InfoGraphstravaganza!!

 

Alright time to show my true nerd colours. I made an infographic! Two, actually. Both by copying exactly what Nick says, of Logos By Nick. That guy has taught me so much. He's like Yoda. 

Yeah so I've been keeping track of a bunch of stuff over the years in a notebook. Actually I have many notebooks, each for different purposes. One notebook I originally started keeping track of which comics I'd read, kind of with an eye to making sure I was getting my money's worth out of my Marvel Unlimited subscription. From there it was easy to start keeping track of other stuff too, and nothing is funner to me than writing in my notebooks so. Sadly, my original notebook was lost so although I would have had data going back to 2011 I think, we are instead limited to 2017. Oh well! Makes making the infographic easier. And to be clear, I don't actually expect anyone else in the world to care about this. I just like geeking out and making these has been both fun and informative.

2020 is kind of an anomalous year, for all the reasons we are only too well aware of. Even so, my National Geographic-reading has gone way off the chart, as you can see with this infographic here (I am pretending I am giving a presentation to the board of directors of my life lol)

A major reason was actually not that I was unemployed, but rather, in the time before I was laid off I was able to read a ton of back issues I had laying around at my Grandma's house while at work. Going to work on the  bus but also sitting there in a shovel, waiting for the coal trucks to return. I think one night I had one or two trucks, got maybe 8 loads all night, and read two whole issues of NG in between. Since being laid off my numbers dropped back down to like 2018-levels. Even so, I recommend the board buy stock in NGC. Just kidding I don't know anything about stocks.

Books are a steadier statistic, as we turn our attention now to this:

I guess I'm a pretty slow reader. 2017 was a good year, though! I no longer recall why lol. I can say that last year my favourite book was unquestionably Gideon the Ninth, which I loved so much I reread it this year prior to diving into the sequel, Harrow the Ninth. It is possible I named my CX-3 after Harrowhark. It is also possible I will need a whole nother infographic to keep track of the number of times I read both books, as well as the third coming in 2021.

I know, there are still a few days left in 2020. But at the rate I read now, with Ahsoka taking up a lot of tie, I am confidant this number won't change. But that is why I left the other fields blank for now. Over the next few days I'll fill some of those in. Exciting! Tell your friends! This might be what finally makes me go viral!!!! 

 

Did you catch this year's Canada Reads panel? Georges Laraque! Sweet! One of my favorite of all Oilers alumni, up there with Gretz and Mess. He was great in Battle of the Blades in the sense of he had lots of fun. As if that wasn't cool enough, Sara Quin too! Sweeeet! Plus she's defending a graphic novel. Definitely have to read that one. Of all the Quin twins, Sara is definitely one of my favorite top two ever, right up there with Tegan.
Anyways, Homie Bear Reads has been pretty slow lately. I got Justin Cronin's The Passage from the library and only made it about halfway through before I had to give it back. Good book, he was at a SDCC panel we went to.
If you can believe it, I have been working on a Green Lantern collection (The Sinestro Corps War Volume 1) for almost four weeks! Not sure why six or eight comic books collected together is giving me such troubles. I really like it, even showed Michelle a cool part that I thought was well written and drawn (many power rings in search of new recruits all of a sudden . . . )
Doesn't help that at work during my breaks I'm trying to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Which so far doesn't seem to be much about zen OR motorcycles.
My own motorcycle is getting raked right now! Which gives me a very zen feeling deep inside.
Also, squid worm! Finally! I've only been waiting for one of those for like, my whole life.

Date night! We were planning to go see Eat Pray Love but it didn't work out. So sad right? Instead we had Indian food on Whyte and then bought many books. Many books. Some form the used bookstore some from the new. And then we went to a Second Cup and read books till we got chased away by the Tango dancing. Yes, tango dancing at the SCup.
Some of my bookswag from tonight:
Marvel's adaptation of George RR Martin's Hedge Knight II- Sworn Sword. I just got the first volume from the library and it is kickass. Set in the same world as A Song of Fire and Ice, but 100 years before. Lotsa Targaryens still around.
Shit My Dad Says- I'm late to the party since I never followed him on Twitter but at least I beat the sitcom. Very funny.
A signed Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. When was he here?
Geektastic, Holly Black. We went to SDCC. Obviously we need this book.
Half Brother, Kenneth Oppel. Chimps! From the bat guy!

