keep my future biographers busy for years and if they want to know what happens from now on, they can come here.  There is a life there.

So the main site is frozen in time.  I am not.  Yet.

I was asked to comment on the books I read in the last six months.

In looking over the list, several are classics and favorites I have read before, often more than once, and can highly recommend, though your tastes may not be the same as mine.  BARRABAS, THE UNDERDOGS, THE MAIAS, VICTORY.  I think I have read all of Conrad, much of his work at least twice, and find myself regretting there is not more.

While James Vance Marshall's THE WIND AT MORNING is not a classic, I think it should be and have written about it in a journal post a while ago.

hilton-head-island-wind-in-morning.html

I had the pleasure of coming across two new to me great authors last year:  Yasunari Kawabata and Machado de Assis.  Before even finishing the first of their books, I bought two more.  I've read a second by Kawabata, but not yet de Assis.  Both men are famous in their own countries and should be more widely.

LEGIONNAIRE was a pleasant surprise.  The memoire of a young Englishman who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and served at the end of the colonial war in Algeria.  I found the view into a world I do not know interesting, educational and entertaining.

BOLIVAR is a fine biography of the liberator of much of South America and a study in perseverance, great success and great failure.

The one book on the list that I would not recommend is the 1900 edition of THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE.  There are other editions that I have enjoyed, but the 1900 is full of obscure, verbose, graceless 'poems'.  I put that in quotes because most of them do not deserve the name.

THE GREATEST DAY IN HISTORY, a day by day account mostly in the words of those then living of the last week of what we now call World War One was eye-opening and shocking.

Yesterday afternoon Carol and I saw AVATAR:  THE WAY OF WATER.  Carol saw it in 3D.  I did not.  I learned that 3D doesn't work with only one eye.  The movie is entertaining and a technological triumph because it seems real and almost none of it is.  Both of us agree, along with others, that at more than three hours it is too long.