Were We Really Though?

We Were Liars

by E. Lockhart

Read on December 26, 2015. 

This is a well-reviewed young adult book, and I will say that it is solid. It did not amaze me, but has a lot going for it. I did not figure out the twist (I never figure out the twist). Even better, I was sure that I did know what it was, only to find out that I was wrong. That built-in red herring was a nice touch. 

On the negative side, the entire heft and weight of the book lies in obscuring a few of Cadence's actions one fateful summer. If this story were told chronologically, it would fall flat unless great care were taken with additional character development, viewpoints from other characters, and a wealth of background information. I think I am trying to say that the surprise ending feels like a gimmick to give people a reason to read what is otherwise an extremely simple, bare bones story.  

Final Call:

I like chronological shenanigans when the book is a heavy-hitter in other ways, too, but this one I think leaned on it too much.

If you like this, try:

I feel like I don't read enough Young Adult titles to offer anything meaningful. This article has 10 suggestions that seem legit, though!

A Tale for Winter Should Be Warmer

Winter's Tale

by Mark Helprin

Read on December 25, 2015.

I think this book will end up taking the prize for Most Disappointing Read of 2015. Possibly split with Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Close call.

My expectations for Winter's Tale were high, and it delivered in several ways. Colors are a theme of the book, and that jives nicely with Helprin's writing style. The man can describe the hell out of a landscape, a weather system, a painting. He gets even better when describing fantastical things, like the tremendous animals that live, unmoving, while constantly moving across the space of the entire universe. It sounds hokey when I write it, but not when he does. The existence of the Lake of the Coheeries and its inhabitants and their relationship with New York City are fascinating.

But for the disappointment - that came from the book's underpinnings. The value system or morality that runs through the text is vastly different from my own personal one. For example, a character at one point essentially tells another that it's a privilege for the poor to be ground up and spit out by the workings of the universe, because it's a wonderful honor to be so close to the machinery.  Like, ewwww.  Many times, it's implied that all injustices, instances of terrible bad luck, and criminal acts are all OK, because, well, they just are. Somehow cosmically, the balance sheet will zero itself out one day and people will be rewarded with a glimpse of a perfectly just world. And, that's it. Just a glimpse, indicated by a flooding gold light. So, yeah. Some foggy, vague idea of a fleeting moment of justice somehow makes everything else that came before better. (SPOILER ALERT: Plus, I think Abby returning to life invalidates the whole damned thing. Was her death part of the balance, or was it not?  Make up your mind about this stuff.)

Kindness is not valued in this book. Love only makes an appearance, as far as I can tell, twice, maybe thrice. It's frustrating, because, to my mind, without those two things, what on earth is there? Justice is a good answer, but it cannot stand alone.

Or in other words, I don't think I'll ever completely trust someone in a position of comfort and security telling me, "It's not so bad that some people get horrible lots in life. It's all part of a cosmic plan, just trust me on this." And yes, that has the implications you are probably thinking that it has.

Final Call:

The pure descriptive power rates the stars but can't hide a lack of heart. 

If you like this, try:

I don't even know.

I'm Not Alone!

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading

by Maureen Corrigan

Read on December 17, 2015.

I picked this up for a friend, and decided to read it before I passed it on. I'm really glad I did. The book is in three parts, and the last one spoke to me less than the first two, but overall this is still a very strong book. Corrigan talks a lot about female characters in literature. I was particularly fascinated by the observation that, traditionally, most male protagonists have adventures. They do something tangible, tackle an injustice, take out the bad guy. Women in literature, on the other hand, tend to hold fast through some insufferable situation, using their inner strength to survive until circumstances change around them. I loved how she framed this as the female adventure story. 

Probably the best thing I took away from this book was Corrigan's discussion about how reading many mainstream books with male protagonists as a young Catholic girl affected her throughout her life. I can relate very much to those effects, as someone who was raised in a family where women are definitely passive and often submissive, all the while also identifying with book characters who took charge and got things done. You can end up with a desire to do things, but an utter lack of confidence when it comes to doing them. In this respect, the book was almost like a free trip to a therapist.

Final Call: 

If you like reading about reading, this is a stand-up entry into the books about books category!

If you like this, try:

Book Lust, by Nancy Pearl

Hyperbole and a Half

Hyperbole and a Half

by Allie Brosh

Read November 29, 2015.

