I could read Rachel Cusk writing about encounters with people all day long. Part of the ever-growing list of authors � think Karl Ove Knausgaard, ElenI could read Rachel Cusk writing about encounters with people all day long. Part of the ever-growing list of authors � think Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante, Annie Ernaux, etc etc — who write superbly about ... not much. Or about very much indeed! About what it means to be alive!...more
I'm an admitted isle-o-phile/islomaniac/lover of islands � whatever term gets the message across best � so books about islands are absolutely my cup oI'm an admitted isle-o-phile/islomaniac/lover of islands � whatever term gets the message across best � so books about islands are absolutely my cup of tea. But who doesn't love a good island? Who doesn't pine to get away to some isolated spit of land jutting out of a remote corner of the ocean at least some of the time?
What is it about islands that we all find so appealing, then?
For me, I think it's the lack of options. Or rather, the finitude of the land, of the possibilities, laid out before you. Which is why I prefer smaller islands to big ones. When it comes to islands at least, I find that size does matter.
Remoteness obviously plays a part as well, the role of the island as an isolated utopia. An island accessible only by sea is infinitely preferable to one you can hop a plane to.
And to think that being marooned was historically a bad thing. That the ship would leave you, typically with all manner of supplies to help you on, and then set off without you? Think about how much people would to have a similar experience these days! To be "stranded" all alone on an island. To truly get away from it all.
Aren't we all drawn to islands because they signify just that sort of escape? Because they represent an outlet from which to flee society?
Don't we all envy Robinson Crusoe a bit? Don't we pine — at least a little bit — to wash up on a desert island à la Tom Hanks in "Cast Away"? Isn't that the life our spirits actually crave?
We all crave the simplicity of the island because, for many of us, the mainland has left us wanting.
An island is a lessening of the burden that is life, or at least of life in a capitalistic society. Because what is life on the American mainland if not an unending series of decisions — where to go to school, where to live, who to love, what to wear, what laundry detergent to buy — and it never stops until you die. But an island in the classical sense — not in the "holiday package tour" sense in which the island acts as merely an extension of capitalistic society — is a drastic shrinking of those choices, a forced reduction in the options we are daily confronted with.
Crest! No, Colgate! Wait, Tom's!
None of it matters, and yet our mental capacity is constantly taken up with wading through this sort of meaningless minutiae.
What to order? Where to vacation? When to retire?
While reading "Island Dreams" I ruminated on some of these questions and others. It's a beautiful book, one full of ruminations, of fleeting thoughts and half-remembered pasts. It is exactly the kind of book I enjoy reading more and more these days — one not burdened by a narrative but not hampered by the lack of one either.
It is a book to muse in. To think, as you read, about anything and everything. To go where the words take you....more
It's extremely rare that I reread a book. With all the many, many unread books I have that I very much want to read, how could I ever justify reading It's extremely rare that I reread a book. With all the many, many unread books I have that I very much want to read, how could I ever justify reading one I've already read? There's something admirable and, I find, decidedly upper class about spending one's time rereading — upper class because it suggests a sort of laissez-faire attitude toward life that's only possible among those of us free of that most burdensome product of modern capitalism: the full-time job (i.e. labor, generally for an other, that constitutes a sacrifice of eight or more hours of our precious day, five days a week).
Furthermore, since most novels are plot driven, unless you've completely forgotten the story, what necessitates rereading at all? Even if it was wonderful the first time around, isn't there always less pleasure to be derived from experiencing the same thing again the second time, whether that's a fine novel or a trip to Italy?
And yet, in my relentless quest to be proven wrong, to have my more cynical beliefs dispelled, I've done the unthinkable.
The moment I turned the last page of Claire-Louise Bennett's novel, I immediately turned back to the first page and started again. In fact, I became certain I was going to reread "Checkout 19" somewhere around page 88. For it was on page 88 that I broke that other long held taboo of mine.
I marked something.
To be more precise, I bracketed a paragraph which, a couple of pages later, led to my underlining a phrase. This, 11 pages later, led to my actually writing something down on the margin of the page. And all of this in ink too.
