I've been reading Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, which I think is good, but I haven't become excited enough to plow through it. It is probably a lot more interesting than the film, with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, which I vaguely recall seeing long ago. The film is said to take many liberties with the book. Dinesen, who was Danish, writes well and is skilled at capturing the feel of the natives and the land. It is a memoir of her years, from 1913 to 1931, at a 4500-acre coffee farm near Nairobi. The farm was one hundred miles from the equator, but at an elevation of six thousand feet, making the climate quite unusual. It is not a particularly happy story, because she contracted syphilis from her husband, who managed the farm poorly and divorced her, and she never recovered fully from the illness. The farm eventually failed, and she left. She did have a romance with a neighbor, an English soldier, but he died in a plane crash in 1929. As I wrote earlier, she had lunch with Carson McCullers and Marilyn Monroe in 1959 while visiting the U.S. I think that this book may have been the inspiration for The Farm in the Green Mountains, by Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer, which I discussed earlier, because there are stylistic similarities. This would also explain why Alice and her husband, two Germans, suddenly became enthusiastic about becoming Vermont farmers. Obviously, rural Vermont during the 1940's was not as exotic as rural Kenya during this earlier period. Nevertheless, even though Out of Africa is well-written, I think it would appeal more to a cultural anthropologist or to a historian of colonialism in Africa than to me. For this reason, I am setting it aside and may or may not resume reading it at a later date.
I am still a little burnt out on the biography/memoir genres and plan to stay on scientific/theoretical books for the time being. I continue to look for biographies but haven't found an appealing one recently. As far as my other activities are concerned, my investment survival instincts have been triggered by the looming commencement of the second Trump administration. He didn't do much damage during his first term, because the economy wasn't bad and the pandemic was the main issue. He mishandled the pandemic, and there would probably have been vaccines whether he was president or not. This time it looks as if there may be a larger window for him to cause economic and diplomatic chaos. For this reason, I sold all of my stocks last Friday and am waiting to see how things play out beginning next week. I managed to make large profits on Nvidia and the four main quantum computing stocks, which all plunged today. I would hate to see a significant economic downturn, but it would probably be worth it if it resulted in the removal of Donald Trump and ended the MAGA movement. Trump isn't even in office yet, and Steve Bannon is already attacking Elon Musk. I find it embarrassing to live in a country where Donald Trump and Elon Musk dominate the news media. As far as investments go, I think that Nvidia will pick up again, but that actual advances in quantum computing may be years away, and the recent run-up was primarily a meme-stock phenomenon.
The winter is turning out nice and white, with an almost continuous light snowfall for several days. The total accumulation hasn't been much, and I've only cleared the driveway twice so far. There is plenty of wildlife to watch. Deer come through the yard to eat dried fruit from one of the trees. Yesterday morning, a red fox chased a squirrel by the house. The squirrel successfully jumped onto the house and escaped.