What We're Reading, pt. II

[Jerkass]

Ok, I'm not reading them yet, but I will be, shortly.

I've developed some kind of fascination with historical expeditionary accounts recently...maybe as a quiet rebellion against a life spent chained to a desk, a house, a wife, and a baby. Er...anyway...I don't suppose we have anyone else around here with that sort of interest?

In any case, I've recently picked up some very nice books (all first editions) at the antique bookseller that helpfully opened up the street about a year ago. Off the top of my head, they are:

*South Pole, Amundsen
*The First Crossing of Greenland, Nansen
*The Voyage of the Chelyuskin (Russian Arctic scientific expedition gone wrong, apparently)
*With Star and Crescent, Locher

The last one seems very interesting--the account of a French emissary who travelled with a caravan from Bombay across the Middle East to Constantinople to buy Arabian horses for Napoleon III. Apparently, with recent interest in that part of the world--and with this book being one of the few ever to deal with some of the peoples and lands crossed by the caravan (some of which have changed very little since the book was written)--the book is very much in demand and would fetch a handsome sum from the right buyer, according to one London bookseller I've spoken to.

So...I'll be reading one of those shortly.

[amner]

Chelyuskin's Voyage sounds interesting, just found this:

One of the most famous "official" Soviet maritime disasters is the loss of the icebreaker Chelyuskin in February 1934 and the daring rescue of its crew. The ship was crushed by ice fields in the Chukotsk Sea (at the far eastern tip of Siberia), and 104 people on the ship had to abandon the sinking vessel and seek refuge on the ice field. Under severe conditions, half a dozen Soviet pilots made repeated flights to the site and over a period of days picked up all the survivors. This drama was covered live by radio. The pilots became the first in the USSR to be honored with the supreme award of the country, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. And the Soviets did it all themselves; a plan to save time by flying pilots to Alaska and buying rescue planes there was rejected as politically unacceptable. If the stranded Chelyuskin survivors couldn't be rescued by Russians, they were not going to be rescued at all.

And, as you might expect, stamps, which tell the tale graphically enough:
http://russian-stamps.dialog-it.ru/stpic/1984/5376_fdc.jpg
http://russian-stamps.dialog-it.ru/stpic/1984/5377_fdc.jpg
http://russian-stamps.dialog-it.ru/stpic/1984/5378_fdc.jpg
Looks like it could be a fascinating read.
.

[Jerkass]

Nice work on finding those stamps, mate.

I actually had found the book on one trip to the booksellers but didn't buy it, then went back home to do a little research on it. It looks like you found a little more information than I did, but it did look like it would be fascinating. Apparently the crew of the ship (who do the writing, along with the rescue pilots) give a very revealing insight into the prevailing (and still relatively young) communist/revolutionary zeal of the times.

All right, that's it--I'll read that one first.

Check back with me in about eighteen months, when I will give you a report on the first two chapters.

[Colyngbourne]

8) Coming out of the blank tank that was two days away in rural, snowy solitary (sans spouse, sans enfants) - I have conquered the beast that was The Idiot (fantastic book but mind-bogglingly headache-inducing), and the interim frivolities of Mr. Golightly's Holiday (a tad obvious in places but amusing and well-handled), a re-read of Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code (too good to explain) and finally the Palimpsestuous Robinson Crusoe (verdict on that on Feb 1st). My eyes are still aching from the Dostoevesky but at least now I have a serious chance of getting down to reading Middlesex at last.

[Colyngbourne]

After Mr. Self's pimping of wotsit McGrath over on the Review thread, I've just bought Asylum and also Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines (by which I've been tempted for a year or so - mostly because of the old-fashioned Biggles-like illustration on the front cover). I'm a couple of chapters in and it's great early teens stuff, well conceived with no naff hero/heroine to screw things up.