Distant Places, Faraway Times
936804
The strenght of this self titled release is its distance from the everyday world.  The songs drift effortlessly like the soundtrack to some ethereal dream.  Being acoustically based, it's organic and light, as if blowing through the wind.  And there is a late sixties psychedelic quality to the arrangements accounting for the buzzing noises flowing in the background.

It's a difficult album to categorize.  It draws on the beauty and sounds of past decades as if it wasn't created in the present time.  I consider it similar to Panda Bear in the regard.
3923350
Jill and I went to the Galapagos Islands in 1996, something we had wanted to do for several years. In preparation, we collected information on the islands by previous travelers, and this is the first of many books we read about these isolated islands in the Pacific, roughly 600 miles west of Equador on the South American mainland.
Wittmer, her husband Heinz, and her stepson Harry originally landed on Floreana in 1932. The only other people on Floreana were two fellow German nationals: Dr. Ritter, a self-avowed vegetarian and nudist who was determined to prove his theory that a human could live double their normal span if they followed his ideas on purity of mind and spirit, and his most devoted disciple, Dora. They initially lived in a natural cave previously used by pirates in the 1800s, then built a successive series of homes. Wittmer gives birth to the first human native of Floreana, they battle wild cattle for possession of their garden, encounter the "Empress of Floreana," ad survive at least three different Equadorian governors, one of which tries to have them evicted. Their visitors include American millionaires on round-the-world cruises, the crew of cargo vessels that kindly stop to deliver and pick up mail in a sort of marine pony express, several scientists and naturalists including the famed explorer Thor Heyerdahl, and presidents of both Equador and the United States.
Wittmer's account is not so much about the islands than it is about herself and her family's struggle to survive on the island. That doesn't mean you don't come away from Floreana with an understanding of the islands--you do, but the point-of-view is that of the settler, rather than what one has come to expect of from the Galapagos (say, Darwin's scientific accounts from Voyage of the Beagle).
I've often said that travel accounts (even of the sedentary nature as this one) resemble science fiction. Both treat a human encounter with the unknown in a factual nature, one being fiction and the other factual. In Floreana, isolated from normal human civilization, Wittmer and her family experience a true alien encounter with our world and its native creatures.
4041614
It is rare to see a collection of fine maps nowdays. That is why I rely on some of the old maps.  Here is a collection of some maps of the most remote areas of the Earth, as well as the more well known lands.  And, they are nicely done with much detail such as the "Asia Minor" map on pages 46 and 47.  Try to find a map like it and you will search forever.
3673700
Some very interesting insights into culture and outlooks of some Eastern European areas not as well trod.

A quick read, and some interesting travels
4338476
Peter Dekom's new book, NEXT, sheds daylight about the ever widening breach in our fundamental perspective and experience of time. The 20th century and early 21st, were eras when the past held more weight and attention than the future; the present stood still long enough to be examined and debated.  NEXT reminds us that the present is ever more integrated into the unrelenting tsunamic disruption of future blowback. Dekom's hip shooting prose is a panoptic treat.
3417572
The writer creates characters who are well-developed and believable, and the book is evocative of a far-away time and place.  I cared what happens to them.  But the pace is somewhat slow and it is a little episodic.  I'm certainly hoping for other books by this first-time novelist.
2601678
such nice and quiet books about a place far far away, neat customs and lore of africa added into wandering tales that seem more about the tellers than about whatever course of action they may be taking. Very Zen.
242045
The world, it seems, is replete with images of the American West. In the age of film and television you don't have to have been born in the United States to recognise the iconography of long, stretched shadows from sunsets slipping through the buttes and prairieland of Montana or Wyoming or Utah. The book Bad Land by British-born Jonathan Raban, therefore presents nothing new, until, as it does, it scratches at a little of that image, through the dry high-plains dirt and grime to reveal the people behind the landscape; the flesh and lives and stories of individuals who endured the cold, the wind, the loneliness. Raban's exquisite descriptions of the Montana terrane of the late 1800s reflect the almost fruitless attempts of immigrants to tame those wilds. Having lived and worked in Montana I found the portrayal of this region disturbing; not because of its inaccuracies (they fit almost exactly with my memories) but with how little the landscape was really changed by those honyockers (homesteaders).
It is evident that the book was not just researched, it has been lived. Raban over many years travelled from his home in Seattle, Washington to those sand washed prairie beaches of central and eastern Montana. One feels his ghost intermingling with the spirits of last century as he slips in and out of roofless, sundried timber cabins set in the tall, mostly snake filled grasses of abandoned ranches. If there is fault in this book, it is that it sometimes slips too far into the minutiae of the lost lives of people, who we somehow feel, we never or could never have known; these are people so unlike most of us - willing to rush headlong into something we can not fathom. We travel with Raban not only eastward from Seattle but backward in time to view the west through such players as Evelyn Cameron and her amateur, but surprisingly surreal, photographs of the infant west. We walk in the shoes of the displaced and lonely; immigrants who were wooed by flashy railroad pamphlets that were spread all over Europe like so many modern day get-rich schemes. Some things, like the landscape, seem never to change.

