On The Road by Jack Kerouac

After reading ‘On the Road’, I definitely caught the breeze of a free-wheeling, music-loving lifestyle wherein the characters feel deeply and live wildly.

I had difficulty choosing excerpts from Kerouac’s gorgeous, hopeful, yet at the same time, dingy prose. My words don’t measure up to the seamless stream of the author’s pen. So in the place of my weak attempt at conveying why I found enjoyment in this American odyssey, I rely on these passages. Read the book and see if the words and characters don’t roll into your head as the wheels roll across the continent.

“And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up.”

“Great beautiful clouds floated overhead, valley clouds that made you feel the vastness of old tumbledown holy America from mouth to mouth and tip to tip.”

And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; …We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, MOVE.”

“Then we started down. Dean cut off the gas, threw in the clutch, and negotiated every hairpin turn and passed cars and did everything in the books without the benefit of accelerator.” …”In this was we floated and flapped down to the San Joaquin Valley. It lay spread a mile below, virtually the floor of California, green and wondrous from our aerial shelf. We made thirty miles without using gas.”

“Dean’s California-wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.”

And I now see how Natalie Merchant’s rambling musical poetry of ‘Hey Jack Kerouac’ gave me glimpses of the exploits of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty long before I eventually found author Jack Kerouac for myself.

Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother
And the tears she cried, they were cried for none other…

…Hey Jack, now for the tricky part,
When you were the brightest star, who were the shadows?…

…You chose your words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Cool junk booting madmen, street minded girls
In Harlem, howling at night.
What a tear stained shock of the world,
You’ve gone away without saying goodbye.

Natalie Merchant / Robert Buck
Hey Jack Kerouac lyrics © Christian Burial Music

10,000 Maniacs’ In My Tribe 1987

The Boys In the Boat by Daniel James Brown

image from the bibliophage.com

A non-fiction story that could have been penned by script writers from back in the day. Let’s see, first we’ll set the scene during the start of the Great Depression. Add in a bunch of mostly working class/downright poor heroes to compete for college degrees and championships in a wildly popular upper class gentleman’s sport and oh, yes add an epic showdown with Adolph Hilter!

The University of Washington Rowing Team’s pride and ongoing rivalry with University of California Berkeley is just the beginning of the athletic triumphs the author Daniel James Brown brings to life. I had no idea of the immense popularity of rowing in those days. Throngs of folks lined shorelines, boarded boats and even rode trains that traveled back and forth along the race course to watch their teams compete. And the fervor seemed to be more intense the farther east you went – all the way to Poughkeepsie NY and back to Oxford and Cambridge for what they simply refer to as “The Boat Race.”

There is plenty of time taken to describe the craftsmanship that went into making the racing shells, the hardships many of the men endured, and the intense competition to be one of the nine chosen for the Varsity boat. All done while the reader more and more anxiously waits for the next race to begin!

No spoilers here, however as each race takes place the intensity and pressure to succeed increases. The author quietly fills us in on the enormous efforts taking place in Germany as the Third Reich wakes up to the idea that the Berlin Olympic Games could serve as the perfect backdrop to fool the world for just a little longer. The boys in the University of Washington boat certainly have something to prove to the Nazis, to the rest of the world, and mostly to themselves.

 

 

 

Kingbird Highway by Kenn Kaufman

A sixteen year old boy from Kansas takes his fascination for birds to the highest level in his quest to locate and identify birds in the US and Mexico in the early 1970s. As Kaufman clarifies in the early pages of his memoir, he can’t accept what he does as ‘birdwatching’ because that has a passive connotation. Rather, his story describes the passionate, and in his case, relentless act of ‘birding’. Kaufman decides to attempt what is known as “A Big Year”, a competition to tally a staggering 600+ bird species in a single calendar year.

Think for a moment about the pre-cellphone, pre-Google maps era as people traveled great distances to follow the enigmatic patterns of migratory birds over the course of a year. Now, imagine being broke, no income, no car and no permanent place to call home and you begin to envision the determination this quest required. Aside from coordinated meetings with fellow birders at seasonal events and specific locations, Kaufman hitchhiked across the nation, and astoundingly even up into the farthest reaches of Alaska, to find and tally “his” birds. The weather alone proved challenging, not to mention finding reliable, safe rides. He spent countless hours standing on the roads of America watching cars and trucks pass him by.

With wonderfully descriptive chapter titles like; Finding the Road, California Influence, Strategy and Hard Weather, To the Promised Landfill, Dry Tortugas, A Thousand Miles of Gravel, The Edge of the World, Exhausting the Possibilities, and Border Patrol, the reader comes to appreciate the many decisive points along the journey. The inclusion of a map showing the route described in each chapter is invaluable as the saga unfolds. Of course, there are good illustrations of a handful of birds which are credited to Kenn Kaufman himself. Kaufman is also the author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America, a bible in the hands of those who know a little or a lot about birding.

Does the young guy achieve the highest tally of the year? No spoiler here, but as the quest wears him out, and still exhilarates him, the author learns a lifetime’s worth of sacrifice and reward.

 

“Just” finished…

Here’s proof that I needed to start eprlife! FOUR years of books and I haven’t shared the titles, much less a review of any kind. That said, many of you read way more than this, and I’m in awe! What are your reading now? Next time, we’ll be checking in with Sarah B. who will put all but the most avid book-nut to shame!