Here's some books I've read lately:
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson- I like girls with dragon tattoos, I even know a few. If Fell Beasts can be considered dragons. And full grown vampires can be called girls. But anyways, good book. I hope the movie is good. Currently reading the second one, I think it is better. Michelle just finished the third one and says it's the best. I just like saying Lisbeth Salander. Fröken Salander. Interesting fact- the original Swedish title is Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women)
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold- this one pulled me in right away, I mean I'm the father of a little girl right? After a while I was just waiting for it to be over however. The ending was worth getting to, though. I wonder if the movie is good? Peter Jackson directed it so I don't see how it couldn't be.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley- another mystery series, but in a genre that usually has sadistic serial killers and brutal sexual crimes, this one really is 'sweet', mainly because the main character is a 12 year old girl who loves chemistry, especially poisons.
Dry, Augusten Burroughs- I think I'm all caught up on his memoirs now. Not as funny or twisted as Running With Scissors, not quite as harrowing as A Wolf at the Table. As you can probably tell from the title, all about his battle with alcoholism.
Over to You: Ten Stories of Flying, Roald Dahl- one amazing fact that is generally not known about the world famous author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox and James and the Giant Peach is that he was an honest to god Flying Ace in World War II. I would say he was a hero of the first degree. This is a collection of short stories about flying and pilots. Some of them are quite lovely, with a recurring theme of, I dunno how you would say it, not fantastic elements per se, but more of that thin place in between life and death that pilots like him in wartime lived in constantly.
Oh yeah and I picked up Marvel's recent adaptation of Wizard of Oz, mainly because I know the artist Skottie Young's work through deviantArt. Beautiful.

One of my favorite science fiction stories ever is a little gem written in the 1930s called "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum. Imagine my excitement when I was checking deviantArt and one of the artists I watch, George Sellas, was hired to illustrate a comic book adaptation of it. It finally came in the mail the other day and it's great! Beautiful art, very faithful to the story with only minor cuts for length. Also, as you can see from the cover, there's a War of the Worlds adaptation and a few other stories. You can get it here.
Speaking of great SF short stories, I love the Year's Best series edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. I'm reading Year's Best Sf 14 right now, covering 2008 I believe. Fantastic. Every one I've read is amazing, though #10 for whatever reason was perhaps a little weaker than the rest. Short stories might not be the most popular form but in the science fiction field at least, they are as strong as ever. Kage Baker, who died this morning, had a story or two included along the way.
Also strong as ever is Empire Strikes Back. Check out this guy's Lego diorama, complete with LEDs and winch motors. And Avanaut's Lego on Hoth photo set is beautiful. Especially this one.

Yay for stuff!
I went to the library to pick up a Kenneth Oppel book- Airborn, and I also found a Beck CD, Guerolito, which is a remix album for Guero. Guero is one of my top ten all time CDs. Sweet! How I missed Guerolito when it first came out I don't know but whatever.
Also I had an Amazon order come in- Mouse Guard and Otis Frampton's Oddly Normal graphic novels. Sweeet!
And although I still haven't obtained any trilobite fossils I am just as happy with my new tree frog magnets. Sweeeet!



I just finished reading a book called The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor. The back cover reads "You think you know the true story of Alice in Wonderland? Well think again." It's one of those books that takes an established story and retells or reimagines it. The trouble is, rather than treating the source material with the respect it deserves, he poos all over it in the first few pages. Alice, or rather, Alyss, sees a copy of what Beddor calls 'Alice's Adventures Underground' and calls it a "stupid, nonsensical book". To me that's not cool. Why not just make up your own story in that case? He already changed Alice's name to Alyss. He made the Mad Hatter into a paramilitary Wolverine-type named Hatter Madigan whose top hat is actually a dervish of blades. The White Rabbit gets replaced by an albino tutor with extra sensitive Wolverinish ears named Bibwit Harte. The Cheshire Cat is now an assassin named The Cat who possesses the Woverine-like ability to regenerate- nine lives, of course. Anyways, the book wasn't terrible, though I've read better for sure, and it will appeal to boys- I think Michelle's grade 7s would like it. I just think if you're going to borrow from the classics you shouldn't show such contempt for them.
Oh well, here's another picture of my sweeeeet frog magnets:

