TINKER GO WALKING! (Book) - 8/28/2019 7:51:44 AM
This seems to be a book for young adults, from the name of the protagonist and the book cover, although 19 is right on the verge of adulthood. And it may actually be really an amalgam of much of what you've learned in your many adventures and travels in the Middle East. You note that the book is travel, but Tinker Taylor meets a lot of people in his travels from the distant past, so it must be fiction.
I've had a great interest in Timbuktu, and have been recently reading in National Geographic about its importance in becoming a waystation for immigrants traveling from equatorial Africa to Morocco. There is a lot of migrating going on, but then, there always was.
If young people are interested in history and adventure like I was, and not in superheroes and fantasy that humans cannot do, then I think this book will be a great success.
My time in the Middle East was brief. Only four days in Cairo. One day visiting Giza, the Stepped Pyramid (underneath) and Memphis, a junkyard of fabulous neglected statues and obelisks. And two days in the Cairo Museum, soaking up all I could. A student from Saudi Arabia told me of the glories of camping in the desert and hunting (in the very rich style he was accustomed to). My masters degree roommate was from Bombay but was Persian and Zoroastrian. His three sons are named Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes.
Ron
Albert Ross is Lonely (Book) - 3/15/2018 5:59:51 AM
An Exquisite Tale in a Rugged Landscape
Albert Ross Is Lonely by Anthony Dalton is an eloquent, evocative tale, simultaneously grounded in a tender and realistic love story and soaring with fine flights of allegory. Among the gannets, the gulls, and the guillemot colony up on the cliff resides the lone black-browed albatross (appropriately named Albert Ross) in the northern hemisphere. The journeys of Albert Ross are chronicled and photographed by Tripp, who came to the Scottish highland coast to study the majestic bird and to live out the last of days (his heart condition rendering his 48-year-old body in a weakened state). There Tripp encounters the lively and curious ornithologist Amanda. The exchanges between the cranky yet clever Tripp and quick-witted, disarming Amanda serve as one of the novels many pleasures. Dalton has a fine ear for dialogue and the delicate building of affection between the two is subtly developed.
As a young sea captain looks at the albatross, he starts “thinking about how lonely it must be – the only one of its kind as far as he knew for thousands of miles.” That description could be applied to both Tripp and Amanda: each of these free spirits has a deep appreciation of nature and a great willingness to sacrifice the comforts most of us require to explore its breath and depth. Albert, Tripp, and Amanda are wonderful company for the reader. The rhythms of their individual and shared journeys ride the thermals as far as nature’s forces allow.
I highly recommend Albert Ross Is Lonely. The last scenes manage to be concurrently inevitable and surprising – true to nature and true to these two individuals who for a time inhabit the rugged Scottish coast. Dalton is a smart and sensitive writer who has given the reader deeply invested characters and has written with the same integrity and commitment as those explorers who inhabit his fictional world.
Albert Ross is Lonely (Book) - 2/17/2018 9:38:23 AM
I didn't know that albatrosses stuck around long enough to be observed. But good-looking chicks might have habits that lend themselves to being observed.
Ron
Henry Hudson (Book) - 12/11/2014 5:28:30 AM
Here's wishing you every success with your new book. Henry Hudson is a worthy subject in a fierce age so essential to the shape of our world today. Best.
Baychimo, Arctic Ghost Ship (Book) - 8/30/2014 8:54:09 AM
Sounds like a marvelous adventure in a legendary vessel over terrain Farley Mowatt or Thor Heyerdahl would love. I look forward to reading it.