Prior to this, I'd made it a rule — a point of pride, almost — never to leave a mark in a book. Books are too precious to be written in, I'm sure I'd said something like this. You can't imagine the inner turmoil that followed that first marking. Later, when I underlined something and my pen-holding hand got a bit wobbly, leading me to accidentally cross out a few words, I briefly had the thought that I had ruined it — ruined the book — and would need to purchase a new copy to assuage me.
Then I calmed myself and underlined something else.
It was all so silly. No one was going to read this but me. I wasn't going to bring this to a used bookstore afterwards (how I loathe when I purchase a used book only to get home and find that someone has left marks in it), so why not mark in it? And I did. Far too frequently.
When I reread "Checkout 19," I marked up the first 87 pages, which had been left unmarked following my first reading, and added plenty more ink to the other pages too.
"And as I go along reading it again I'll underline sentences here and there once more, but they won't be the same sentences," Bennett writes, "you don't ever step into the same book twice after all."
This is a fantastic book, so very difficult to summarize, because it's almost entirely plotless. It's about language, firstly, and the reason a word appears on a page often seems to have less to do with its meaning in any given sentence than how it looks in that sentence ... or even just on the page itself.
Shades of Knausgaard, of Ernaux, of Calvino, of Sebald, of Ferrante, of Fosse, flash here and there, but what "Checkout 19" really is is remarkably unique — so unique I can't remember the last time I read something like it. It's a book you read for the joy of reading, of just reading the words on the page, without really feeling the need to hold onto the thread, to keep count of what all those words ultimately add up to.
I could quote this entire book, I'd have to because I wouldn't know how, or where, to stop. My pen is out of ink, my own thoughts spilling all over Bennett's. So it's really best if I just push this thing towards you — urge you to go on your own little journey to "Checkout 19" and tell you, sincerely, that I envy you the first time....more
Well, hello!! Yes, it's been a while since I've written one of these, mainly because I've been in Astoria these past 2+ months and that has coincided Well, hello!! Yes, it's been a while since I've written one of these, mainly because I've been in Astoria these past 2+ months and that has coincided with a significant lapse in my review writing. I just haven't done a very good job of keeping up with anything that's been happening around here, and that has made me sad so I have chosen today, my friends, to remedy that.
So while I could write a proper review of this book, about the founding of Astoria, a town many of you have likely never heard of, I am not going to do that because that would be boring — for me. Instead I will just say, "really insightful book! check it out!" and write about these past two months in Astoria, if that's ok with you. If not, there are, of course, plenty of actual reviews about this book that you can read.
I arrived here on July 20th. The plan was to stay until October 20th — I find it quite difficult to be anywhere for more than three months at a time — but I will instead be leaving here on October 13th and that, my friends, is not a moment too soon. Because, truth be told, I would have been better suited to three weeks here than three months. That's not to say anything bad of Astoria except that there just isn't a lot going on here.
There's a riverwalk, which is lovely, where you can go to watch all the cargo ships come in, but even this activity fills me with melancholy. Why? Because water, in general, makes me a bit melancholic, but more so because these boats are coming from exciting places like Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, and other exotic places that don't even start with the letter "S" and, well, I'd rather be in one of those.
This doesn't feel like a place where one goes to live, it feels like somewhere one goes to die. Perhaps that gets back to the whole "doomed" expedition to found the city in the first place, but lest I actually start talking about the book, let me quickly get back to what I was talking about: death.
Yes, a place one goes to die.
The, erm, funereal nature of this place is only further heightened by the fact that I don't have a car, which means I must cycle if I want to go anywhere outside of town — which is walkable enough on its own. That would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that there are bridges leading out of town in nearly all directions, one of which you can't cycle on, one of which you can but which appears most foreboding, and another of which I have cycled on but it doesn't really go anywhere other than Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark spent a winter. I've been renting cars, and that's how I've managed. Otherwise, I may very well have drowned myself in the river by now.
Of course, the reimposition of COVID restrictions has only added to this. People are generally less friendly these days, at least here in the US, and it's especially hard to connect to people when you're all wearing masks. There's also quite an eclectic crowd here. You've got everything from your Q-Anon crazies (a painter, wouldn't you know!) and your more bohemian, lefty types. But they're all a bit cold and stand-offish, much like the sea lions that bark to keep their kin from attempting to hop up on their pier or buoy.
