Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Tiger Reading

John Vaillant did a reading last night at Riverrun Books in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for his wonderful new book on Amur tigers, poachers, and rangers. I had participated in part by reviewing The Tiger here.

I'll let him configure the whole tale for you, but Dr Hypercube was the pivotal figure, and blogged it here. Suffice to say that an amazing crew of nature and travel writers were brought together via the web- the Doctor, Sy Montgomery (who wrote the OTHER great tiger book, The Spell of the Tiger), and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas ( The Old Way, among other fine books). I wish I had been there, but the next best thing was when Vaillant , livestreaming his excellent talk, waved at the camera to "Steve Bodio in New Mexico".



L to R: Vaillant, Sy, the Doctor, Liz.

5 comments:

dr. hypercube said...

Thanks for the kind words - credit where it's due: it was your (excellent) review that started the snowball down the hill and Michele at RiverRun did all the phone calling and juggling that made it actually happen.

Not news to you, but for others who may be interested, Liz Thomas wrote 2 stories of stone age (epipaleolithic?) culture - Reindeer Moon and The Animal Wife - that I think are pretty darn good. Think Clan of the Cave Bear written by someone who really understands the old ways.

wolf said...

Steve--I am on deadline trying to get in touch with you to do a short interview for a NM Mag roundup. Can you email me at my website asap, http://www.wolfschneiderusa.com/contact.html
Thanks, Wolf

Retrieverman said...

I read The Hidden Life of Dogs when I was very young.

I think that's what got me hooked on good dog books.

Steve Bodio said...

She has an interesting mind. Probably growing up with the Bushmen (and parents who wanted her to) helped!

Anonymous said...

I LOVE ALL of Elizabeth Marshall-Thomas's books--one of those people I'd love to sit down with and swap critter stories with....I really liked the "Clan Of The Cave Bear" series of books by Jean Auel when they came out years ago--I thought they were well written and entertaining--BUT, the characters in them had very modern motivations and perceptions, I felt. By the end of the series(is it finally over?) I kinda felt like it was "Barbie and Ken take a trip through the Pleistocene"--not that THAT isn't an intriguing book series topic! But Marshall-Thomas's two books of this genre("Reindeer Moon" and "The Animal Wife") I thought were VASTLY superior and much more authentic to what REAL ancient hunter-gatherers would be thinking and be motivated by. In fact, I think they were so accurate on that account that most modern readers could not relate to them, which is why the "Clan Of The Cave Bear" series became an international phenomenon, and these two books are hardly known except by us quirky individuals......not that any of you guys(ahem!) are quirky!....L.B.