Last month Lloyd Alexander passed away at the age of 83. So I went back and read The Prydain Chronicles for the first time in over twenty years. My Grandma, an elementary school librarian, was always giving me these fantastic books to read, starting with The Hobbit when I was ten. But I think her favorites were Alexander's tales of Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper. Rereading them as an adult I'm pleased to say they retain their magic, unlike some of the books I read back then (excuse me I have to sneeze, ah-ah-shannara!) They have a real sense of humour to go with the typical heroic quest themes of this type of fantasy.
Some of the unforgettable characters you'll meet are Fflewddur Fflam, the wannabe bard with the lie-detecting harp. The photo of Alexander above is pretty much how I imagine Fflewddur.
Gurgi, a vaguely-described creature of epic loyalty and appetite, if not brains. I think he is a sort of hominid, maybe an unknown variant of australopithecine.
Then there's Doli, the grumpy old dwarf who discovers that turning invisible is not all it's cracked up to be.
And of course, Taran and Eilonwy, the assistant pig-keeper and the girl he loves.
Disney made an animated movie of The Black Cauldron but I've never seen it. I don't think it's available on DVD, actually- it didn't do too well, possibly because it was rated PG rather than G. Funny how that makes a difference.

Okay, so Spidey 3, though it had its moments, wasn't amazing. But that's alright. For the truly amazing all you have to do is turn to real life, which never runs out of innovative ways to surprise and astonish. Have you ever heard of Attila Ambrus? I hadn't, and I even spent a few days in Budapest in his heyday. Luckily for us, author Julian Rubinstein was paying attention and wrote a book about his exploits. It's called Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, and it's about a Transylvanian who defected to Hungary, became the unpaid backup goalie of a professional hockey team in Budapest, and made his money by robbing banks and post offices. He was very good at it, and was known for his thoroughness, his politeness (even once giving a cashier flowers), and his penchant for whiskey. When he was finally caught he confessed to everything, but then decided it would be best if he broke out of jail, so he did.
That's just the broad strokes. You should read the book to truly appreciate the story of Attila Ambrus and the cast of colorful characters that lived in the outlaw days of post-communist Hungary.
Attila never killed anyone's uncle or turned into living sand, but his story is far more amazing than any onscreen burglar, I'll tell you that much.

Taking a break from Venom week to bring you some important Panserbjorn news:



That is all.
Oh yeah and May the Fourth be with you. (Thanks Kimdianna, ever since I heard you say that it's my new favorite day!)

Driving out to Hinton for another round of nightshifts this afternoon, I heard Yann Martel on the CBC talking about how he is sending Stephen Harper a book every two weeks, and I thought that was a great idea. There's a website the Life of Pi author set up to show the books he's sent (just one so far) and the PM's response, if any, and so far there's been none. Makes me want t read along.
What would you send the PM to read? I'll need to think on that one before I answer.
Right now I'm reading David Brin's Heaven's Reach, with the new "JRR Tolkien" on deck. I put that in quotes since really it is Christopher messing around with his dad's notes again but I've heard good stuff about it. Oh yeah and after that I have Friedman's The World is Flat. Only cost me five bucks at Greenwoods' with the little stamp card deal they have.

We were giving some of the guys a hard time about the way they use their mics at work- some yell into it, some hold it down by their bellies so you can't hear them, and a couple of guys, for some reason, squeeze the hell out of their mics so they make these godawful sounds. Leon is the worst offender by far- he has these huge bulldog hands which are not made for delicacy. So it was ironic that he was the one razzing John about his mic etiquette.
"You sound like that space alien in that movie, what's it called there, you know . . . " and he put his fingers up to his mouth and wiggled them in the universal sign language for Predator.
"Yeah, Predator." Then he clucks his tongue in a fair approximation of the predator's vocalizations. We all laugh.
"I love that movie," I say.
"Yeah it's wild. He could imitate whoever he heard. Perfectly! And he could make himself invisible!"
"No shit!" said John, clearly impressed.
"But he was a trophy hunter that sunuvabitch. Took their heads. The first time I seen him there he was hunting Arnold Schwarzenegger."
"If it bleeds, we can kill it," I say in my best Arnie voice.
"Yeah! And then the next time I seen him there, he was hunting drug dealers. But the last time I seen him, he was hunting that alien from that other movie, what the hell was it called there . . . "
"Alien!" I say.
"Yeah, Alien!"

