{"id":3253,"date":"2010-10-19T13:19:04","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T17:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/?p=3253"},"modified":"2010-10-20T07:34:05","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T11:34:05","slug":"the-tiger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/3253","title":{"rendered":"The Tiger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author John Vaillant was in town last night on a book tour in support of his latest: The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival<\/a>. It was a good evening out (understatement). John, Sy Montgomery, Liz Thomas and I met before the event and had some dinner – much tiger conservation strategizing (in the ‘what can writers do’ sense) was done, contacts were exchanged, etc. Fascinating stuff – I was mostly a fly on the wall, but not completely.<\/p>\n

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John<\/a>, Sy<\/a>, yr humble corr., Liz<\/a><\/p>\n

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Then it was off to RiverRun<\/a> for the main event. I’d already read The Tiger – regardless, I found John’s reading to be riveting and, in the case of the first passage, where Markov meets the tiger for the last time, hair raising. I wasn’t alone – you could have heard a pin drop whenever John had the floor.<\/p>\n

The book itself… Before I quote some reviews, my short version -> read it. Soonest.<\/p>\n

Steve Bodio:<\/p>\n

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It is better than good– my favorite book of the year so far, and a likely classic in my rare favorite genre, that which documents (to use a book title) “the edge of the wild”, that interface where humans and “nature” are not artificially separated but in conflict or cooperation, acting on each other. *<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Liberty Hardy:<\/p>\n

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…no other non-fiction book has gotten me so wound up in the last five years as John Vaillant’s The Tiger<\/em>. It is a phenomenal book! I read it back in March and then had to wait *five* whole months before I could start selling it. But that didn’t stop me from talking about it to everyone in a ten-mile radius. I talked about it so much that it was driving my coworkers crazy. *<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sy Montgomery:<\/p>\n

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…those who truly know the tiger realize that it also possesses an invisible but equally lethal weapon: a brilliant and calculating mind. One hunter tells the author: “The tiger is strong, powerful and fair. You have to respect him. You think he doesn’t understand the language, but he understands everything. He can read a person’s mind.”<\/p>\n

Of course, there are those who say a tiger doesn’t have a mind, much less one that can read ours. But Vaillant’s book teaches a lesson that humankind desperately needs to remember: When you murder a tiger, you not only kill a strong and beautiful beast, you extinguish a passionate soul. *<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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After the signing (and chop marking – v. cool) finished up and a phone call from New Mexico was taken (see below) John and I headed out for more conversation, food and drink. Steller’s Sea Eagles were mentioned, the scale of the landscape in British Columbia was discussed and a good time was had (by all? I sure had fun).<\/p>\n

A note on how all this came to be:<\/p>\n