Maxed Out: Home is Where the Heart Is
January 19, 2011 |Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Good grief – I know it sounds strange, but I’m reading books faster than I can write reviews about them. Actually that’s not strictly true – the real problem is that there’s so much I want to read that I find it hard to drag myself away.
At Home
On the other hand, I really want to share the stuff I like so that others can enjoy it as well. In my last column I talked about A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I tell you, if I were going to be exiled to a desert island and could take only 10 books with me, this one would be very close to the top of the list!
Honestly, I love Bill Bryson’s work. He always manages to come over as being wildly enthusiastic about the topic in hand while achieving the perfect balance between interest and humor. His books are replete with nuggets of knowledge and tidbits of trivia – which I can’t get enough of – all enlivened and enhanced by his off-the-cuff comments, which often have me laughing out loud.
Seriously, in one case I was laughing so much that tears were streaming down my face and I couldn’t breath – I almost passed out! And I’ve heard the same thing from other readers who say that they embarrassed themselves by bursting into laughter whilst travelling on a train or a plane.
On the off-chance you are not (yet) a Bryson fan, he was born in Des Moines, Iowa, USA, in 1951. In 1973 he visited England and decided to stay after landing a job working in a psychiatric hospital. While there he met and married a nurse named Cynthia. Bill and Cynthia moved to the USA in 1975 so he could complete his college degree. Two years later they returned to England. In 1995 they moved back to America. And then in 2003 the Brysons and their four children travelled back “across the pond” to England, where they now live in Norfolk and Bill is the Chancellor of Durham University. Phew!
Bill has written many wonderful books about his travels back and forth. Notes from a Small Island talks about his experiences in England; I’m a Stranger Here Myself recounts his return to America in 1995; in Neither Here Nor There Bill retraces a youthful European backpacking trip; and In a Sunburned Country we follow Bill as he meanders his way around Australia. And these are but a few of his works, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about here…
When the Brysons returned to England in 2003, they purchased a Victorian parsonage in Norfolk, which Bill describes as “A part of England where nothing of great significance has happened since the Romans decamped.” While living in this house, Bill started to ponder how little he knew about the history of the various types of rooms and the things one might find in them. This was the inspiration for his latest tome: At Home: A Short History of Private Life.
The underlying premise of At Home is that Bill walks us around his home explaining the history of each type of room. Along the way he covers a multitude of topics like sex, hygiene, nutrition, and the way in which people from different social classes enjoyed life (or not, as the case might be). Although mostly rooted in English history over the past few hundred years (with the occasional excursion into the deeper past), we also get a good dose of American history along with forays into European history.
In reality, Bill uses this book as a platform (or perhaps an excuse) to regale us with all sorts of historical facts, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the telephone to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets to the spice trade and the Spice Island.
To be honest, I think it’s fair to say that this is probably not the best of Bill’s books, but that’s only because he has set such a high standard in his other works. Sometimes he rambles on a bit and many times he wanders off topic, but I don’t really care because I always seem to enjoy where we end up. The bottom line is that I personally really enjoyed “At Home” and would happily recommend it to anyone.
A Cracking Time
Speaking of good books, I recently re-read A Crack in The Edge of the World – America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester.
Now before we leap into the fray, I should note that Simon’s style is not for everyone. If you look at the reviews for A Crack in The Edge of the World on Amazon, for example, you'll see that they are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the majority of the 100+ reviews are 4-star and 5-star; on the other hand, a lot of readers voted it down because the book does meander around a little, bouncing from one topic to another.
I can understand why some folks may find the presentation to be not quite what they expected, because the author does not restrict himself only to an account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake itself. Instead, he mixes geology with the commercial and social history of California; scientific data with his personal thoughts and writings from folks who lived through the event; and a whole bunch of other stuff (for example, the 1906 earthquake gave a major boost to the Pentecostal branch of Christianity).
Like I say, this style might not be for everyone, but – as you are already aware – I personally like to learn tidbits of trivia and nuggets of knowledge. This book provided a huge amount of background into the early days of California and gave me a lot of insight into the way things were...such as the way in which Chinese immigrants were treated (actually, mistreated is more accurate).
The thing is, scientists and geologists agree that there's going to be another monster seismic event on the San Andreas Fault – it's not a case of “if” but “when.” If you read this book you'll have a much better idea as to the ramifications of such an event.
But wait, there’s more, because I recently took a stroll through my Kindle e-Book reader perusing the tomes that are awaiting my attention (I have more unread electronic and print books than I care to think about) when I saw another book by Simon Winchester: The Map That Changed the World.
This is the story of tragedy and triumph about one William ‘Strata’ Smith (1769-1839), surveyor, self-taught geologist, and maker of the first geologic map. One reason this is of particular interest to me is that in A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson explains how the science of geology first started. This is much more interesting that you might suppose, and it’s given me an appetite to learn more.I’m a (3D) Fool
Last but certainly not least, you may recall a couple of columns ago when I was waffling on about 3D television and suchlike. At that time I also mentioned that 3D was coming faster than you might think, and that there was already a 3D digital camera available from Amazon. In fact just a couple of days ago I heard that Nintendo are soon going to release a 3D gaming station that doesn’t require special glasses.
Also in that article, I mentioned a 3D film-based camera called a Holga that is available from the Lomogrophy Web site. The thing is that after I’d written that column I started thinking about how wonderful the 3D images were on the old View-Master viewers we had when I was a kid (apparently they are still around). Then I started to think that I would really like to take some of these 3D pictures myself.
The bottom line is that I just took delivery of one of these Holga 3D cameras – it’s sitting on my desk as we speak – and I can’t wait to start playing with it this coming weekend. I will – of course – let you know how I get on in a future column.
Until next time – have a good one!
Clive (Max) Maxfield is Founder/Consultant at Maxfield High-Tech Consulting. He is the author and co-author of a number of books, including Bebop to the Boolean Boogie (An Unconventional Guide to Electronics) and How Computers Do Math featuring the pedagogical and phantasmagorical virtual DIY Calculator. To contact Max, click here.