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5-9 Nov 24 (audiobook)
We, of course, learned a great deal about Cook‘s first voyage at school but I knew very little about his other two voyages and had not known what a prominent figure he was in his own time. This was a very informative account but it was also engaging. I appreciated hearing about Cook from a modern viewpoint - Sides did not shy away from the sometimes brutal misdeeds of Cook and his men which no doubt led to Cook‘s death.

#Readingoceania2024 I was going to use this for Tonga as Cook did stop there in addition to New Zealand, Tahiti, Kiribati and, of course, Hawaii. However, there was exactly two pages on Tonga. I‘ll have to find another book. This was a good view into Cook‘s third voyage of discovery though. It illustrated well the geographical and cultural differences between the islands and it really highlighted how the European and Oceania cultures clashed.

#schoolspirit
#team
Antarctic exploration - the ultimate team survival
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
@Eggs

My heart belongs to the Franklin expedition, but I‘m trying to branch out! Endurance doesn‘t disappoint (truly HOW did they survive that) but I do have an unpopular opinion™️. I am not sold on Shackleton‘s leadership skills! Lansing glosses over mistakes and tends to give Shackleton full credit for feats that were group efforts (or even just Frank Worsley efforts, justice for Frank.) It felt biased and made me wonder about other sides to the story

This book tells the story of Captain Cook‘s final voyage and its well written. Just enough historical diary entries, explanations of ship maintenance and navigation, and a variety of characters lead this book to be entertaining. The colonialism isn‘t avoided, critiques about decisions are included, and shocking avoidance of death make it interesting.

My two Hampton Sides books from HPB. The tagged book should work for #readingOceania @Librarybelle @BarbaraBB

Mine is an #unpopularopinion, but I was bored to tears through most of this. I‘m sure the audiobook narrator didn‘t help, but there are nonfiction authors whose writing is more compelling, IMO. It wasn‘t until the last visit to the Hawaiian islands and Cook‘s death that things got interesting. I struggled to convince myself to pick it up, as evidenced by the fact that I finished with only 2 hours left on my Libby check out.

Voyager 1 is back online! What an amazing piece of technology. 47 years into a 5-year mission, both Voyager 1 and 2 are in interstellar space, having escaped the influence of the sun's solar winds and magnetic field. It takes almost two days to see how Voyager 1 will react to a command sent from Earth.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-program/voyager-1/voyager-1-returning-...

This is a pretty lively summary of readings about discoverers and “discoverers”, explorers and mapmakers. Inherently a volatile mix of political chicanery, the hubris of men that think it‘ll be fun to sail off the edge of the world, scurvy, occasional deaths by polar bear, and the vicissitudes of pre-industrial economics, expansionism, and mercantilism, I found myself grimly laughing at all these misadventures.

Read it.

It‘s history, so you think you already know how the story goes. But Hampton Sides somehow always manages to imbue his nonfiction accounts with suspense and a propulsive narrative that reads like a thriller. This details the third and final voyage of Capt. James Cook, which ended with his death in Hawaii in 1778. What precipitated that violent and tragic encounter on the beach? I couldn‘t put it down.