I feel like I’m one of the very few people who read this book and didn’t feel the urge to rave about it. I read a lot of hiking memoirs, and I just don’t feel like this was one of the better ones. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t stand out either. Admittedly, I have a pretty high bar for the genre. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods was not only my introduction to the subject, but it was the book that essentially fueled my passion for non-fiction. I try very hard not to compare anything too closely to this favorite of mine–writing styles and narrative focus differ from writer to writer, after all–but even so, I didn’t find anything in this book to elevate it above the crowd. My issues with this memoir boil down to two things. The first is a minor gripe: the dialogue sometimes comes across as stilted. Much of this book focuses on the interactions Lugo had with various people during his hike, so there are lots of conversations. I felt that there were several instances where the dialogue didn’t flow like a normal exchange would. My larger issue has to do with the pacing. As I said, I’ve read lots of hiking memoirs, and one thing that they have in common is best described as a sense of the time taken during the hike. This is especially true–and especially important–for thru-hikes, in which the hiker does the entirety of a long-distance trail (like the Appalachian Trail ) in a single summer. It usually takes anywhere from six to eight months and is done between March and October. Lugo’s book comes across as more of a series of vignettes seen in the course of a bunch of unconnected outings. I didn’t really get a feeling of the whole scope of the hike over the arc of the book’s narrative. There is one thing for which I want to commend the author, though. Hiking is most often a pastime undertaken by white people (for various reasons that I’ve read about but do not feel qualified to discuss at any length), and Lugo notes that he was the only Black person thru-hiking the trail that year. He also notes how far outside his comfort zone it was to do the hike. The fact that he did so, and the fact that he wrote about it and was able to give his voice to the experience, should be taken into consideration. Any shortcomings that I perceive in the actual writing shouldn’t take anything away from that accomplishment. I mean, I don’t think I could do what he did, so I certainly give him props for it! This book has a place in the hiking genre, certainly, but I think that there might be better gateways into learning about the sport.
Tag: 3 stars
Everything Trump Touches Dies by Rick Wilson
Full disclosure before we get into this: I’m a registered Democrat, and as you can probably guess from that nugget of info, not a fan of our current president. One thing I try to do, though, is to seek out points of view that I may not agree with so that I have a more rounded view of things. Now admittedly, I haven’t been able to bring myself to read books by the likes of Cory Lewandowski or Newt Gingrich, but I have been trying to read books by conservative commentators who take a more neutral view of things. By doing so, I have learned a lot about the way our two major parties and their politics have evolved (or devolved in some cases) since the Nixon era and how we got to the point we’re at now. I’ve encountered critiques of the Democrats that I think have merit as well. All of this is by way of saying that no, I’m not perfect and I do have my own personal views, but I make a conscious effort to not get caught up in a liberal echo chamber. I was initially drawn to Wilson’s book not because of the title (although I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me a snicker), but because he is described as a longtime conservative and Republican strategist. I thought that he might have interesting insights into the current state of the country that gave me a few laughs in the bargain. Goodness knows we can all use one nowadays. Sad to say, this book didn’t live up to expectations. That has nothing to do with the content, honestly; rather, it’s more a matter of how the book is written. The whole issue of “dark comedy” that the book jacket espouses never quite materializes. It’s obviously something that can be done–late night comedians do it all the time. Seth Meyers, in particular, has excelled at blending comedy with in-depth looks at current issues, often devoting up to twelve minutes to his “Closer Look” segment. In Wilson’s book, I think he was just trying too hard to be edgy. He does have some witty bits, but there were many times that I wanted him to just stop looking for superlatives and get on with the book already. On the other hand, the author does offer up some interesting food for thought on various topics. One that sticks out in my head is his statement that it seems that China’s retaliatory tariffs were aimed squarely at industries in the mid-America red states. If that’s true, that’s a fascinating tidbit of info about current global politics. I wish these little factoids had been presented a little more cleanly, simply because some of the internal structure of individual chapters sometimes gets slightly messy, but there are there to be discovered. All in all, this isn’t the worst book that I’ve read about our current political situation. There are some thought provoking ideas scattered throughout, and even…
Scourged by Kevin Hearne
“Two-thousand-year-old Druid Atticus O’Sullivan travels to Asgard and faces off against the Norse gods to try and prevent Ragnarok in the final battle for the fate of mankind.” Two notes: This book will be published on April 3, and this review contains some spoilery stuff. Well, that’s it. The Iron Druid Chronicles is officially over. …
Zenn Scarlett by Christian Schoon
“When you’re studying to be exoveterinarian specializing in exotic, alien life forms, school… is a different kind of animal. Zenn Scarlett is a resourceful, determined 17-year-old girl working hard to make it through her novice year of exovet training. That means she’s learning to care for alien creatures that are mostly large, generally dangerous and…
Omega Days by John L. Campbell
“San Francisco, California. Father Xavier Church has spent his life ministering to unfortunate souls, but he has never witnessed horror like this. After he forsakes his vows in the most heartrending of ways, he watches helplessly as a zombie nun takes a bite out of a fellow priest’s face. University of California, Berkeley. Skye Dennison…
The Remaining by D. J. Molles
“In a steel-and-lead encased bunker a Special Forces soldier waits on his final orders. On the surface a bacterium has turned 90% of the population into hyper-aggressive predators. Now Captain Lee Harden must leave the bunker and venture into the wasteland to rekindle a shattered America.” Okay, the situation with this book is kind of…
Caesar’s Last Breath by Sam Kean
“It’s invisible. It’s ever-present. Without it, you would die in minutes. And it has an epic story to tell. With every breath, you literally inhale the history of the world. On the ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar died of stab wounds on the Senate floor, but the story of his last breath is…
The Mortal Bone by Marjorie M. Liu
“When the bond Maxine Kiss shares with the demons tattooed on her skin is deliberately severed, the demon hunter is left vulnerable and unprotected. For the first time in ten thousand years, the demons have a taste of freedom. And as the little demons grow more violent and unpredictable, Maxine starts to fear they will…
Wakeworld by Kerry Schafer
“Vivian Maylor is trying to hold it together. But her attempts to build a life with the man she loves seem doomed by the dragon inside her yearning to break free. Vivian is a dreamshifter, the last line of defense between reality and the dreamworld, and the only one of her kind. Weston Jennings also…
The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett
“Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare. Literally. Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a…