Ultimately, bad land is a book about people. And the details of their lives are bought to life by Raban. Perhaps it takes a non-American to see a specialness in seemingly dreary, worn and weather-beaten people and land. For those wanting to know what the American West was and is now like, this book will be more than just a pleasurable read, it will beckon you to travel there and seek yourself.
1177323
Find your comfort zone in the most peculiar place.
2061520
The stories in this collection largely take place in two settings: Houston and Montana. Since Bass was born and raised near Houston but now lives in Montana' Yaak Valley, that's not too much of a surprise. The themes often begin with questions of youth or aging, and the youthful stories are often set in Texas. However, we do meet one female character in both youth and old age, in both cases in a place much like western Montana (though not identified as such). Again, it's not surprising that an author of a certain age would be interested in playing with themes from his own youth in Texas and his middle age - - and coming senior years - - in Montana.

All the characters and stories connect closely to the land. Around Houston, this land is often poisoned, sterile, overworked. In Montana, that's never true. In Texas, Bass also juxtaposes a gritty realism and bleak surroundings with elements of the surreal, a kind of Texan magical realism. That's doesn't seem necessary in Montana, where the characters are much better grounded in the land and in themselves.

Thus, intertwined with youth and age are different environmental landscapes, the freshness of Montana and the sterility of Texas. Even when the title story focuses on a character confronting death in Montana, the story is full of life, while sexual coming-of-age in Texas is bleak and loveless. Altogether a remarkable collection.
1948552
This book was just a little too close to home. As I was reading it I found myself worrying for my small children. The setting is present day, and so it may some day become a little dated, but it was a very enjoyable read. I'd recommend it if you like a good 'what if' and if you enjoy digging around in the uncomfortable parts of your mind.
2964393
I'm kind of a sucker for time-travel stories (what happens if you go back and change something, etc.) but I'm afraid much of this anthology really doesn't work for me. _Asimov's Science Fiction,_ one of the few surviving pulps, has been around since 1977 and attempted, in its earlier years, to hew to a higher literary standard than its competitors. This is not a bad thing, but in terms of the time-travel theme, it means a tendency to abstract, "experimental" writing rather than puzzle-adventure or problem-solving stories.

Of the eleven stories included (all originally published 1976-86), the best is the often-reprinted "Sailing to Byzantium" by Robert Silverberg, in which a man of our own time (maybe) travels somewhat listlessly in the far future from one urban simulacrum to another in the company of a never-aging woman. It's a lovely piece of writing and there's some great imagery, but it isn't "time travel." "Air Raid" by John Varley was the basis of his novel _Millennium,_ and while it actually does involve time travel, it's always struck me as very depressing. "The Small Stones of Tu Fu" is just Brian Aldiss being poetic without really saying very much. Ian Watson is a good writer, usually, but "Ghost Lecturer," about resurrecting medieval and ancient scientists and the humorous results, just doesn't work. I like Lew Shiner (one of several Texans in this volume) and "Twilight Time" is a pretty good story about a young man from an unpleasant future searching for personal meaning in his own past. Steve Utley's "Time and Hagakure," on the other hand, is rather confused and isn't really time travel, either. "The Pure Product," by John Kessel, is a wild tale about an narcissistic nihilist; interesting but kind of out of control. Lucius Shepard's "Aymara" reminded me in tone of his _Life During Wartime._

And that's about it. This is one of those collections about which the best one can say is "meh."
2554796
A cross cultural, religious, and political restrictions love story takes place in a very hostile time. This plot is not far fetch from reality and actually occurs even today, despite the spirits of resentments.
Good book to read and a way to learn some history on a place that many think they know.
4939715
The migration of populations, across oceans, frontiers, economic and political divides, has been a prominent human behavior since modern man first emerged from Africa, and has continued to the present day. This compact volume explores particularly the migrations in and out of Europe since 1500, and the political, cultural, and economic aspects of these vast population movements. Much of this restless movement represented the flow of labor from regions with too many people to regions where labor was desperately needed. In recent times these dynamics have been counter-balanced by political attempts to control or restrain migration, or to address it, ineffectively, as a transient phenomenon.

Some of the subjects addressed include the migrations of 1500-1800 (out of Europe), the accelerated pace of migration from 1800 to 1913, and the reverse migrations back into Europe from 1914 to 2010. The author attempts to put these movements of populations into a context of globalization and a world economy, supplying people where they are needed in a global economic system.

