Peter Trumbore
answers thirteen questions in a Booker's Dozen.

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

PT: I have two things I’m currently reading. One is Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. It is an exploration of the history of scientific research into and potential for psychedelic-assisted therapy to treat things like anxiety and fear of dying among terminal cancer patients as well as drug and alcohol addiction. It’s really fascinating, especially if, like me, you have taken at face value the societal fears and stigmas that in the 1960s became attached to these substances and those that used them. Turns out that establishment reaction against psychedelics derailed very promising research that had the potential to revolutionize the treatment of mental illness and psychiatric disorders. I will say that I find the chapters in which the author describes his own “guided trips” with psilocybin and other substances to be pretty uninteresting, and I wish he spent more time on the historical and ethno-cultural dimensions of psychedelics, especially among indigenous societies. But those are pretty minor criticisms of what is overall an eye-opening book. I’m also completing my annual rereading of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. This is a book that for a number of years now I have made a point of rereading, generally when I’m on break from university and have time to devote to it.

TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?

PT: I think for me, one of the things that defines best or worst book hinges on whether you’d be willing to read it again once you’ve finished it. By that criterion, I’d have to put LOTR in the category of best, and even more so when we consider its place within the world of lore and literature that Tolkien created. So with the original trilogy, I consider The Hobbit and The Silmarillion as part of that “best” group. Which brings me to worst. Hands down, it would have to be Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. But I will admit that the first time I read it, right after it came out and was getting all of this acclaim, I found it to be a riveting page-turner, the kind of book you can’t put down and keep reading late into the night even though you’ve got to get up early to work the next morning. So about a year ago I went back to reread it, and was astonished by what utter garbage it is. How hackneyed and clichéd the writing and how one-dimensional the characters. I actually felt a little embarrassed that I’d found it so compelling on first read.

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

PT: This is a difficult question to answer. I began reading very early, and read most everything I could get my hands on that was in the house. But probably the thing that I read at a young age that has stayed with me is Jean de Brunhoff’s The History of Babar the Elephant, first published in French in 1931. That, and subsequent volumes, I found really captivating. Now today I understand that those books are, in a pretty transparent way, a celebration of French colonialism in Africa and the “gift of Western civilization” bestowed upon primitive peoples by their European betters. But as a kid none of that was in my head. They were just fun illustrated stories with some surprisingly dark plot turns. I haven’t seen those books in years and would love to get my hands on them again.

TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?

PT: This is another difficult one because I read so many varied things as a kid. But if I had to pick one, I’d give the honor to L. Frank Baum for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and subsequent books set in the Land of Oz. Baum and his books opened me up to fantasy literature, and by the time I was 10 I had moved well beyond Oz to discover the pulp fantasy and horror authors like H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and so on. Those authors led to Fritz Leiber and his Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone stories, and finally to Tolkien.

TPQ: First book to really own you?

PT: I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this, but if you mean books that I keep thinking about long after I’ve read them, I’m going to have to go with C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Whatever you might think of Christianity, or organized religion in general, or Lewis’ own religiosity, Screwtape is full of deep insights into human nature and character, and is, in many ways, a powerful indictment of the hypocrisies that so easily take root among those who consider themselves people of faith and the religious institutions they belong to and support. I find the book to be a helpful check when I start to get too smug about my own faith and how I live into it. A close second is Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God as a reminder that people of faith shouldn’t be afraid to ask challenging questions about what we believe and why. 


TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

PT: This is a weird answer, and let me caveat it by acknowledging that there are a lot of objections to my favorite male author. H.P. Lovecraft was a deeply flawed man whose works are, for a lot of people, irredeemable because of the currents of racism and anti-Semitism that run through them. But, for me, Lovecraft’s place in my thinking about favorite authors rests on his ability to invoke existential horror, to put his finger on the insignificance of man in a cold, uncaring universe which is beyond our ability to comprehend, and to paint vivid pictures of the decaying and forgotten remnants of colonial America that made up the landscape of his native New England at the turn of the 20th century. Favorite female author is a much more challenging question for me. To my embarrassment, I have to admit to not really reading a lot of the work of women authors, outside of my professional reading. There, Martha Crenshaw and Mia Bloom rise to the top. I don’t think I have any conscious bias against women authors, I just find that most of what I turn to for my pleasure reading has been written by men. Let me offer a couple of names though. First, the classical historian Mary Beard is a wonderful writer. I read her magisterial history of the Roman Empire, SPQR, a few years ago and it is on my list to read again in the near future. If I go back further, the first female author whose whole catalog I read was Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House books. Growing up in a small town in a very rural part of central Florida, where farming was the main industry and many folks I knew still hunted and fished both for fun and for food, Wilder’s stories of frontier and small town life struck a familiar chord.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

PT: Given what I do, I read a lot of nonfiction, and I’ve been a history buff for as long as I can remember. And a lot of what I read is not what most folks (like my wife) would consider “fun” reading. For example, one of the books I recently reread was Joel Harrington’s The Faithful Executioner, a fascinating look at the society and culture of 16th century Germany through the lens of the journals of Nuremburg’s professional executioner. But if I want to actually relax and indulge in pure escapism, then its fiction all the way, especially the heroic fantasy and science fiction stuff that fired my imagination as a kid.

TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?

PT: I don’t read much of these. But a few years back I did read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. As a White man who grew up in the American South in the 1960s and 1970s, I was aware of the overt and covert expressions of racism that permeated the society I lived in. But Coates’ pulls the curtains back on the racial violence that is at the heart of American history and society in a way that forces White people like me to come face to face with a reality our Black brothers and sisters live daily. And to accept responsibility for our part in sustaining that reality.

TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?

PT: Anything by Malcolm Gladwell. I made that mistake once and never intend to repeat it.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?

PT: Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by archaeologist Neil Price. This book takes just about all the fields of study that intrigue me and brings them together in a way that lets you feel what these people were like, in all their complexity. It’s all here: history, myth and legend, anthropology and ethnography, archaeology, linguistic development, economics and politics, religion. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I read it in a few days and immediately went back and read it again. It’s brilliantly and beautifully written. As a scholar, I envy this work. It is deeply erudite yet accessible to a mass audience at the same time. I wish all academics could write like this. I wish I could write like this. This book captures all the things I’m curious about and which have sparked my imagination since childhood. 

TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

PT: The last time I gave books as a present was last Christmas. I gave my adult daughter Mary Oliver’s Devotions: Selected Poems, and to a friend Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf: A New Verse Translation.

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

PT: I am eagerly awaiting the new attempt at turning Frank Herbert’s Dune into a watchable movie. The 1984 version, written and directed by David Lynch, was a train wreck.

TPQ: A "must read" you intend getting to before you die?

PT: This is more out of obligation than real desire, but as my wife points out, I am woefully negligent in my reading of actual “literature.” So on my list is to finally read Moby Dick all the way through.

 ⏭Professor Peter Trumbore blogs @ Observations/Research/Diversions. 

Booker's Dozen @ Peter Trumbore

Peter Trumbore
answers thirteen questions in a Booker's Dozen.

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

PT: I have two things I’m currently reading. One is Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. It is an exploration of the history of scientific research into and potential for psychedelic-assisted therapy to treat things like anxiety and fear of dying among terminal cancer patients as well as drug and alcohol addiction. It’s really fascinating, especially if, like me, you have taken at face value the societal fears and stigmas that in the 1960s became attached to these substances and those that used them. Turns out that establishment reaction against psychedelics derailed very promising research that had the potential to revolutionize the treatment of mental illness and psychiatric disorders. I will say that I find the chapters in which the author describes his own “guided trips” with psilocybin and other substances to be pretty uninteresting, and I wish he spent more time on the historical and ethno-cultural dimensions of psychedelics, especially among indigenous societies. But those are pretty minor criticisms of what is overall an eye-opening book. I’m also completing my annual rereading of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. This is a book that for a number of years now I have made a point of rereading, generally when I’m on break from university and have time to devote to it.

TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?

PT: I think for me, one of the things that defines best or worst book hinges on whether you’d be willing to read it again once you’ve finished it. By that criterion, I’d have to put LOTR in the category of best, and even more so when we consider its place within the world of lore and literature that Tolkien created. So with the original trilogy, I consider The Hobbit and The Silmarillion as part of that “best” group. Which brings me to worst. Hands down, it would have to be Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. But I will admit that the first time I read it, right after it came out and was getting all of this acclaim, I found it to be a riveting page-turner, the kind of book you can’t put down and keep reading late into the night even though you’ve got to get up early to work the next morning. So about a year ago I went back to reread it, and was astonished by what utter garbage it is. How hackneyed and clichéd the writing and how one-dimensional the characters. I actually felt a little embarrassed that I’d found it so compelling on first read.

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

PT: This is a difficult question to answer. I began reading very early, and read most everything I could get my hands on that was in the house. But probably the thing that I read at a young age that has stayed with me is Jean de Brunhoff’s The History of Babar the Elephant, first published in French in 1931. That, and subsequent volumes, I found really captivating. Now today I understand that those books are, in a pretty transparent way, a celebration of French colonialism in Africa and the “gift of Western civilization” bestowed upon primitive peoples by their European betters. But as a kid none of that was in my head. They were just fun illustrated stories with some surprisingly dark plot turns. I haven’t seen those books in years and would love to get my hands on them again.

TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?

PT: This is another difficult one because I read so many varied things as a kid. But if I had to pick one, I’d give the honor to L. Frank Baum for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and subsequent books set in the Land of Oz. Baum and his books opened me up to fantasy literature, and by the time I was 10 I had moved well beyond Oz to discover the pulp fantasy and horror authors like H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and so on. Those authors led to Fritz Leiber and his Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone stories, and finally to Tolkien.

TPQ: First book to really own you?

