Read These Books: The Tripods Trilogy

On each of my trips to The Book Barn, and there have been plenty, I've made a stop in the young adult section. Not just because there's usually an affectionate cat or two hanging out there, but because I was always on the lookout for When The Tripods Came, the prequel to John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy. A book or two from the trilogy was always there, but it wasn't until my most recent visit that they finally had a copy of the book available. Though it wasn't quite up to par with the original books, When The Tripods Came was still a welcome return to the world of a terrific sci-fi series that became one of my favorites in my adolescence.

(Source)

The easiest way to describe the Tripods Trilogy is to say it's a re-imagining of War of the Worlds, but with the aliens triumphing over mankind instead of dying because of a bunch of pesky germs. As alien invasions go, the overlords in the series are pretty benevolent at first. The aliens limit their presence to three domed cities and routine patrols by towering, three-legged machines known as Tripods. Humans live semi-autonomously in peaceful agrarian villages and small cities. War and disease are a thing of the past.

It's not exactly an ideal setup, however. The aliens saddle all humans with mesh caps to inhibit their brain activity at the age of 14. The process halts free thought in its tracks, keeping technology stalled at a level where the clock is the most advanced invention. The world's greatest cities lie in ruins. And it soon becomes clear that the alien "Masters" aren't as kind as they might seem.

Christopher (the pen name for writer Christopher Youd) never talks down to his readers, meaning the books are an enjoyable read for both adults and teens. The advanced vocabulary, not to mention the fact that the trilogy was penned by an English author, might prove a little daunting to young American audiences. I gave up on the series when I first tried it out, but devoured the books in the course of a week when I picked them up again.

The first book, The White Mountains, follows a group of boys as they undertake a dangerous journey to join an anti-Tripod resistance movement in the Alps. This is followed by The City of Gold and Lead, which focuses on a resistance effort to infiltrate one of the alien cities. The trilogy concludes with The Pool of Fire and a climactic effort to defeat the Masters and regain human independence. Christopher wrote the prequel some time later to clarify the question of how the Tripods managed to take over the world.

The books carry on a spirited adventure story, from the pleasure of wandering the countryside with friends to life-or-death battles against a powerful enemy. But the trilogy isn't just a dime store yarn. Christopher packs the narrative with a number of substantial themes to reflect on. The protagonist questions whether society is any worse under alien control, a theme reflected in Christopher's query on how well humanity can cooperate, Masters or no Masters.

The trilogy was written in the 1960s, and to some extent it's a product of its time. This blogger, writing an entry on Christopher's death in 2012, notes how the handful of female characters who appear in The White Mountains generally present obstacles to the boys' efforts to join the resistance. No women at all show up in the next two books. There's also a certain amount of casual racism, in particular Christopher's reference to the "little yellow men" who lead a resistance movement in Asia.

The Tripods Trilogy was popular enough that it spurred a BBC series, but this petered out before it ever reached a conclusion. There has been buzz about bringing the trilogy to the big screen for years, but unfortunately this hasn't amounted to anything. But the books are a memorable experience for anyone who comes across them, and a fast enough read to complete in a few dedicated sessions. Read them with War of the Worlds for the full Tripod invasion experience.

Read This Book: Bill McKibben's "Long Distance"

Somehow my city doesn't support a bookstore at the moment, although there is a record store which includes a sizable book selection and an antiques store where several sellers include books among their offerings. For supplementing my bookshelf, though, the best option in the area is a used bookstore called The Book Barn (topic of a future Greatest Thing of Anything). There's an extraordinarily wide selection, including a sports section with titles on not only the big-time activities like baseball and football but more specialized things like boxing and mountaineering.

I'm not a big sports nut, but I do enjoy hiking and cross-country skiing and tend to visit this section to see what's available. The skiing section is usually disappointing. Cross-country is lumped in with downhill, and the latter tends to dominate what's available. The section as a whole is usually made up of outdated guides on ski areas or yellowing guides on the best practices for Nordic skiing in the 1970s.

But then one day I came across this:

(betterworldbooks.com)

There were two copies of Long Distance by Bill McKibben, and a cover photo that nicely captures what it's like to take a secluded ski on a crisp winter day. And no, you can't judge a book by its cover but it certainly helped that the book had earned kudos from Bill Bryson, author of the Appalachian Trail book A Walk in the Woods, and Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air and Into The Wild.

McKibben isn't the first person to take a break from their everyday activities and try something to test their body and spirit. Instead of hitting the Appalachian Trail or Mount Everest or backpacking around some exotic country, however, McKibben took the unusual step of taking a year to undergo Olympic-level training for cross-country skiing. He didn't have any illusions about actually competing in the Winter Games, of course, but expected that he would take part in several challenging races and experience a change in his health and attitude.