If you have not read Allie Brosh's blog, please do. I don't think she posts new content there anymore, but what's there is amazing. This book is a compendium of her blog posts, among other things. Ally does illustrated, comic book-style posts. Some are primarily humorous, but many more, while humorous at the surface, fearlessly explore the problems that come with being human. She tackles depression in a particularly gut-wrenching way. There's also a post on the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, and it even involves a flowchart. It's brilliant! 

Final Call:

Caaaaaaaaaake.

If you like this, try:

Let's Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson, because she maintains a similar knife's-edge balance between absolute hilarity and sharp observations on mental illness based on personal experiences. 

When It All Goes Down, What Do We Keep?

The Girl with All the Gifts

by M.R. Carey

Read on November 14, 2015. 

I can't remember, now, how I found out about this book. This, unfortunately, is a review that I did not write at the time of reading, being the procrastinator that I am.  It's actually four months later, which is bad, but does give me the opportunity to look back and see what has stayed with me over time and through the reading of, hmmm, let's see, twenty-two books since this one.

Surprisingly, the answer is, quite a lot. Melanie as a character is fantastic. Her teacher and the security man and the other traveling companions all still hold a place in my head, despite their names escaping me.

At first, I thought the story was going to take a very different arc. Then, as Melanie and her companions' journey began to take up larger and larger parts of the book, I realized the resolution could not be what I was expecting. There simply wasn't time. The actual resolution is fairly unique, to my knowledge. I would love to read a sequel, although I do not think there are plans for any. I want to see Melanie make her plan a reality. (Note from 2018 - not only is there a movie, there's a stand alone book set in the same universe. Still no actual sequel, though.)

I give this book, overall, pretty high grades for execution. The premise hangs together. People do things based on realistic motivations. The 'science' behind the epidemic and Melanie's existence is not stretched too far. It's about as believable as The Passage, which is pretty good company to be in. And like a lot of other good apocalyptic books, it takes a hard look at humanity and what's worth saving. 

Final Call: 

Mushrooms for the win!

If you like this, try:

Other zombie books are sure to please, so maybe try World War Z by Max Brooks? Both are spins on the traditional zombie tale but I think this one, despite staying at a smaller scale, is more innovative. 

Following Up a Great One

Anil's Ghost

by Michael Ondaatje

Read on November 10, 2015. 

Two things brought this book to my attention. First that it's by the author of The English Patent, a book I adore. Second, it's set in Sri Lanka, a literary location I don't think I've visited. The plot, set around the investigation of war crimes by the government against civilians, seemed promising. 

And, the thing is, it is a good book. Anil has depths, her relationship with Sarath has delicious tension, and Sarath himself is complex. The setting is strong; it's an atmospheric book.

All that being said, it did not impact me in the same way that The English Patient did. Part of that may be that there is no great destructive romantic love driving the plot, part may be that there are just very few books that can rise to the same caliber. Even from the same author.

Final Call: 

If you like this, try:

Ondaatje's other books would be a good place to start, because he's a Sri Lankan native. I'm also planning on reading Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala, which documents her grief after a tsunami affects her family holiday in Sri Lanka. 

Hamburger Helpers, Running Around Causing Problems

Annihilation

by Jeff VanderMeer

Read on October 31, 2015.

The cover is gorgeous.  The premise is interesting.  It's gotten a lot of buzz, even if the buzz has a sort of cult feel to it - not mainstream, definitely weird, but supposedly terrific.  I even bumped this into my to-read list over the discouragingly big bunch of my yet-to-be-read Challenge books for this year.

Instead this is a contender for most disappointing read of 2015.  It's not that its bad, per se.  Okay, well maybe it is.  The only way I can admire it is if I look at the writing itself as creating a state in my brain that is akin to what would happen if I tried to read a normal book while I was in Area X.  

The text seems distorted in an unusual way, that's what I'm getting at.  Sentences just don't track right - the words don't quite make a sensible thought. The flow of the book is odd. "Here's this weird green thing. I hid my inner self from my husband. I see the lighthouse."  If all this is on purpose, it might be brilliant, but I don't think that it is.

There's not much meat to build atmosphere or context either.  A complete list of what we get is:  a tower tunnel, a scary blob, a lighthouse, a base camp, something that moans, a photograph, a pile of paper, and three women. Possibly an island?  And that's it.  