The food, as well, hasn't exactly been a showcase of the diverse, lively ethnic cuisines I like to see, though there is some good Mexican, so that's something. It seems most of the tourists come here for "The Goonies", a very 80s film starring a young Sean Astin, specifically to tour the filming locations. That seems to be about it. There is a lovely bridge though, the Astoria-Megler bridge, which is the "longest continuous truss bridge" in the US, for what that's worth.
No, the bridge actually is lovely.
As is the river.
But a weekend trip ought to do it. No need to come move out here for three months. If only someone had told me THAT before all this. Oh well. I shall remember it for the future.
Was Astoria today what John Jacob Astor had in mind? Would he have been disappointed with what his little Pacific outpost had become? I don't much care, to be honest with you. He didn't seem like a very nice fellow himself.
So, my fellow Goodreaders, while the thought of leaving Astoria brings me joy, to you all I say, it's nice to be back!...more
Time to get up to date with my reads! I've been reading, but I've taken a few weeks off from reviewing so as a result I'm left with a list of "currentTime to get up to date with my reads! I've been reading, but I've taken a few weeks off from reviewing so as a result I'm left with a list of "currently reading" titles that I actually finished some time ago.
First off was this gem about America's public lands and why they're so great. I doubt anyone picks this one up who has yet to be convinced of the value inherent in public land, but those people likely don't read much to begin with so what can you do?
There are two parts to "That Wild Country." One is a history of America's public lands and how they came to be, and the other consists of the author, Mark Kenyon, going out camping and hiking with family and friends in those lands. The first part was more up my alley than the second, but it's nice to see the author practicing what he's preaching, not that it would matter � you don't have to set foot in a National Park like Yellowstone or Yosemite to benefit from or see the value in it.
Part of "That Wild County" recounts the 2016 occupation of Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by a group of philistines led by the Bundy family, a pack of halfwit inbreds who believe public lands should be auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder. Because the government won't allow them to graze their cattle on this land, because it belongs to everyone — not just them � the Bundys figure they'd rather it go to millionaires and billionaires who'd sooner not allow access to anyone. No, it doesn't make much sense, but that's what passes for conservative "thought" these days: if the government's involved, it's automatically bad.
Whatever happened to the "conserve" part of "conservative"? I don't rightly know. It was a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, who began the National Parks system after all, but the party has come a long way from Teddy as anyone who's witnessed the last five years can attest.
It's simple: America's public lands are what makes America great. We have some of the most stunning, incomparable nature of any nation on Earth, and the fact that the "Make America Great Again" con artists decided that selling off portions of this land and opening it to drilling for oil and natural gas shows exactly how full of shit they are — and who they're working for.
Check this one out, you'll learn a good deal about what makes America's public lands so special. But if you've ever stepped foot in a National Park and witnessed how truly magnificent the American landscape is, you already know just how special it is....more
I have always felt drawn northward. There's just something about the north — be it the relative isolation, the cold, the light/darkness — that has alwI have always felt drawn northward. There's just something about the north — be it the relative isolation, the cold, the light/darkness — that has always lent it a sense of mystery in my mind.
The title "Arctic Dreams" encapsulates this attraction perfectly. There is something dreamlike about this fascination with the north, and everything set in it (Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy comes to mind).
Even today, if I find out that a particular story is set in some northern location — Svalbard, say — I'm much more likely to pick it up.
But "Arctic Dreams" might have been a little bit too grounded in reality for my liking. Now don't get me wrong, this book has everything a naturalist might want, but it truly is designed with naturalists in mind. There are looooong digressions here about Arctic birds, Arctic sea life, Arctic tundra, Arctic peoples, Arctic air, Arctic light, Arctic darkness, Arctic ... you get the idea.
That's all well and good, it's just long and, I must admit, incredibly tedious. I listened to this on audiobook, which likely only exacerbated the tedium. Barry Lopez would be going on about narwhals when I suddenly realized I'd been thinking about something else for the last ten minutes, but it's ok, because Barry is still talking about narwhals.
Would I have enjoyed this more if I had actually read it? Maybe. But I am sure I would have still found it tedious.
