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WELCOME TO BOOK TALK

This location presents Arizona Braille and Talking Book Readers
with book summaries and reviews suggested by our readers, staff, and volunteers.
Also provided will be recent library news.

(Writer’s note: It’s that time of the year when transplanted Southern Californians start getting homesick for the Pacific Ocean. Some of us, like your writer, look around for books that will take us to any ocean minus the Arizona heat. With this in mind I discovered Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes, a contemporary travel log in which Horwitz takes a replica of Captain Cook’s ship from Bora-Bora to the Bering Sea. This seemed just perfect for not only a cool summer book but one that would also take me on a historical adventure. What could be more exciting than retracing the voyages of Captain Cook and learning how a poor farm boy became Britain’s greatest navigator?

 

Book Review:

BLUE LATITUDES: BOLDLY GOING WHERE CAPTAIN COOK HAS GONE BEFORE
RC 55707
By Tony Horwitz
480 pages on four cassettes
Narrated by Bill Wallace

FROM THE BOOK JACKET

“James Cook’s three epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. When he embarked for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in 1779, during a bloody clash in Hawaii, the map of the world was substantially complete. Cook explored more of the earth’s surface than anyone in history – sailing from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Tahiti to Siberia, from Easter Island to the Great Barrier Reef – and introduced the West to an exotic world of taboo and tattoo, of cannibalism and ritual sex. Yet the impoverished farm boy, who broke the bounds of social class to become Britain’s greatest navigator, remains as mysterious today as the uncharted seas he sailed more than two centuries ago.

In Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz sets off on his own voyage of discovery. Adventuring in Cook’s wake, he relives the captain’s journeys and explores their legacy in the far flung lands Cook opened to the West. At sea, aboard a replica of Cook’s ship, he works atop a hundred-foot mast, sleeps in a narrow hammock, and recaptures the run – and – lash world of eighteenth century seafaring. On land, he meets native people – Aboriginal and Aleut elders, Maori gang members, the king of Tonga – for whom Cook is alternately a heroic navigator and a villain who brought syphilis, guns, and greed to the unspoiled Pacific. Accompanied by a carousing Australian mate, he meets Miss Tahiti, visits the roughest bar in Alaska, and uncovers the secret behind the red-toothed warriors of Savage Island. Throughout, Horwitz also searches for Cook the man: restless prodigy who fled his peasant boyhood, and later the luxury of Georgian London, for the privation and peril of sailing off the edge of the map.

Horwitz’s bestselling Confederates in the Attic (RC 47299 on three cassettes and narrated by Steven Carpenter) combined history and adventure in a harrowing and hilarious tour of the Civil War South, in Blue Latitudes, he goes international, taking readers on a wild ride across hemispheres and centuries, from Bora-Bora to the Bering Sea, from the mud hut where Cook was born to the sun struck shore where he died in Hawaii. Poignant, probing, antic, and exhilarating, Blue Latitudes brings to life a man whose voyages helped create the global village we inhabit today.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Tony Horwitz is the author of Confederates in the Attic, Baghdad Without a Map, and One for the Road. He is also a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has worked as a war correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and as a staff writer for The New Yorker. He lives in Virginia with his wife, Geraldine Brooks, and their son, Nathaniel.”

(As quoted from the book jacket and all of the above titles are available at your Arizona State Braille and Talking Book Library.)

ABOUT THE NARRATOR

Bill Wallace has been an outstanding voice for both the American Foundation for the Blind and Talking Book Publishers. He has recorded over 300 titles for the National Library Service Program and on June 25th of 2003 won the coveted Alexander Scourby award for outstanding narration. He is considered to be perhaps the best narrator of non-fictional books and has also received the prestigious Torgi Talking Book of the Year Award from the Canadian Institute for the Blind along with being nominated for an “Audi” award by the Audio Publishers Association.

READER CRITIQUE

Tired of formula writing and the same kind presentation or story line? If you are, this is your book. There simply is nothing ordinary about Tony Horwitz. His travels, sense of humor, views on life, and creative writing style are definitely beyond the norm!! Blue Latitudes takes us from the past to the present as it investigates Captain Cook’s notes, ship’s log, diaries, and revisits places Cook put on the map.

With both adventure and humor, Horwitz takes us on a journey to areas Cook discovered and tells us what they were like and what they are like today. Horwitz even interviews contemporary inhabitants to determine their feelings concerning this famous historic navigator.

For example, Horowitz asks Maoris to relate their opinions regarding Captain Cook and finds a resentment that has been utilized to create a racial identity and pride amongst a native people. On the other hand, when he asks the same questions to Australian Aborigines in Botany Bay, he finds apathy rather than resentment. The author also notes that Captain Cook had enormous respect for native peoples and punished his crew harshly for unjust wanton acts against locals. In fact, Captain Cook’s death in Hawaii is largely attributed to his technique of negotiations over violence.

If you want to be both entertained and educated in a highly innovative fashion, this is your read. However, for those who might be offended by some ribald humor concerning Tahitian sex practices – both past and present- you might want to forgo this book or at least skip the chapter on Tahiti. It is my opinion that both the fun and knowledge of Blue Latitudes makes looking the other way worthwhile, should Horwitz’ humor become offensive. So cast off for some great summer reading and an adventure you won’t forget, as you bring the cool Pacific Ocean into the Sonoran Desert!!!

NARRATOR REVIEW

Bill Wallace excels with narrative skills that make his presentation not only pleasing to the ear but also a pleasure to the mind. His cadence and diction allow Horwitz’s reference to Cook’s diaries and ship’s log to be both readable and adventurous. Cook’s writing is so straight forward that without Horwitz and Wallace’s help, one might fall asleep and wake up on the Great Barrier Reef in North Western Australia!

Library News

As Cook navigated the world, his best skills were tenacity and planning ahead. This also applies to your library service. With the upcoming holidays of Tuesday, July 4th, Independence Day, and Monday September 4th, Labor Day, you should start ordering more books the week of June 26th and August 28th. Try and stay away from calling the library on Mondays and Tuesdays to avoid ship wrecks and tied up phone lines.

You can also plan ahead by calling your Reader Advisor for your user i.d. and password so that you can order books through our Online Catalog at http://www.lib.az.us/braille. For some great instructions on how to use this lifeboat, take a look at the June 2006 issue of Talking Book News written by our Online Catalog specialist Deputy Director Sandra Everett. Please remember that large waves of orders tie up our phone lines on Mondays and Tuesday, and the two working days after a holiday. So for best sailing try the lower phone load tides and remember that ordering ahead can prevent being shipwrecked without a book!!

(Comments and questions regarding “BookTalk” should be
directed to Reader Advisement Librarian Henry Hayden at hhayden@lib.az.us)

 

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Updated:  10/6/2006

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