This is a good thread, but I’m not a reader of books.

Calvin and Hobbes was a great way to end the day and send me off to the land of nod.

Other than this (and a similar Garfield compilation comic book!), I have read no books for a long time, and instead read OLO and a whole lot of associated stuff online.

I wonder how many people, who may have read books a few years ago, simply don’t any more…. because there is so much else to spend one’s time on these days.

That goes for me too Ludwig. I'm not one for the product of other peoples imaginations, more interested in something factual.

I carried a book "The Ant World" on the yacht for some years before I actually opened it. I was not expecting much, but was then fascinated at the range of behaviours of the hundreds of ants studied. I couldn't put it down.

I also developed a deep interest in WW11 as fought in PNG & the Solomons, while I was sailing around the area. It was that interest that made me sail to the Carolines, & Truk. I wanted to see what I had read about.

I found the stories of the coast watchers quite incredible. I had no problem being a fighter pilot, but I doubt I could ever raise the courage of those men who spent months & even years behind enemy lines, with just a radio, & perhaps a few locals for company.

I was lucky enough to gain access to some unpublished diaries, & stories of these men at their strange war. When one of them that you met, realised you were really interested, they sort of passed you on between each other.

I also find the net more interesting than a book. I sometimes get so many windows open, chasing information, that the computer almost stops.

Dear Ludwig and Hasbeen,

There is more in heaven and earth than accessing and processing information. Good fiction is not just the product of someone else's imagination. It incorporates views of a particular society and the feelings of people. There are many clinical studies of the teenager and his or her angst. There are also many studies of the various questions that people ask about religion. ‘The Way of All Flesh’contains the feelings that is missing in those studies.

The book is a semi-autobiographical novel which includes Ernest Pontifex’s struggle with his father who apparently thought of Ernest as a mere extension of himself and Ernest’s struggle with the religion he was expected to believe. It incorporated the struggle that many people of the time had with the hypocrisies of Victorian religion. Samuel Butler used his life as raw material for the novel and in doing so brought life to the character. I was living in a different time and a different place with a different religion and a different father, but I had similar feelings to those of the fictional Ernest Pontifex. I remember my father saying, “I never met a boy like you.” That carried the idea that I was unique in my doubts about religion and my feelings that I was something other than an extension of my father. Ernest Pontifex had similar feelings. I was not alone, unique or a monster.

If I should read that book again it would not have the same effect as I am now an old man with many descendents, but it had tremendous meaning then.

I have read “Moby Dick” more than once. Even though I know what is going to happen I enjoy the descriptions of the meeting of Ishmael and Queequeg, the sermon in the New England church and the process of whaling. My wife’s father was a sailor on a whaler before whaling became the mechanised industry it is now. From “Moby Dick” I can get some idea of his life.

Good fiction allows us to enter many other lives and enriches our own life.

Hasbeen: I found the stories of the coast watchers quite incredible.

If you found those stories incredible, you should have met the "Coastwatcher" himself, John (Jack) Dobell Wilkinson. 3rd Nov 07 - 24 Mar 87. He lived in Townsville after living on Saibai Island from the end of WW11. Through him I met many interesting people. The Arch Bishop of Papua & New Guinea & Dame, (God, I can't think of her name) one of the girls from the "Sound of Music." & many more. Great Book.

An aside. I worked with an Australian Coastwatcher, Mick Statham, who was looking after the Cromarty area between Townsville & Ayr. He watched 109 Japanese Marines land. He radioed Army HQ in Townsville & they told him he was dreaming. He insisted & they sent a Negro Battalion from Woodstock to investigate. There was a short battle & a number of Japanese were killed for 2 Americans. The Japanese were captured & kept in the cutting at Jessine Barracks on Kissing Point in Townsville before being sent south by plane. My father-in-Law was one of the guards. Very, very, hush, hush. Oh, the same Negro Battalion was involved in the first Negro Civil Rights Protest. It happened at Stuart near Townsville. They won & were allowed into Townsville after dark without being shot on sight.

Jayb,
What an interesting story - about the Japanese marines landing. I'd certainly never heard about it before. Amazing what secrets remain, probably for no better reason that no one ever got around to declassifying them.
I wonder what their mission was; probing the coastal defenses, I suppose.
Anyway, thanks for sharing that.
Very interesting indeed.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

If literature has integrity - that is, if it explores,
orders, evaluates and illuminates the human experience,
its heights and depths, its pain and pleasure
aesthetically and according to the creator's genuinely
felt response - the end product becomes an image of life,
and potentially a metaphor for living.

The range of such images is as vast as human society
and culture.

"He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust.
He knew no more that he was poor,
Or that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy ways,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book.
What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!"
(Emily Dickinson).