Author Massimo Livi-Bacci writes in a dense, scholarly style, employing vast arrays of facts and statistics to illustrate his points. It makes for somewhat difficult reading. If you're interested in the movement of peoples around the world in the setting of a global marketplace, you will find this book fascinating. I recommend it, but it's not for everyone. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.
3794255
The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Anil Ananthaswamy is not quite what it seems.

While the title promises a look at the bleeding edge of physics and cosmology, this book in actuality has a broader canvas.  Anathaswamy, a journalist at the New Scientist, focuses on the places he goes and the people he meets on his journey to understand the experiments, equipment and the people associated with them.

High energy physics requires special conditions to have their detectors work. If you want to detect WIMPs, look for primordial antimatter, and try and find Higgs Bosons, you need special equipment, which just can't be built anywhere. In this book, Ananthaswamy chronicles his journeys to these often remote locations and talks with the people there.  In the midst of this, the book is filled out (some might say padded) with a large number of digressions.  In detailing his trip to Antarctica, for example, Ananthaswamy feels compelled to discuss the race to reach the South Pole first by Shackleton and Scott. It really has little to do with the physics experiments going on at Antarctica, and while its a fascinating bit of history, it is out of place as far as the title of the book is concerned.

This portion, and almost all of the other portions of the book read like travelogue, as Ananthaswamy details the effort he has to take in order to get to some of the more remote locations where the physics experiments are taking place, such as Lake Baikal, the Chilean Desert, South Africa, and the Soudan Underground Mine in Minnesota. Those far more interested in the physics are going to be annoyed by these portions of the book.  For myself, I liked these digressions, and accepted them as part of the matrix of the book. I was fascinated by, for example, his journey to Lake Baikal. I didn't know much about the lake, and in reading this book I learned as much, if not more about the lake than about the neutrino detector submerged there.

It's a relatively conversational tone of a book, with no equations and not a lot of hard science. It's well edited and a very easy read. I think that the target audience for this book are those who have taken physics in high school, maybe some general science in College, but do not generally have a strong science background. My mother is has no special science background. and no post-secondary education I think she would be able to understand and enjoy this book.

Conversely, those who have physics degrees, and have a stake in the "cage match" that is going on between String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity should stay far away from this book. Ananthaswamy does not "discuss the controversy", to coin a phrase. While the information on the experiments might be interesting to physics experts, the non physics portions of the book will probably not be to their taste.

If you are looking for a book on the level of Lee Smolin or Brian Greene, no matter which camp you support, then this book is definitely not your cup of tea and you probably will be frankly bored by large portions of this slim volume.  If your interest is more broad, and your commitment to controversies in the field are not intense, then this relatively painless look at the field, and more especially, the people and places associated with high energy physics is entertaining and informative, even if (and for me especially because) it does contain a wide ranging view of the people and the places the physics takes place.
4254358
A Meeting of Clans is the story of two groups of pre-historic wanderers (clans) who discover they are not the only people in Southern Mexico 14,000 years ago, and what happens when they discover each other.

As I read the book, there were a number of isms that came to my mind, including realism, mysticism, and empiricism.  First and foremost, the book tries to give a realistic picture of life 14,000 years ago.  Today, we have to dodge traffic and avoid our boss when he/she is in a bad mood.  The individuals in this book had to dodge stampeding mastodons and avoid hungry saber-toothed tigers.  The world has changed, just a bit, and Rollins does a great job in describing the nature of those differences.  But she does so in a way that also reveals some significant parallels to modern-day life  a drive to understand and control, a need to belong, a drive to explore.

The book is also sprinkled with magic and mysticism.  In some cases, the myths are well-known; in others, they are less common but with a familiar feel.  And they add a spice to the story.  The author is giving us a view into the minds of these peoples and the ways they perceived the world.  (Unless, of course, you believe these events really happened as described.)

But the ism that captured my thoughts in A Meeting of Clans is empiricism, e.g., the role of systematic observation in the formation of ideas.  It is a matter of academic debate exactly what science and medicine the peoples of the Ice Age would have mastered  even the possibility that humans inhabited this region 14,000 years ago is not known with certainty.  But Rollins weaves an interesting story around clans with considerable skills ranging from medicine and dentistry to astronomy.  Would people of this era have these skills?  Or would they still be so focused on meeting their biological and safety needs that no one could devote the time needed to understand the movement of the stars?  Would someone with a broken leg be nursed back to health or would they be abandoned because they put too great a strain on the group?

Finally, as this book is part of a series, Ill mention that this novel is self-contained and so, you could read it without reading the previous books.  However, as someone who read one of the two previous books, I can say that I felt much more comfortable with the clan that I knew from the previous reading compared to the peoples that were new to me.  The familiarity gets you into the story more quickly.

A book such as this in the magical realism genre may not be everyones cup of tea, but if its yours (or you want to dip your toe into this literary style), I can recommend A Meeting of Clans as a well-written and engrossing example.
4651249
The range and magnification is not very large but enough for an amatur to view images about half a kilometer away.