The other problem here is that it's a psychological study told in the first person, and that person is a bit of a wet rag.  She never draws the obvious conclusion about a situation. She describes things in opposite ways, at least one time doing it in thoughts that are only inches apart on the page.  She uses the word really in dialogue. A lot.  

Then there's this talk of hand-shaped fruiting bodies, and after that, all I can picture are lots of little Hamburger Helpers running around causing problems.

Final call:

Maybe two and a half. At least its quick?  To give this perspective - this is the first in a trilogy.  Using page counts, over three Annihilations could fit inside The Passage, which is itself the first in a trilogy.

If you like this, try:

H.P. Lovecraft

Other books in the 'New Weird' genre.

Battle of the Apocalypses

Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel

Originally read on October 27, 2015

I'm reading some apocalyptic stuff because its coming up on Halloween and I like to tuck in a creepy, eerie book to mark it.  This year, it's two.  Both deal with apocalypses, and in an interesting turn, Station Eleven briefly alludes to The Passage.  (Even more strangely, the allusion made me realize something about The Passage that I hadn't quite put together before!)

So let's do a direct comparison, because those can be fun:

How We All Die:

TP - Military attempt to build super soldier with immortality virus goes horribly awry.  Vampires.

SE - Superflu epidemic.

Extent of Destruction:

TP - Most of North America is a vampire playground.

SE - 99.9% of humanity dies, worldwide.

Religious Overtones:

TP - Allusions and parallels galore.  Fate/Destiny/God is At Work Here.

SE - Characters deal with what happens through their various religious beliefs, and one character's beliefs are very important, but not a central theme

Is it a Page Turner?

TP - YES.

SE - Occasionally.

Action Scenes:

TP - No problem. Here, have even more action!

SE - Eh.  Most are awkward.

What's the Biggest Problem?

TP - Too many people doing things because of some mysterious feeling or drive.

SE - A religious zealot villain with very little complexity.  

Is it a Good Book?

TP - Hell Yes.

SE - Yes.

What's the Best Part?

TP - The easy, natural power of the storytelling.

SE - The way that the book weaves complications from the time before the flu to consequences after the flu, when you might assume a pandemic would obliterate the past completely.

Final call:

The emphasis on art in several forms is refreshing.  I also get the impression that I would enjoy hanging out with the author.

If you like this try:

Sorry, fresh out of ideas!

When Books Weigh as much as Cats

The Passage

(Originally read on October 24, 2015)

Is this literary fiction?  Genre fiction?  Action? Adventure? Sci Fi? Horror? Don't worry, no one else knows either!

What I do know is that it's a new all-time favorite of mine.  Yes, it probably weighs more than my cat.  Yes, I have a 20-pound cat.  Yes, there are thousands of small details that don't "need" to be there.  Yes, it gets a little heavy handed with religious parallels.  Yes, it's very much in the spirit of Stephen King's The Stand.  It doesn't matter.  None of that stuff matters when you have a knock-out premise, a set of characters who are genuine people, who take actions consistent with what you know about them, and an author who knows how to pace his plot.

I've read a lot of long books recently, but I don't think any of them put their length to this good of a use, i.e., taking the time to create believable back stories and thought processes for all of the characters involved.  Don't get me wrong, there are probably hundreds of characters in this book and some do serve as place holders, more or less.  But to have dozens of people explored in this much detail, well, I don't get that very often.  

The first section describes the military-experiment-gone-wrong that destroys life in North America as as we know it, and those chapters are just beyond gripping.  Then we get to the First Colony one hundred years later, the tiny outpost of 94 souls under dying lights ... and well, I'm always a sucker for humanity on its last legs, and this part blew me away.  Then everything goes to hell, and the tension ratchets consistently to the end.  Well done, well done.

I keep fumbling around at the edges of why I like this book so much and feel like I'm not getting at the heart of it.  But now that I've thought about it for a few days, I think it might be based on how deeply a story draws you in.  How well you can submerge yourself into it.  It's suspense, of course, but also points of beauty and humanity and reflections and moods and settings.  Like, there's a trail (the plot) and the book should make you want to walk along it.  Plenty of times, you take the trail and its flat and boring and you get to the end and all you can say is that you got some exercise.  But the good trails go up to great views (the ending), and the best have points of constant interest along the way: maybe a waterfall, cool rocks, lots of wildflowers, some deer grazing, birdsong.  The Passage makes a fantastic trail.   

Final Call: 

If you like this, try:

The Stand, by Stephen King, because you really just should read this.

