krakatoa

Tonight I'm working on finishing the book Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded. It's basically a biography of the massive volcano that used to exist off the coast of Java and exploded during the summer or 1883. I love books like this because you learn so much about so many things. I will admit, I put the book down for weeks at a time to explore more fiction and dip into the dozen books I'm reading at any given time, but I keep coming back to Krakatoa. It's fascinating.



This one begins a couple hundred years before the eruption explaining the behavior of the volcano and the culture of the surrounding areas then jumps ahead to the twentieth century sharing the discoveries in science unveiling some mysteries of the plates and faults and magnetite compasses, then moves back again to the dramatic story of the paroxysm(what a great word), then the aftermath, from earthly reactions like tsunamis and shock waves, to cultural reactions like religious uprisings and empirical collapses!

And I'm not even finished reading yet!

I was so excited when I first opened to the prelude and saw that it begins with this quote from A Little Prince:
           "He also had one volcano that was extinct. But, as he said, 'One never knows!' So he cleaned out the extinct volcano, too. If they are well cleaned out, volcanoes burn slowly and steadily, without any eruptions. Volcanic eruptions are like fires in a chimney. On earth we are much too small to clean out our volcanoes. That is why they bring no end of trouble upon us."

....Okay, now back to the book!

~nico