Reading List Update – Brief reviews of books completed so far.

A few months ago I posted a list of about 30 books that I had wanted to get around to reading someday, with the intention that I would finally read them. I promised to post updates on my progress on this list. Since then, I have finished seven of the books on the list. During the same interval, however, I added about another thirty, so at this rate I will never be finished. Here are some brief reviews of the ones I have finished, in order of how much I enjoyed them.

The Corporation – the Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, by Joel Bakan
If you want to understand what is basically wrong with our society, start by pondering on this fact: The most powerful institutions in our world today are founded and legally obligated to put monetary profit ahead of all other considerations. Greed has been established as the central organizing principle of our most powerful institutions. This book examines how this happened (it wasn't inevitable) and the dreadful consequences of it. It also gives a glimmer of what we can do about it.

This is the most important book I have read in some time. If I could, I would require every literate person in America to read it. There is a documentary film by the same name based on this book, and it is available on DVD. If you can’t read the book, see the movie. If there is a flaw in this book, it is that it ends up being too optimistic. There are very strong trends now for corporations to become more powerful and more irresponsible in their behavior, and it seems that nobody has the power anymore to stand up to them. Things are going to get much worse before they get better.

Coast Redwood: A Natural and Cultural History, edited by John Evarts and Marjorie Popper
From my point view of this book obeys the first rule of show business: always leave them wanting more. For most people, this book would be everything you would ever want to know about Redwood trees. However, most people do not have my love and fascination with Sequoia semperverins. Still, this book is an excellent start towards what I do want to know about Coast Redwoods (which is, everything there is to know!). Although the text is written by various writers, the quality of the text is consistently good. The book is beautifully and amply illustrated

The Sacred Pipe, by Nicholas Black Elk and Joseph Epes Brown
Until recently, this wonderful book had been out of print for some time, and rather hard to find. I had started reading it twice before, having had to get it via interlibrary loans from distant libraries, but circumstances had conspired to prevent me from finishing. When it came back into print, I quickly bought a copy, so that this time I would be sure to be able to finish it. I wanted to read this because I had so immensely enjoyed the other Black Elk book, Black Elk Speaks. People without my level of interest in anthropology, comparative religion, and Native American lore may not enjoy this book as much as I did, as it does get a little repetitive, but I found the descriptions of the Lakota legends, prayers, and rituals to be beautiful and fascinating. Much of the Lakota religion was about the sacredness of the natural world, about our relationship not only to our Father in Heaven, but also to our Mother the Earth. I wish the religion I was raised in had a lot more to say on that subject.

Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
This book describes the adventures of two men (the authors) traveling to various exotic locations to see animals on the brink of extinction. This is not as grim as it sounds, because: 1) the focus is on the adventure of trying to see the animals, and on the interesting people the authors meet along the way, and 2) the narrator of these adventures is the late Douglas Adams, one of the funniest writers of the twentieth century and the author of the popular Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Mixed in with the humor are some very poignant thoughts on the irredeemable loss of parts of our natural heritage. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The Return of Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger
This book is the sequel to one of my favorite novels, Little Big Man. The earlier book followed the wild-west exploits of Jack Crabb, who was born white but raised by the Cheyenne, and ultimately becomes the only white survivor of Custer’s last stand. The earlier book had a colorful, but plausible, cast of characters which included gunfighters, swindlers, a gay Indian, and a reformed harlot. The newer book is not quite as interesting, and follows Jack’s career as a saloon keeper and a performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. It contains far more detail about that famous show than I would have ever thought I wanted to know, but I still found it entertaining.

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
I wanted to read this novel, the story of a man who returns to Earth after being raised since infancy by Martians, because it is on almost every list ever written of the “all-time greatest works of science fiction”. Many fans have described reading this book as a major life-changing experience. I can see how it might have been for a teenager reading it in the 1960’s, but for forty-something men in the early twenty-first century major life-change experiences are, I guess, harder to come by. Science fiction, at it’s best, is rich in thought-provoking ideas and makes you see thing in ways you’ve never considered before. This book certainly provides the ideas, and presents them most entertainingly. Perhaps because this book has been so influential, some of the bigger ideas are now commonplace in science fiction stories and will be familiar to any Star Trek fan. The others seem dated, and some I just plain disagree with. Still, I enjoyed the book, and I recommend it to any science fiction fans who may happen to see this. Just don’t take it too seriously and don’t expect it to live up to its reputation.

Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore
This book is the only real disappointment on the list so far. I love Michael Moore’s movies. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is one of the very best movies I have ever seen, and I also loved “Roger and Me” and “Bowling for Columbine”. Of course, the pranks which are so hilarious in his movies are harder to do in a book, and his satirical tone just doesn’t come across the same in print. But what is strangely missing from this book is the informativeness of his movies. I learned a lot of stuff which I hadn’t known before by watching each of his movies. I learned very little from this book. Look, I already know that George Bush is a bad person, that he cares only about his corporate pals and his own lust for power, and doesn’t give a hoot in hell about anything else. If you are going to tell me that all over again, at least support it with examples that I don’t already know all about.

Another Redwood Weekend

I camped again at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on October 1st and 2nd. I was going to write a long John Muir-ish posting about this, full of spiritual and philosophical reflections on the Redwood trees. If you have followed my blog for a while (probably only my mom has done this) then you probably know that I have a love for the old-growth groves of the Coast Redwoods which borders on idolatry.

However, for two weeks now other things on my to-do list have kept me from writing a long reflective post. So, in the interest of just getting it done, I will opt instead for something closer to the Joe Friday style. (“Just the facts.”)

I had made my reservation at Big Basin a couple of weeks before. (My first choice, the Butano State Park campground, also noted for its old-growth Redwoods, had already been booked up.) During the last week in September, I learned that my best friends in California, Frank and Nicole, could use some help moving. They need to move from their apartment to a house to accommodate a coming increase in their family size. I agreed to spend Saturday afternoon helping to move boxes for them in my Volvo wagon.

Since I now had nothing particular to do on Saturday morning, I drove over to the Pacific side of San Mateo County for some shoreline birding. A point of land at the north end of Half Moon Bay, called Pillar Point, is considered one of the best spots for birding in California. Fog limited visibility rather severely, but I still had a good time and tallied up a long list of bird species there. The most exciting find was a Wandering Tattler, a fairly uncommon bird.

That afternoon Frank and I loaded up boxes in his car and mine and made three trips from their apartment in San Mateo to their house in San Carlos. After we had gotten all the boxes moved, we had an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant in San Mateo which neither of us had tried before. Then I put a minimal load of my camping gear in my car and headed down to Big Basin. I reached the park, signed in at the campground, and pitched my tent just before nightfall.

One nice thing about camping at a great state park in the fall is that night falls fairly early, and then you have the hiking trails pretty much to yourself. After my camp site was all set up, I went hiking from about 7:00 PM to about 11:30 PM. Unlike my previous camping trip to Big Basin, this time I had two good flashlights with fresh batteries in my backpack. I was looking for owls mostly, and I found three Northern Saw-whet Owls (aren't they cute?) and a Western Screech-owl before the night was over.

The worst thing about the night at the park is that some @#$!& had apparently set up a boom box somewhere in the park and all night long was blasting the kind of noise which I hate to dignify with the name of “music”. (When I read The Lord of the Rings, I always imagine the orcs playing this kind of “music”.)

After a night of this kind of “entertainment”, it was pretty hard to get up early the next morning, so I slept in until almost seven. Then I got up and made myself a breakfast of a pancake and a couple cups of coffee. (Real coffee, not instant. What a wonderful invention for camping the French press is!) After this I hiked until about noon, seeing plenty of Winter Wrens, Acorn Woodpeckers, and Townsend’s Warblers.

In the afternoon, I drove down to the seashore, and then drove up on Highway 1, along the coasts of Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties, stopping at various spots for some shoreline birding. At the south end of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, I stopped at the Rancho del Oso Nature Center. This is a little place, and apparently put together on a tight budget, but it was very nicely done and the tiny staff was wonderfully eager to be of service. I enjoyed talking to the friendly (and pretty) naturalist until closing time and then I hit the road again.