"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Thursday, September 06, 2018

The Lost City of Z (David Grann, 2005)

(319 pages)

Book club selection (via Nick; session held 5 September 2018).

I like this genre.  But so far had only read about it in the context of the Nile (Alan Moorehead's White Nile and Blue Nile, biographies of Stanley and Livingstone, etc.

It was interesting to think about the differences - the Nile was impossibly difficult, but the Amazon seemed far worse. 

Another point of reference was Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World - a great story, and modeled to some extent on this adventure.

Story is built around a fellow named Percy Fawcett; he rattles around in British colonial outposts; like famous African explorers, he seems immune to the hardships.  Fawcett becomes convinced that the Amazon formerly supported large cities (or at least one large one), and works to raise funds, launch an expedition, and hope to find it.  Takes his son and his son's best friend on the final effort.

He disappears without a trace; various folks go looking for him (generally with awful results); the author also goes out into the Amazon, after a fashion. 

No comments: