Monday, April 11, 2011

Spotted: Lords of the Atlas by Gavin Maxwell

Subtitle: Adventure, Intrigue, and Mystery in Morocco, 1893-1956
Where: N-train
Who was reading: A tired looking man in a yellow graph-paper print oxford shirt. Not bald per-se, but the hair atop his head was decidedly worn—like he'd had a few too many noogies.
So maybe he's planning to leave this hair-loss inducing town and scamper around the mountains of North Africa for a while. After all, Lonely Planet includes LoTA on their list of stuff to read before traveling to Morocco.
By the author of: Ring of Bright Water, in which Mr. Maxwell describes his days living in a highland cottage, keeping otters as pets.
He kept otters as pets? How cute is that? Is it this cute? No, definitely cuter.
"To call it a travel book," wrote Geoffrey Moorhouse of LoTA, "is as inadequate as calling a camel a quadruped.
To say that Mr. Moorhouse enjoyed the book... is as inadequate as saying that pet otters are merely passable in appearance, or that the work of Jonathan Franzen is only mildly overrated, for instance.



2 comments:

  1. Ring of Bright Water was popular in its day. Not surprisingly, Maxwell's book about his ill-fated shark fishery was not as successful. Basking sharks are not very cute.

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  2. Aren't they?

    http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/pics/8/4263/how-to-draw-a-cute-shark.jpg

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