Tag: adventure

August ’09 Is…

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August is a long awaited trip homehome. August is the trials and tribulations of hiring. August is a little Avett Brothers, drums and Sean for music. August is getting back to cooking. August is so many different things, including a goal of 84 miles. Don’t ask. Here’s what August is for books:

  • The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester (the easiest way to celebrate National Language Month.)
  • The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (Marking the anniversary of hurricane Katrina later this month – The Moviegoer takes place in New Orleans.)
  • Mutual Friend by Frederick Busch (Celebrating Busch’s birth month.)
  • Turbulent Souls by Stephen J. Dubner (Blame it on someone else month. I think I’ll have to wait for the review to explain this one.)
  • These Tremendous Mountains by David Freeman Hawke (Celebrating the expedition of Lewis and Clark)
  • Wind, Sand & Stars by Antoine Du Saint (August is National Aviation Month)

And for LibraryThing it is: Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey and I really, really should reread the one Early Review book I didn’t get around to reviewing, Honeymoon in Tehran by Azadeh Moaveni.

For fun it’s a bunch of running band vegetable books. Go figure.

Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

A classic is a classic is a classic. No doubt about it. My copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was a facsimile of the first American edition so it includes the original illustrations, typeset, etc. This made reading really fun because the illustrations really add to the story. Truth be known, I had forgotten a great deal of the plot. While I remembered Tom was a troublemaker, I couldn’t remember details of his escapades. I’m glad I reread this.

Tom Sawyer is a typical Southern boy looking for adventure. I don’t think there are many young boys that would skin a cat or fake his own death so that he might attend the funeral, but the mischief of such a boy has always been there…and will always be there, too! Tom lives with his auntie and while he is well loved he is always looking for ways to run away. His sidekick, Huck Finn is eager to join him in adventures “down river.” Both are “smarties” as my grandfather would say. Showing off for their peers, and besting the adults -there is never a dull moment in Tom Sawyer’s world.

Two favorite lines: “The strangling hero sprung up with a relieving snort” (p 40), and “Huckleberry was cordially hated…” (p 63).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Literary Lives: The Americans” (p 145).

Living High

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Burn, June. Living High: an Unconventional Autobiography. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941.

I like books that make me ask questions. I like books that leave me wanting more. Not more of the story. Usually, the ending is adequate enough and I don’t need to know more about that. I am left wanting to know more about the author, about the life of the author at that time. Such was the case with June Burn. When I read Living High I held in my hands a first edition copy signed by June herself. Maddeningly, there were no pictures to guide my imagination. How old was she when she finished Living High? Where were her parents? What did she looked like? I pictured a fiery redhead with an unmatchable zest for life. But, I wanted the truth of who she was.

Living High is called an “Unconventional Autobiography” and I would have to agree. Not because it doesn’t cover a life from the sunrise of birth to the sunset of death, but because it has a moral to the story. There is a lesson to be learned within Living High’s pages and that lesson is live life to the fullest. Enjoy every single moment of each and every day. June is elegant and adventurous when describing living on the gumdrop island of Sentinel off Puget Sound with her husband, Farrar; or remembering walrus hunting and dogsledding in Alaska; or later, bombing around the west coast in the Burn’s Ballad Bungalow with Farrar and two kids (named North and South, I kid you not).

Best quotes: “Be thrifty with the things that count and you won’t have time to worry about whether your wallet is fullor not” (p 7), “To go on an island and pull the ladder up after us and live, untroubled by anything – that would be heaven” (p 11), and “the wind came howling out of the north, with icicles in its whiskers” (p 150). My favorite is, “When you walk you are somewhere at every step” (p 264).

Interesting side note: June changed her name and so did her second son, South. One day he decided he was Bobby or Bob.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Living High in Cascadia” (p 149). Go figure.

Twenty-One Balloons

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21 BalloonsDu Bois, William Pene. The Twenty-One Balloons. New York: Viking Press, 1947.

I like coincidences. I was nearly finished with Zelda Fitzgerald’s biography when I picked up Twenty-One Balloons. I’ve gotten into the habit of reading prefaces and author’s notes before diving into a story. In the past I would skip over them but now I like the little tidbits if information before getting to the heart of the plot. It was a huge surprise to read that Du Bois’ publisher noted “a strong resemblance” to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story called, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” Du Bois states in his note, “The fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald and I apparently would spend our billions in like ways right down to being dumped from bed into a bathtub is altogether, quite frankly, beyond my explanation. William Pene Du Bois January 16th, 1947.” I find this compelling and made it impossible for me to delay reading Twenty-One Balloons!

Twenty-One Balloons is the clever children’s story of Professor William Waterman Sherman. He taught arithmetic for 40 years and decided he was in need of a vacation of solitude. He decided ballooning would be just the thing and masterminded the invention of a balloon that could take him around the world. Except he doesn’t make it and the adventures that follow are more exciting than had he actually made it around the world. This book is delightfully illustrated by William Pene Du Bois as well.

Some of my favorite moments are when first, when Sherman first crashes (on Krakatao) he is told, “you may think that your landing on this island was all by accident…” setting the scene for something little more ominous. It’s followed up by the escape which is equally fun.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust  and the chapter on Krakatau. Pearl says, “Du Bois’s book is a glorious fantasy…” (p 183). Indeed!

