The Stillwater library rummage sale score

Being the kind of person I am, I was at the library rummage sale a few weeks back and I went to the back tables and got a little strange in my excitement: "Look, J!," I shouted, "they have Durkheim, and Heidegger, and Max Weber.  They have Spinoza and Kierkegaard and Kant!"  Obviously I already owned Spinoza and I didn't feel up to the idea of more Heidegger for at least a few more years (I've found that for me at least a little Heidegger goes a loooooong way) but I did buy Hegel's Philosophy of History (I've been poking at Hegel every few years ever since reading Emma Bull and Steven Brust's Freedom and Necessity).  And I got the Max Weber classic on protestantism and capitalism.  And I picked up a copy of Christopher Moore's Island of the Sequined Love Nun for J., because that's the only one of Moore's books he hadn't read yet.  Also I got some books on the Ordeal and the Duel in medieval law.  I don't recognize the author, they are sort of generic "I'm educational looking" trade paperbacks, but I liked the idea of having some books on those topics, so what the hey.  And T. H. White's translation of The Book of Beasts rounded out the stack nicely.

Because it was a smaller mass market paperback size, the edition of "Classic Slave Narratives" ended up on top of the pile, and I've been enjoying reading about Olaudah Equiano, who had one of those outsized lives: kidnapped from Africa into slavery as a youth, taken over the Atlantic to the West Indies, brought from there to North America, sold into service to a British naval type, voyages back and forth, sold into slavery again in the West Indies, earned his own freedom being the ship steward and an international trader up and down the coast, traveled as a free man to Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Jamaica, and all sorts of places.  I think later on in the story he goes as a Christian missionary back to Africa, or tries to (I haven't gotten to that part yet).  All of this takes place in the pre-American Revolution times.  This is clearly a guy who was smarter than smart, capable, brave, and able to jump on the tiniest opportunity.  Also able to keep his cool in times of immense danger, and to win the support and trust of people in many places.  Plus he seems to have spoken several languages and pursued a huge variety of educational opportunities.  I'm surprised it isn't the kind of book they assign high school kids to learn more about slavery, except I suppose there is a lot of very biblical Christian stuff in it?  But there's a lot of biblical stuff in the life of folks like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., too, so I dunno.  But it's full of excitement and shipwrecks and naval battles and arctic explorations and diverse customs and danger and so forth, so I think it would maybe get folks more interested in history to read books like that?

I'm just starting The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, which is a biography of a woman who moved through roughly the same international climate, and in the preface to that the author talks about similarities between Marsh's life and Equiano's.  So the much easier 1st person narrative of Mr. Olaudah Equiano is getting me ready to dive into Ms. Marsh's history.  (There was also a shorter narrative from a Ms. Mary Prince, about her experiences as a slave, that I got through the first day.)

The human body - it is pretty cool

I just spent a really awesome hour playing on Youtube while watching films of parkour, capoeira, and aikido.

*sigh*.  I only wish my flabby book-reading body was capable of such awesome feats.  But, the questions burning in my mind:
1) Will crime, action, and fantasy novels of the future be HUGELY influenced by the availability of youtube?  I mean, think of any cool physical feat, and watch video of someone doing it (often to pleasing music) only seconds later?  Just the parkour stuff alone ought to change how cat burglar stories are written.

Unless my assumption is wrong and there are lots of authors out there who, in their free time, are all like "Why yes, I can jump from off a rooftop onto a hand railing and then run along it and then jump from there to swing around a flagpole!"  For me it's just the sheer awe of the idea that regular human bodies can do that.

Also, I'm sure there are some action author types who can swing their whole body around through the air from one hand, tighten it up, do lots of backward flips, roll their bodies through their arms, etc... but I doubt it's the majority of folks who are writing stories?  (Capoeira dudes are like gymnasts to some sort of exponential power, in my book.)

2) Will anyone who ever reads a fight scene I've written INSTANTLY know that the only martial art I've studied ever is Aikido?  Cause I kinda suspect that they will be able to tell.  Instantly.  I've got to get back into a dojo and learn some more different fighting styles so as to make my fight scenes more entertaining.  I'm not sure this would be considered a good motivation though.  Can I just sit on the couch and eat mac'n'cheese and watch parkour videos until dawn instead?