I've never seen The Thing, but a couple of weeks ago I read the original short story by sci-fi legend John W. Campbell, called "Who Goes There?". The lovely red-eyed blue critter you see to your left is the Thing. Great name, eh? I scanned the image from my copy of Barlowe's Guide to ExtraTerrestrials, which is an old artbook done up as a field guide to alien species. Pretty cool, though most of the species are from stories that are fairly obscure nearly thirty years later.
I'd love it if someone put out a similar guide- but of course, there are now thousands upon thousands of stories to glean aliens from.
What species would you have in there? I nominate (for starters, anyways) the qheuen, from David Brin's Uplift Storm trilogy. Qheuens are a crab-like, five-legged race who speak from leg-vents and see from a 360-degree vision strip on their heads. And hoons and g'keks from the same series would be very cool to see too.
And anything from Dan Simmons' Ilium/Olympos- Setebos, Caliban and voynix. Also the shrike from his other masterpiece, the Hyperion Cantos.

Best 6 Books
This was the hardest list for me since I read 60 or 70 books this year. And I'm not sure if ANY of them were actually published in 2006. I'll put the actual publication date in brackets.
1. Next of Kin, Peter Fouts (1997). This is the story of Washoe, the world's first talking chimpanzee (she speaks American Sign Language, as do many other great apes), and the scientist, Fouts, who spent his career learning from her and her family. Simultaneously hilarious, astonishing, and heartbreaking.
2. Olympos, Dan Simmons (2005). I've mentioned this book, and its predecessor Ilium, several times, and always somewhat inadequately. You can't really put such a book in a nutshell, dealing as it does with Homer, Proust and Shakespeare by throwing together Greek gods, robots, spaceships and monsters. On Mars.
3. Hitching Rides With Buddha, Will Ferguson (1998). Fellow Albertan Ferguson is rapdily becoming one of Canada's best loved writers, and this book shows why- it's a quirky travelogue full of eccentric figures and fascinating places as he hitch-hikes the length of Japan in pursuit of the cherry blossoms.
4. Serpent Catch, Dave Wolverton (1991). I tried reading its sequel first, The Path of the Hero, and found it pretty confusing, not realizing it was numba 2. Read in the correct order, they're great sci-fi fun, with Neanderthals and apemen and mammoths galore.
5. The Boilerplate Rhino, David Quammen (2000). How do you get this gig? Outside Magazine told Quammen to write a monthly column on anything science-related he felt like. This book is a collection of some of the best essays that resulted. Lucky for me there's another one out there.
6. Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson (1998). I love Lost World stories, especially ones that have a unique mechanism for bringing said world into play. Special bonus- Wilson is a Canuck too.

I'm looking forward to reading a book that actually was published in 2006- Vincent Lam's Giller Prize winning Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures.

The response to my last entry inspired me to create a virtual anthology of whimsical sci-fi short stories for you to track down in libraries and (used) bookstores, if you so desire (most have been published many times so look in the table of contents of books called "Year's Best Sci-fi" or "Sci-Fi Hall of Fame" &c). I even came up with a soundtrack for each story! Yay!

A Martian Odyssey, Stanley G. Weinbaum. This is widely considered to be the finest sci-fi short ever written. Even after 72 years it still has the ability to astonish and delight, with characters such as Tweel, a beak-diving avian, the brick layer, and the industrious barrel people. "We are vriends!" Soundtrack- "Woodpeckers From Mars" by Faith No More.

Mimsy Were the Borogroves, Henry Kuttner and Catherine L Moore. You might recognize the title, borrowed from Jabberwocky. What happens when the blank slate of a child's developing brain is introduced to the educational toys of a far-future four dimensional geometry? Soundtrack- Anything from "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Thomas Newman.

The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C Clarke. Those crazy eastern monks! Always engaged in some inscrutable project or other. Here they are cataloguing all the known names of god. When they're finished, we are treated to the best last line of a short story ever. But don't peek! Soundtrack- this seems appropriate! Just click on the "listen" button.

Homefaring, Robert Silverberg. Don't let the generic title fool you- it's all about the crustacean wisdom of lobsters. One of my favorites. Soundtrack- Rock Lobster by the B-52's.

