How could she stand being cold for two months?!?!

Alone in Antarctica
by Felicity Aston

Before I start saying wonderful things about this, let me first blast the publisher. I read an American edition with the imprint 'Counterpoint Berkeley', so I don't know if they're to blame or it is the UK publisher, Summersdale Publishers Ltd. Whoever was to blame, here's what they did:
    NO MAP
This is a travel book and there's NO MAP.  The continent of Antarctica has few mappable features--it wouldn't have needed to be a complicated map.  A simple line drawing would have been better than  nothing; better yet would have been a contour map showing the temperature gradients and the sastrugi zones and the crevass areas. But no map at all? Not acceptable.

It had color pictures so they weren't sparing the expense.  I don't get it.

I'd followed along with her journey via NPR, so I knew what she'd planned--to ski alone across Antarctica, from the Ross Ice Shelf to the south pole, then across to the Hercules Inlet. As the seagull flies (theoretically, of course, since they don't fly in the interior of Antarctica), she took the shortest route across the continent. But the zig-zag route came up to 1700 kilometers. (1000 miles to me)

NPR aired her daily reports via satellite phone, but the brief blurps told little of the trials of courage she faced. Her occasional mental breakdowns; her love affair with the sun; her amazing freaking will to endure and why the heck she decided to do such a thing in the first place--that's the subject of this book. She decided to sum up the experience with this:
 
Keep getting out of the tent.
If I can do that, each and every day, no matter the challenge, who knows where the next day will take me.  

Why does everybody do "years"?

My Kitchen Year
by Ruth Reichl

More of a cookbook than I'd been led to believe. It was probably a pretty good cookbook but that wasn't what I was reading it for--I wanted the anecdotes and stories of her life after Gourmet.  She's a good writer and I heartily enjoyed Garlic and Sapphires.  Tender At the Bone, not so much. And this one, not much at all.  I'll try again at least once more.

I have to admit it had gorgeous pictures and thoughtful poetry. It would make a great gift book.  And if the person you're gifting just happens to like cooking, more the better.

Wish I hadn't bothered finishing this

I shouldn't say anything, really I shouldn't. Okay, if you insist.

As much as you can dislike a book and still finish it, I did. But I couldn't stop reading--doesn't that say something good?  It's a wild and wacky story of a lawyer or legal assistant or something who got stuck with a lawsuit investigation or something and ended up meeting a sweet old lady with a cat. At some other point she woke up covered with grape cool-aid, in bed with her hot landlord. It seemed to be trying to be funny, but sadly, I didn't get the jokes.

Sorry not to like it--my requirements for a good mystery are character development, plot, and a protagonist who really gets into the mystery instead of just kicking around aimlessly happening upon clues.  If it had any of that, I'd have tried harder to laugh.

Halfway good

Wildflower

At first I enjoyed Drew Barrymore's memoir because it reminded me of some of my young friends. The way she spoke, her approach to life--it hit a familiar note and made me nostalgic.  When that experience wore off, I kept on listening because certain parts were almost unbearably insightful, like her descriptions of living in an apartment with her mother and her absent relationship with her grandfather. Her deep friendships with Stephen Spielburg and Adam Sandler were funny AND touching.

But I'm sorry to say that a good bit of the rest isn't anything special for the general reader. Letters to one's children are sweet and touching--they need to be written and they need to be preserved and hers are great examples of the genre...but did they need to be published?

Oh, well. She warned me at the beginning. it's not a typical memoir.

Kept trying; should have given up

The Sweetheart of Prosper County
by Jill S. Alexander

Strictly for the younger set, say, through age 12. For the older reader, the story was lost in the lesson. A lot of lesson.  It was like a good writer was being forced to fit a certain market in order to be published, so she made sure to have bad things happen to the bad people while the good people learned to live with their narrow, self-imposed morality. I think she's capable of better things, but this one didn't leave me smiling.

I liked Lewis and Maribelle and the Cajun guy even though they didn't get any character development. They were just tools for teaching. I might have liked the Mom, but she preferred to duck her head down and be a good little woman instead of making a stand that might have saved a kid's life.  She had a chance--I held my breath--she ignored it.   (I'm referring to Dean; she could have filed a lawsuit instead of muttering a "not my problem" epitaph and turning aside.)

And worst of all was the total lack of spine development in the heroine. She ended up moseying along her mousy way.  The same old coping strategies that failed to work in the beginning suddenly and miraculously started to work--thanks to her friends. She never made an effort to make the friends, but they just happened to come along and save her. Like a certain 'invisible' friend who will eventually solve all your problems.

I kept expecting to like it and trying hard, but never did. Sorry.