This essentially reads as a nature journal, and it's about as interesting as that. Yes, there are some lovely turns of phrase and some cool facts about the native peoples that inhabit whatever ice-covered terrain Barry is sauntering across that particularly month, but I'm not sure I really wanted this much info on Arctic terns, though they do sound lovely.
I'm sorry, Barry.
It's not you, it's me.
I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into here. Maybe I'll come back to the print version of this at some point in the � let's be honest —�very distant future, but for now, this sort of meditative exercise disguised as a book just didn't really do it for me....more
"Surrender" is full of images that stay with you long after you've turned the page, in this case, quite literallThis one was a real pleasure to read.
"Surrender" is full of images that stay with you long after you've turned the page, in this case, quite literally. Pocock uses the Sebaldian tactic of including photos (there are dozens of them here) along with her text. I'm not convinced that the photos really added anything to the book — other than a good deal more pages — as the text itself is visual enough in and of itself.
Pocock is an Irish-Canadian living in London who, along with her husband and their young daughter, embarks on a two-year odyssey to Missoula, Montana. During this time she connects with the land, examines varying sides of contentious American issues — like drilling, trapping, mining, and the like � and, you could say, "finds" herself.
Part of the reason I was so intrigued to read this is that I, too, have an innate fascination with the American West. I've never visited Montana (something I hope to correct in due time) but the American West more generally has always held a sort of mystique for me. The spaces are wider, the buildings fewer, the landscape more awe-inspiring, the nature less forgiving.
The other theme in this book is Pocock's "mid-life crisis," for lack of better words. Pocock isn't satisfied with the way her life is going, and London — a city she's lived in since her twenties that she has always looked forward to coming back to — now feels dead to her, or rather, i>unnatural.
This "crisis," this search for something more, serves as the catalyst for the entire book, as Pocock discovers the American West she inhabits the life that maybe she could have had, were it not for her family and the decisions she's made.
The one characteristic that really stuck out to me when reading this was the honesty with which Pocock writes. Whether it's her deliberating about giving it all up, family included, to stay in the American West during a solo trip she takes later on in the book, or her views on the MeToo movement, she writes without filtering herself. That's a rare and invaluable quality in any year, but particularly in 2020, when every spoken — not to mention, i>written � word feels calculated and designed to garner minimal backlash.
Pocock feels like a friend, and you never feel like she's not telling you exactly what she thinks. Even when she's spending time with people she vehemently disagrees with, and she does a lot of that here, Pocock doesn't seem to shy away from expressing her feelings.
As alluring as the American West is, Pocock's fear of living in the US echoes my own.
After having spent eight years living abroad and only recently returning to the States, my own anxiety has risen as I contemplate the cost of things, as I rage over the division that keeps common sense (in any other place) legislation protecting the air, the water, the land, from making it into law, as I stress over the possibility that some accident could befall me and I'd be stuck with a medical bill I couldn't possibly afford.
In these pandemic days, the divisions in the country seem to have risen to a fever pitch, and this plays into my American-anxiety too. The curiosity, the fascination that conversations seem to hold elsewhere, all too often seem to devolve into suspicion and disappointment here.
Not always, of course. Coming "home," if you can call it that, is always a mixed bag, but I often feel like Pocock who, in these pages, doesn't ever feel assured of having a home in the first place. Having grown up in Ontario and moved to the UK in her twenties, she suffers from a similar kind of displacement, has that same chasm inside her that only the certainty of home, of belonging, can fill.
Pocock expresses her delight when she has rewarding experiences and encounters with others, her disappointment when such experiences fail to meet her expectations.
In the final third of the book, Pocock attends an "Ecosex convergence" in Washington State. While there, she is forced to take part in a two-hour lecture on the importance of consent in sexual encounters. Having to constantly ask out loud whether what you and your partner are doing is "OK," having to negotiate boundaries beforehand, or stop any sexual activity and go back and renegotiate them — isn't it all a bit, i>anticlimactic, Pocock wonders?
I'm sure Pocock lost a few readers there, but she again justified my admiration for her writing.
"Surrender" is a book about being open and willing to engage in new experiences. It's about examining our doubts, our fears, and asking "why?"
