Boat Docking

Bookstore - Charles' Choices

-a small selection of other, non-nautical books which Charles has enjoyed.

-on this page:

• The Books
  • Outposts, by Simon Winchester
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
  • The World According to Garp, by John Irving
  • Love in a Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • The Riders, by Tim Winton
  • Brother Cadfael's Penance, by Ellis Peters
  • Nobody's Fool, by Richard Russo
  • The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx
  • Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns
  • Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling
  • Igloovik, by Thomas G. Low (my father)
  • Kabloona, by Gontran de Poncins
  • In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson
  • Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch
  • Photography Books
  • Return to the Boat Docking Bookstore
• Excerpts
  • Kabloona
  • Voyaging Under Power
  • Brother Cadfael's Penance
  • The Shipping News
  • Cold Sassy Tree
  • In a Sunburned Country

Charles’ Choices

Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire

by Simon Winchester

I found this book simply fascinating. It illustrates facets of what remains of the British colonies of which I had no idea, and raises some serious questions about how seriously Britain takes those ongoing responsibilities. It also, as often happens, raises some interesting questions about the author; his motivation for taking on this extraordinary project, and the reasons for his choices of means to do so, remain largely unanswered. So: it's well-written, informative, interesting to the point of intriguing, and with more than a hint of reprimand and social conscience.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

Among the many reactions readers have had to this book, indifference does not number. The little fellow with the perpeptually shouting, squeaky voice is an instrument of God - isn't he? Could he or we be deluded? More to the point, and harder to answer, is what does this book tell us about John Irving, the author? Is he a deeply religious man or a devastatingly sarcastic existentialist? Regardless, Owen Meany's story is a rolicking, jarring, off-beat romp about an unusual boy growing into an unusual man, all narrated by his faithful dyslexic friend. Full of intriguing, perplexing, stimulating symbolism, themes and imagery (all things which tortured us in high school but are used here to great effect), the impact that A Prayer for Owen Meany will have on you is hard to predict - but you won't be indifferent!

The World According to Garp

by John Irving

Garp is Everyman, and yet there is no one like him. He is completely innocent, and yet guilty of the basest impulses a man can experience - and act upon. We all wish we could be like him, and we're glad we're not. He's universally likeable, so much so that those that hate him do so with a deep, smoldering, passionate abhorence. His single-minded, single mother meets the world on her own terms, and implicitly teaches Garp to do the same, in ways she probably couldn't have predicted and wouldn't have wanted. Again, John Irving sees the same world that we do, shows us things about it we never knew were there, and probably leaves a little Garp in every reader.

Love in a Time of Cholera

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This charming story starts out seeming to be about Dr. Urbino and his lovely wife Fermina - and then enters Florentino, with whom Fermina had a madly obsessive but long-distance romance when they were teenagers. All set long ago in an unspecified South American country, at a time when things like cholera could give life and love more immediacy, we trace the lifelong course of the love of two men for the same woman. It is not immediately clear if the commitments and sacrifices the three of them make are noble expressions of our loftiest ideals, or silly infatuations that just don't have the sense to get old and grow up. The translation from the Spanish is excellently transparent. The ending is controversial - some people like it and some, like me, find it vaguely unsatisfying, but the development of the story is well worth the read, regardless.

The Riders

by Tim Winton

Scully, on the verge of a new phase in the life of his cherished family, suddenly and unexpectedly finds that things aren't quite the way they had seemed. He sets out on a compulsive, exhausting quest to find that which he has lost - or, perhaps, just temporarily misplaced - dragging his young daughter, Billie, all over Europe on what she views as a quixotic mission. The symbolism of the Riders is much clearer than their actual nature and purpose, and probably that's part of the parallel. Our protagonist, though possessed of great intelligence, ability and energy, still has a lot to learn. The Riders is a good, self-propelling, aggressively told story. I could call it a thinking person's light read.

Brother Cadfael's Penance

by Ellis Peters

This must be the last of the Ellis Peters series about the ancient monk, Brother Cadfael. After such an illustrious career as a healer and a medieval crime sleuth, what can the aging Cadfael have done to qualify him for penance? Conflicting loyalties take him far from his abbey, and far from his vows of obedience to his Abbott, to where the very history of the English monarchy falls under the influence, sometimes barely perceptible, of his gentle wisdom. Somehow, the hundreds and hundreds of years that separate the Cadfael stories from our present lives make them seem to me just a little bit sad, perhaps somewhat irrelevant, even though there is no reason for modern day fictional characters to seem more real. Particularly poignant is this excerpt from Brother Cadfael's Penance, in light of the author's own advanced age, and of her demise not long after finishing writing this novel.

Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

Sully seems to be one of those smart people who live stupid lives. His clever, witty wise-cracking hasn't done him much good in a material sense. He's getting up there now, approaching old age, but not yet at all ready to be put out to pasture. He's still the same old guy, living in the same old poor village with the same old assembly of friends and acquaintances whose lives are so humble as to approach the grotesque. And then, things start to happen, and Sully finds he still has a few things to learn, and still has the smarts to learn them. Nobody's Fool, although a story about little people and their small lives and limited visions, makes us care about Sully, and about those around him. If ever there were an underdog who didn't even know he was one, it's this man. It's a very pleasant read; be prepared to laugh out loud.

The Shipping News

by E. Annie Proulx

This is another anti-hero book. (I'm beginning to see a patten here, and I worry about what it means!) Quoyle is a big, dumb, unassertive fellow (at first), who you just can't not root for. How such a lunk provides the reader with so much enjoyment and insight testifies to the skill of a most talented author. When Quoyle's life falls apart, and he seems about to do the same, up pops his aged aunt, taking him under her own mysteriously damaged wing, her own neediness concealed by a deep strength of character. Auntie carts Quoyle and his two children off to their ancestral home in Newfoundland, where his unwitting journey of self-discovery gradually reveals to him that his life indeed does matter. It's a very pleasant and completely engrossing read. See an excerpt.

Cold Sassy Tree

by Olive Ann Burns

Away down in Cold Sassy, Georgia, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy is working out all of the little details about how life works, in his own, quiet way, surrounded by people who have, for the most part, very little insight into how perspicacious and discerning he is. (Lucky for them!) He is greatly influenced by the imposing presence of his grandfather, E. Rucker Blakeslee, who thinks Will is going to take over the family store. (He isn't.) Can Will's attraction to his classmate, Lightfoot, cross the deep chasm of class boundaries? What does Will think when his grandfather, only three weeks a widower, marries Love Simpson? Who is she, anyway, and where did she come from? Does she have a secret? (Yes.) Can an aged, female author capture the essence of a red-blooded teenage boy? (Yes.) Olive Ann Burns, wrote this, her first book, in her later years, after falling ill, and produced a masterpiece. See an excerpt.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

by J. K. Rowling

So much has been said about the Harry Potter series of books, describing the many adventures which befall the boy who discovers he's a wizard and starts attending wizard school (Hogwart's), that I hardly know what to add. Yes, the marketers call these children's books, but of all the material my progeny have brought home over the years, the books that have engrossed them the most (and millions of others), and the ones they most dearly wanted me to read, were the Harry Potter books. Once I started in, to see what all the fuss was about, there was no turning back! Do I worry about them scaring younger children? Yes I do, except that the children I have known who are old enough to read the books for themselves have seemed to cope just fine. Do I share the concerns that some have expressed about the evils of promoting witchcraft? Not one bit. These stories are just well-told, extraordinarily imaginative, very human tales, which clearly embody positive traits like courage, resilience, honesty, work, play, rest, fortitude, humour, and so forth. The many tragedies which the author has chosen to include in the plots of the four (so far) books have raised some controversy, but balance against many triumphs, and that's part of how she propels the reader's interest, which will not waver as you devour Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
The second through fourth books just get better and better:
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Igloovik

by Thomas G. Low

Igloovik is the fictional story of an Inuit boy, growing up in the Arctic at a time when the influence of the white man was just beginning to be felt. The author, Tom Low, is the father of Charles Low, the owner and operator of this, the Boat Docking web site. Mr. Low entertained successive waves of raptly attentive grandchildren with colourful inventions of plot and character, and one of his impromptu serializations was that of Igloovik. Later, in retirement, it became apparent that he had better write these stories down, and thus was born this book. (There is talk of a sequel, and of an unrelated series ["Old Man Moe"], both of which are anticipated with bated breath.) Igloovik, of course, is learning all the things a proper Inuk must know - but he has some extra skills which turn out to be as much a surprise to him as to anyone else, and which change his life drastically in ways no one could have foreseen. There are also sub-plots relating to his beautiful sister, Sheena, and to the first white people to visit Igloovik's village, the Wagoners, but rest assured that nothing happens in isolation, and that all of these people's activities and interactions produce ripples which eventually span vast empires. You may buy the book here (click on the title, above), or read more about it at the Igloovik web site.