Did I Ever Tell You?

Everything I Never Told You 

(Originally read on October 9, 2015)

Here's the obligatory quick read that I usually need after tackling a big brick of a book.  This is a family drama, looking at how different family members react to each other's expectations, before and after a traumatic, life-changing event.  If books were paintings, this would be a watercolor of a rainy day, all gray and pastels.  Muted and sad, but making a pretty picture nonetheless.  

The ending was beautiful, as it was written, with one problem.  SPOILERS FOLLOW: Marilyn feels like she pressured Lydia into taking her own life.  We, the readers, find out that this is not so.  But, after I finished, I realized that Marilyn is never given this knowledge.  No one except the readers and Lydia actually know what happened.  I would think that being convinced you contributed to your daughter's suicide, as a not-psychopathic mother, would destroy a woman, not set her up for a reunion with her somewhat estranged husband.  

The only other complaint is how narrowly most of the characters are defined.  It's almost like the author came up with five descriptors or drivers for each character, and almost everything they do and say reinforces those themes.  I guess what I am saying is that the bones, or architecture, of the story are too close to the surface and it shows in places.

It's still a very nice read.  It was cathartic, in an odd way.

Final Call: 

This is completely worth the time it takes to read it.

If you like this, try:

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, because I think it's the only other book I've described as a watercolor painting.

Illywhacker

This is a Booker Prize finalist from the 1980s, and I am left to wonder if maybe it doesn't age very well.  I think it's supposed to be a grand statement about the spirit and character of Australia, with comedy and tragedy and everything in between and everything a little fantastical, too.  

The general theme, i.e., lies and their value and what they say about the people who tell them and listen to them, is very intriguing.  Unfortunately, a lot of the book doesn't really address it.  You read on and on about improbable people doing improbable things in improbable ways, and then before you know it everyone's living in cages in a pet store.  No, really.  Maybe every 20 pages or so, you get a quick little flash of really insightful or beautiful text that you can't tie to the rest of it.  The balance is off, for me.  Or maybe it's just that I am not familiar enough with Australia to get all of the in jokes.

This is the only Peter Carey book I have read to date, but I get the impression that several of his other titles might have been a better place to start.  I also cannot tell you how much I dislike the cover.

Final call:

This book actually might be right up a lot of people's alleys, especially if those alleys are very literary and enjoy world fiction particularly, so don't write it off on my account.     

The Diamond Age

I .... just don't know about this one.  The premise sounds beyond promising:  a young girl (ok, street urchin) in the future gets her hands on a smartbook programmed to essentially raise said child to be subversive, and before you know it, the entire world's in trouble.  

But the execution is a bit off.  Instead of getting tighter, the story spins off into weird subplots.  Poor Hackworth, always hapless, and disappearing from his family for ten years.  Sort of.  Miranda's in the story, then she's out of it sort of, then she's suddenly the key to it all.  And here's a sentence I never thought I'd have reason to type: the sexually transmitted data plot line was a huge turn off in a book about raising young girls.  It just didn't fit the mood or style and reaaalllllly slowed down the story. 

Sometimes books go astray by going for a big picture at the end, and giving no closure for the characters we've loved the entire book.  The Diamond Age is the exact opposite.  Just a few pages from the end of this looooooonng saga, we're still hearing incredibly specific details about how characters are fighting in the street.  Then, the book ends.  It's so bogged down in the minutia that I have no idea how the large scale competition between the Feed and the Seed is actually going to shake down.  Worse, I have no idea whether Hackworth is helping the Seed or not, or whether it's even a good thing.  

Gah!

Final call:

I can't give a book with this much humor and imagination less than four stars, but it probably deserves three. 

Brooklyn Bones

I don't think I've read a book by someone I've known, however meager the acquaintance, excepting academic books.  But here's one. I have to say, I expect the worst from genre mystery books these days, and Brooklyn Bones is solid.  It avoids a lot of traps.

Erica is our main character, and she has her head on strait.  The relationship between Erica and her daughter is really sweet, even if it fraught with teenage angst, and Erica always acts for her daughter first.  Really the only criticism I have is that the mystery seems to coalesce around Erica and then resolve itself without much action by Erica herself.  I'm not even sure that's a criticism.  It's just different from other mysteries.  But that's how I think Brooklyn Bones stays true - a lot of books veer off course because the hero/heroine has to take nonsensical or contrived actions to move the plot forward, and here Stein finds other ways to get to the end.  

