Doe it make you pine for the sane old days of Congress?
1 - McCarthy did it before Doctorow, I believe.
2 - Yes. That theory was in vogue for awhile but is widely discounted now, from what I’ve read.
The only other Doctorow I’ve read is Billy Bathgate. That was a long time ago, but if he omitted quotation marks in that one, it did not leave an impression on me. Could be a style choice just for this one novel.
Nevermind…this belonged in a different thread.
Ooh! Ooh! Putting both on my ‘want to read’ list, although I’m guessing Dampier will go before Cabeza de Vaca. 
Have you read Skeletons of the Zahara yet? Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz?
Delphica, have you ever read Trollope’s Framley Parsonage, to which Tooth and Claw bears affinities (except Trollope uses humans, natch)? I have not - debating putting it in the TBR pile. Walton swears she’s not going to write a sequel to Tooth and Claw, despite the fact that she’s named this won’t-be book Those Who Favor Fire and published the first chapter on her website here.
I have not, the only Trollope I have read is Rachel Ray. I’ve never considered Framley Parsonage because it is part of a series (so it seems like a commitment), but it’s the same series that has Barchester Towers, which I’ve been told is one of the best ones. So maybe I should think about tackling it …
Thanks for the link for the chapter-of-not-a-book!
Yeah, read them both. There is some doubt as to whether Rawicz’s book is factual, including an investigation by the BBC that determined it was a fraud. But a good read, nonetheless.
I don’t know if this is too much of a stretch, it’s maybe at the intersection of exploring and biography … but I enjoyed The Lady and the Panda.
For what it’s worth, most of the Barchester novels can easily be read as a stand-alone book, with the possible exception of The Last Chronicle of Barset. You might be missing out on a little bit of back story for some of the minor side characters, but that’s about it.
Good to know, thanks!
I found the translation of the Cabeza de Vaca book that I read to be very dry and a bit of a plod (ha!) to get through, despite it’s content. Do you remember which translation you read, and how readable it was?
The Dampier biography was good, too, but I remember reading one of Dampier’s own books a couple of times when I was still at school and enjoying it a lot. No longer remember which one it was though. You might like to read the original version of his travels!
You could maybe try The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Barry Cunliffe. It’s about an early Greek geographer and explorer who ventured beyond the Mediterranean to northern Europe, including the UK. Hard facts about exactly where he reached are few, but it’s a great look at that part of the world before the Romans got there!
Or Before the Heroes Came by T. H. Baughman, about efforts to explore Antarctica in the 1890s and very early 1900s, before the time of the epic expeditions of Scott and Amundsen.
Personally, I’m still reading Monday begins on Saturday by the Strugatsky Brothers. It’s about life in a northern Soviet Institute where magic and witchcraft are researched. Good, but slow going.
It wasn’t a translation of Cabeza de Vaca’s own writing but rather a book about his travail, written by someone else.
Just finished Huckleberry Finn. I can’t say anything about it that hasn’t been said a thousand times before except that I, personally, thought it was absolutely brilliant. The various idiolects took a little getting used to, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment one bit. I think it’s one of the best books I’ve read in years. Five stars.
I’m also mid-way through Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov, and I’m not really enjoying it so far. I’ve loved every other Nabokov I’ve read but this one isn’t doing it for me at all. It’s beautifully written, of course, but all the fine prose on Earth can’t save a book that’s little more than a series of vignettes about an elderly nerd bumbling his way through his boring life. I’m going to finish it, but I’d only give it two stars at the moment, and that’s purely because it’s so elegantly written.
Down to the last few pages of The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. It’s like all McCullough books, not a ‘deep’ historical tome, but presenting the characters and the times in an accurate and entertaining manner.
I think sometimes we forget just how massive things changed when it was proved (and there were skeptics, some quite important and smart) that man could accomplish powered and controlled flight. I found it fascinating how these two brothers, neither college-educated or with engineering degrees, solved so many basic issues and came up with so much.
It’s also fascinating to read about their success (especially Wilbur’s) in France. We sometimes forget than Europe at the time was the center of the world, not the United States, and their successes in France made them world celebrities.
All-in-all, a good read about two rather unique and sometimes forgotten heroes of aviation.
Note: I still remember the first time I stepped into the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on the Mall in Washington, DC. There hanging was the Wright Flyer (1903) and directly below it was the Apollo 11 capsule (1969). From Kitty Hawk to the Moon in the span of one lifetime…still boggles the mind.
Finished Bluescreen by Dan Wells, a YA novel about a team of girl gamers who are trying to stop the spread of a drug/computer virus that has infected virtual reality. And in this future, everyone is plugged in constantly. It was a well done and fast moving story, but I kept thinking of that quote about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. The heroine was basically able to perform any miracles by just hacking the nearest device. There were a lot of good things going on with this book and I would recommend it, although I’m not sure I will continue the series myself.
Began this morning on The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by William Sloane, with a foreword by Stephen King. Saving the foreword for last, as Mr. King said there would be spoilers.
Wow! Ive not been getting notifications so I thought we’d all gone on vacation or something! 
I finished Conspiracy in Death by JD Robb, last week. A more complicated plot than the prior novels but sadly the subplot blew away in the face of Eve and Roarke’s combined awesomeness, but kudos to Robb for trying. Of greater interest to me is the failure of our heroes to recognized their own hypocrisy when Eve is put on departmental suspension pending an investigation and both Eve and Roarke react with shock, anger and “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I/SHE IS? HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME/HER?” and yet be so contemptuous of the same “you don’t rat out your own” attitude in another close knit professional community. It’s wrong to question a cop’s motives but everyone else is fair game apparently.
I love Huck Finn, but I thought the book slowed right up in the last bit, when Tom Sawyer showed up, and started thinking up increasingly absurd things for Jim to do.
Other than that, it is truly one of the great novels of all time - equal parts funny, uplifting, heartbreaking, and horrifying.
At least one critic suggested ignoring the rest of the book, after Tom showed up. He felt everything after that points cheapened the work.
I read The Annotated Huckleberry Finn a couple of years ago. It was worth it. The footnotes added much to the book, and there’s even a “lost” scene.
Heh, I’d love to check that out. My own kid is almost old enough to read this book for the first time.