Kabloona

by Gontran de Poncins (with Lewis Galantière)

Kabloona (meaning "white man") describes de Poncins' year-long 1938-39 trek to the nethermost regions of Canada's north, places so remote that only a handful of kabloonas had ever visited there before. He documented the now-extinct "pre-contact" way of life of the Inuit, and more importantly, he did this from the "Inside," as he calls it, spending months with all "Outside" appurtenances discarded (except notebook and camera). He made long dogsled trips lasting weeks at a time, wore native clothing, slept in communal igloos (the details of which you couldn't possibly anticipate), ate raw seal and rotten fish (a much-savoured delicacy!), and survived extended temperatures below -40 degrees.

De Poncins writes from the clearly personal perspective of his own journey of self-discovery. The technical details of Inuit life remain secondary in importance, to him, to the mind and soul of the people, and he devotes his attention and analysis to them. He records without reservation what he considers the people's strengths and weaknesses, resulting in a stronger work for its frankness, however lacking in modern-day political correctness. He experiences a strong affection for the Inuit (formerly erroneously called "Eskimos," but that's another story), and then finally departs, with great sadness, from a land he realizes belongs not to him, and in which he cannot stay.

He finds the influence on the Inuit of Western "civilization" distinctly negative, but makes no comment about the impact of his own presence there. De Gontran himself remains an enigma, even though ultimately he wrote about himself (otherwise he would have called the book "Inuit"). In some way, this French aristocrat belonged to another time, if not to another world. Apparently, the closest he came to finding it was among the Inuit.

Chosen by the Book of the Month Club in 1941, Kabloona still reads very well, and provides unique insights into one of the last truly aboriginal societies on the planet. Read an excerpt.

In a Sunburned Country

by Bill Bryson

Bryson, an American traveller and writer, clearly loves Australia and finds it completely enamouring and captivating. That doesn't mean that he views it uncritically, or spares it his sardonic humour where he finds puzzling inconsistencies or blind spots - and he finds many! - but he describes the people, the land, the country and its history, with sympathy and usually with admiration.

The book doesn't always seem quite to know what it's about; he chronicles several of his trips to Australia, often including great swaths of background detail about geology, sociology, politics, among many other topics which catch his fancy, but then will spend pages describing an evening spent drinking in a bar with friends (much of which he then can't remember), and the ensuing hangover the next day. There's a slight stream-of-consciousness air to the book, and its tone and content sometimes change somewhat abruptly and jarringly. Also, his best style seems to me to be casual and conversational. His occasional forays into more lyrical passages just don't quite work.

However, having aired those minor grievances, I recommend this book. Not only is it a pleasant read, it is very interesting and informative. I am quite sure that Bryson knows more about Australia - or at least, more facts about Australia - than most Australians. I wondered how Australians view the book until an Australian told me that they love it. Read an excerpt.

Love You Forever

by Robert Munsch

Robert Munsch's extraordinary career as a children's story-teller culminates, for me, in this book. I still can't read it out loud without exhibiting emotion, a fact of which I'm very proud. That Munsch can do this while telling such a charmingly simple story testifies to his skill.

A mother and her son have all of the joys and problems inherent in that relationship - during the daytime. But in the evenings, when he's asleep, she sings him her Love You Forever song, while holding him in her arms - and continues doing so after he's all grown up and has moved out of the house! To the few people with whom this book hasn't resonated, I say this: it's for children (but adults love it); it's a fantasy; it's a story about the primeval force of family bonds, written - nay told (because Munsch always field tests his stories extensively before publishing them) - for those whose imaginations are not bound by physical reality or societal custom.

And then there's the ending (which I won't describe). Your children will love this book, and adults had better have a handkerchief handy. Here's the simple song:

I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living
My baby you'll be.

The New 35Mm Photographer's Handbook

by John Garrett and Julian Calder

The New 35Mm Photographer's Handbook: Everything You Need to Get the Most Out of Your Camera. This is the first book I read about photography when I got my first SLR camera, and it still holds up very well. The authors are very experienced, professional photographers, who have cut through the arcana and laid out the basics of good photography in a very readable and practical format. It's also well-illustrated.

