Sun 3 Jun 2007
I’ve fallen a bit behind lately. It’s now June and Nepal was in April !! The computers in Myanmar were just too slow and expensive to bother with posting but now that I’m back in Thailand briefly (going to visit Marten in Krabi tomorrow) I’ll hopefully catch up - I’m determined to see this through to the end. I don’t yet know when the end will be. Possibly a little earlier than August. The next stop is China but try as I might, I can’t seem to shift an overwhelming desire to visit the small, rainy country of Scotland. I think I’m getting a bit travelled out - missing things like work, cooking, even having a room to tidy … not to mention guitars, you lot and The Pub. Anyway … if you could see the beautiful island I’m moaning from, you’d have less sympathy. On to the point :
I had an idea ages ago, back in Sri Lanka when Sarah and Brian were recommending ‘further reading’ to me on the subject of the British Empire. I suppose one of the things travel has taught me, by having to find out information on a daily basis, is that people will always be more useful than guidebooks or computers. Not only can people quickly tell me exactly what I want to know (and sometimes things I hadn’t even known to ask about) but I can also make a judgement as to how applicable this information will be to me based on what I can pick up about them. Dead sophisticated stuff - it’s called ‘a conversation’. Aren’t humans amazing ?
Computers are useful though. This was actually the central premise of mine and Rob’s unrealised masterplan for an internet video travel guide - it allowed you to meet the sources and guage for yourself whether you thought their information was your sort of information. As I’ve travelled about so many books have come my way from such people I’ve met along the way, not to mention the inspiration to learn more about subjects I knew nothing about. And while I have you guys - my peers - reading this stuff, you no doubt have many a book in mind for me. Tell me. Or perhaps I’ve inspired you and you’re after a book yourself. It’s so much better than browsing a bookshop apathetically looking for the inspiration to buy something - I am a man, and by definition crap at shopping.
Anyway, this whole blog thing has evolved along a path I could never really have predicted. I had the idea long ago to have a little book exchange section at the bottom of each post but it’s a bit late in the day now. I did buy ‘The Scottish Empire’ as Sarah recommended but I’ve seen slimmer volumes of the phone book and had to strap it back onto Lidka’s rucksack and send it home for practical reasons.
So a compromise of the idea is this - you lot can post ideas anywhere if there’s something you really enjoyed that I’ve jogged your memory of. I’m definately on the hunt for books about China, fact or fiction, from any perspective - though any of the countries, topics or random suggestions would be great too. Even if it takes me years to get through them !
And I’ll make this page an updateable bibliography of books that have really inspired me along the way. I imagine my Dad and Susan’s jaws will now be hittng the floor - Morgan, the boy who didn’t ‘read’ until he was 18 is now proposing something that sounds scarily like a book club. I’m not going to pretend it’s cool.
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BIBLIBLOGRAPHY
Book: How We Believe : Science, Skepticism and the Search for God by Micheal Schermer
Related Post: The Indescribable Varanasi
I bought this hoping to continue with the train of thought I was on when I met Dr Mishra who is both priest and scientist. It amazes me how little Hinduism conflicts with the modern world in India and the book is good in the sense that it is not just a scientific counter-argument to God and more of a ‘critical thinking’ approach to understanding why humans inherently tend to believe in things. Neuroscientists, psychiatrists, cosmologists, evolutionary biologists and the like all present the latest findings. Schermer is an ex-Christian and theology graduate who now contributes to Scientific American works within Caltech and MIT circles.
To me it raised a completely new story without answering it - belief in God in America has increased to over 90% in recent years. Belief in Creationism (God literally created the earth and humans in 7 days, Darwinism is to be countered) is up to over 40% along with belief in UFO’s among other completely mental things. Interestingly enough it’s largely the stubborn Creationists who don’t believe in UFO’s - crikey ! Apart from Europe, belief in God seems to be going up in alot of coutries. I read today that due to a few landmark legal cases in China where the police have been forced to stop imprisoning Christians, Christianity is on the rise. The article predicted there could be 100 million of them by 2010 - the largest Christian nation in the world. God, or something like him, is alive in the modern world.
Books: City of Djinns; A year in Delhi, The Age of Kali - both by William Dalrymple
Related posts: All India - I never got around to a Delhi post but his book was the reason I spent a whole week there.
