The Travels of Marco Polo

I was never a big fan of water as a kid.  I took swimming lessons a couple times and knew how to keep myself above water (more or less: treading water was always difficult for me), but I really didn’t enjoy being in the pool too much.  As a teenager and in college, I had fun playing water basketball, which was always understood to be a no-holds-barred version of water polo with a basketball hoop hanging over the water.  No matter if it was a young men’s activity or a get-together with friends (even in a co-ed setting), it was a brutal, but fun, game.  Since I was so adverse to the water as a kid, I never played the childhood pool favorite, Marco Polo, ostensibly named for the XIII-century explorer (Wikipedia claims the game is not connected, but that honestly seems a bit daft).  I never read his famous and influential book as a kid, either, but as I’ve come to be more interested in the world’s classics, I thought I’d give it a try.

The Travels of Marco Polo translated by Ronald Latham (ISBN: 978-0-14-044057-7) is the famous and influential (Columbus was inspired by reading Polo’s account of his travels) tale of travel and adventure that is really quite ethnographic in nature.  There is no authoritative version of the book since there are over 150 extant manuscripts, and there are many significant differences.  Latham, a Polo scholar, did this translation in 1958 and worked to meld the major manuscripts together, giving the reader a very complete view of Polo’s travels.  The focus of Polo’s account is his time in the court of the Mongolian khans, but he discusses his time in what is now Turkey, Iran, Burma, China, Sumatra, India, and Arabia.  The descriptions of the people and places are often quite detailed, especially when it comes to court life.  Commoners’ lives aren’t given the same level of detail, but the major industries and agricultural pursuits of each region are listed, along with general religious customs, and usually a note or two about interesting flora, fauna, and cultural customs (for instance, sharing wives seems to have been a thing in more than one Asian culture 700 years ago).  Polo talked about the spread of Christianity.  He talked about various technologies, shipping methods, and Oriental warfare.  He always took time to describe the local take on alcohol.  He also relayed tales of the supernatural and used interesting words, like “unicorn” (argued by some scholars to mean “rhinoceros”) that renders some of the description of the travels rather hard to believe.

Although tough at times because of archaic language and downright lies in some places (i.e., men with tails or people who look like dogs or the ability of some of the natives to conjure up storms to defeat their enemies), the book is an enjoyable read and the general idea of the work is considered by most scholars to be true.  A lot of what is written in the book is true, and more of it is based on truth, leaving only the really crazy stuff to be outright lies.  It was interesting to read the accounts of ancient peoples, places, customs, and religions.  It reminded me of my time in Russia as a missionary and my first visit to the Czech Republic, both instances of my own travel where I kept a journal, often detailing the things I saw around me that were new to me.  Polo likely did the same, and it’s quite important that he and others did, since such records provided knowledge and inspiration for others.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

Gulliver's Travels

I am not a big movie fan, but a few years ago, the comedy actor Jack Black did a movie based on the classic novel Gulliver’s Travels.  I don’t much care for movies, so I know even less about actors.  What I did know was that Jack Black made a movie about being a Mexican professional wrestler.  It looked massively dumb, and I never saw it.  Black’s modernized take on the classic novel didn’t look much better, and I avoided it, too.  I hadn’t ever read the book, but, as everyone knows, the book is better than the movie.

Gulliver’s Travels (ISBN: 0-14-143949-1) by Jonathan Swift is an interesting novel that was originally published as political satire.  Now far removed from the contentious political scene of XVIII-century Great Britain, it has withstood the test of time and continues to be popular.  This is mostly thanks to the first part of the book, where the book’s hero, Lemuel Gulliver, visits Lilliput, home to a humanoid race only inches tall.  Gulliver has a number of adventures in this part of the world, including participating in a battle and putting out fires, which saves the island’s royalty.  He also ends up being trapped in some distant land where the inhabitants are giants, which also provides for some adventure, but mostly being carried around in a box by a girl.  Gulliver’s third voyage features a few different islands and a people who have figured out how to live on a machine that perpetually floats in the sky, landing only if the inhabitants are trying to crush the people on the ground below.  Finally, Gulliver finds himself in a land where the ruling inhabitants are horses.  The most inferior race in this quarter of the world are essentially humans, but in a wild and feral form.  In each place, Gulliver is exposed to differing methods of government and people.  He seems to learn from each, although always very patriotic when it comes to his homeland.  Finally, after his visit to the land of the horse beings, he is disgusted with mankind, claiming it to not think and to be disgusting and wild in nature.

