AMONG REFLECTIONS at yearend should be to think back on the number of books read. Normally, I stay away from the bestsellers like those by Robert Ludlum, Dean Kootz (my sister reads almost all his stuff, though I still don’t know what she finds in him), Sandra Brown and Stephen King. They may be all good and exciting (I started one by John Grisham) to some people, but I lean towards non-fiction, biographies and travel books. They don’t need to be published recently. Last year for me was no departure from the norm (excuse the pun).

Most of the books were from the Barbados Public Library system or from secondhand bookstores like the one at the Royal Barbados Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). A couple I had in my own library for a long time.

Reading, as Guyana’s Minister of Education and the Library Service in Guyana correctly point out, is a rewarding pastime; it helps in ongoing national progress and development. Regardless of influence of the Internet and other new- fangled communication technology like the BlackBerry, we should retain the habit.

Here are seven of the books I read; I put down a few and didn’t get back to them. But, for what it’s worth, here are what I enjoyed right to the end:

* ‘Travels With Charley: In Search of America’ by US author, John Steinbeck. This is a chronicle of a month-long drive through the United States in the early 1960s by Steinbeck in a pickup camper truck with his dog, Charley. He stopped at small towns (and big cities). We share with him his appreciation of the American people of all races and their culture. Steinbeck had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. A really moving yet gripping book. Forty-five years later, it is still topical: Cultural traits, humanity’s innate personal warmth and decency, never change. Speaking generally and about many countries, it is economic reasons and wrong ‘leaders’ which make things difficult.

* ‘Round Ireland in Low Gear’ by British travel-writer, Eric Newby. This is also a diary of sorts. It was kept by Newby as he and his wife, Wanda, cycled (sometimes they took a train or bus) part of the way around Ireland during the autumn of 1985. In places, he doesn’t mince words about what he thinks of the Irish people he meets. It is, nevertheless, a type of book that allows you a look at a country, literally, off the beaten track. Recommended (and costs only Bds$2 from the RSPCA store!) but probably out of print and has to be ordered secondhand through the Internet.

* ‘Slowly Down The Ganges’ by Eric Newby. I’ve always liked Newby, since I read his 1956 book, ‘The Last Grain Race: Around The Horn On A Four-Master In The Last Days Of Sail’, a log of his fascinating stint as a deckhand on one of the last square-rigged cargo vessels travelling around the tip of South America to Chile. ‘Slowly…’ is about he and his wife making a 1200-mile journey down the Ganges River in India in a small boat (with Indian boatmen as crew). It is really a wonderful read. Newby is his usual acerbic self. In one situation, when they had to squeeze on a bus, he writes: “There was a warm, animal smell of bodies; but it was far less disagreeable than it would have been in England, because the majority of the occupants were addicted to ritual bathing.” A former travel editor of the British newspaper, Observer, Newby, who died in 2006, has also written ‘A Short Walk in The Hindu Kush’ and ‘Love And War in The Apennines’. The latter work came out of his experiences serving with the Allied forces during World War II in Italy where he met Italian-born Wanda.

* ‘Passage Of Arms’ by Eric Ambler. Not that I am ‘Anglophile’, but this book by another British writer is still a fine rewarding read fifty years after its publication (by William Heinemann). Set in Hong Kong and other Far Eastern countries, the writing is even better than (bestselling mystery writer) le Carré for that time. Indeed, Ambler is probably the greatest British and spy-fiction writer at the height of his most creative output (1930s to 1960s). His political tendencies were on the left for most of this time; yet his understated allegiances are so creatively done, making it an additional pity that his works are only available on the secondhand websites.

* ‘American Building: The Historical Forces That Shaped It’ by Professor of Architecture at Columbia University, James Martson Fitch. I think I bought this at a secondhand bookstore in Toronto in the 1970s, and only got around to reading it more thoroughly last year. Buildings, for residential, recreational and industrial use, make up part of a people’s culture over the years. It started, in this case, from the structures of native peoples (the Amerindians) before the Europeans came. Books on humankind’s development of technology and mastering nature and the often harsh elements (look at the big snowfalls in recent days in the US!) are always fascinating for me. The American people’s development and use of technology is an inspirational one when it is put to good use of people rather than destruction. Well-written and researched books like these for the general public should always be considered part of our reading package. Though written in 1947, Professor Fitch’s overview is still informative.

* ‘The Ragman’s Son: An Autobiography’ by US actor, Kirk Douglas. This came out in 1988, but nothing has, unlikely, changed much in Douglas’s life since. I think he is still alive. Douglas is one of the veteran US actors, going back to the 1940s. I still remember his exceptional performance in ‘Spartacus’ as a slave rebellion leader. What a movie! He’s acted in many since then, some forgettable. Another memorable movie was ‘The Vikings’. He was a champion of left-wing writers and actors in the McCarthyite 1950s witch-hunts. He defended Civil Rights causes in the US. Douglas wa
s the son of an illiterate Russian-Jewish rag-picker and junkman (like Sandford on the TV sit-com). The book has its shortcomings, but it’s always good to read about the roots of one of Hollywood’s great actors. Book bought for one dollar from The Book Den, the premiere secondhand bookstore in Barbados run by the dedicated Greg Adams.

* ‘Archaeologists of The Contemporary Past’ by Britishers (I think) Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas. This is an interesting collection of papers about different perspectives in the field of archaeology. They dwell on how the discipline may be used to give a crucial understanding of what’s happening today. I bought it second-hand from The Michael Forde Bookstore downstairs of Freedom House on Robb Street in Georgetown, Guyana last year. Some of the papers have titles such as ‘Archaeology of World War II (about the excavating of the crash site of an RAF bomber in France)’.

‘Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War 1913-1914’ is about the excavation of the site of a massacre by National Guard troops of striking mine workers, mainly immigrants but including Afro-Americans, in 1914 in the US state of Colorado. The researching of the past is important, as is clear in the ongoing excavations in Barbados of former Amerindian village sites. It helps so that we can better understand the present. During the year, I also referred to ‘Prehistoric Barbados’ by Dr Peter Drewett, the head of the University of London team doing the excavations. Always good to get a reminder from this book that the first true settlers of Barbados were Amerindian people. They were the descendants of explorers who first came to the Eastern Caribbean from what is now Guyana and Venezuela.
(NORMAN FARIA <nfaria@caribsurf.com> IS GUYANA’S HONORARY CONSUL IN BARBADOS)