Maybe it's not about a woman finding herself at all, but rather about a woman being open and willing to admit that maybe she never will, but that won't stop her from looking....more
Activities promoting a return to nature seem particularly in vogue lately, and this is just another in the long line of books about walking tha[image]
Activities promoting a return to nature seem particularly in vogue lately, and this is just another in the long line of books about walking that I see appearing in bookshops with ever increasing frequency.
Or is it?
Granted, I haven't read those "other" books about walking, but is there a better person to pen a book on the subject than the first fellow to have walked to the North Pole, the South Pole, AND the summit of Everest? I mean, Jesus Christ. It's a good thing I just read Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive because after reading Erling Kagge's biography I feel like I haven't done much with my life.
I first heard about this book back in April. I was stuck in traffic on the way to my favorite used bookstore (because where else would I be headed?) in Orlando, Florida. The radio was tuned to the local NPR (National Public Radio) station and Erling Kagge's accented-English suddenly crackled on the car's speakers.
Some of Kagge's answers that day struck me as a bit too "zen". In response to the interviewer's question of how he prepared for his hike to the South Pole, Kagge answered that it was simply a matter of putting "one foot in front of the other". The interviewer scoffed at this, as did I when listening, but I think I get Kagge's point now. "One foot in front of the other" isn't necessarily to be taken literally, but has more to do with the mental state one has to have to set out on such a hike in the first place.
Or perhaps I'm just fooling myself.
I fully understand the health benefits that come with routinely walking, but I wasn't as clear on the mental and emotional benefits. I'm not sure how I could have missed this, as just about every famous person throughout history is referenced in "Walking" as being a devotee.
There's Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard who, in a letter to his sister-in-law, writes, "Above all, do not lose your desire to walk; every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness."
Then there's American poet and essayist Henry David Thoreau, who writes, "I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least � and it is commonly more than that � sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements."
Of people who don't walk regularly, Thoreau writes that they "deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago."
Greek physician Hippocrates notes that "if you are in a bad mood, go for a walk" and, if you are still in a bad mood, "go for another walk". Fellow-Greek philosopher Diogenes says, in reply to the idea that movement does not exist, "solvitor ambulando" (it is solved by walking).
Others � Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs � were avid walkers who reportedly got some of their best ideas when strolling outdoors.
Kagge notes that walking is connected to our bodies and emotions even in our language.
Motion, emotion. Move, moved.
Kagge also emphasizes that the way we walk often says a lot about us. Do we take timid steps, or do we stride confidently? Do we rush forward hunched or do we stand straight as we saunter?
In his extraordinary novel Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald writes that, following the German-invasion, the residents of Prague "walked more slowly, like sonambulists, as if they no longer knew where they were going."
At this point I recalled something a friend of mine told me a few years ago. Her brother, she said, had been mugged three times in the past few months simply walking back to their London home. My friend's family lived in a relatively safe area of London, but having never lived in London myself, I enquired as to whether such muggings were "normal".
"Not at all," she told me. "It's the way he walks. He's hunched and constantly looking over his shoulder. It's obvious to anyone who sees him that he's terrified."
Before reading this I had never seriously thought about walking before or, rather, I had never thought of walking as a serious endeavor. It's so easy to take the ability to walk for granted, to not consider the fact that millions of individuals lack this seemingly basic ability. And yet the majority of us don't make the most of this ability.
We desire to sit day in, day out, and our kids are preferring to spend their free time inside rather than out. Walking, it seems, is something we practice in our daily lives less and less. Nevermind hiking to the South Pole, what about going around the block?
Some places are worse than others. Most of us in America have been conditioned to view walking as a last resort, as something you have to do rather than something you want to do. After all, why walk when you can drive?
Even leaving aside the obvious environmental and health benefits, walking has so much to offer.
As Kagge writes, because so much in our lives is fast paced and walking is such a slow undertaking, "it is among the most radical things you can do." Furthermore, "walking expands time rather than collapses it."
I'm about to head out on something of a walk myself, along the 382-mile Oregon Coast Trail. I'm sure I can't even comprehend at this point the challenges I'm likely to come across in doing so. But I fully intend to "put one foot in front of the other" until I've reached the end of the trail.
