Latest Reading

 It was a strange winter in Minnesota. With the exception of a ten-day cold snap, it was unseasonably warm. Now we're moving into a cool, rainy spring, which while good for my lawn and my writing, is keeping me inside too much.

So what am I to do? Sit inside and read! 

First up, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," by Jules Verne. Long-time readers will remember that every year I read one of the classics. And since I'm working on my action/sailing novels, 20,000 Leagues seemed a good fit.

First, if you've ever been curious, the 20,000 leagues refer to distance, not depth. A league is 18,228 feet or about 3.45 miles, which works out to about 69,000 miles of travel. I had always wondered and it makes a lot more sense now. 

Much like "Moby Dick," 20,000 Leagues is 1/2 action story and 1/2 a look at the biology of sea life. One of the characters, Conseil, spends most of his time (and yours!) classifying creatures. I would have been fine with it being a sperm whale, but Physeter macrocephalus was Conseil's choice. Since the original story was a serial in a magazine, I guess I see the business sense of longer words, but yikes. I'll confess, it took me quite a while to get through.

On the other hand, it is a ripping good adventure story. Professor Pierre Arronax, his servant, Coseil, and harpooner Ned Land are rescued and then held hostage by Captain Nemo aboard his "far ahead of its time" submarine, the Nautilus. Nemo takes them around the world to visit the ocean depths and have all kinds of adventures. 

In 1870, we didn't know much about the seas and thus they were a ripe setting for an adventure story, so Verne could say about anything he wanted. Most startlingly, Verne's vision of submarines was 1/2 visionary and half really wrong. But he took a chance and saw the future. If you've got a long winter to fill, it's a reasonable story to read.

Second, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," by William Kamkwamba with Bryan Mealer is one of my non-fiction reads. It's the true story of a boy (the author) who struggles to survive in drought stricken Malawi. He can't afford to go to high school, but is curious and loves to read. So he self-teaches himself about electricity from books in the local library and uses scrap material to build a wind turbine that generates electricity. The electricity provides light, but more importantly helps pump water to their crops. 

The story is inspiring. The author uses his brains and a library to solve a problem and bring some relief to his village. That success would leverage resources for rural Malawi for years to come. The writing, however, is not great. I rooted for William (you will, too!) but with a bit more editing and polishing, it would have been a more compelling story. Still worth a read, though.