THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610030213
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 24 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: 66 lines
Years ago, at boring parties, somebody often would try to enliven the evening by asking what one book you'd take if you were stranded alone on a desert island.
As an entertaining device it worked, producing strong opinions. The Bible was usually mentioned with the expected reasons. So was ``War and Peace,'' with proponents of Tolstoy's never-ending novel contending that only on a desert island would anyone ever finish the epic. (A friend once took a speed-reading course and then proudly proclaimed he had read ``War and Peace'' in two hours. ``Wow!'' I replied. ``What's it about?'' ``Russia,'' he said.)
Other popular choices were favorite novels, such as ``A Tale of Two Cities'' and ``All Quiet on the Western Front.'' ``Gone With the Wind'' was sure to draw votes, and usually there would be a little-known recommendation such as Herman Wouk's ``Don't Stop the Carnival.''
Independent thinkers would perhaps suggest a blank-page book so they could write their own. I'd usually recommend ``The Straight and Narrow Path'' by Honor Tracy, an Irish author who makes me laugh aloud on almost every page.
For years we played the game - until some know-it-all ruined it forever by haughtily announcing that before she left the sinking ship and headed for the desert island she'd grab a book called ``Building Your Own Boat.''
Nobody could argue the practicality of her pick, and we never played the game again.
Once, though, I sort of turned the idea into reality. Heading out on a two-week, single-handed sailing cruise, I took the first volume of an encyclopedia set with me in the boat. I had always wanted to read the entire set.
My plans went astray. Maybe people on a desert island read a lot, but in the Wind Gypsy there were other things to do.
When the cruise was over, I was still on aardvark, ``a nocturnal mammal that . . . uses its long, sticky tongue to capture insects.''
I'm afraid I'm getting too long in the tooth to ever make it from volume A to Z in the encyclopedia, but a solution came from a friend the other day.
She sent me the latest edition of the ``World Almanac,'' and I've rediscovered it's nearly perfect for the office, the home, the boat or a desert island.
Flipping randomly through the 974-page book, I found that every stop provided facts that may be helpful and at worst are nice to know.
Des Moines' tallest building is 44 stories. The population of Gabon is 1,155,749. The real name of British model Twiggy is Leslie Hornby. The Pentagon covers more than 3 million square feet and houses 23,000 people (about the number of year-round residents of the Outer Banks).
Egbert, king of Wessex, was the first to win the allegiance of all of England, in the year 829, and reigned 10 years. Cartoonist Thomas Nast created the Republican elephant and the Democrat donkey before he died in 1902 at the age of 62.
Michael Jordan was the National Basketball Association scoring leader for seven straight years, '87 through '93. His 37-point average in '87 is his all-time best. Hannibal Hamlin was Abe Lincoln's first vice president. Pluto is about 3.7 billion miles from the sun.
Joan Leitzel is president of the University of Nebraska. (I'm a graduate of Nebraska, but I had never heard of her until I flipped to page 236. I can tell you lots about football coach Tom Osborne without referring to anything.)
All that data was gleaned in 10 minutes of flipping pages. Imagine what a smart cookie I'd be after a decade or two on a desert island, curled up with the $9.95 ``World Almanac.''
Too bad it doesn't have a chapter on boat building. by CNB