  • 2016 – 2017

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. The first in The Border Trilogy and my favorite.

Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey. What map geek wouldn’t read this true tale of thievery, obsession and a heist that took place at Northwestern University?

Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. How Kidder got me caring about the geeks who sweated their brains out for the first PC is a testament to his talent!

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplan. I live on an ‘old orchard’, but don’t want this stuff happening here!

  • November – December 2018

Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar. Really captivating story of a family. A war. A refugee’s existence.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I’d read Good Omens and found I like a good biblical-based fantasy so I picked up this lovely little fairy tale and ‘Poof!’ my wish was granted!

  • 2019

Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936
by Edward Sorel. Kind of a ‘hoot’ and the illustrations are classic, but actually very sad and appropriate as ‘Me Too’ is not at all new!

French Milk, by Lucy Knisley. I like reading about France and Lucy Knisley is a talented of an ‘indie-cartoonist’. Is it really a ‘graphic novel’? Barely. But its FRANCE!

Southpole Station by Ashley Shelby. Being a little obsessed with Antarctica and it’s fragile/hostile environment, I took a chance on a novel about an artist in residence in the scientific, quirky world that is truly down under. It did not disappoint, and left me wanting to read more on the subject.

Reading now…American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Stay tuned THE battle is nigh!

The Egg and I

eggs_egg_and_IAs we packed up and sold our suburban home to move to a rural 7 acre property, my former boss suggested I might want to  read The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald. While I still enjoy such luxuries as indoor plumbing, grocery stores under ten miles away and only a cat as qualifying livestock, author MacDonald effortlessly describes the balancing of a romanticized life of freedom in an open, wild place with the daily realities of endless farm work and isolation. She somehow accomplishes both with quick, detailed accounts of tending to thousands of egg laying birds, canning enormous quantities vegetables, and the dangers at nearby logging operations along with awkwardly hilarious encounters with neighbors and local characters. Like it or not, (and the neighbors apparently did NOT), it was Betty MacDonald who gave the world its first peak at the bumbling Ma & Pa Kettle, based on one of the few neighboring farm families!

MacDonald’s account of her fascinating early life as the daughter of a mining engineer father and an adventure-loving mother in the early years of the 20th century sets the stage as she tells the tales of her first two years of married life with her ambitious husband on a remote chicken ranch on Washington’s Olympic peninsula. Her humor overrides the entire story and was certainly one of the best skills the young bride used in that time and place.

Looking forward to reading more by Ms. MacDonald including, Anyone Can Do Anything, Onions in the Stew, and the children’s series Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

White Fang by Jack London

200px-JackLondonwhitefang1I grabbed this book as I was about to go out of town with nothing to read.  My father had read Jack London and I tend to like wilderness adventure tales, so that’s all it took.  If  Mr. London does not have you hooked in the first 3 chapters, I’d be surprised~ I. The Trail of Meat; II. The She-Wolf; III. The Hunger Cry. Two men, and six dogs, sledding across the Arctic, transporting a corpse in a coffin, when daylight comes and goes in a brief 6 hours. Oh, and they only have 3 cartridges for the rifles.  A lot can go wrong quickly~

London then gently transitions into part anthropomorphic narrator and finds a way to bring us into the world of Kiche the she-wolf whom the native Indians had once tamed.  She bears White Fang,  her only offspring to survive that spring’s litter, and he takes us along on first hunts, first terrors, and many encounters with humans, or “man-gods” as London calls them.

You won’t look at your own sweet pup in the same way~

Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, Calistoga California

“I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and find it hard to believe. The names, the shapes…the courses of the roads and rivers…are an inexhaustible fund of interest for any…with eyes to see or two penceworth of imagination to understand with.”

Treasure Island, 1883

photo3 photo2 photo1

Robert Louis Stevenson  and bride, Fanny Vandergrift Osbourne spent the summer of 1880 honeymooning  at in a cabin at an abandoned mining camp on Mt. St. Helena. Perhaps not surprisingly, no record of Fanny’s review of this romantic setting can be found. There is a small marker 1 mile up the forested, sometimes rocky trail. Hike 4 miles beyond that spot on mostly gravel forest road, up, up, up to 4337 feet to look out from North Peak, the highest peak in Sonoma County on a mountain shared with Napa County. The dogs were barking, but Mr. Stevenson was the inspiration for this adventurer!

 

 

Always talk to a good bartender, like Corey at Hotel Yountville – a 10 year update!

The Hotel Yountville is comfortable, simple, classic. The stone, wood, and bright accents of turquoise fabric are fresh and inviting.  But it was our hotel bartender Corey, who shared his tips for a perfectly lovely way to enjoy the valley that only a local would know.  Here, I share an abbreviated version of his a simple afternoon plan for fun in the Napa sun. Drive North out of Yountville on the Silverado Trail to St. Helena.  Head for Napa Valley Olive Oil Company for their homemade pepperoni, olive oils, dry sausage, cheese and bread. Do you see where we’re going here?  **Caveat time! Orignial post was dated 2012 and the picnic spot at Rutherford Hill Winery now requires reservations and a $30 per person charge plus a bottle purchase. It is still a lovely hillside picnic spot – just not a freebie! After that, for us it was back to Yountville where we rode bicycles provided to hotel guests over to Domaine Chandon Tasting Bar . 11:00 am – 4 pm reservations required.  And finally, back to the hotel for a calm, relaxing swim. Cheers!

Cheers, Corey!