The Cage

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Schulman, Audrey. The Cage. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1994.Cage

As soon as I saw this book I knew I would read it in one day. The Cage is only 228 pages long. The storyline is simple. Beryl is a young photographer, known for her moving portraits of animals. She is recruited for an assignment in Manitoba to take stills of polar bears in their natural habitat. The catch is the assignment involves working with three other men and a cage barely big enough to contain her. Nothing will stand between her and the bears except for the much anticipated cage. When the cage didn’t make it’s debut in the story until p.150 and it was afforded a few pages of description (Beryl sits in it only twice), I knew the Cage was a metaphor for something bigger: Beryl’s life. She is confined by her insecurities, her rigid sense of self. She is uncomfortable with relationships and intimacy, constantly jittery and unsure. “She sometimes wished she had ears like a cat so she could fold them back as cats do then people pushed their faces in too close” (p. 45).
Beryl and her crew spend some time in Churchill before going out on the expedition. There, Beryl befriends a local and spends some time bear watching at the local dump. It reminded me of an episode of Northern Exposure when Ed & his date go to the dump to watch the bear forage for food.
Needless to say, the expedition ends with death. Beryl even speaks of the impending doom as a premonition the night before. I was shocked by the tragedy even though I knew it was coming. It was a given someone had to (and would) die by bear. It’s like the proverbial gun in the first act, by the third act it needs to go off. Schulman did a great job leaving the story open. Ultimately, I was unsure exactly who survives. I closed the book wondering what Beryl was going to do next. Just the way I like a book to end.

BookLust Twist: This selection comes from Book Lust’s “Adventure By the Book: Fiction” chapter (p. 7).

Travels with Charley

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Steinbeck, John. Travels With Charley: In Search of America. New York: Viking Press, 1962.

Charley This could easily be my favorite Steinback story. Maybe because it’s a true one. Maybe because it hasn’t left me wanting to slit my wrist by the last page. Maybe because Steinbeck writes about something I am interested in: traveling the country. His humor and DownToEarth voice make reading easy. I was thrilled when, by the 26th page, Steinbeck had already mentioned Deerfield, MA and my father’s school (the Eaglebrook School). His own son had attended there, hence the shout out.
Steinbeck does a wonderful job describing the small towns, the set-in-their-ways locals who inhabit each place, and the passing autumn into winter scenery. Like all his other tales (fiction or not), he makes the people and places come alive with vivid realism. My favorite part: Steinbeck wants to see the birthplace of Sinclair Lewis. He asks some locals about finding the small town of Sauk. They know the sign, “Birthplace of Sinclair Lewis” but it’s obvious they have no clue who Lewis was.

Booklust Twist: Pearl hides this gem in a chapter called ‘The Beckoning Road”, (More Book Lust, p.20)

Admiral Hornblower (w/ spoiler)

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Forester, C.S. Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies. Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1958.

Hornblower

I guess I read this series out of order because Admiral Horatio Hornblower retires at the end of this one. Woops. Anyway – rewind: it’s peacetime, right after the Napoleonic Wars. Admiral Hornblower is riding the high seas, battling pirates, confronting revolutionaries, and roughing the winds of a hurricane. This book is the reason why I’m doing this booklust challenge. This is a book I never would have picked up otherwise. At times I thought, “this is perfect for a teenage boy.” It’s easy reading…definitely easy, but exciting. Hornblower has challenge after challenge in every chapter. I loved his bluff about Napoleon being dead and then finding out “Boney” really did die. My favorite aspect of the book however, is more psychological. I loved the necessary “game face” Hornblower has to put on in different situations. There was a certain decorum, a definite mind-game to everything he did. He couldn’t look vulnerable to anyone, including his own wife.

Booklust Twist: Pearl calls C.S. Forester “the greatest storyteller of life on the high seas.” (Book Lust p 217). Confession – I should have read this one later in the series.

Last River

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Balf, Todd. Last River: the tragic race for Shangri-La. New York: Crowne Publishers, 2000.

This just came in for me. Not only is this a BookLust mention, but Todd Balf is a Massachusetts man. I’m curious about this (nonfictional) story because I have a near & dear friend who does the whitewater thing. When I’m not worried about him cracking his skull open, I’m proud of him.

EDIT: I’m still reading Here First so River will just have to wait. 11/21/06

11/23/06: I gave up on Here First so I could jump into Last River.
11/25/06: Wanna hear something weird? Back when I first ordered Last River I said I was curious about the story because I have a friend who kayaks. I’m 60 pages into it and already Balf has mentioned HACKS, which my friend is a member (okay, president), and Falls River where my friend lives AND the very house my friend lives in. It doesn’t take much to excite me. I know I won’t see his name in this print, but it thrills me to know I’m delving into his world.

11/27/06: I finished Last River. Once I really started reading I couldn’t put it down. Was it the sense of imminent doom? I did know someone would die tragically. Balf was clever never to let on who would meet his doom on that monstrous river. I think that was part of it, but I think it was more out of fascination for Balf’s respect for the Tsangpo Gorge and everything that went with the October 1998 expedition. I have a deep rooted respect for the places I’ll never see, the things I’ll never do and the dangers I’ll never comprehend. This book opened my eyes to a different way of life: a life challenged and driven and obsessed by whitewater. In the end, I think I understand my friend a little better too.

Booklust Twist: Categorized as “Adventure By the Book” the kayakers are called, “gung-ho”, (Book Lust, p.8).