This is definitely not hard-boiled, or even much of a thriller, per se.  But it is a nice, quick read of the cozy variety.

Final call: 

The Years of Rice and Salt

Somehow, I read a synopsis of this book somewhere, and bought it, and read the back of it, and still managed to not realize what the book was about!

I thought it looked at how life in Africa might have proceeded if European colonization had not occurred.  And yes, that is a part of it, albeit a very small part.  I missed the whole let's rewrite global history as if the Plague breakouts in the 1300s had killed almost everyone Western Europe, instead of only one third of them.  And I definitely had no idea about the strong Buddhist bent to the plot.  Not that any of that is a bad thing, but I rarely go into a book so off course as to what I was about to read!  

This one lies pretty solidly in that grand science fiction tradition of using alternate worlds and/or histories to question how society operates.  The author is compared to James Michener, too, since both have written epic fictionalized histories that follow generations (not quite generations in this case, but the effect is similar). I realized that it's been quite a while since I've read something in either of those veins.

So, this one was hot and cold for me.  There were parts that were frankly just beautiful, but more and bigger parts were a slog.  I had 15 pages left last night to finish this entire 700+ page book and couldn't do it.  That, like, never happens.  Some of the issue comes from the difficulties of covering so much time relatively quickly - the pace gets very uneven.  Some of it comes from the extended discussions, which were really mini-lectures, on the fabric of religion and civilization, although actually many times those were interesting to me.  

There are 10 books, I most liked Awake to Emptiness and The Widow Kang.  For a long time I thought the book's title had no specific meaning, but Widow Kang has a wonderful explanation.  The discussion of reincarnation in the last few pages of the book is both amazing and wickedly clever.     

Maybe most troubling is that I'm not sure what the big picture is.  The book seems to make judgments about particular religions/civilizations, but some of them don't seem correct, even within the context of the book.  But I think I would need more time than I'm willing to commit to untangle everything. 

Final call:

I wouldn't say that this book has broad appeal, but it's also pretty approachable.  If you feel like walking on the philosophical wild side, give it a go.

Jersey Birds

Time for more photos from Forsythe.  We went out to Atlantic City a few weeks ago and of course took the time to drive up to my favorite wildlife refuge, once on Saturday and again on Sunday.

Pine trees and egrets, what a mix.  You don't see the two together a whole lot, but this Great Egret was proud as a peacock up in his perch.  The flexibility in these guys' necks never fails to amaze me.

Birds were somewhat scarce (although scarce for Forsythe means there's still plenty around.)  But maybe two miles down the dikes, we found a huge group of several types of birds in what appeared to be a feeding frenzy.  This is the best shot I could get of it, and it's missing maybe half the birds that were there.

There were:  Double-crested Cormorants, Great and Snowy Egrets, plenty of Laughing and other Gulls, and about 30 Glossy Ibis.

Here's a cormorant close-up, sixteen of them in this shot alone.  It must have been a good day for birds in groups, because about three quarters of the way around the wildlife drive, we came upon this small tree covered in Great and Snowy Egrets.

This is really just about a third of the tree, there were many more birds hanging out in it.  Funny, because we've been going to this refuge for years now, in all seasons, and this is the first time I've really seen any kind of heron hanging out there.

Lastly, a Snowy Egret we found making use of a piling and giving us a very good demonstration of the leg and feet colors that are so distinctively identifiable.  Adults usually have a strong break between the yellow of the feet and the black of the legs, but this one doesn't, so I'm thinking it's a juvenile bird, hatched just this spring.

Always Time for Middle Creek

The same day we took the butterfly tour at Fort Indiantown Gap, we decided to swing through Middle Creek on the way home.  I like going there on random summer days - it's always beautiful and the crowds are gone.  Plus you just never know what you're going to see!

I love the look of the summery meadows that take over so much of the open ground at Middle Creek in the warm months.  In truth, I was hoping for more butterflies, but they were sparse.  It was a pretty hot day, so maybe that had an effect.  The birds weren't out much, either.

There was a dragonfly, posing semi-nicely on a Common Mullein stalk near Stop #3.  I say semi-nicely because he stayed put for a long time, but never turned his butt away from the camera.  The internet tells me this is probably a Halloween Pennant, which I can see, given the black and orange color scheme.