I, like most modern readers, did not get much of the political satire in the book.  I would probably agree with many others that the Lilliput episode was the highlight as far as adventures went.  The other sections were significantly drier, although they still had their interesting points.  I noticed that by the end, although likely starting in the third episode, I was more attuned to the commentary on the behavior of people.  One of the points that Swift made multiple times in the book is that people spend a lot of time in conflict with one another because we choose to magnify little differences.  He also thought people succumb to thinking the grass is always greener on the other side, especially when it comes to the pursuit of scientific and technological advancement.  Finally, Swift, as I read him, was a big proponent of honesty.  If people would be honest in their dealings and in what they say, the likelihood of our never-ending conflicts decreases to a large degree.  The combination of the story of travel and adventure with commentary was interesting, although I think it tended to detract from the book a little, making it too slow in places.  I thought it was a decent book, but probably not one that I would pick up and read again just for the fun of it.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

The Possessed

While in college at BYU, I took a Russian literature in translation course.  We read a number of books, most of which I thought were pretty good, a few of which I didn’t much care for.  One that I thought was a good book was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.  I remembered that book to have dark, brooding, often just outright insane characters, yet it was a good read. A while back, one of my aunts was cleaning out some old junk and came across some books she read in college.  Some of them were Russian classics.  I took up her offer to become the owner of these books that cost under $1.00 back when they were published in the 1970s.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s the Possessed (often called Demons in more modern English translations), translated by Andrew MacAndrew, was one of those books.  The book is the story of a provincial town in late tsarist Russia that undergoes a short period of chaos when some sons of the town’s prominent citizens return from abroad, university studies, or time in Russia’s crown-jewel cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.  The young men come back with anarchist, atheist, and nihilist views and what seems like a role in an overarching plan to bring down the established government.  The young men play off the fears of the older members of the town’s citizenry, which aren’t really fears of government or the future, but more about their place in society and other more mundane fears.  Doing this, they wreak havoc messing with romances and balls, get involved with the town’s convicted felons, and even murder someone.  What was probably the saddest part of the novel was how after the murder, the victim’s wife and newborn son died.  All of it was caused by the anarchists working to spread their ideas and being willing to eliminate their opponents if necessary.  After the murder, the anarchists were mostly dealt with by the authorities and things fell back into their routine in the town after a shake-up in the government.  Other than the misery they caused, the atheist anarchists accomplished nothing, and that was probably Dostoyevsky’s point in writing the novel: atheism, anarchism, and nihilism are sure ways to bring about one’s destruction and the destruction of those around us.  He also noted, as another of the novel’s characters died, that a firm belief in God and Jesus Christ was a sure antidote to those negative philosophies.

As predicted, the novel had dark, brooding, misguided, and certifiably insane characters.  It was honestly kind of hard to get through at times.  It’s not the kind of book that you pick up one afternoon and finish later that evening because you just couldn’t put it down.  On the other hand, it’s very well written, and easy to follow the story, if not always the philosophy of some of the characters, which is probably just because the ideas of nihilism and anarchy are such fringe ideas in our current society.  By the end of the book, even with all of the death and destruction that many people consider to be hallmarks of Russian literature, I was a fan.  It showed very clearly the depths to which the philosophies of nihilism, atheism, and anarchism can lead people.  They lead to destruction on a personal and societal level.  They lead to spiritual and physical destruction.  While Dostoyevsky didn’t focus on the Christian message very much, he made the point clearly that to redeem oneself and to redeem the human condition, one must accept God and live by the standards that acceptance demands.  That is a message worth reading any time.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

War and Peace

An extraordinary strength of vitality — the strength

which in that vast space amid the snows maintained

the life of this original, peculiar and unique people.

— Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), War and Peace

My first exposure to War and Peace came as a young boy when I saw a ridiculously fat book sitting on a counter at one of my grandparents’ houses.  I was intrigued enough to crack it open, but the endless pages of small print about Napoleon and the Russians meant absolutely nothing to me.  Still, I was fascinated by the idea that someone would sit down and read a book over 1,000 pages.  After returning from my mission to St. Petersburg, Russia, I ended up deciding to double major while at BYU, and Russian was the major I added.  One of our classes was a survey of Russian literature (in translation).  We read a number of books during the one-semester class (the reading assignments were killer), but I gained a larger appreciation for some of the Russian classics.  That class probably inspired me, in general, to seek out more classical literature in addition to the history and politics books that I typically enjoy.  At some point, I knew I’d tackle that ridiculously fat book from my childhood.

War and Peace (ISBN: 978-0-19-953605-4) by Leo Tolstoy (Louise and Aylmer Maude translation) is arguably what we would call historical fiction today.  The only difference is that it was written soon after the events it depicts and likely had some direct impact of one sort or another on its author.  He definitely paints his version of the events surrounding Napoleon’s campaigns.  There is a lot of Tolstoy’s philosophy woven into the story, but essentially, the story follows a few main characters through their youth and into adulthood as they embark upon their careers and family life.  Tolstoy’s characters are varied and present all kinds of different people with all sorts of different character traits.  The reader also gets to become acquainted with the characters in all kinds of situations, which lets one see the best and the worst of the characters.  There are hundreds of members of the supporting cast, some playing a more important role than others.  With so many people in the book, it’s probably a legitimately arguable point just who the main characters are, but I think it was Pierre and Natasha, the two that one sees from beginning to end in the book.  Natasha, young, beautiful, and fun-loving, is the object of just about every young man’s fancy.  She falls in love, spurns her fiancé for the temporary affection of a married man and known womanizer, later repents of that mistake, but must suffer when, seemingly through chance, her original fiancé, wounded severely in the war, is evacuated from burning Moscow along with her family and dies as they make the trek.  Pierre as a young man is short-sighted, rash, and searching for something more in life than the dissipated life he leads drinking, playing cards, and chasing women.  Throughout the book, one sees him struggle to figure out what life is about.  He tries Masonry, civil service, an ill-advised marriage, and philanthropy.  None of them really do it for him.  When captured by the French while observing the battles near Moscow, he meets a peasant soldier from whom he learns a lot about the meaning of life.  After Napoleon’s retreat, the changed Pierre is re-acquainted with Natasha, and eventually they go on to form a happy family.

Many Russians with whom I have discussed literature have told me that if one enjoys Dostoevsky, one will likely not enjoy Tolstoy.  I had previously found this to be true, as I thought Crime and Punishment was a great book, but found Anna Karenina to be excruciatingly painful to read (it can be summed up like this: some rich woman has an affair and then kills herself).  I, therefore, approached War and Peace with some trepidation, but was pleasantly surprised.  Others may, of course, get something different out of the book, but I found Pierre’s change from a going-nowhere youth to a respectable family man with an overwhelmingly positive attitude on life that rubbed off on others to be a great message, especially since it coincided with him coming to terms with his belief in God.  I was intrigued by the thoroughly pro-Russian view presented by Tolstoy throughout the book, especially as it concerned the war years.  He was quite dismissive of foreign leaders, both civilian and military, although — somewhat surprisingly — the Russian tsar didn’t really escape his scorn, either.  Tolstoy presented the great Russian general Kutuzov as a fallible man and even soft in his old age, but also one who was above the fray, which I found to be a quality worthy of emulation.  Some of Tolstoy’s discussion of fate versus agency was difficult to follow philosophically, and even given a little time to digest it, I’m not one hundred percent sure I completely understand what he was trying to say.  What I got out of it, though, was the part of the book I liked least.  Tolstoy argued that fate or pre-destination determines the way our lives play out.  He claims that we need the illusion of free will or agency to function, but that we really play little to no role in how it all works out in the end.  He argues that in a given moment, it seems like we are making choices, but when you step back from the moment and see the whole timeline laid out before you, it becomes apparent that it was, in reality, impossible to make any different choice.  That is, of course, the exact opposite of what I believe, and what is taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which agency is central to all that happens to us.  The choices we make have a direct effect on what happens to us as everything has consequences, good or bad.  So, the story was enjoyable, the Russophile viewpoint was interesting, although Tolstoy may dispute that he was presenting that outlook, and the philosophy was difficult and disagreeable.  Overall, War and Peace was a worthy read.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

