Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars *** 1/2

You can tell from the title that Wind, Sand and Stars is going to take a lyrical approach to its subject matter. Although the cover proclaims it as "a National Geographic Top Ten Adventure Book of All Time," Wind, Sand and Stars uses its author's adventures as a mere launching pad for musings on the nature of man, his place in the universe, and the meaning of life. In other words, don't read this book for its exciting aviation adventures, but for its beautiful imagery and engaging philosophy. It has the latter in abundance, although Saint-Exupery's prose is undeniably overblown at times.

Weekend Wodehouse ** 1/2

P.G. Wodehouse has a reputation as one of the wittiest and funniest writers of English. Weekend Wodehouse is a sampler of short pieces from the master, providing a taste of his various characters and styles.

Wodehouse's way with a sentence is undeniable and Wildean. But because he restricts himself to comic tales about the British upper class, his stories inevitably sound like anecdotes shared over a pint at a club in the 1930s. That's his intent, but I don't find them engaging.

I picked up Weekend Wodehouse in a used copy at Moe's Books. The pages had an appropriately musty smell.

Susan Casey, The Wave ***

The Wave is a surfing book disguised as a popular science book about giant waves. In her introduction, Casey says she'll investigate "freak" waves from the point of view of scientists, mariners, and surfers. And she does, but with a heavy emphasis on surfers. Most of the chapters describe awesome days out surfing with Laird Hamilton, the literary equivalent of a Warren Miller film or Endless Summer.

Casey is a very good writer, effectively capturing both the sense of an experience and scientific principles. I just wish she'd provided more of the latter.

Felix Markham, Napoleon ***

One encounters Napoleon Bonaparte in many different places. He is the villain in War and Peace, the background villain in the Patrick O'Brien Jack Aubrey novels, the self-satisfied emperor in the huge J.L. David painting at the Louvre. He fought the Turks when he occupied Egypt. He was exiled to the island of Elba, or was it St Helena? Trafalgar, Waterloo, Austerlitz, Josephine. How do all of these glimpses fit together? And how does the Napoleonic era relate to the French Revolution? I wanted to read a biography to find out, especially after our recent trip to Paris.

At 300 pages, Markham's biography is necessarily short for such an eventful life. It gave me what I wanted, although it did have plenty of exhausting paragraphs that were little more than lists of battles or political machinations. It felt well balanced in its opinions and was not without interesting insights, but it couldn't really give a sense of Napoleon as a person. Quite an amazing life, for sure.

Richard S. Wheeler, Snowbound ***

Snowbound tells a fictionalized version of John Fremont's fourth expedition, which sought a railway route across the Rockies at the 38th parallel... in winter. The expedition met with disaster, largely because Fremont interpreted all warning signs as merely impediments that would make his destiny more impressive.

At the heart of the story is the contradictory character of Fremont, "a man of considerable courage and ability who nevertheless was constantly getting into grave trouble, often from lack of judgment." Fremont inspired loyalty among his men; various of the narrators in Snowbound note with perplexity the blind obedience they all had to his obviously flawed decisions.

The first half of the story, leading the crew into disaster, has a certain repetitiveness to it: they should turn back, Fremont obstinately insists on continuing, mules die, the expedition members wonder why they don't speak up. Also, the various expedition members who narrate the story don't have distinctive voices, lending a sameness to their observations. I also felt a lack of sympathy, since the character's choices were so obviously wrong and so reversible. The drama was significantly more involving once their situation became apparently hopeless.

Fremont is an intriguing character, and I can imagine tracking down some of Wheeler's primary sources in the future,

Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs **** 1/2

These two excellent adventure/travel books describe the post-WWII years that Thesiger spent among the Bedu of southern Arabia and the Madan of southern Iraq respectively. The books give a strong sense of place, both the natural landscape and the culture of the people in these harsh environments. Arabian Sands in particular captures the diversity of the land that might seem at first like undifferentiated desert sands.

Thesiger has a talent for finding the telling detail that paints a picture and allows him to make a general point without interrupting the flow of the narrative. He has an obvious respect for the people and their way of life. In the course of his story he shows how the customs of the tribes fit into an ecosystem of mutually supporting cultures; in a later chapter of The Marsh Arabs, he makes a compelling case for the advantages of traditional ways of life over the apparently less burdensome modern life, including the double-edged sword of education.

These two books will forever color my mental picture of that part of the word.