Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!

A present from Will, I greatly enjoyed this book of Feynman's reminiscences!  I was familiar with some of the tales, which I enjoyed re-reading, and I was delighted to read many new accounts of Feynman's insatiable curiosity and lively sense of fun.  As a child during the Depression, he bought many broken radios and repaired or recombined them - and then was hired by relatives and, eventually, stores, to repair their radios and other appliances.

Sometimes his ingenious inventions created gigantic and very humorous consequences, as when he devised a rapid-fire string bean slicer and, enthusiastically demonstrating it for the head chef, cut his finger, releasing blood into an entire bowl of beans, dooming his invention! His adventures in drumming, safecracking, deciphering Mayan codices, art, and frequenting topless bars are all absorbing and very entertaining.

The book ends with a transcription of his commencement speech to graduating Caltech students, titled Cargo Cult Science.  I have read this before and again found it interesting; he describes the difference between real science and "phony" science - but his concluding advice was dishearteningly relevant to much of today's academic research:

So I have just one wish for you - the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity.  May you have that freedom.

This is really a very enjoyable read!

House of Earth

Woody Guthrie's only full-length novel, written in 1947, languished in a closet until ferreted out by author Douglas Brinkley and actor Johnny Depp, who edited it and brought it to publication.  The interesting backstory is available in a NY Times story and a very nice piece from NPR.

The novel tells a bit of the story of the dirt-poor,  farming couple Tike and Ella May Hamlin.  Tike and Ella May are struggling to make a home for themselves, struggling against the harsh midwest dustbowl conditions and the even harsher exploitation of bankers, politicians and landowners.

The book is one of the most interesting, least interesting books I have ever read.  It falls into the category of least interesting because there is very little plot - essentially nothing happens for 150 pages, until the story of Ella May's childbirth is told - which ends the book.  The cornerstone of the book is the dream of building a house of earth - one made from the very earth they live on, out of adobe bricks, as described in a government pamphlet that never leaves Tike's body.  The thick, solid walls of the house of earth would provide protection against the elements  - and also insulation from the exploiters, as it could be built at little cost, through their own labor.  At the conclusion of the book, the house of earth remains a dream, though perhaps one that could be realized in the future.

Of least interesting books, though, House of Earth is one of the most interesting!  The voice of Woody Guthrie is very distinctive - descriptive words and events are strung together in near rhyming, streams of consciousness - and these drones of words sometimes convey powerful emotions or evocative portraits of the land and life of Tike and Ella May.  It is also surprising that the 1947 book is very frank, sexually.  Not lurid, but definitely earthy and very human.  Interestingly, one of the thousands of songs written by Woody Guthrie is entitled House of Earth - and this song asserts that prostitutes play a valuable role:

Come here to my house of good rich earth if you

Would like me teach your wife a thing or two.

The Man of Two Tribes and The Will of the Tribe

Finished two more enjoyable Napoleon Bonaparte mysteries.  The Man of Two Tribes was quite interesting, but the mystery was thin, so it was really more of an adventure tale than a detective story. Bony is called to investigate the baffling disappearance of a woman, recently acquitted of murdering her husband.  His investigation leads him to become trapped in an unusual colony comprising the Released Murderers Institute.  Bony quickly deduces who has entrapped him and these other very interesting characters, so the story focuses largely on the fascinating psychology of the fellow prisoners and the group's effort to escape rather than the unraveling of a mystery.   Interesting and pleasant, but lacking the driving force of the better Bony mysteries.

The Will of the Tribe was a stronger mystery, though the solution ended up being more of a deus ex machina rather than following from the initial facts and suspects.  Still, the story centered around a cultured aboriginal girl, adopted and educated by an Australian family, who ends up facing conflicting pulls from her adoptive family and loyalty to her tribe - highly intriguing and worth reading.