It's not the South Pole, it's just a walk, still a radical act in today's world. Because maybe it's not taking the road less traveled that matters as much as the way you're taking that road.
Maybe the thing that most drives me to walk is that I could drive....more
No review can begin to do justice to something as sublime as "Underland". This is probably the best book on nature and the environment that I've ever No review can begin to do justice to something as sublime as "Underland". This is probably the best book on nature and the environment that I've ever read. It reportedly took Macfarlane six and a half years to write "Underland" and it shows.
The depth of research (pun intended) and environments in which Macfarlane immersed himself in order to write authoritatively on this subject is mind blowing. And as the title makes clear, the subject is the very ground beneath our feet.
Along the way, the reader is treated to all sorts of fascinating insights � the fact, for example, that we know less about what lies beneath us than we know about what's up above. The little bit we know about the stars and the planets in our galaxy still surpasses our knowledge of what our very earth holds.
Why is this?
Because, as Macfarlane makes clear, we are prejudiced. We turn to the ground when we want to hide something away, either because we want to preserve it or because we want to destroy it, and the discrimination can be felt in our language with words like "catastrophe" � the Greek origins of which meant literally "down" (kata) "turning" (strophē) � cataclysm, and depression, among others.
It can also be felt in myths like Orpheus and Eurydice, the inside of the earth as something that is evil � it is, after all, where Hades itself can be found � something that is undesirable that we must try and escape from.
In short, we don't have a positive association with what's beneath us. Our hopes and aspirations have launched us into the skies, but our fears and paranoias have kept us from delving too deep.
In "Underland" Macfarlane scales glaciers, plunges into underground rivers, and squeezes through frighteningly tight spaces in order to relay our past back to us. His is an adventure, claustrophobic at times, that brings us face-to-face with our oldest ancestors and up close to layers of ice and rock that existed millennia before the first humans trod the planet.
The point of this entire endeavor, and the lasting impact from reading "Underland", is the state humanity has left the earth in. Climate change has seriously disrupted the natural order of things, and Macfarlane doesn't spare any details of the harm our species has done to the planet. He takes us there, up close and personal, until the horror of it presses in on you like a shallow passageway deep beneath Paris.
I was fortunate enough to briefly meet with Macfarlane during a book signing last year following a talk he gave at the Hay Festival in Wales. The talk was phenomenal, but I had a ticket to Stephen Fry's talk immediately after and I didn't want to miss that so I had to forego Macfarlane's book signing ... or so I'd thought.
In my experience, most authors don't doddle. There are a few seconds of niceties, "Oh, I loved your book", "thank you" and all that, and then they've moved on to the person behind you. I get it. When you're an author as popular as Ian McEwan, for example, you just want to get the whole thing over with. But as popular as Macfarlane is, I was thrilled to find that even after the hour long Stephen Fry talk, even after the hour I spent in line to get my books signed by Fry, Macfarlane was still there. Still signing books. Still talking to people.
There was a couple with a little girl just in front of me, and when their turn came, Macfarlane stood up and came around the table he'd been sitting at and shook the little girl's hand and chatted with her for a minute or so. Just with her. I've never seen an author do that before, and it showed that Macfarlane is more than just the words he's written in books like "Underland", he truly is an individual determined to try and make the future better for the generations that come after.
I am so so happy that the book is as good as the man....more
I first started scuba diving a couple of years ago and quickly became hooked. How is that I managed to live for 31 years totally oblivious to the magnI first started scuba diving a couple of years ago and quickly became hooked. How is that I managed to live for 31 years totally oblivious to the magnificent world that exists under the sea? The ocean has always fascinated me, but to actually explore the life that exists down there has deepened my love of the earth's oceans.
James Nestor seems to have experienced a similar transformation, but on a much grander scale � freediving.
Freedivers are some of the most compelling people I've met. Despite the serious risks involved, their love of exploration � in a world that is still largely unexplored � trumps their own personal safety.
As Nestor documents, sometimes the risks freedivers take aren't out of love for the oceans or exploration at all, but merely the desire to break records. Competitive freediving is a thriving sport and one that might eventually be featured in future Olympic Games. But it also routinely leads to serious injury and even death.
