books

S PROMISED, this is

going to be a whirl-

wind tour of some of
the most magnificent spots
on the globe courtesy of

UniReview Travel, your in-

newspaper guide to the ex-

otic, the legendary and the
enticingly remote.

A friend recently commented
that until she had seen this first
book, she had had absolutely no
desire to visit China.

Zhao ji’s The Natural History
of China (McGraw-Hill; 224 pp.;
$29.95) will surprise anyone who
had thought of this enormous na-
tion as nothing but a collection of
sullen, smog-shrouded cities con-
structed as a reminder that totali-
tarianism is serious business.

This is an extraordinary book for
several reasons, the most impor-
tant of which is that this is the only
itlustrated natural history of China
compiled to date.

And it’s nothing short of
breathtaking.

There’s hardly a page unadorn-
ed with color photographs and
what incredible images they are:
strange, multihued birds, fish and
mammnals (most an identification
challenge to even the most
dedicated fan of nature documen-
taries) and spectacular scenery
that ranges from the coastal to the
alpine with an awe-inspiring
diversity of ecological panoramas
in between.

All are explored and explained
in the exhaustive text which takes
pains to emphasize conservation
problems and initiatives. People’s
Republic? Make that Nature’s
Renubilic. -

Fabled Cities of Central Asia
(197 pp.) is a follow up to last
year’s National Geographic-like
Kathmandu from Abbeville Press.
Unfortunately my copy didn’t in-
clude a price, but given that Fabi-
ed Cities... is almost identical in
format, size and quality to its
predecessor, $49.95 is a fairly safe
bet. ,

_ The fabled cities of the title are
ones we hardly think of as existing
other than in ancient folktales, so
unfamiliar are they to most
westerners: Samarkand, Bukhara
and Khiva.

This near-mythical reputation is
due largely to their location in
Soviet Uzbekistan. Tourism has
not, at least until recently, been
encouraged in this area which lies
roughly north of Iran and
Afghanistan.

While the isolation of the
“garden cities” (reputedly three
of the most beautiful cities in the
world and so they appear in the
vast number of photographs scat-
tered throughout the book) is
regrettable, it may have con-
tributed to the preservation of
these former bastions of the Silk

Christmas Party2
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_

Travel and never

MIKE
STEELE

book review

Route.

The architecture, market gather-
ings and general scenes of daily
life could, in fact, be images of a
world not of centuries past but of
millennia.

Writer Robin Magowan and
photographer Vadim Gippenreiter
have created a coffee table
masterpiece in Favled Cities of
Central Asia, one which is as great
a delight to one’s sense of curiosity

Lonsdale

Quay Market
Expands

Market Dollar
Parking Program

Now, during Market hours, customers
who park in the surrounding IMPARK
lots will be entitled to one Market
Dollar. We will continue to offer two
hours of free validated parking to
customers using the Marker parkade
and one Market Dollar to those who

park in the I-C.B.C. parkade.
The location of the four new

IMPARK lots is highlighted in the

easy-to-read map above.

Guiting your Market Dollar is

simple! Just purchase your
ticket from the dispenser
and bring the receipt
portion to the

[be

as it is to one’s eye.

Well, China and Central Asia,
inspirers of wanderlust though
they undoubtedly are, might lie a
tad too far afield for some folks. So
let’s swing around to fields of
adventure a bit claser to home.

I's virtually an axiom of boating
that anyone who has as much as
steered a rubber ducky across the
suds-speckled waters of a bathtub
has had the irrepressible desire to
write about the voyage.

It therefore takes a very special
nautical narrative to excite the
jaded palates of mariners and
general readers in search of a
vicarious thrill.

When The Water Smokes
(Algonquin/Thomas Allen; 189
pp.; $23.95) is just such a back.

When The Water Smokes is
basically a low-budget odyssey of
a couple, Bob and Mary Simpson,

call 985-6261

0

an
Market Information Desk and
we'll give you one Market
Dollar redeemable with
purchase at all merchants and

restaurants (alcohol excluded).
For more information,

No cash valua. fadesmable with
purchase at ali mechants and
restaurants Exciudss alcoho?

leave home

who salvaged a sunken, half-cen-
tury old workboat (bought for
$300), restored it then spent a
summer and autumn cruising the
coastal and inland waters of
Carolina and Florida.

Even considering the initial
bargain-basement price tag, there
wouldn't appear to be much
potential here for a magazine
piece let alone a book, but wait:
what sets it apart is the profoundly
evocative, almost rhapsodic writ-
ing style of the author, Bob Simp-
son.

There is a gentle, intimate power
that lows through the writer’s
descriptions of the interplay of all
of nature’s components, large and
small.

“The revelry and crowds of
summer are long gone. Now the
candle of life is burning at its
lowest ebb. The burned-out ashes

oO

Wednesday, October 17, 1990 ~ North Shore News — 31

of summer have mingled with ice
... Summer is noise. Winter is
quiet to the point of silence.

“On every ice-encrusted
sandbar hungry gulls huddle in
starving flocks, shivering before
the cutting wind. Winter is
nature’s method of returning to
the realities of life, perhaps as
recession of depression is to man.
There comes a time of reckon-
ing...”

Poetic, philosophical, When The
Waiter Smokes is not only a story
of the passage frorn one point to
another but also an exploration of
the relationship between observa-
tion and thought, nature without
and nature within.

Simpson has the rare gift of
harnessing words to convey some-
thing of the emotional swell that
surges in the breast of everyone af
sensitive to the miraculous, in-
tricate currents of nature.

just another boating book? Just
another boater? Hardly.

Next week we complete our
odyssey with three titles of per-
sonal exploration.

Market

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