The Swiss Family Robinson

As a young boy, I enjoyed watching Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson.  What is maybe kind of weird is that I remember the family singing “O, Christmas Tree” more than any other part of the movie.  Like any true boy, the idea of fighting pirates on a deserted, tropical island easily captured my imagination, as did the concept of actually living in a tree house.  Could it get any better?  With my own children now getting to the point where they appreciate movies above and beyond Disney princesses, I have turned to the great movies of my childhood.  These clean, fun movies beat just about anything the movie studios have to offer us today.  For the economically-minded like myself, buying a DVD for $10.00 online also beats going to the movie theater, where you pay at least that for one ticket alone.  Anyway, I recently got to relive some childhood excitement when we watched the classic Disney movie.  It got me wondering, though, where they got their story from.

The answer is The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss (ISBN: 978-0-14-310499-5), but with all movies, the book was only a starting point, and then the screenwriters went from there.  (It’s worth noting that the original story hasn’t been in print much since its 1812 printing and that most people have read a French translator’s version that abridged the original and then added a new storyline halfway through.)    Then again, it’s only fair to note that it seems Wyss was highly influenced by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.  The story follows a Swiss pastor and his family (his wife and four boys) as they venture off to the colonies to start a new life.  Their well-equipped ship is wrecked, but somehow all the articles and the ship itself is rather well preserved while all the passengers and crew die except the family.  They make a raft and alight on the island that is to become their home.  The family, through resourcefulness and through an expansive knowledge of the natural sciences, is able to get along rather impressively in their new jungle home.  They’re constantly making trips along the beaches and into the interior of the island in an effort to find out all they can about their new home and to discover new natural resources such as plants and animals they can use to make their life a bit more comfortable and pleasant.  Most trips result in a success of one form or another, and soon the family has a couple places to live, orchards, fields, and an abundant number of livestock and beasts of burden of all various types.  There are some adventures along the way with wild animals, explosives, and the rigors of life under the open skies.  The family’s chance for rescue and a return to society is foiled by rough weather, and they must await another such rare opportunity to come, but such opportunities and the adventures in the meantime are left to the reader to invent for himself.

The story was an interesting one and while overall an enjoyable one, not quite the page turner one would expect having seen the Disney movie.  There are no pirates and no romances to be found in Wyss’s novel.  In fact, he intended it mostly as a tale, cautionary in part, for his own sons.  Therefore, there is a somewhat formal feel to it, and not just because of the old-fashioned language or old-fashioned customs.  Those are, often, to be lamented since modern society does not embrace them, including reverence and gratitude before God, respect for one’s fellow man shown through respectful social interaction, respect for women, and respect for parents.  Like all fiction involving juveniles, the young men and boys of the family seem to be able to do much more and know infinitely more than people of their age really would, but maybe young men of the early 1800s really were just that much more ready to enter the adult world than boys of our times.  I also found it a little less interesting than it could’ve been because success was so forthcoming and because the characters, especially the father, seemed to have unlimited knowledge concerning wildlife, animal husbandry, agriculture, seamanship, and a myriad of other subjects.  Again, I realize the everyday man of the 1800s was more knowledgeable about these than most are today, but it seemed just a little too far fetched in the story.  Still, some dry passages notwithstanding, the book was enjoyable in most parts, is certainly not “children’s literature” as it was originally billed (mature teenagers at the earliest), and probably succeeded in its mission of inspiring the reader to be better since I came away wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to incorporate just a little more knowledge about the natural and mechanical worlds around me into my life.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