Freediving is listed by as being the second most dangerous adventure sport with an estimated 100 annual fatalities from a pool of just 5,000 active freedivers. The author of goes on to say that only base jumping is more fatal than freediving.
As much as I love diving, I'm not keen to engage in an activity that has a 1 in 50 fatality rate. At least not while I still love living. But reading about it � and learning a boatload about the oceans in the process � sure is cool!...more
The travel industry is largely made up of people talking about how wonderful a certain place or international program is, even if said place or prograThe travel industry is largely made up of people talking about how wonderful a certain place or international program is, even if said place or program isn't all that wonderful.
At one point in my life, to support myself and further my writing aims, I found myself working to further this deception — for an absolute pittance, which would appear to make the deception worse � but merely for the allure of the title. Until one particularly miserable experience where I could deceive no longer ... thus bringing my travel writing career to a close.
That final assignment came to me while I was working as an English teacher (my day job at the time) in the beautiful Italian town of Polignano a Mare. I would take a week off and ferry across the Adriatic to Croatia to join up with something called "The Yacht Week," where I would spend, yes, a week, hopping on and off yachts suffused with drunk, rich bastards partying it up like it was 1999 (albeit in 2013).
I would still be getting paid a pittance, that hadn't changed, but this time my travel expenses would be covered. My living quarters were with the program's volunteers � i.e. other rudderless youths who were getting basically nothing other than the opportunity to spend a summer in Croatia — but I could spend some time on the yachts, could attend the parties, could at least tell myself that I was writing.
So I jumped at it.
And hated every single second.
Cliques among the volunteers were already long-established thanks to previous summers together to serve the needs of well-off clients. My time spent on the yachts was even worse. The number of people I interacted with who weren't staggeringly intoxicated plunged after 12 o'clock, and the disdain the locals had for the rich Americans and Brits who came to play was more than palpable.
I'd return to my bedroom to find complete strangers cavorting in my bed. There was nary a quiet moment.
I would have left early but I wanted to finish the piece, which I did, except that it addressed issues that the travel site that had hired me was none too interested in shedding light on — namely, the effect that this company and mass tourism more generally were having on formerly little touristed locales, the fact that the residents of the once-serene towns on the itinerary were all-too-open about the fact that they did want us there, and my own general disdain at the whole enterprise.
Of course, I had never been told that this needed to be a fluff piece, but I suppose that was obvious given the nature of the industry. As a result of my outpouring of negativity, the piece was never published.
I wondered, while reading "South and West," whether that was why Didion's own "notes" on the American South went unpublished for so long. It's clear she hated pretty much the entirety of her month-long trip to Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Clearly, the tourism boards of those states would have squirmed if Didion's urgent � and hysterical — desire to leave their states had made it into the pages of Esquire or The New York Times.
"I was afraid to get too near Jackson [Mississippi] because planes left from Jackson for New York and California, and I knew I would not last ten minutes in Jackson without telephoning Delta or National [airlines] and getting out. All that month I hummed in my mind "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" ... and every night in our hotel room we got out the maps and figured out how many hours' driving time to Jackson, to New Orleans, to Baton Rouge, to the closest places the planes left from."
If Didion has anything positive to say about the South, it certainly got by me.
"It occurred to me almost constantly in the South that had I lived there I would have been an eccentric and full of anger, and I wondered what form the anger would have taken. Would I have taken up causes, or would I have simply knifed somebody?"
As someone who has spent a good deal of time in the South, I found the above passages absolutely hilarious � and very relatable. But there is also something I've always found fascinating about the South, albeit something occasionally dark and unpleasant, as Didion notes too. There's a certain danger, an insidious violence, simmering beneath the veneer of Southern Hospitality. That the South has the of any region in the country hints at that, as do more obvious indicators like the region's avid Trumpism and its, occasionally, quite overt racism.
You can't travel to the South without seeing the fervent, almost cult-like following the region's college football teams have, so you can't help but feel what Didion observes as "the sense of sports being the opiate of the people."
If, as Joan Didion writes, the air in New Orleans "is heavy with sex and death," then death — if not the sex — permeates the entire South and is something you constantly feel weighing on you, pulling you ... or maybe that's just the stifling humidity.