PT: I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this, but if you mean books that I keep thinking about long after I’ve read them, I’m going to have to go with C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Whatever you might think of Christianity, or organized religion in general, or Lewis’ own religiosity, Screwtape is full of deep insights into human nature and character, and is, in many ways, a powerful indictment of the hypocrisies that so easily take root among those who consider themselves people of faith and the religious institutions they belong to and support. I find the book to be a helpful check when I start to get too smug about my own faith and how I live into it. A close second is Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God as a reminder that people of faith shouldn’t be afraid to ask challenging questions about what we believe and why. 


TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

PT: This is a weird answer, and let me caveat it by acknowledging that there are a lot of objections to my favorite male author. H.P. Lovecraft was a deeply flawed man whose works are, for a lot of people, irredeemable because of the currents of racism and anti-Semitism that run through them. But, for me, Lovecraft’s place in my thinking about favorite authors rests on his ability to invoke existential horror, to put his finger on the insignificance of man in a cold, uncaring universe which is beyond our ability to comprehend, and to paint vivid pictures of the decaying and forgotten remnants of colonial America that made up the landscape of his native New England at the turn of the 20th century. Favorite female author is a much more challenging question for me. To my embarrassment, I have to admit to not really reading a lot of the work of women authors, outside of my professional reading. There, Martha Crenshaw and Mia Bloom rise to the top. I don’t think I have any conscious bias against women authors, I just find that most of what I turn to for my pleasure reading has been written by men. Let me offer a couple of names though. First, the classical historian Mary Beard is a wonderful writer. I read her magisterial history of the Roman Empire, SPQR, a few years ago and it is on my list to read again in the near future. If I go back further, the first female author whose whole catalog I read was Laura Ingles Wilder’s Little House books. Growing up in a small town in a very rural part of central Florida, where farming was the main industry and many folks I knew still hunted and fished both for fun and for food, Wilder’s stories of frontier and small town life struck a familiar chord.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

PT: Given what I do, I read a lot of nonfiction, and I’ve been a history buff for as long as I can remember. And a lot of what I read is not what most folks (like my wife) would consider “fun” reading. For example, one of the books I recently reread was Joel Harrington’s The Faithful Executioner, a fascinating look at the society and culture of 16th century Germany through the lens of the journals of Nuremburg’s professional executioner. But if I want to actually relax and indulge in pure escapism, then its fiction all the way, especially the heroic fantasy and science fiction stuff that fired my imagination as a kid.

TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?

PT: I don’t read much of these. But a few years back I did read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. As a White man who grew up in the American South in the 1960s and 1970s, I was aware of the overt and covert expressions of racism that permeated the society I lived in. But Coates’ pulls the curtains back on the racial violence that is at the heart of American history and society in a way that forces White people like me to come face to face with a reality our Black brothers and sisters live daily. And to accept responsibility for our part in sustaining that reality.

TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?

PT: Anything by Malcolm Gladwell. I made that mistake once and never intend to repeat it.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?

PT: Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by archaeologist Neil Price. This book takes just about all the fields of study that intrigue me and brings them together in a way that lets you feel what these people were like, in all their complexity. It’s all here: history, myth and legend, anthropology and ethnography, archaeology, linguistic development, economics and politics, religion. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I read it in a few days and immediately went back and read it again. It’s brilliantly and beautifully written. As a scholar, I envy this work. It is deeply erudite yet accessible to a mass audience at the same time. I wish all academics could write like this. I wish I could write like this. This book captures all the things I’m curious about and which have sparked my imagination since childhood. 

TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

PT: The last time I gave books as a present was last Christmas. I gave my adult daughter Mary Oliver’s Devotions: Selected Poems, and to a friend Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf: A New Verse Translation.

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

PT: I am eagerly awaiting the new attempt at turning Frank Herbert’s Dune into a watchable movie. The 1984 version, written and directed by David Lynch, was a train wreck.

TPQ: A "must read" you intend getting to before you die?

PT: This is more out of obligation than real desire, but as my wife points out, I am woefully negligent in my reading of actual “literature.” So on my list is to finally read Moby Dick all the way through.

 ⏭Professor Peter Trumbore blogs @ Observations/Research/Diversions. 

2 comments:

  1. I read the Hobbit around the time of my GCSEs and Lord of the Rings during my A-level year. I found it sluggish in parts but loved it overall and am glad I read them in childhood, with the perspective that brings. I have read a few others; the Silmarillion, Tales from the Perilous Realm, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. I.enjoyed them all.

    I started Angels and Demons but couldn't finish it. It was tripe. The author wrote it as if he was continually trying to hammer it home how clever he was. Other authors, Stephen Fry, for example, gets the message across that they're clever without being in your face about it.

    Haven't thought of Babar the Elephant since childhood.

    I would recommend the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune to everyone particularly if they are interested in the concept of Dune as a film. It tells the story of the director, Jodorowsky's ambitious but failed attempt at making a film adaptation of the book. Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, David Carradine were meant to star along with a soundtrack by Pink Floyd. I think the director wanted to make a 12 hour feature film. Full of great funny stories and life lessons.

    I enjoyed Moby Dick very much but preferred Melville's The Sea Wolf although I am not sure of the literary merits of the latter.

    I really enjoyed this 'Bookers'.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Simon. I enjoyed writing it.

    ReplyDelete