Never did figure out that title

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

by Ruth Reichl

Sometimes a person's experiences while growing up don't seem to reflect on the person they became. Or possibly--just possibly--they do--but the transition is lost in the telling. So with this book.

After reading Garlic and Sapphires I really wanted to know how such an interesting and unique person as Ruth Reichl came to be, but this book didn't get me there.  Apparently I was looking for a different story: how she became a writer. I was also curious about how she managed her mother and daddy issues--nope.  What this book did tell was the story of how she learned to cook and to eat--not inconsequential for a person whose life is so intricately involved with cooking and eating.

Enjoyable, fun, and light.

Not a well thought out review, darn me.

The Longest Race:

A Lifelong Runner, an Iconic Ultramarathon, and the Case for Human Endurance

by Ed Ayres

 

 

Running the JFK 100-mile race and reflecting on our past and our future. Very engaging reading. The future part isn't all that depressing--it's realistic and it makes you think. But he's still out there running...and that says it all.

I'm sorry not to write more but I was reading in a hurry which is a really stupid way to read. I should try it again sometime when it's not overdue at the library.

Oddly readable for the era

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
by Harriet Jacobs

First published in 1861, this is an autobiography of a woman who eventually escaped to New York.  Later in life she became an abolitionist speaker. The sources I consulted called it a fictionalized history, but having read it through, I'd say there was very little fiction to it. She changed the names of the main characters, but who can blame her? Some of the people were still alive when the book was published. The good people would have suffered for the deeds they did, and the evil ones would have filed one heck of a libel suit.

Even after living on her own for years, she still lived in fear of being captured and returned.  Eventually a  good friend purchased her freedom and that of her children. The generous (or decent) act was done against her wishes, but she admits to relief when it was all over. So much joy! But tinged with eternal grief.  And her one fondest wish was to live in a house together with her son and daughter, but that wish was never realized. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 scared her brother into emigrating to California and her son went with him. Her daughter was educated in a boarding school.

The book ended too soon for me. After hearing of all she'd suffered, I longed to hear her reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation.

One interesting note--bearing in mind that it was written in the mid-nineteenth century, the story is told straightforwardly, with only a modicum of moralizing. Her little asides in the stylistic, preaching tones of the typical nineteenth century writer were easy to ignore.  Her moral indignation was not so convincing, either--when she resisted her master's attempts to rape her, I suspect it wasn't chastity she was concerned with, but subjugation.  It was a power struggle--and she was one determined woman.

Quiet moments on the farm

Epitaph For A Peach: Four Seasons on my Family Farm

by David Mas Matsumoto

Lovely and sad. But not depressing. How is that possible, you may ask, to be sad but not depressing?  Read it and see.

Its a personal, meandering, pondering year on a family farm growing grapes and peaches.  It takes place entirely on the farm in California and entirely in the mind of the author...yet his mind roams far and wide and deep, down to the wiggly worms in the soil and the leaf borers mining his trees for gold.  He touches on history but I wish he'd gone farther--we know his grandfather bought the farm but we hear only the scant facts of their lives and hopes and dreams. His father helps out on the farm, but I long to hear his story, too. Maybe another book, someday?

Oddly enough, it neither bored me nor put me to sleep as such simple, quiet memoirs frequently do these days. I seem to have lost the ability to sit and savor.  Retirement--oh, that blessed fantasy!--might give it back to me.

The rise of the food like substance

In Defense of Food:
An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan

If you've read Marion Nestle or any number of other critics of the American "food culture", you'll find nothing new here. But Michael Pollan is a great synthesizer and writes a snappy prose. I enjoyed it so much I listened to some parts twice or more.  (Okay, I was walking on busy city streets at the time--I had to double-up sometimes to hear what the noise of motors drowned out.)

Some points of note:
According to Michael Pollan, in 1977 when the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs first attempted to publish its recommendations, it was blasted for saying that Americans should eat less red meat and dairy products. It had to change its recommendations to, "less cholesterol and saturated fat."

Nutritionism is the word used by Marion Nestle (I think) to describe the way of thinking that says that foods with similar nutrients are identical, whatever their origins or other ingredients. Of course this falls short in the easiest example: baby formula. Even when formulated with the same relative proportions of protein, fat and carbohydrates, then fortified with every "known" nutrient, it still fails to keep babies thriving as well as mother's milk.  What we don't know will hurt us.

America's lack of a traditional food culture may owe something to the puritan doctrine that forbade taking pleasure in food.  Bless it, eat it, and get back to work.

You'd have to eat three of the apples of today to get the same nutrients as one apple of the 1940s.

And to top them all, "Organic oreos are not health food."