But I didn't read this for an account of the South at all. It wasn't all that long ago that I escaped the South, and I don't wish to go back — not even in my reading.
I wish reviewers would more often state the reasons why a book appealed to them initially, so here's mine. I'm visiting California right now, and there is probably no writer I associate more with California than Joan Didion. I found this in a bookshop and took the title, "South and West," to mean something like "Southwest," whereas in fact the "and" is most definitely key.
"South and West" is not about the South and the West, though, and the fact that the West is getting equal billing here is akin to Matthew McConaughey's name appearing next to Leonardo DiCaprio's on the poster for "The Wolf on Wall Street." McConaughey was in that movie for no more than ten minutes and, likewise, the "West" gets 14 (14!!) pages here, which is a sneaky bit of marketing when you think about the lack of appeal a book called just "South" may have garnered. (though maybe "I Hate the Deep South," would have driven more sales?)
Joan Didion is a great observer, which is what made her such a great writer, and that first quality — and occasionally the second — is very present here. These are scrambled, disorganized notes to be sure, only seeing the light of day because they have the name "Joan Didion" attached to them, but in them I found something like a bedfellow of travel miseries past....more
Everything about this book is beautiful. And I do mean everything. The illustrations, the font, the binding, and the text itself.
If these read dates Everything about this book is beautiful. And I do mean everything. The illustrations, the font, the binding, and the text itself.
If these read dates are accurate, then I started reading this just over a year ago, on May 14th. I was about to embark on a trip to the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues and thought, "what could be better than reading a book about remote islands while on somewhat remote islands?"
Not much, really. But this is so much more than a beach read. It took me over a year to finish this not because I didn't enjoy it but because, at an all-too-brief 144 pages, I wanted to savor it, to read and think about each island in depth, one at a time.
And you will think. You'll find that you won't be able to just breeze through this, reading one entry after the next. And you shouldn't. This book demands your concentration. It urges contemplation.
"Atlas of Remote Islands" covers 50 different islands. There is a page of text on each, along with a map of each on the opposite page. The text varies wildly. Some of the "stories", if we can call them that, speak to the geography � often harsh � of the island, while others speak of documented historical events, and others still speculate about past or present life on the island.
This isn't a novel, nor is it really an atlas. It is an adventure � a way to travel to these islands without the detailed planning, and immense sums, that physically getting there would require. This gorgeous book is the best gift you could give any traveler or anyone who desires to travel in the slightest.
For me, too, paradise has always been an island. When I think about the places that have most resonated with me on my travels, they have all been � with few exceptions � islands. Iceland, La Digue, Crete, Rodrigues � each different but each special in its own way.
My love for islands extends back into childhood when even the tiniest strip of land in the midst of the smallest body of water represented something like solace and safety to me. My love for islands arose around the same time I discovered my love for reading so that some of the first books I ever read I gravitated towards because they were about islands. So it was that I read books like Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island. I even owe my discovery of certain authors, like Michel Houellebecq and Umberto Eco, to the fact that they had books with the word "island" in their titles � The Possibility of an Island and The Island of the Day Before.
Films too. I remember anticipating "Cast Away" for months before it came out, as well as Ted Danson's TV adaptation of "Gulliver's Travels". I spent what felt like several agonizing months awaiting the release of the two-bit (and, if memory serves, much delayed) remake of "Robinson Crusoe" with Pierce Brosnan in the title role.
Point is, I've read and watched a lot I otherwise wouldn't have as a result of my love of islands, a love echoed only by that for bridges, which are special, mainly, because they often lead to islands. So when I saw this book in a bookshop in Rome, I knew I had to have it.
East German-born author Judith Schalansky has truly done something remarkable here. She hasn't just written fantastical, poetic texts to accompany each island in the book, she's also designed, illustrated, and typeset it. If that weren't enough, she opens with an absolutely masterful piece called "Paradise is an island. So is hell." I was smitten with the cover, but I fell in love while reading that introduction.
We all have an island, or two, we'd like to escape to. For me, it's Pitcairn Island � an island that, when you look at a globe, appears to be the perfect distance from every landmass.
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