Photographing the World Around You

by Freeman Patterson

I recommend this, and other Freeman Patterson books, wholeheartedly. You'll find barely any mention of f-stops or shutter speeds - it's all composition. (It's always been only composition!) But composition is where we win or lose, in photography, and Freeman is i) an excellent photographer with ii) a finely-honed ability and passion for teaching. His combination of information and inspiration has enchanted me (I've attended seminars of his twice), and I'm not easily enchanted!

National Geographic Photography Field Guide

by Peter K. Burian and Robert Caputo

The National Geographic Photography Field Guide: Secrets to Making Great Pictures is a classic of essential photography concepts. I have a much earlier edition, but find it invaluable - a primer for just about any imaginable photographic situation. The editors say this:

Burian and Caputo share the secrets to making great photographs in this engaging and informative guide.

• Making photographs of people, landscapes, and wildlife
• How-to tips from ten of National Geographic's top photographers
• Charts for selecting the right film, filter, and exposure
• Cameras, lenses, and maintenance
• Using existing light and flash
• Tips on effective composition
• Computers and photography
• Travel tips and gear
• Photography Web sites

Synopsis - A comprehensive guide to field photography from respected experts offers advice to both beginners and professionals alike on how to create striking and original works, including step-by-step instructions on composition, facts on the latest equipment, secret techniques, and much more.

---

Amazon.com also stocks a wide selection of other Photography How-To Books.

And the reason this section is here, among all of these novels, is that this was a convenient place to put this as an adjunct to my essay for beginning photographers, Photography Basics.

Click here to see other top books at Amazon.com.

Also visit the Boat Docking Bookstore.

Excerpts

Kabloona

- from Kabloona

But this sort of thing happens, which belongs only to Eskimo life. He and I see at the same moment that the dogs' traces have become entangled. With one impulse both move to stop the sled. He on his side jumps down and, clinging to the sled, brakes it by dragging his heels in the snow. Simultaneously, I have flung the sled anchor overboard into the snow and am clinging to the chain with all my might. The sled stops, the Eskimo goes forward and puts a dog back in its place; and at the moment when he straightens up, I haul in the anchor, the sled glides smoothly forward, the Eskimo drops down on it as it comes abreast of him, and once again we sit side by side without a word. Time passes and Ohohunuak turns his head towards me. I see a serious look in his face. Squall forward on the left. We stare, he nods, and from that bobbing of his head I know that the squall will not hit us. Still without a word we go on.

Together we spend hours like this, reading in the great Book of Silence. He learnt its lessons in childhood; I have come from afar to spell them out with extreme difficulty. They have taught me, above all, to discard things -- haste, worry, rebelliousness, selfishness. It has taken me a year to learn these lessons, and I see suddenly that my year in the north has not been, as I thought it, a year of conquest of the elements, but of conquest of myself. And because of the peculiarity of my conquest, the Arctic is for me no longer a source of suffering but of joy. It is a crucible in which, slowly and patiently, the dross in my nature has to some extent been melted away. In this Arctic I have found my peace, the peace I was never able to find Outside. Except one were a monk, or such extraordinary circumstances as war and danger intervened, there was no way one could find this peace Outside, this sense of the brotherhood of man. Yet this sense the Arctic had given me simply and directly. That which, elsewhere, would demand a sublime degree of abnegation, had been effected here by simple necessity. How was I going to say this sort of thing to the men of my soft world, who sat in offices during the day and played bridge at night?

Kabloona

Voyaging under Power

- from Voyaging under Power

Capt. Beebe's wife, Linford, contributes a chapter to Voyaging Under Power, titled "The Long-Range Galley". Its conclusion is a beautiful section, abruptly and unexpectedly changing topic, called "Landfall":

For the long-distance voyager, there is a special magic to a landfall: not just excitement, more like enchantment, as a vision dissolves into focus and becomes reality. Even men who have worked with stars and horizons for many years acclaim the wonder of this moment.

For two or three weeks you have been at sea, crew settled into jobs, ocean vast around you, high sky above, living the arts and work of the sailor. Then at some unlikely moment someone shouts, "Land ho!"

At once, the crew assembles on deck, first to find the tiny speck on the distant horizon, then to identify it indisputably as land, finally to watch it grow. Abruptly, your are terrestrial creatures again, eager to see your native medium, wondering about all the mysteries of the land ahead.

Awed, you see the speck swell into a mountain, stare harder as the mountain takes shape and throws out a headland, takes on a fringe of palms, acquires a coral necklace of crashing waves, and finally reveals a village - boats, people, cars, houses, shops....