The Three Musketeers

I have always been a firm believer in reading the book before I see the movie.  I guess there are a few reasons for this, but one is that I prefer to not have a movie’s set, costumes, actors, and incomplete story line influence my reading.  I find that my mind’s eye can usually come up with better scenery, more vivid characters, and increased excitement, passion, and other feelings than any movie can.  I also enjoy the fuller plots, characters that are explored in greater detail, and being able to catch the intangibles that just don’t port over from an original work to a reinterpretation, no matter how true to the original the copy is.  While there have been multiple theatrical releases of Dumas’ famous work, The Three Musketeers, during my lifetime, I have never watched a single one.  My general lack of interest in movies contributed to this, but I also wanted to read the book first.

As those more in tune with pop culture than me know, The Three Musketeers (ISBN: 0-679-60332-8) by Alexandre Dumas tells the story of the young d’Artagnan and his three protectors and friends, the eponymous three Musketeers, who go by their pseudonyms, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos.  Duelling brings d’Artagnan and the Musketeers together, and from there they fight duels and more serious battles together, continually looking out for each other.  They manage to get themselves mixed up in high-level intrigue as the queen of France, Cardinal Richelieu, the king of France, and the Duke of Buckingham play out their political ambitions, romantic interests, and personal aspirations in Paris’s parlors, on battlefields, and through behind-the-scenes intrigues involving soldiers, churchmen, and criminals.  There is a decent bit of action with horse rides, pistol fights, sword fights, battles between armies and between minds, and seduction.  In the end, the bad guys get what is coming to them, and in what seems to be a bit of a pattern for Dumas, not all of the good guys make it out alive.  D’Artagnan and his friends are more or less unscathed and have lived up to their immortal motto, “All for one, one for all!”

I, obviously, cannot compare the book to the unseen movies, but standing on its own, I enjoyed the book.  I was not sure what to expect after being slightly disappointed by The Count of Monte Cristo.  I thought there was a good mix of action, strategy, and romance.  I enjoyed the lack of philosophizing by the main characters.  The storyline flowed and was more or less believable (maybe this shouldn’t be a requirement for fiction, but the Count’s inhuman abilities to remember things as well as his supposedly oriental medicinal abilities were part of my underwhelming read of that other immortal Dumas story).  I thought the story was fun and easy to read, which cannot be said of all classics, but probably help make and keep this story a classic.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Back in high school, at the end of a year of AP calculus, the teachers decided the best way to use the legally mandated seat time was by showing us movies.  While this would be a great time to jump off on a tangent regarding the follies of state-run schooling, I will refrain, and I could go off on wasted tax monies, but, that, too, must wait for a different place and time.  One of the movies that many of my classmates were very excited about was called the Count of Monte Cristo.  Not having anywhere near the level of pop-culture exposure as my peers, I didn’t get what all the rage was about and ended up sleeping through most of the movie.  Still, my curiosity was piqued, and I have always wondered what caused such commotion.  Almost twenty years later, I’m still not much for movies, especially if they've been made since about 1980, but I have come to appreciate classic literature much more than AP English could ever have hoped to instill (there's something to be said for reading something of one's own volition and being forced to read something).  A good adventure story makes a book that much more appealing.

The prolific French writer Alexandre Dumas’s epic adventure, The Count of Monte Cristo (ISBN: 0-679-60199-6), tells an intricately woven tale of injustice, revenge, hope, mercy, and even forgiveness.  The first part of the book gives the reader no indications whatsoever of the impending treachery and troubles as one is acquainted with the hero, Edmond Dantès, a dashing, honest, and hard-working sailor about to fulfill a few of his life's dreams.  A jealous neighbor, a competitor for the affections of his love, and colleague who couldn't bear seeing Dantès promoted before himself stop those plans, though, and send the main character's life in a totally different direction.  Prison, though, affords us with our first adventure: sneaking out of prison in another prisoner's body bag.  After that, there are many adventures to be had with Dantès on ships, with smugglers, and finally, in Paris as he exacts revenge on those who put him in prison and deprived him of his father, his beloved, and his desired job.  In Paris, the rich Count of Monte Cristo wows the elites, works his way into their lives, and manages to bring those lives to screeching halts, usually through ignominious deaths.  Although Dantès exacts his revenge, he starts to realize that maybe it's not all about justice, especially as he sees his former girlfriend reduced to a thoroughly depressed and unhappy state.  His shows mercy almost to a fault toward those who were once nice to him, but eventually even to one of his avowed enemies.

