Day: August 30, 2005

Skeletons of the Zahara re-tells the story of an early 19th century shipwreck on the northeast coast of Africa. The American merchant ship Commerce runs aground, and the surviving crew ends up as slaves for various tribal groups on the west edge of the Saharan desert. No fun. Enduring starvation and thirst which evoked (in a strange parallel) the heights of Everest from Into Thin Air, the captain James Riley and a handful of his crew survive to be ransomed in Morocco.

The author, Dean King, built the story from the narrative published by Riley, combined with a shipmate’s account and historical research. The past doesn’t quite come alive, but the human scale is well balanced. This was a quick detour for me from my current major non-fiction book (more soon), and worth a few hours.

I did read an earlier work by Dean King, his biography of Patrick O’Brian, though I didn’t realize that until halfway through Zahara, when I saw the author photo/bio on the backflap. Guess I’ve now read both of his books, though he’s edited more and written for several magazines. I’ll keep an eye out.

It’s been a while, but thought I’d note that I did see War of the Worlds a couple of weeks ago. Nothing special, but Tim Robbins must have had fun with his small role. Metacritic gives the movie a 74, for “generally favorable reviews” — seems about right.

TiVo means watching the early season Arsenal-Chelsea fixture over two nights nearly ten days after the match is played. Yes, Arsenal lost, as they did in the Community Shield. Yes, Thierry Henry needs to be patient as the team adjusts to new midfielders who don’t serve him as well as Patrick Viera did. But worthy game all the same, and I’m glad that I can stay willingly ignorant of the score all this time. Yes, the Chronicle prints brief scores in the paper, but I avert my eyes, and I rarely visit sports websites. To me, the game was new, and that’s all that matters.

Now I have to hope I can duck the Chelsea-Tottenham score until I find time to watch that match, too.