Experimental Blog #74

Comments on 3 books

"The Possessed" - Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

It takes a very imposing and formidable person to write a literary travel memoir such as this book. Although the author, Elif Batuman, is American by birth, she is Turkish by very recent immigrant ancestry. Besides knowing English and Turkish, she is a Russian language scholar who also very extensively studied Uzbek. She also uses a few words of French, German, Polish, Italian, and Yiddish in her book.
Being at least 6 feet tall, she says, perhaps also helps her to be naturally self-confident.


"Songbird Journeys - Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds" by Miyoko Chu and "Superdove" - How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... and the World by Courtney Humphries

Although Miyoko Chu's statistics or arithmetic seem somewhat questionable in places, it is truly amazing what recent scientific studies have revealed about the highly precise migratory movements and memories of even the smallest of many songbirds.
The second book, by Courtney Humphries, is supposedly about one bird, now called the Rock Pigeon. Its scientific name is Columba livia. However, the implications of the lives of these once wild, then domesticated, and now "feral" birds are very general and profound. They might even be applied to people and society in a variety of ways.