His personal recommendations for how to shop and how to eat are summarized at the end.  After reading them, I took a look at some of my cherished pantry staples. Most were (reassuringly) actual foods--not food-like substances.  But my organic vegetable broth?

Cane sugar, dextrose, molasses, and pear juice concentrate.  aka, sugar, sugar, sugar, and sugar. Organic, of course.

As far as the foot can slog

As Far as the Eye Can See

Reflections of an Appalachian Trail Hiker

by David Brill

About the time when I was yearning to hike long distances in remote places, this guy did it.  1979, Appalachian trail.  Only it turns out that the Appalachian trail was hardly "remote places".  Never did a day go by without him seeing at least one other hiker, and typically many more. For those seeking solitude, it was not the place to be.

Funny--I walked up the trail a little ways back in 75 or 76 and felt eerily alone. But I was comparing it to where I'd started--Clingman's Dome, a site accessible by car and one of the most visited sites in the Smokies. Once I'd gotten away from the parking area, I had a taste of that panicky solitude you get when you're suddenly away from your pack...but I also felt that marvelous quiet.

It took him a while, but the author got what he wanted. He was changed by the experience in many wonderful ways, and he says it stuck with him for a long time and maybe forever. 

As to the book itself, I'll admit that about halfway through, I got bored. I was tired of his descriptions of his traveling companions, people met on the road, and towns he visited for resupply. A lot of facts like pictures in a scrapbook...how many people can take photos--even vacation photos--that you really want to see?  There's Joe, and John, and there's Matt and his new wife Sally; here's Mount Bland and a scenic trickling stream....  Sorry folks--your friends might pretend to enjoy your vacation photos, but mostly they're just being polite.

But three-quarters through the book he took a break and spent a fortnight at Randall's Farm near Hot Springs, North Carolina  Things suddenly got real--our surface skim acquired depth. And I was no longer bored.

Good beginning; shaky middle; great ending.

So-so mystery

Blessed Are the Dead
by Kristi Belcamino
It kept me turning the pages. What else can I say about a mystery?
Suspenseful--check. Likeable protagonist--check. Any real detective work done by protagonist--nope.  Three-dimensional characters--not really.  Stress-relieving humor--not so that I noticed. Plot--not so much. Interesting twist at the end that you didn't see coming--not a chance. Irritating introduction of a new character at the end just to hike up the suspense--for sure.  Blatant borrowing from Silence Of the Lambs? Seemed that way to me.

Negatives aside, it's fine if you like that sort of thing.  Newspaperwoman on the trail of missing kid because her own sister disappeared and was never found.  It may be just what you're looking for--if so, this is worth a second look.

My new hero

My Beloved World
by Sonia Sotomayor

Wow wholy amazing stupendous. Autobiography and essay by a person with more
brains in her little finger than I ever could cram into my whole stupid head. Wow.

Okay, I'm in love. But honestly--could she be telling the truth? Could she not? How can a poor girl from the projects end up a justice on the United States Supreme Court? She says, brains, perseverance, and a blessed life.  I say brains, perseverance, and a freaking awesome family. 

But the funny thing is, she started off disadvantaged in the family department, with an alcoholic father and a distant mother and an empty apartment full of embarrassment and anger. But she had grandmothers and aunts and uncles and cousins. She knew the coziness of a grandmother's kitchen, the fun of a family party, the camaraderie of cousins your own age, and the help of uncles and aunts who cared to make a difference.  They did.

And don't get me wrong about the disadvantages--the alcoholic father was a good man who held down a job and cooked for his family and never hurt his kids. He just checked out of life once each day. And the distant mother was trying hard, but so overcome with her own pain and inadequacy that it took her years to learn how to be the mother her kids needed.

Enough--I've said too much. Judge Sotomayor became who she is through self-discipline and hard work.  And if the book gets a little preachy at times, I consider that just fine. She's earned the right to speak out. I hope she keeps on--and I know she will.

More inspiration

My Year Of Running Dangerously:

A Dad, a Daughter, and a Ridiculous Plan

by Tom Foreman

Optimistic to the point of ecstacy, this book is a perfect antidote to the downer that was What I Think About When I Think About Running.  I finished that book still not knowing why he ran. And especially not why he raced. It just seemed like something he did to keep fit.

Not so for Tom Foreman. He may have started off in order to help his daughter run a marathon, but he ended up in a whole 'nuther universe.  From reporter to runner in 180 days.  And that's only the first half of the book.

He ends up on such a monumentally positive note that it's hard to say anything critical at all about the book. Maybe I think the author overdid it a little in his training, but in no way did that hurt the story.  Who likes a wishy-washy writer, anyway?  He wasn't.  And neither was his family. In fact, the family story is almost half of the book and I loved it.