Another treat to going in summer is that there's a spur road off of the Wildlife Drive that seems to be open only at this time of year.  Back this road, we found a Grasshopper Sparrow with some grub sitting on a fence post.

The spur road ends in a cup-de-sac by a pond and wetlands. Bird activity here was stronger, and there were also two White-Tailed Deer.  They amused me by wading out into the shallows of the pond.  In the meantime, Orioles, Catbirds, Goldfinches, Robins, and more were poking around and flying from bush to reed to tree.  All in all, one of my favorite spots in the Management Area!

Book Reviews: A Blast from the Past

For Christmas of 2005, one of my then coworkers (and a fellow reader) gave me a journal and told me it was to keep track of what I read.  I recently pulled it out, with the intention of adding these into Good Reads as a kind of back up.

I wrote the date I finished, the title, the author, the page numbers, and then a 1-2 sentence review. I diligently logged books from 2006 through July of 2013, when I moved totally to Good Reads.

I thought I'd share some of these reviews; looking back they're hilarious, often in a "what was I thinking" kind of way :)

For example.  My thoughts on Twilight:  "An easy read, but a dumb book.  Like it's written for teenagers by teenagers. Grrrrr."

And, The Harlequin by Laurel K. Hamilton: "Actually not that bad. The psychobabble yapping did not totally dominate the book."

What was my obsession with the word dumb?  Here's The Secret Lives of Doctor's Wives: "A dumb book, but it's entertaining, which is actually pretty good for a dumb book."

I seemed to use the words excellent and incredible overly much.  But what can you do when you read a book like Making Money by Terry Pratchett:  "Excellent as always, and it's hard to say that about a book where the main character's first name is 'Moist!'"

One more, The Secret History by Donna Tartt (a generally well-liked book): "What is the point of great writing about dull people?  How does a genuine bacchanal turn into a yawn???"

I do still wonder about those questions, by the way.

I'm only through 2008, for tagging all the books in Good Reads and entering my reviews, and I can already see how my tastes have changed.  Less paranormal series now, less thrillers, more literary books and more of the classics I never picked up in high school or college.  More books, period.  About 10-15 more per year now!

The Tiger's Wife

The big "thing" with this book, if you read know anything about it at all, is that it's a blend of the realistic and the mythic.  A major theme is how people turn real events into stories to comfort themselves or help them make sense of their lives.  But exactly how this works with the events and stories presented in the book, I'm not always sure.  The diggers in the vineyard, those were obvious.  And the way the deathless man's role seemed to mirror what a doctor's role is, knowing who will live and who will die.  The tiger seemed like a symbol for outside influences pulling on a very insular village, dangerous and to be distrusted.  I could make those connections.  But the tiger's wife herself, and Luka, and the apothecary, and their back stories, those remain opaque to me. 

How almost any of this relates to Natalia and her grandfather, I don't know.  Aside from it all supposing to be very Balkan.  Despite Natalia saying that the key to understanding her grandfather lies between the stories of the tiger's wife and the deathless man, I struggled to pull together any grand connections between the stories and his life.

Then there's war.  The entire book is painted on a backdrop involving various and numerous wars.  Sometimes you get lost and can't remember which war caused what to happen.  The author plays it as another facet of the Balkan cultural attitude, which may not be fair, I think.  Certainly it's what led me to see the tiger and his wife as the "outside" and the "different" sparking conflict.  

I do get the impression the author was trying to use animals to make us see plainly what humans hide, particularly the costs of stress from war.

I thought I would like this book more than I did.  Which is not to say I didn't like it; I predicted that this would be an easy five stars for me, and it's a solid four instead.  I'm not sure I completely got what the author was throwing out there, but I was able to interpret (i.e. make stuff up!) enough on my own to feel satisfied.  

Final call:

I say read it, and don't stress out about trying to figure everything out on the first go.  This is an impressionist painting done in words - individual parts may make no sense, but the overall effect is clear enough.

Fort Indiantown Gap Miscellany

Here's the big group of us, after arriving at the range.  We got a good lecture on safety and respect for the habitat, and we listened because the guy was big and loud.  But, most of us also had our eyes on the field while our ears were on the instructions :)

There were plenty of things besides butterflies to be interested in, like this Ring-Necked Snake that was found by the herpetologist of the group.  Later he found a turtle, too.

This concluded our time at Fort Indiantown Gap, but it turns out that we had more outdoor adventures in store for us this particular day.  But more on that in the next posts.