At last, a few hours after the speck appeared, your little ship passes through a gap in the reef, curves across the harbor toward the town, slows as it nears the seawall, and then - as always and remarkably - through the smiles of welcome, several pairs of willing hands reach for your lines and make you fast to the land....

Tomorrow you will explore the busy streets; hear the chatter; soak up the color; be startled by noise and surprised by scurry; discover the tang, aroma, fragrance, and spice of a native market. But for the rest of today, it is enough to sit and watch and marvel at being back on land again.

Voyaging Under Power (Boat Docking Bookstore page)

Brother Cadfael's Penance

- from Brother Cadfael's Penance

He had never before been quite so acutely aware of the particular quality and function of November, its ripeness and its hushed sadness. The year proceeds not in a straight line through the seasons, but in a circle that brings the world and man back to the dimness and mystery in which both began, and out of which a new seed-time and a new generation are about to begin. Old men, thought Cadfael, believe in that new beginning, but experience only the ending. It may be that God is reminding me that I am approaching my November. Well, why regret it? November has beauty, has seen the harvest into the barns, even laid by next year's seed. No need to fret about not being allowed to stay and sow it, someone else will do that. So go contentedly into the earth with the moist, gentle, skeletal leaves, worn to cobweb fragility, like the skins of very old men, that bruise and stain at the mere brushing of the breeze, and flower into brown blotches as the leaves into rotting gold. The colours of late autumn are the colours of the sunset: the farewell of the year and the farewell of the day. And of the life of man? Well, if it ends in a flourish of gold, that is no bad ending.

Brother Cadfael's Penance

The Shipping News

- from The Shipping News

Quoyle is up on the roof, fixing his old house, when he hears his young daughter’s voice:

“Hi, Daddy.”

He heard Bunny's voice, glanced toward the ground, but the glance stopped high. She stood on one of the rungs above the roof level, straining to put her foot on the roof. She held the hammer with the red-striped neck. Quoyle saw in a tiny vivid window that Bunny was going to put her foot on the roof, was going to step forward onto the edge of the steep pitch as though on a level path, was going to fall, to pinwheel shrieking to the rock.

“I'm going to help you.” Her foot reached for the roof.

“Oh, little child”, breathed Quoyle. “Wait there.” His voice was low but passionately urgent. “Don't move. Wait there for me. I'm coming to get you. Hold on tight. Don't come on the roof. Let me get you.” The mesmerizing voice, the father fixing his child in place with his starting eyes, inching down the evil slope on the wrong side of everything, then grasping the child's arm, her hammer falling away, he saying “Don't move, don't move, don't move,” hearing the painted hammer clatter on the rock below. And Quoyle, safe on the rungs, Bunny pinned between his chest and the ladder.

“You're squashing me!”

Quoyle went down with trembling legs, one hand on the rungs, his left arm folded around his daughter's waist. The ladder shook with his shaking. He could not believe she hadn't fallen, for in two or three seconds he had lived her squalling death over and over, reached out time after time to grip empty air.

The Shipping News

Cold Sassy Tree

- from Cold Sassy Tree

Grandpa has an earnest talk with his grandson, who has just narrowly escaped death on a train trestle:

Grandpa ... poked me in the ribs and said, "By George, gittin' ran over by a train must a-been some experience!" He acted like it was something to remember instead of something to forget.

With the way he took it so casual, and the relief of getting it told, I felt like I'd been stuck back together. But one thing worried me. "Grandpa, you think I'm alive tonight cause it was God's will?"

"Naw, you livin' cause you had the good sense to fall down 'twixt them tracks."

"Maybe God gave me the idea."

"You can believe thet, son, if'n you think it was God's idea for you to be upon thet there trestle in the first place. What God give you was a brain. Hit's His will for you to use it - p'tickler when a train's comin'."

Resting my chin in my hand, I thought about that while Grandpa finished up his pie. I felt awful tired. "Sir, do you think it was God's will for Bluford Jackson to get lockjaw and die?"

Grandpa spoke kindly. "The Lord don't make firecrackers, son. Hit's jest too bad pore Blu didn't be more careful when he was shootin'm off."

"You don't think God wills any of the things that happen to us?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows?"

"Mama and Papa think He does."