Without a doubt the best books I have read on India. He wrote City of Djinns as a young 20-something Scot just married and moved in Delhi. It’s fantastic whether you’ve been to India or not, as he somehow manages to weave the amazing story of a city invaded and abandonned by 8 successive rulers around his own struggles as a newcomer amongst the big, dirty, crazy product of influences that remains. Almost like a detective story he rumages around among the backstreets and finds living remnants of every one of it’s incarnations. Hidden Glasgow readers take note.
Age of Kali is a sharp series of portraits of modern India giving a sense of where the country has come from and where it may be headed. Might not be the most optimistic prediction but as always, along with his vivid, colourful writing, you feel he’s being honest and objective. He has style and integrity.
Others to type up later:
Letters from Burma - Aung San Suu Kyi
Forest Life in Ceylon - K. Knighton
Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and the Margerita
Ghandi; His Life and Message to the World - Louis Fischer
Small is Beautiful - A study of Economics as if People Mattered - E F Schumaker
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Right … bugger this. I’ll add more later. Enjoy. And give me some books !
June 5th, 2007 at 1:43 am
Not pretending to be cool is what makes you cool
This coming from an avowed librarian who loves this post. I haven’t read any of the books in your list, but here’s one I’m currently reading:
Peter Morville — Ambient Findability.
I find it’s tying together a lot of threads in my life, past and present, under the aegis of “wayfinding”. The second chapter, a history of wayfinding, talks about people finding their way in the natural environment, the built environment, and the Web.
Another book I just located at work was “Wayfinding in Architecture” (Romedi Passini, 1984) which deals specifically with wayfinding in the built environment (signage, etc). You may have seen it in some of your coursework.
I’ve been turning the old murder mystery concept in my head with an eye towards “letterboxing” (look it up) as well as “geocaching” (like letterboxing with GPS systems — I’m leaning towards the former — less gadgetry). I’ve also been hiking a lot and so I’ve been reading trail guides.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Cheers Rick, sounds interesting. I will seek it out (ho, ho) at some point.
Seeing all these people in the “far flug corners of the planet” attatched to Facebook, blogs, Japanese on-line role play games (in Varanasi !!) brings it home to me that the virtual world is close to shaping our perceptions of the real world. As ever, there’s a temptation to fear it or like flashmobbing, letterboxing or your classic ‘murder mystery game concept’; have alot of creative fun with it.
On kind of a related thread - a history of everyday ‘wayfindng’ - one of the best random purchases I have ever made is a book called “An intimate history of humanity” by Theodore Zeldin.
The jacket described it as something like - the story of how humans have loved, lost and repeatedly given up all hope. Which sounds a bit grim I grant you, but really it’s a beautiful and inspiring book exploring how people felt or thought about their lives and the world in the past. He’s an Oxford fellow of history writing with all the charm of Milan Kundera.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:36 am
Have you ever tried LibraryThing?.
It’s an online tool to help people catalog and share their personal book collections. I’ve just started.
I agree that the virtual world is close to (or already is??) shaping our perceptions of the real world. Best to have creative fun with it, but try to keep it at arms length. I’m less crazy about things that tend to divorce you too much from the real world (SecondLife, virtual reality, most video games, etc). Better to have fun linking the real and virtual and using each to enhance the experience in the other.
I’ll check out that Zeldin book.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:38 am
btw, I hemmed in the third paragraph with {windbag} and {/windbag} but it didn’t show
June 18th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Hi morg,
sorry I’ve not been in touch, I’ll write an “update” shortly. For the moment, here’s my tuppence worth;
I’m trying to get hold of “An intimate history of humanity”, for Annalisa, it’s just her sort of thing and I fancy reading it again actually.
I’ve just read;
Calum’s Road by Roger Hutchinson
I had heard about it from Ferg, and I knew the story from the tune of the same name. It’s a really beautiful wee tune that I’ve been learning on the fiddle. The book itself is a bit slim and covers the material a bit laboriously, but the story itself and the charcter of Calum shines through.
it’s the story of Calum from north Raasay who after watching his community survive the clearances and years of centralised government neglect takes matters into his own hands and builds a road from Brochel to Arnish. It’s so simple but at the same time so inspiring, a man who flew in the face almost of reason, went out with his wheelbarrow in any and all weather and built a road. It’s helping me get over my own useless swithering and procrastination..
cheers
Brian
June 24th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Cheers dudes,
Aye … been waiting patiently Brian, it’s been months !
Haven’t got very far with the tin whistle (Marie’s Wedding … Dark Island - badly) but am up for a Scottish jam - up to Ben Nevis standards yet ? The story sounds right guid an’ aw.