Roosevelt's Beast, by Louis Bayard, 2014*****

I started reading this book last night after watching "The Hunger Games" (2012) on TV. Its 299 pages took about 3 wee hours to read. Another one that I couldn't put down.

Roosevelt's Beast is a novel imagining what might have happened to Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit on an actual expedition into the Brazilian forest in 1914.

"Roosevelt's Beast is a story of the impossible things that become possible when civilization is miles away, when the mind plays tricks on itself, and when old family secrets refuse to stay buried. With his characteristically rich storytelling and a touch of old-fashioned horror, the bestselling and critically acclaimed Louis Bayard turns the story of the well-known Roosevelt-Rondon expedition on its head and dares to ask: Are the beasts among us more frightening than the beasts within?" - Goodreads

Kermit Roosevelt, a sketch by John Singer Sargent from his book

*

I read a book by Louis Bayard several years ago, Mr. Timothy, which was pretty good but not as interesting as this later book. It was a novel of Dickens's Tiny Tim grown up.

Roosevelts, Kipling, War and Peace

I read Quartered Safe Out Here, by George MacDonald Fraser, a few days ago. And tonight PBS will show the final (I think) episode in the Roosevelt series. The style of the Fraser book is very reminiscent of Kipling; it's about the battles in Burma at the end of the second world war, in which Fraser was a 19-year-old private. Mainly, what fascinated me about it was the cast of characters with their various British accents and colloquialisms.

The Roosevelt series is fascinating, too. Makes me admire Eleanor even more than I already did.

This morning I wrote a poem for one of the ASPS contests, took it to the P.O. and mailed it:

The Wiz: Back in Kansas

A long and weary flight in the makeshift
balloon, through storm and doldrums, rain and snow,
brought me at last wrecked in a stubbly field,
wishing I'd never left the Emerald City.
The post of Wizard was ideal for me,
and much more fun than selling patent brews
or prestidigitating in side-shows.
I most regret leaving the child behind--
precocious angel that she proved to be,
she with her delightful little dog--
Toto, she called him, and he knew his name.
And their refrain of, “There's no place like home,”
sings in my heart each time I think of Oz.
I miss the soldier with the green mustache,
the different-colored horses, and the road
of yellow brick, that ended in a wood
some leagues past Munchkin-land. And, truth to tell,
sometimes I even miss the wicked witches--
although a lady here might be their triplet!
I'd been in Oz so long, it felt like home,
and now I roam this flat and windy land,
wondering if child and canine made it back.
At every farm I pass, I stop and ask
after a little girl who owns a dog
named Toto. In the meantime, I've a plan
to build a different kind of flying craft,
filled with the noble gas named helium;
and if I find her, I'll ask if she'd like
to take a ride back to the land of Oz.