Grandpa licked some meringue off his fork while he pondered. Finally he said, "Life bullies us, son, but God don't. He had good reasons for fixin' it where if'n you git sick or too hurt to live, why you can die, same as a sick chicken. I've knowed a few really sick chickens to git well, and lot a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin cept in a coffin. Still and all, common sense tells you this much: everwhat makes a wheel run over a track will make it run over a boy if'n he's in the way. If'n you'd a-got kilt, it'd mean you jest didn't move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog. You think God favors the dog over the rabbit, son?"

I shook my head.

"I don't neither. When it comes to prayin', we got it all over the other animals, but we aint' no different when it comes to livin' and dyin'. If'n you give God the credit when somebody don't die, you go'n blame Him when they do die? Call it His will? Ever noticed we git well all the time and don't die but once't? Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if'n we can. Hit ain't never His will for us to die - cept in the big sense. In the sense He was smart enough not to make life eternal on this here earth, with people and bees and elephants and dogs piled up in squirmin' mounds like Loma's dang cats tryin' to keep warm in the winter-time. Does all this make any sense, Will Tweedy?"

"Yessir, Grandpa." I wanted to go lay down. But I also wanted some more answers. "Grandpa, uh, why you think Jesus said ast the Lord for anything you want and you'll get it? 'Ast and it shall be given', the Bible says. But it aint' so." I felt blasphemous even to think it, much less say it out loud.

Grandpa was silent a long time. "Maybe Jesus was talkin' in His sleep, son, or folks heard him wrong. Or maybe them disciples tryin' to start a church thought everbody would join up if'n they said Jesus Christ would give the Garden a-Eden to anybody believed He was the son a-God and like thet." Grandpa laughed. Gosh, I'd get a whipping if Papa knew what was going on with the Word in his kitchen. "All I know," he added, "is thet folks pray for food and still go hungry, and Adam and Eve ain't in thet garden a-theirs no more, and yore granny aint' in hers, and I ain't got no son a-my own to carry on the name and hep me run the store when I'm old. Like you say, you don't git thangs jest by astin'. Well, I'm a-go'n study on this some more. Jesus must a meant something else, not what it sounds like."

"Grandpa, I think maybe I better go back in yonder and lay down."

"Yeah, you better. But I got one more thang to say. They's a heap more to God's will than death, disappoint-ment, and like thet. Hit's God's will for us to be good and do good, love one another, be forgivin'...." He laughed. "I reckon I ain't very forgivin', son. I can forgive a fool, but I ain't inner-ested in coddlin' hypocrites. Well anyhow, folks who think God's will jest has to with sufferin' and dyin', they done missed the whole point."

(Webmaster's note: Grandpa Blakeslee does "study on this some more," and has clarifying thoughts to say on it further along in the book.)

Cold Sassy Tree

In a Sunburned Country

- from In a Sunburned Country

This quotation is one of the funnier from the book, but isn't really a sample of what most of it is like. But I think it gives a pretty good idea of the book's style, and if you like this (and who wouldn't?), you'll enjoy the book. Bryson is driving in the middle of nowhere in Australia, radio stations gradually dropping away, when he finds:

...one clear spot near the end of the dial.  At first I thought that's all it was - just an empty clear spot - but then I realized I could hear the faint shiftings and stirrings of seated people, and after quite a pause, a voice, calm and reflective, said:

"Pilchard begins his long run in from short stump.  He bowls and ... oh, he's out!  Yes, he's got him.  Longwilley is caught leg-before in middle slops by Grattan.  Well, now what do you make of that, Neville?"

"That's definitely one for the books, Bruce. I don't think I've seen offside medium-slow fast-pace bowling to match it since BadenPowell took Rangachangabanga for a maiden ovary at Bangalore in 1948."

I had stumbled into the surreal and rewarding world of cricket on the radio.

After years of patient study (and with cricket there can he no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry.  It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect.  I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game.  It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks.  It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect.  It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players - more if they are moderately restless.  It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.

Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to center field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg.  Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, does.  If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug.  Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege.  Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue.  There you have cricket.

But it must be said there is something incomparably soothing about cricket on the radio.  It has much the same virtues as baseball on the radio - an unhurried pace, a comforting devotion to abstruse statistics and thoughtful historical rumination, exhilarating micromoments of real action - but stretched across many more hours and a lushness of terminology and restful elegance of expression even baseball cannot match.  Listening to cricket on the radio is like listening to two men sitting in a rowboat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without losing consciousness.  It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.