The book was an enjoyable read, but toward the end, I mostly felt sad for the main character and wished that the book could have included a stronger redemptive message.  It seems that Dantès's final act of forgiveness and ability to again find love were afterthoughts by Dumas.  They didn't make up for 1,000 pages of a man spending all his time and energy on finding ways to be smarter, stronger, and better prepared than one's avowed enemies so one could more fully destroy them.  Dantès's confusion of God's justice with his desire for revenge was also somewhat distracting from the story.  Finally, while I turned page after page as quickly as possible, and enjoyed the story, I realized that the vast majority of the story took place in the parlors of the Parisian elite.  It was adventure minus swords, guns, ships, armies, and other, more traditional forms of daring.  Still, the intriguing web of characters, storyline that was complex at times, and quick-moving events make for a good read and it is understandable why the Count of Monte Cristo is such a fixture in western culture.  It is also worth noting that as I read the book I found myself thinking a lot of the Princess Bride and figured that the author of that book and (later) screenplay must've been intimately acquainted with the Count of Monte Cristo.  It’s a very long book, but the unabridged version is really the only way to go since it provides the richest character development, deeper understanding of the plot lines, and a more complete picture of the settings, motives, and world views of the characters, all of which makes the reader more easily drawn into the world of the characters — one full of faraway places, exotic people, intigue, crime, high society, petty theft, politics, and human foibles and emotions.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

Robinson Crusoe

As a kid, both when I was pretty little and as a teenager, I found the idea of survival in the middle of nowhere intriguing.  I like to think this stemmed from being well acquainted with camping and from a healthy imagination tendered by plenty of time outside in the dirt in the backyard.  The possibility of bugs in our shelter notwithstanding, I found the wilderness survival merit badge in Scouts a lot of fun.  I read with interest the news stories about downed pilot Scott O'Grady, who was shot down over Bosnia and survived in the forest eating leaves, bugs, and avoiding patrolling Serbs.  Now that I'm not a kid, I am much less confident in my abilities to make it on the proverbial deserted island alone.

In Daniel Defoe's classic fiction, Robinson Crusoe (ISBN: 978-0-14-143982-2), the eponymous hero is also initially rather suspicious of his chances of survival after being shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere.  Having already lived through one adventure, he decides to give survival everything he's got, and works hard to salvage things from his old ship; learns through trial and error various farming, carpentry, sewing, hunting, and pottery skills; and explores the deserted island to learn just what is at his disposal.  Two things change his situation immensely: one, he comes to be a more fully committed and believing Christian, and two, he saves an Indian from his cannibal pursuers, thereby gaining the Indian's services for life.  That really comes in handy when Crusoe must fend off other cannibals and then a mutinous ship crew.  In the end, Crusoe considers himself greatly blessed as he is able to save some lives, a ship, and get back to England, where he settles into a comfortable, middle-class life.

I quite enjoyed reading the book.  As with all classic literature, there are a few slow points and it is sometimes hard to get through certain passages because of the modern reader's lack of knowledge regarding geography and history.  Some of the philosophy and theology was also slow, but it didn't take away from the story, which I thought moved along at a pretty good pace and was full of adventure after adventure.  The only real disappointment for me was that Crusoe was not able to help the Spaniards he came in contact with.  It seemed to me that with his knowledge of how much he would've liked to've got back to England and his newfound Christian desire to help others, he would've worked harder to get those guys out of their stranded state.  In the end, though, the book's a good read and it was kind of interesting to get acquainted with one of the books that most people read in their youth (I have found that I have a much greater appreciation for the classics now that I am reading them of my own volition).

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.