The Book Count 2021

[Greg]

One more Fremont note: He was a fencer. While he was in Washington, he spent days in the 2nd floor corridor of his house practicing fencing while Jessie was downstairs writing up his notes.

[Drunk Monk]

I went to Fremont high school and our house is in Fremont.

[Greg]

So many Fremonts. The town of Fremont, as near as I can tell, is one of the places John Fremont camped in California.

[Greg]

Yosemite's Innkeepers by Shirley Sargent

If you want to learn about the early hotel pioneers, then this is not the book for you. If you want to learn about the Curry family, then this is the book for you. Although I got the sense a lot of the less salutary information was omitted from the book. Although, there was some. You can't really sweep the Foster Curry story under the rug.

I learned how David and Jennie Curry started Camp Curry in the shadow of Glacier Point as a cheaper alternative to the hotels currently available in the park. The book details the ins and outs of their assumption of all the park concessionaires. Sargent gives long lists of who ran what departments and I skimmed those pretty quickly.

My hope was to get some insight of the really early days of the park but those notes were given a few paragraphs at best. And some people, like the Degnan's weren't mentioned at all. The book really should have been titled the Rise and Fall of the Yosemite Park and Curry Co. The book was published in 2000 so the dustup between the Delaware North Corporation and the government are not covered.

[Greg]

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

A well written book that was ultimately unsatisfying. I loved the language of this book. It was tremendous exercise in world building. But the story in it wasn't very good. Jevick the Islander travels to Orlandia to sell his family's pepper harvest. But in reality, he does it to buy more books. He has been introduced to books and reading by his new Olrandian teacher at the behest of his father. And when it is his turn to go to the big city off he goes. There is much more to the story but that is the genesis. Along the way, he is accused of being a mystic which is a crime. He talks to a ghost. He travels. 

It is ultimately a book about books and reading. There are a ton of books mentioned. Jevik eventually has to write a book. Everyone is constantly telling stories to make points. Meh. But language of the book was beautiful.

[Greg]

Shirley Sargent: Yosemite Historian by Fernando Peñalosa

Ms. Sargent wrote a lot of books about Yosemite and I have read several of them. I was curious about her so I picked up this biography of her. I almost stopped reading it because it is written in a very simplistic style (akin to Ms. Sargent's own writing style) and I didn't think I was going to get get anything of use out of it. But I stuck with it and did get a couple of really good nuggets of information and some places to look for further information.

The most astounding thing about Ms. Sargent is that she suffered all her life from Dystonia which is a neuromuscular disease that made it hard for her to use her arms and legs. Misdiagnosed for quite some time as a child, she eventually gained some mobility through the use of exercises. But it wasn't a complete cure. She struggled all her life. Not withstanding that, she covered most of the ground in Yosemite and it's environs. She wrote a lot of definitive books about Yosemite. The saddest part of the story might be that her house in Foresta burned down in the Arch Fire in 1990. Her entire collection of Yosemite memorabilia was lost. Despite the fact the head of the Yosemite Park & Curry company had trucks standing by to pack up everything she owned and move her out. She waited until her car was on fire before fleeing.

I did complain that her book Yosemite Innkeepers focused too much on Curry Family and Curry village. Turns out the Curry family put up the money for her to tell the story of the Curry Family and Curry Village which led to the book. I've since learned she has written other books that have the information I want.

[Greg]

Revenge of the Nerd by Curtis Armstrong subtitled The singular adventures of the man who would be BOOGER

It's the Hollywood Biography of Curtis Armstrong who played Booger in Revenge of the Nerds and Lewis in Risky Business plus a whole bunch of other things. It's a pretty good telling of his life story.  There is a lot of emphasis on him being a Nerd. Too much in my opinion. He did have a lot of adventures. He had an upbringing a lot of us can relate to. The chapters about Risky Business and Revenge of the Nerds are the most in depth. There are lots of juicy anecdotes about cast and crews. Oddly, he doesn't talk a lot about Anthony Edwards. His later chapters on Moonlighting and Supernatural are kind of brief compared to the earlier chapters. I was amused to learn he was 28 when he played a High Schooler in Risky Business.

You're going to really like Hollywood memoirs to venture into this one.

[Greg]

100 Years in Yosemite by Carl P. Russell

A good survey work. The book doesn't have a lot of depth but it hits all the major points from the earliest people to see the valley to entry for the first time by whites to about the 1930s. The book was good in the fact that it pointed to other books for more in depth coverage of the various subjects. Some chapters were just lists of people who worked in the park. There were two appendices that were incredibly interesting. One was ten important documents related to the park including letters from the people involved in the Indian pursuits into Yosemite. The second was a time line of the key events of Yosemite History.