McKibben's name may have rung a bell when I saw it, but it wasn't until later that I found out more about his background. He's a former New Yorker staff writer who has since become a leading writer on the environment and climate change, including the books The End of Nature, Fight Global Warming Now, and Eaarth. He also founded 350.org, a movement whose goal is to strive toward reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to below 350 parts per million.

It's not to knock McKibben's writing or environmentalism, but the only times when Long Distance really falters are when he brings the green message into the book. It's a big part of his persona, but it doesn't quite work given the main impetus of his journey. The year he chose to train was a terrible one for snow, and it's certainly frustrating for skiers when we want to hit the trails and instead are treated to rain and mud in December. Yet I've always understood global warming as involving subtle but far-ranging changes: increases in average temperature, damage to fragile ecosystems, extreme conditions in summer and winter, etc. McKibben's references basically seem to suggest that global warming is to blame for any winter with lackluster snow, something he certainly wouldn't be contending if he had tried this last year when New England was getting hit with blizzards seemingly every five days. I think the idea that any blizzard disproves global warming is why the concept has changed to climate change over the years.

And why it's so easy to find things like this online (imissglobalwarming.com)

The major strength of the book is its seemingly effortless ability to capture the experience of cross-country skiing. I raced in this sport for about 10 years, and though I've fallen off it as I've moved away from major ski venues there are still plenty of things you remember about it. McKibben is a newcomer to skiing, and writes in such a way that non-skiers will be able to understand what he's talking about and people involved in skiing will enjoy the way he describes various aspects of the sport. He hits upon the frustration of not being able to ski in poor conditions, the thrill of pursuing other racers, the exhaustion of a long race, the tranquility of a good solo ski, and the constant pursuit of a good kick for classical skiing.

Given that McKibben is doing Olympic level training, the book also offers a glimpse at other aspects of skiing that you wouldn't get if he had simply done one-on-one with a coach at a local ski area. He visits races around the world, ending with the original Birkebeiner in Norway, and gives memorable descriptions of his time on a roller-skiing treadmill at the Lake Placid training facility. The one in this video is in Calgary, but you get the idea:



Long Distance also expertly incorporates another theme into the narrative. Partway through his training, McKibben's father came down with a terminal illness. For awhile, both McKibben and his father are dealing with their own personal challenge: McKibben to improve his racing performance, and his father to stay alive. The juxtaposition between McKibben's growing strength and his father's weakness comes with some touching reflections on losing a parent and what McKibben's father meant to him.

Granted, McKibben doesn't have much competition when it comes to non-instructional books on cross-country skiing. But Long Distance is well worth a read by athletes and non-athletes alike.

Read This Book: Last of the Donkey Pilgrims

Snopes has declared that this was not in fact the last photo ever taken by an out-of-control motorcyclist in Ireland.

A month without an entry? Ouch. I'll knock a quick one out tonight and try to keep them coming, since I do like doing them. This time around: a book review!

I had plenty of fun on campus in college, so my excursions into the city usually involved walks or runs in the immediate area of St. Paul. Shortly before I graduated, I took a stroll down Grand Avenue, a line of mostly small businesses set up in residences, to see some of the shops I hadn't stopped in. One of them, Irish On Grand, specializes in a wide variety of Celtic products, ranging from jewelry to books. I was pleasantly surprised to see the above book, Last of the Donkey Pilgrims, on the shelf, since it shows that it made it at least 1,000 miles from its point of origin.

The author, Kevin O'Hara, gave me a copy some years after I interviewed him for a middle school project about his parents, who had immigrated from Ireland. O'Hara lives near my hometown and has a column in the local paper every St. Patrick's Day recounting adventures in Ireland. It seems like he's had a lot of them, though the biggest one came during an uncertain period in his life when he was staying with relatives in Ireland after serving in Vietnam. Eventually, he lighted on the idea of touring around the coast of the country using a donkey and cart.

Kevin demonstrates how the oil industry can literally kiss his ass.

Since O'Hara's journey was well-publicized, he had the advantage of an entire country alerted to his idea. As such, he pretty much had to knock on a door once the sun started to go down and politely ask if they could put him up for the night (and give his donkey, Missy, a place to graze, of course). The book is full of his experiences with the kindness of strangers, the beauty of the countryside, and the nervousness of a different time as he carried his journey over the border into the more contentious northern part of the island.

The one downside to the book is probably the opening in which O'Hara and his relatives reminisce on the experience and consider that no one could probably do it again due to an increase in crime and other factors. So it's inspirational if you want to embark on an adventure of your own, just so long as that adventure doesn't involve orbiting Ireland with a donkey. Nonetheless, the excellent characterization of himself, the whole range of Irish folk, and even Missy makes this memoir a real gem.