"So here comes Stovepipe to bowl on this glorious summer's afternoon at the Melbourne Cricket Ground," one of the commentators was saying now.  "I wonder if he'll chance an offside drop scone here or go for the quick legover.  Stovepipe has an unusual delivery in that he actually leaves the grounds and starts his run just outside Carlton & United Brewery at Kooyong."

"That's right, Clive.  I haven't known anyone start his delivery that far back since Stopcock caught his sleeve on the reversing mirror of a number 11 bus during the third test at Brisbane in 1957 and ended up at Goodiwindi four days later owing to some frightful confusion over a changed timetable at Toowoomba junction."

After a very long silence while they absorbed this thought, and possibly stepped out to transact some small errands, they resumed with a leisurely discussion of the England fielding.  Neasden, it appeared, was turning in a solid performance at square bowel, while Packet had been a stalwart in the dribbles, though even these exemplary performances paled when set aside the outstanding play of young Hugo Twain-Buttocks at middle nipple.  The commentators were in calm agreement that they had not seen anyone caught behind with such panache since Tandoori took Rogan Josh for a stiffy at Vindaloo in '61.  At last Stovepipe, having found his way over the railway line at Flinders Street - the footbridge was evidently closed for painting - returned to the stadium and bowled to Hasty, who deftly turned the ball away for a corner.  This was repeated four times more over the next two hours and then one of the commentators pronounced: "So as we break for second luncheon, and with 11,200 balls remaining, Australia are 962 for two not half and England are four for a duck and hoping for rain."

I may not have all the terminology exactly right, but I believe I have caught the flavor of it.  The upshot was that Australia was giving England a good thumping, but then Australia pretty generally does.  In fact, Australia pretty generally beats most people at most things.  Truly never has there been a more sporting nation.  At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, to take just one random but illustrative example, Australia, the fifty-second largest nation in the world, brought home more medals than all but four other countries, all of them much larger (the countries, not the medals).  Measured by population, its performance was streaks ahead of anyone else. Australians won 3.78 medals per million of population, a rate more than two and a half times better than the next best perfomer, Germany, and almost five times the rate of the United States. Morever, Australia's medal-winning tally was distributed across a range of sports, fourteen, matched by only one other nation, the United States.  Hardly a sport exists at which the Australians do not excel. Do you know, there are even forty Australians playing baseball at the professional level in the United States, including five in the Major Leagues - and Australians don't even play baseball, at least not in any particularly devoted manner.  They do all this on the world stage and play their own games as well, notably a very popular form of loosely contained mayhem called Australian Rules football.  It is wonder in such a vigorous and active society that there is anyone left to form an audience.

No, the mystery of cricket is not that Australians play it well, but that they play it at all.  It has always seemed to me a game much too restrained for the rough-and-tumble Australian temperament.  Australians much prefer games in which brawny men in scanty clothing bloody each other's noses. I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other.

And the thing is, it would be a much better game for it.

In the late afternoon, while the players broke for high tea or fifth snack or something - in any case, when the activity on the field went from very slight to non-existent - I stopped at a roadhouse...

...

In the motel I dumped my bag and reflexively switched on the TV. It came up on the cricket, and I sat on the foot of the bed and watched it with unwonted absorption for some minutes.  Needless to say, very little was happening on the field.  An official in a white coat was chasing after a blown piece of paper, and several of the players were examining the ground by the stumps, evidently looking for something.  I couldn't think what, but then one of the commentators noted that England had just lost a wicket, so I supposed it was that.  After a time a lanky young man in the outfield, who had been polishing a ball on his pant leg as if about to take a bite from it, broke into a loping run.  At length he hurled the ball at the distant batter, who insouciantly lifted his bat an inch from the ground and putted it back to him.  These motions were scrupulously replicated three times more, then the commentator said, "And so at the end of the four hundred and fifty-second over, as we break for afternoon nap, England have increased their total to 17.  So still quite a lot of work for them to do if they're going to catch Australia before fourth snack."

...

I was back in my room by about nine-thirty. I switched on the TV and was impressed to see that play was still going on in the cricket match.  Give the men their due.  It may be light work, but they put in the hours.  The man in the white coat was still chasing paper, though it wasn't possible to tell if it was the same piece.  England, according to the commentator, had lost another three wickets, which seemed rather absentminded of them.  At this rate they would soon run out of equipment altogether and have to call it a day. Perhaps, I decided as I switched the TV off, that was what they were hoping for.

In a Sunburned Country

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