[Greg]

Imperial San Francisco by Gray Brechin

Another history book this time centering on San Francisco. Another book declaiming boy are people bad and here the receipts. Dr. Brechin is a geologist by training so this books starts with a premise on mining and the deleterious effects the mining has on the area around it in profound ways. There is a lot of talk about the mining pyramid and how the axis of the pyramid work to support the central theme of mining. The idea is that all the wealth of the mines are eventually concentrated into the hands of a few people. The book is broken down into four main sections and the families that benefited from those sections.  The discussion is about the Iron Works owners and The water barons and the real estate brokers and the newspaper publishers. And there are a lot of families that cross all the different segments. I learned a lot about the Hearsts, DeYoungs, Spreckels, and Phelans. It's all kind of disheartening to see how the majority of people are just pawns to a small minority of people who would strip our country for wealth for their own ends.

Oddly, the book ends with a deep dive into the birth of UC Berkeley (aided in the early days by the Hearst family) and the birth of the Atomic Bomb. Oddly again there wasn't a lot of talk about trains which I though would have played a bigger part. There are brief mentions of Crocker, Stanford, and Huntington but only as asides. Crocker is mentioned because he's a banker and a Newspaper owner. Stanford because of the University. Huntington because of the trains but only in passing. No mention at all of Hopkins.

So, yeah. Doctor, my eyes indeed.

[Greg]

Devil's Garden by Ace Atkins

Before Ace wrote Spencer and Quinn Colson novels, he wrote fictionalized true crime novels. Devil's Garden tells the story of the Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle case wherein Arbuckle is accused of killing Virginia Rappe. The story is mainly told from the viewpoint of Dashiell Hammet who was a Pinkerton agent at the time. Hammett is called in to track down the witnesses of the scene in Arbuckle's room at the Fairmont where Rappe was taken ill. William Randolph Hearst also plays a role in the case as he actively makes sure that Arbuckle is portrayed as the villain of this piece.

If you know the ins and outs of the Arbuckle case it's kind of interesting to see it framed as a detective story. But if you know the Arbuckle case with any depth, it's kind of dull because you know the motivations of the players and how the whole thing turns out. I was interested to see Hammett in the mix. And I did like the reasons behind Hearst doing what he did although I don't think they are ultimately valid. As a bonus, Atkins throws in a extra Hearst scandal at the end of the book.

In synergy notes: the last two books I read had Hearst in them.

[Greg]

John Muir in Yosemite by Shirley Sargent

A quickie. Only about 50 pages long. But it was nice overview of Muir's life. It goes over the highlights with a few interesting tidbits and some good pictures.

[Greg]

Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty

The battle for Daevabad continues. Nahri gets to build a hospital. Ali comes back from the desert to help Narhi. Dara helps with the invasion of Daevebad. The mythical world is really well built based on the concept that Djinn have their own city. There are a lot of factions that I kind of lose track of. But oh my god this book is taking forever to get anywhere. Lots of moping around bemoaning the fact the world isn't how they want it. Get to some fighting already. Or make the palace intrigue more intriguing.

Many was the time I thought I should stop reading this and not even starting on the final book in the trilogy. And yet, here I am. There are a few flickers of interesting things happening that keep me going. And it is an interesting look a fantasy based on arab history and myths. I hate myself for continuing to read it. But I will press on because I am not a quitter.

[Greg]

Kenneyvile: Yosemite's Forgotten Village by Edward W. Wade

Before they built the Ahwahnee Hotel, the land in that area was leased by the Kenney Family. They leased the land, formerly the Lamon Homestead and ran a pack station on the property. They built a bunch of homes and shops and barns and fenced off fields for their livestock. George Kenney died. His wife sold their half of the business to the Coffmans and moved away. It's not a great story. Fortunately, it's not very well written. Basically, we leased land for fifty years and then we didn't. Then the park commission built the Ahwahnee on the property. The end.

It's a tiny book. There are few interesting photos but they are of poor quality.

[Greg]

Yosemite's Historic Wawona by Shirley Sargent

What started as Clarke Station under Galen Clarke grew to be the Wawona Hotel under the auspices of Henry Washburn. Shirley Sargent hits the high points of the history of the resort at a brisk clip from it's earliest days as Galen Clark's ramshackle cabin to a place frequented by president's until it's eventual absorption into the Yosemite Park and Curry Co. The history really runs to about the 1930s. Most of the details are from the 1880s until 1910.

The story moves fast, maybe too fast. I gt confused trying to follow who is who as Sargent jumps back and forth in time. She also switches between names and nicknames. This also makes it hard to keep track. But I followed along enough. I think I have the high points. It's a short book and I read through it in a couple of hours.

[Greg]

Galen Clark: Yosemite Guardian by Shirley Sargent 2nd Edition

Yep, another Galen Clark book. Also written by Shirley Sargent. But this one was written about thirty years or so after the first one with a lot of new information that had just come to light. There were also a lot of very nice pictures. I think this book gave me a much better understanding about Mr. Yosemite.  He was a horrible businessman but a great conservationist. The classic story was that he was supposed to die when he was forty because of lung problems. He decided he would die in the mountains near the beautiful Yosemite. 56 years later that is exactly what he did. I remember vaguely hearing this story back in Junior High when I was on a week long trip to Yosemite. Only recently have I put the story with the actual person.

If you are going with seminal figures in early Yosemite History, Clark has to be in the top 5 along with Hutchins and Muir.