A Lion-Sized Purchase on Amazon
For my birthday I decided to get an online card for shopping on the Internet. The main goal was to buy Xbox Points, but it didn't work out, because they had already added a check on the card's country, and for Australia at that — that's where I registered my Xbox Live account. Of course, you can buy top-up codes, but that comes out to around $35 for GTA IV: The Lost and Damned (a seven-hour add-on to the game) — I'm not ready to pay that kind of money, and I'm also not ready to create a US account and lose all the achievements and points I racked up on the Australian one. So I decided to do without TLaD and n+, and just bought a code for a month of Xbox Live Gold membership through WebMoney.
But there was still money left in the bank account, so I turned my attention to Amazon UK. I didn't want to buy a lot right away — it was the first time, after all; and not too little either, since the shipping comes out too expensive for a single item. In the end I picked two books: Mystery of the White Lions: Children of the Sun God
The main goal was the book Mystery of the White Lions: Children of the Sun God by Linda Tucker, founder of The Global White Lion Protection Trust. I'd wanted to read it ever since I saw the mention on The Messybeast, after which I went and found the project's website. The book itself is good — 400 pages on solid paper in a dust jacket, plus photographs. True, those shots have been on the Internet for a long time already, though not in very good quality. If the book were more popular, I think it would cost more.
So far I've only read the foreword by Credo Mutwa; even the first paragraphs strike a nerve — they say that neither in India nor in Thailand would anyone in their right mind kill sacred animals, cows and white elephants respectively. Only in South Africa do people kill sacred animals, white lions, in the name of courage and sport... I know that right now, in the run-up to the World Cup, they've officially banned the staged hunts there. And unofficially? Although the book isn't about that — it contains the author's research and her story.
I didn't know the documentary The Lions are Free even existed until I stumbled on it in the online store. The documentary, which had been kept in the archives of the Born Free Foundation and was filmed by Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna two years after the shooting of "Born Free," is about the lives of seven lions being returned to the wild by George Adamson. You can read a description of the film's events in Joy Adamson's book "The Spotted Sphinx," but the writer herself wasn't present at the time, busy with cheetahs in another part of the park.
The beginning shows the reunion of Virginia McKenna, who played Joy Adamson, with the lioness Elsa. Even though Elsa played a free lioness on screen, after the filming wrapped she ended up behind the bars of a zoo cage — the actors couldn't come to terms with the fact that only 7 lions could be left in the wild. It's especially hard that after two years apart the lioness still remembers the people close to her, but can't be near them, separated by the bars... That's just the introduction; the film itself, running 54 minutes, is mostly about George Adamson, about lions free not only on the TV screen.
The small children's book Christian the Lion is based on the book by John Rendall and Anthony Bourke, adapted for children by Ruth Knowles. It tells the story of the lion Christian, also returned to the wild by George Adamson. It has become popular again thanks to the video of John and Anthony's reunion with Christian after years apart, posted on YouTube. Thanks to that success, the adult version of the book A Lion Called Christian
The book itself has a soft, beautifully embossed cover; the paper isn't very good, but there are two sets of inserts with photographs. At the end there are facts about African animals and a little about the authors. I could have just gone for the adult version, but it's more expensive, whereas in this book everything is clear, considering my level of English. I think at some point I'll get both new versions of the book and the film that came out this year together.
You can read about Christian in Russian here. Interestingly, this lion's story is in many ways similar to the story of the fictional lion Kimba from the anime Kimba the White Lion. It's good that Christian is a real lion — otherwise we'd still be hearing The Lion King called plagiarism of Kimba.
A bit more about the purchase itself. Amazon has interesting packaging — just a cardboard box and that's it, opens without any trouble, you don't even have to tear anything, doesn't protect against impacts; it seems their post office works well and they trust it enough to pack things so simply. On the other hand, I can say with confidence exactly when the corners of the books got slightly damaged from the parcel being tossed around. When I ordered a disc from Ozon, they wrapped it and packed it in so many layers that I could barely get it out myself.