Elephants on Neptune, Mike Resnick. This is the newest story on the list, a Nebula winner from 2003. It's a sort of lament for the way humans have treated elephants over the years, but it's set on Neptune so it still counts as sci-fi. Soundtrack- White Elephant by the White Stripes. The whole album.

The Liberation of Earth, William Tenn. A hilarious commentary on the rhetoric of conquering nations (China still insists it did Tibet a favour by "liberating" her 47 years ago). Soundtrack- Bulls on Parade, Rage Against the Machine.

Blood Brother, Charles Beaumont. A newly undead vampire goes to see a shrink. "'As I understand it, you think you are a vampire.' 'No, I think I'm a human being, but I am a vampire. That's the hell of it. I can't seem to adjust.'" Dedicated to the vampirenomad. Soundtrack- Surprise! You're Dead, Faith No More.

Founding Father, J.F. Bure. If I tell you this one is about two little alien lizard guys that ride around on the backs of humans, telling them what to do, you might think I'm weird and not want to read the story. You'd be right, but you'd be missing out! Read the story! Soundtrack- Lizard King, The Doors.

Puppet Show, Fredric Brown. A common sci-fi theme is aliens come to invite us to join a galactic society. But what if the aliens are a little nervous about the reception they'll get? I love the twist ending. Soundtrack- Master of Puppets, Metallica.

Turnover, Geoffrey A. Landis. Another relatively new one (1997), I like it mainly for its comic tone. It's about a scientist and her beautiful assistant who go to Venus. Soundtrack- The Beautiful People, Marilyn Manson.

I was excited to read Endymion Spring, since the author, Matthew Skelton, grew up in Edmonton and is a fellow U of A alum. As much as I'd love to tell you that I've finally found a great YA novel that everyone can enjoy, this one didn't quite get there for me. But at least the writing wasn't too bad- not nearly as bad as some I've encountered lately. The story was just a little too . . . unexciting. Not boring exactly. Just average, I guess. My bet is that Skelton has some great books in store, so he'll be worth keeping an eye on.

I know lots of you read Young Adult fiction (which actually means children's literature). Where are the good titles? Harvey, I know you have the goods on what's going on in New Zealand and Australia, I definitely want to look into some of your recommendations. I liked Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, His Dark Materials, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and of course the classics which stand on their own (Tolkien, Lewis, even Beverly Cleary). But I didn't care for Artemis Fowl, Septimus Heap or the Edgewood Chronicles (though the beautiful art almost made up for the writing). What are you guys reading that you recommend? My criteria are first and foremost a good story, but I am also fairly discerning regarding the writing as well.

I realize a 10 or 13-year-old won't necessarily have the same standards as I regarding what makes good writing, but at the same time I think it is very unfair to give these young readers subpar writing with the attitude that it's okay because they won't know the difference. I believe it does matter- because an excellently written story will be a pleasure to read, and young readers will be motivated to seek out more great stories. Whereas a clumsily written story will be hard to read and will therefore have the opposite effect- some readers in that age group will encounter bad writing and think the difficulties they are having are their own, and hence they will be less inclined to read more. Haley-o, do you have some inside insight?

I read The Sword of Shannara in grade 4. My teacher saw me reading LOTR, and thought I would enjoy Shannara. And I did, but only because I was pretty motivated to get through it, and I was already reading at pretty close to an adult level at that point. I still remember how painful the first twenty-some pages were when the main character is just walking through the forest- a less skilled reader likely would have given up on it. By the way, I went back to that book last year to see if I could recapture the magic of youth and was appalled at how terribly written it was. No offense to Terry Brooks, I'm sure he has improved a lot in the last 25+ years since Sword was written.

By a Strange coincidence, I finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell today, and the other day, I finished off Moving Mars, by Greg Bear (no relation). How is that a coincidence? The two books could not be more different! Turns out Moving Mars won the 1995 Nebula Award, and JS & MN won 2005's Hugo! Both are prestigious sci-fi/fantasy awards (or as my coworker who looked at Moving Mars when I set it down called the genre, "Far-fetched"). And the more I thought about it, the more in common the two books had. One postulates a universe in which everything you see is the result of quantum 'descriptors' which can be tweaked in almost any way imaginable- such that you could move Mars to a whole other solar system if you wanted to. The other is about magicians who just tweak everything by magic to relocate such things as Brussels to somewhere in America. Practically the same book! Though of course both could have been improved by the addition of a polar bear or two.

Top 2+0+0+5=7 Books of the Year (not that they were necessarily written in '05)

1. Ilium, Dan Simmons. Any book that combines Mars, the Trojan War (complete with all the gods), robots, little green men, dinosaurs and Shakespeare has to be the best book ever written, right? No contest. And it has Voynix. Whatever those are.
2. Half-Blood Prince, You-know-who. Grrr! Rargh! Damn you Snape! I owe you for a punch in the nose!
3. Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, Will Ferguson. A cool Canadian travelogue in the style of both Cahill and Bryson, but not a ripoff of either. Plus he's from Alberta too! The chapter on St. John's is worth the cover price alone.
4. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clark. I'm reading this one now- not quite done, but I can't leave it off the list. Still, this book is not for everyone- the 19th century language and sensibilities, as well as meanderingness will put off some readers. But I love it- it is often hilarious and quite dark. Surprisingly dark at times, as Clark is keenly aware that the original connotations of Faerie were sinister, malevolent, and had a curiously innocent way of being wickedly selfish.
5. A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin. This guy excels at writing very vivid, lurid scenes full of mayhem and murder. Hard to put down. My only complaint might be that I devoured the second volume and then realized afterward that hardly anything had happened to move the story along. But all those crazy twists and turns made up for it. Martin will be in Edmonton January 11th at Greenwoods, in support of Volume 4, btw.
6. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson. Fascinating and funny, well researched and very readable. Bryson at his best.
7. Across China, Peter Jenkins. A friend of my Grandma's moved to Hawaii and left us some books by this guy who walked across America back in the 70s (she also gave me a bright orange hoodie for some reason). Then he went to Tibet and China in the 80s, and wrote about it in his easy, conversational style. You feel like you were there with him, and he made me want to go back.

It's good to see young people writing. Her project is definitely something that is worth supporting- for those of you not from Edmonton, the Stollery Children's Hospital is a world-class institution out of the University of Alberta. It would be cool to see The Good Prince and the Evil Witch Hazel on Greenwood's bestsellers list this month.

Getting back to the children's literature, I am reading CS Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader right now, and really loving it. I'm not finished yet, so I don't have too much to say but I will mention that I loved the thing with Eustace and the dragon (I won't delve into details in case you haven't read it). That's exactly the sort of whimsical thing I try to capture, not always successfully, in my poetry and stories.
And, I am getting more excited for the Prisoner of Azkaban movie every day. To be honest, the first two Harry Potter movies didn't really grab me that much- I liked the books fine, I just found the adaptations to be kind of lifeless, somehow. But the fact that Alfonso Cuaron is directing this one has me paying a little more attention. And Gary Oldman as Sirius Black- yeah. Dracula/Zorg/Rosencrantz/corruptcopfromtheProfessional- the guy is a genius.
Oh yeah, I found JK Rowling's personal official site, and it's pretty cool. Flash intensive, so if you don't have Flash don't even bother.
Rounding off this week's survey of children's lit, let me just say that I got the new Slipknot disc and I really like it so far. Not as brutally heavy and violent as their other stuff, though more melodic and still compelling.

Every dull rock rising like a bear ghost

In 1907, polar explorer Dr. Frederick Cook and his group spent 5 months huddled in a cave near Cape Sparbo on Devon Island, living off the land and waiting out the winter. As if spending a winter in an arctic cave wasn't bad enough, they were basically trapped there by polar bears, who prowled about outside stealing blubber, waiting for an unwary explorer to emerge. Obviously Homie Bear's sympathies naturally align more with the bears than the explorers, but it still makes for a harrowing tale. Sadly, it's the explorers who came out ahead, as they eventually made their way back to civilization and a position in the Annals of Polar Exploration (though some of Dr. Cook's claims are disputed). They even (supposedly) lassoed a bear, shot it and ate it at one point. They were all starving to death, so I suppose that's how it goes- natural order of things. However I can't help but wonder how a starving man managed to lasso a polar bear and not be killed instantly.
The quote above is taken from Dr. Cook's account of the trek, describing how he would poke his head out of the cave to see if the coast was clear, and the waiting polar bears would raise their heads. I like the poetry of it.
(Source: Pierre Berton's The Arctic Grail)