Tracks

Davidson, Robyn. Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback. New York: Vintage. 1980. Print.

First Sentences:

 

I arrived in the Alice at five a.m. with a dog, six dollars and a small suitcase full of inappropriate clothes....A freezing wind whipped grit down the platform and I stood shivering, holding warm dog flesh, and wondering what foolishness had brought me to this eerie, empty training station in the centre of nowhere. 

Description:

With personal challenge and survival memoirs, I always try to imagine whether I could achieve what the author accomplished. Almost always the answer is a resounding "No, not in my wildest dreams." That is even more obvious while reading Robyn Davidson's magnificent journey, Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback.

 

Davidson is just an ordinary Australian-born young woman with no special skills or ambitions...except for a persistent desire to walk across the Australian outback desert, alone, with only camels and her dog as her companions. Yes, that's right. She will walk on foot, not ride the camels, for 1,700 miles, making her "lunatic idea" (her words) even more impossible-sounding.

 

So she takes a train from her home in Queensland to the bleak outback town of Alice Springs, where men are men and women stay home. There she hoped for the first time to actually even see a camel and then learn how to manage them by herself. 

 

She began to work for a domineering man who captured and tamed wild, feral camels that roam the outback. Taking on the lowest position on his ranch, she agreed to work for free in exchange for camel-training experiences and, at the end of eight months, be given three of his camels for her expedition. Not all goes according to this plan, however.

 

Eventually, off she goes, with her two camels, following old desert roads, trails, and open terrain from one feeding spot to another, hoping local information about watering holes is correct and the rumored tiny settlements are still active and places where she can get rest and advice along the way.

I knew [people] all had that sinking feeling that they would never see me alive again, and I had the sinking certainty that I would have to send messages from Redbank Gorge the same day, saying, "Sorry, muffed it on the first seventeen miles, please collect." 

Along with her faithful dog, Diggity, and occasionally a photographer from National Geographic magazine, the source of her funding and eventual article, she slowly walks, gaining rhythm, confidence, and power in her aloneness. Wild, unpredictable camels, numerous hardships, and the vast desert all around her. What could possibly go wrong?

We were breaking camp at four in the morning, walking until ten, resting in the shade until four, then continuing until eight at night....Living on one's nerves and expecting every moment to produce a horrendous catastrophe is one thing -- doing it in 130-degree heat is quite another. Hell must be something like that. 

Along the trek, she encounters wild camels ("If you see one, shoot it first -- immediately" is the advice given her), snakes, dried up water holes, abandoned villages, as well as friendly, generous people and moonlit skies that kept her dream alive.

 

I really enjoyed reading her clear, honest prose as she recounts adventure after challenge, or just the boredom of putting one foot in front of the other mile after mile. It is a powerful, yet simple read, one that should be enjoyable to anyone seeking an insight into the beauties and threats of the Australian Outback desert, and the perseverance of one woman who tries to live in it.

It struck me then that the most difficult thing had been the decision to act, the rest had been merely tenacity....One really could do anything one had decided to do whether it were changing a job, moving to a new place, divorcing a husband or whatever, one really could act to change and control one's life; and the procedure, the process, was its own reward.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Harris, Kate. Lands of Lost Borders.   

One woman's quest to trace the route of Marco Polo through China, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, India, and other countries...by bicycle. Wonderful descriptions of her journey, the land, and the few people she encounters in the vast, mostly unsettled mountains of Asia. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 475 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

The Penguin Lessons

Michell, Tom. The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird. New York: Ballentine 2017. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Had I been told as a child in 1950's England that my life would one day run parallel with that of a penguin -- that for a time, at least, it would be him and me against the world -- I would have taken it in stride. After all, my mother had kept three alligators at the house in Esher until they grew too big and too dangerous for that genteel town and keepers from Chessington Zoo came to remove them. 

Description:

Probably never does a movie even come close to the quality and depth of the book on which it is based. Films in my mind that are closest to achieving a similar level of quality as their book, in my mind, might be To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck and The Martian with Matt Damon. While these films can't plum the full depth and characterization possible in the books, they do convey the storyline, the tension, the emotion, and the overall impact. More importantly, they encourage movie-watchers like me to seek out the original source material book to answer questions, fill in gaps, and follow tangents only hinted at in the film.

After recently watching the film The Penguin Lesson with Steve Coogan, it tickled my interest enough that I really wanted to read author Tom Michell's own words about his escapades with a South American penguin. Lo and behold, in our local library I found a copy of The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird. I plunged right in and was quickly absorbed into his homey narration.

In 1975, author Michell was an assistant master and resident at an exclusive boy's school in Argentina. While on a vacation in Uruguay and walking along a beach, he noticed hundreds of dark lumps on the shore. These turned out to be dead penguins, recently migrating northward now covered with oil from unloading tankers and washed ashore. Shocked at the sight, he looked closer and found one that was still alive. As he approached it, the penguin, oil-slicked and weak, boldly stood up to defend itself.

Michell decided to try to save it by washing off the oil, capturing the 10lb bird in a string grocery bag and cleaning it in the home where he was house-sitting. Definitely not an easy task, nor a very clean one.

But after the penguin (later named "Juan Salvado") calmed down and allowed Michell to fully remove the oil, the author tried to return it to the ocean. To his surprise, the penguin immediately waddled away from the shore, determined to follow Mitchell wherever he went. 

After several more unsuccessful attempts to set it free, and due to a growing respect and love for this bird, Michell decides keep the bird until he can take it to a zoo. But he first must sneak the penguin back to the Argentine boy's school with him. This ridiculous journey involves adventures with buses and trains, customs inspections, feeding, and of course some very smelly pooping (by the penguin).

This is the action of the first few pages, so I am not giving much away. From here on in, Michell recounts decision after decision he faced about the penguin's food, water, exercise, secrecy, and of course what to do when Michell is away from his apartment teaching and Juan Salvado is left alone. 

We also get glimpses of the people and life in a small town and school in Juan Peron's politically unstable Argentina. Inflation was 100% per month, so Michell was told to spend his entire  paycheck the same day he received it, buying things he didn't even need so he could re-sell them from the school. Otherwise, his money would decrease by 50% the next day.

We meet the people who enter the penguin's life: the school's head of housekeeping who befriends Juan Salvado as one of the students needing her care; the local fisherman who sold Michell the small sprat fish for Juan Salvador; and the school boys who after learning there is a penguin living with a teacher on their grounds, they adopt as a mascot, friend, and confidant. The chapter where a shy, outcast school boy swims with Juan Salvado is absolutely first rate.

The book is delightful, heart-warming, and overall fun to read. Juan Salvado is a star in his new land-locked life, carefully integrated into the lives of every person he encounters. I loved it and hope you find it equally satisfying ...much more so than even that very good movie version of his adventures.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Montgomery, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus..   

Fascinating up close encounter, study, and even friendship between the author and an aquarium octopus. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Soaring to Glory

Handleman, