What I am actually in the middle of:
The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin. A novel, a historical mystery set in the early 19th Century in Istanbul, by a writer who knows the territory, with a hero who is an able and brave court eunuch! Unique and with a believable air-- the guy knows Turkey, and the details ring true.
Sons of the Conquerors by Hugh Pope, subtitled "The Rise of the Turkic World". Pope is the bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal in Istanbul, speaks the Turkic languages, and knows the ground from Istanbul to Almaty. He is sharp and sometimes funny. This looks like the one to go to for starters, though I have a lot to go before he gets to places I have actually been. More later?
Going Wild by Colin Wyatt: a forgotten gem of natural history writing from 1955-- English of course. Mr. Wyatt appears to have spent his life travelling, skiing, collecting butterflies, and climbing-- and writing well about it. (His father apparently did the same). We should all be so lucky! Earliest quoter of Nabokov on butterflies I have encountered. Worth reading alone for the tale of his father, sunbathing nude in the Alps before WWII, seeing a desired butterfly and chasing it through a party of sunbathing German women similarly non- attired...
On deck: Training the Short- Winged Hawk: an Elizabethan Perspective, edited and transcribed by Derry Argue (a 1619 book, one of the best, rendered into modern English by the Irish master setter breeder); The Prince of the Marshes (and other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq) by Rory Stewart; Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke (dark fantasy set in the Napoleonic Wars); and Under Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway: the complte text he write about his last safari, which I am studying as well as reading to do a paper on his African guns for a scholarly volume--!!
That should keep me a while alongside magazines and whatever I discover next...
2 comments:
Colin Wyatt was a butterfly "Collector" in more ways than one! In c1946 he stole 827 specimens from the Museum of Victoria - and more from other Australasian museums. Scotland Yard investigators found 3000 stolen specimins in his Surrey house. Wyatt admitted his guilt and was fined 100GBP. The specimens were returned to their home institutions, but Wyatt had altered labels, thus muddling the collections.
Sort of like Meinertzhagen's birds. What is WITH these people??
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