Grace Kelly | Karavansara

When I flew out of New York City in 1951 for Karachi, Kabul, and Delhi, I planned to write a
book about the famous mountains that stretch across northern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The Himalayas, the Karakorams, and the Hindu Kush-all geologically one-had long fascinated me.
William O. Douglas – Beyond the High Himalayas

A new, 70-years old book for my collection – I just got me a digital copy of William O. Douglas’ Beyond the High Himalayas. That sounds quite promising.

Douglas (1898-1980), that was a SCOTUS judge since 1939 and a prominent proponent of environmental justice, spent the 1950s traveling in the Middle and Far East, and he wrote a lot of books about his experiences. Beyond the High Himalayas was his second book, published in 1952.

I knew nothing about Douglas and his book, but today during lunch time I re-watched for the umpteenth time Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and there, right at the end, I caught a brief shot of Grace Kelly, sitting on a couch and reading a book.

I always try and spot the titles of books that appear in movies – especially movies I love – and I was quite surprised when I realized the book Kelly’s reading is somewhat connected with my general interests.
A freeze-frame allowed me to get the title, and then I did a quick search – and found out the book’s available for real cheap as an ebook on Amazon.
And I know I said I would not spend more money on books in 2022, but I’ve just got a gift card for my forthcoming birthday and… well, I did it.

One more for the to-be-read book pile.

There is a very quick personality test that’s pretty popular and well-known¹.
It basically goes like this – choose your favorite Beatle.
Everybody knows the Beatles, and choosing is not that difficult.
Based on their choices, you can profile pretty easily the people you meet.
It works.

Another test, that is somewhat more limited but equally good at discriminating between groups goes like this:

You are Clark Gable in Mogambo – do you choose Ava Gardner or Grace Kelly?

Get the answer to that, and you’ll know a lot of things about the person standing in front of you – a lot of them impossible to define in any other specific way².

For the uninitiated, Mogambo is a 1953 movie by John Ford that has been aptly described as an adventure movie without adventure.
And it goes like this: