Things read - Week 48
In the last two months, I focused on reading books instead of articles. I plowed through:
Oranges
I am a big fan of John McPhee and I plan to read everything he has written. Oranges is the book that's more about the people behind the oranges in the USA. He covers everyone involved in the orange and related production from the start to end - orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers and orange packers. You will be disappointed if you pick up the book to learn facts about the oranges. Sure there're are orange fact but it's more about how he writes about people. And for every person he mentions, he somehow is able to find the idiosyncratic trait that makes it a joyous read.
TBOT
Like McPhee, I immensely enjoy writings of Craig Mod as well. He has a unique perspective in the sense that he grew up in USA but moved to Japan some two decades ago. He walks. He photographs. And then he weaves the stories together with the historical context. This book is only that. It's sort of like his autobiography but with a lot of Japanese history embedded. I highlighted a lot of the paragraphs in the book but sharing a couple of that resonated with me:
I’ve come to crave the solitude and asceticism of these solo walks. There is no quieter place on earth than the third hour of a good long day of walking. It’s alone in this space, this walk-induced hypnosis, that the mind is finally able to receive the strange gifts and charities of the world. If that sounds like woo-woo nonsense, it feels even more woo-woo to experience.
Having walked somewhat extensively last month, I couldn't agree more. Even though I was surrounded by people, there were bouts of this same feeling. In the urban setting, we rarely hear the sound of our own steps but on long walks, when everything goes quiet, the mind chatter begins to subside too. And probably this is what Mr. Mod is talking about.
The book being an autobiography, it dwells on other topics as well. E.g., on the power of writing.
Throughout life I’d marvel again and again at the power of writing—and writing books, especially—and how all my most treasured friendships were grounded, somehow, in published words.
This is very much inline with his earlier suggestions about forming connections. It needs to symbiotic instead of you being the leech. Instead of "can I pick your brain" approach with "inspired by your work, I made this. Would love to hear what you think."
After the book, I found new obsession with walking in Japan. Because, in the world there are only two pilgrimage routes in the world with "World Heritage" designation and one of them is Kumano Kodō (the other one is in Camino de Santiago).