Books

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A colder day in New York with promise of it getting even colder tonight. No snow and no sunshine. Ugh.

Speaking of cold--I bought this book a couple of years ago when I was roaming around the upper peninsula of Michigan. I almost never read nonfiction books but it looked pretty good and I decided I needed to educate myself a little once in a while. It took until a few weeks ago for me to start reading it and even then I was reading it as a "second". I read a lot but I never, ever read more than one book at a time-until now. It is quite a fascinating read, focusing on one lake at a time. I had no idea how much "stuff" is on the bottom of the lakes. It must just be piled so high down there. I am currently reading the part about Lake Erie and there is quite a bit about Niagara Falls in this section. In the 1830s it used to be a huge attraction to send boats, ships, whatever over the falls to destroy them and let them sink. Then one wise person started putting animals on them and sending them over the falls, another set them on fire to send them over. Apparently this was the beginning of the tourist trade as that was when they opened lodges along the water's edge and people came to enjoy the "sport".

The strangest thing about reading this book is that I just get so cold. There is so much written about how cold the water is and about the hundreds and hundreds of people who literally froze to death almost immediately upon hitting the water. Frozen bodies don't float to the surface again. They have to be warm to produce the gas necessary to float them up. Frozen bodies are found years later looking very life-like. Well, except for being totally stiff and having icicles on them.

Like I said, I needed to educate myself. Continuing with that theme I also started to read the Chris Matthews book. I think there are only about ten books I have read in my life that I didn't finish. Mr. Matthews' book is probably going to make it onto that list. It just seems to be pages and pages of name dropping. I keep reading it and reading it but am very bored and my #1 rule about reading is that life is just too short to read a boring book. I'll give it one more day.