The Fencing Master

Categories Rediscoveries , Fiction

I wrote last week about a tragedy in the classic American Western genre.  Here’s another elegant short novel that’s both adventure story and tragic character study.  A pretty different setting, though.

The book is The Fencing Master, by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

In a Spain racked by political upheaval and rumors of revolution (it’s 1868), fencing master Don Jaime Astarloa abstains from politics and devotes himself to his ancient and honorable art.  Though modern weapons are making sword work obsolete, Don Jaime continues to teach it to a small group of noble pupils, and still hopes to bring it to perfection by formulating the legendary unstoppable thrust.

Despite his academic isolation and his old-fashioned ideas of honor, he bends his principles enough to take on a very unusual pupil, the beautiful and mysterious Adela de Otero, who comes to him already an accomplished swordswoman and asks to learn his most advanced technique.

Teacher Man

Categories Award Winners , Digital Audiobooks , Nonfiction

“On the first day of my teaching career, I was almost fired for eating the sandwich of a high school boy.  On the second day I was almost fired for mentioning the possibility of friendship with a sheep.  Otherwise, there was nothing remarkable about my thirty years in the high school classrooms of New York City.  I often doubted if I should be there at all.  At the end I wondered how I lasted that long.”

So begins Teacher Man, Frank McCourt’s final memoir in his trilogy that starts with Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela’s Ashes and continues in ‘Tis.

In the classroom, McCourt tells stories of his childhood spent in poverty in Limerick, Ireland.  He instructs one class to compose homework excuse notes (“A man died in the bathtub upstairs and it overflowed and messed up all of my homework").  He makes another read cooking recipes to music. 

His lessons may be unconventional, but his students discover the beauty of the English language and learn to always think for themselves. 

Unleash Your Inner Pirate on September 19

Categories Entertainment , Nonfiction , Fiction

Yes, I know, it is on the verge of being overdone, this pirate thing.  But, really, people do need to have fun, and dressing up like a Buccaneer or a Scurvy Wench only on Halloween is not enough for some.  So, now is the time get ready for Talk Like A Pirate Day on September 19.  Hide the treasure chests!  Protect the women and children!  Annoy your co-workers! 

Space. How far is Home?

Categories Nonfiction

Do you recall where you were on January 28, 1986 at about 11:40 a.m.? I do. I was watching the space shuttle Challenger takeoff. If you remember that date and time, then you remember the Challenger Disaster and the seven astronauts who died on it. The explosion occurred seventy-three seconds into the flight as a result of a leak in one of two solid rocket boosters that ignited the main liquid fuel tank. Then about seventeen years later on February 1, 2003, ten astronauts were orbiting the earth and seven were headed back on the space shuttle, Columbia. The seven never made it and the three men left behind found themselves Too Far From Home by Chris Jones. This was originally an award-winning article for Esquire, where Jones is a contributing editor. This is the story of those three men-two American astronauts, Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox and a Russian flight engineer, Nikolai Budarin and how they lived daily life and survived on the International Space Station. This book captures the dangerous realities of space travel. Find out how long they lived in space and if they made it back to earth.

The Fall of Rome OR: Was Charlemagne Really the Magne?

Categories In the News , History , Nonfiction

Just when I'd become okay with the idea, gathered from my college history text, The Middle Ages, 395-1500, that the western part of the Roman Empire fell because the upper-class Romans who ruled it all moved out to the country and lost interest in even having an empire, let alone paying taxes to support it, a new book, The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians comes out and says no, it really was the barbarians after all.  My own ancestors were among the worst barbarians, but you can't blame them because at the time they were too barbaric even to think about attacking anyone.  Later, when they did, The Middle Ages, 395-1500 scornfully says they mistook some small Italian hamlet for Rome.  The Middle Ages, 395-1500 authors hated my ancestors.

Still, I'm sorry about the Dark Ages, what with being the beneficiary of many centuries of Western culture, as well as other cultures.

Fall into Fall

Categories Children's Books

Now that Labor Day is behind us, thoughts drift to fall- back to school, leaves changing colors, crisp cool days I know it’s 90’ right now, but use your imagination…

Looking for some great books to get your kids to a fall frame of mind? Check out any of these great titles!

Lois Ehlert’s Nuts to You! (1993) follows a city squirrel as he prepares for winter. Pair it with her other fall favorite, Leaf Man (2005) which follows a leaf on his travels from a tree in fall.

A Man, An Alp, Napalm, No Llamas, Calamity (The Darien Gap Part 2)

Categories History , Travel , Outdoors & Nature

I learned just a few years ago that you can't drive your car all the way from Alaska to the bottom of South America, and I found this unsettling in the same way I found it unsettling as a child to learn that Baja, California, is actually a part of Mexico. 

The problem is the Darien Gap, an area of about 30,000 square acres of swampy, mountainous, and otherwise difficult geological features between Colombia and Panama, that has been breaking hearts and ruining lives for centuries, even before Colombian paramilitary groups got into the act. The Gap now refers to the uncompleted stretch of the Pan-American Highway.  Centuries earlier, the Gap referred to a possible break in the mountains, sort of like the Cumberland Gap, that would allow the building of a canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  An Englishman named Dr. Edward Cullen claimed to have found just such a gap.

Well, we all know what happened with that idea.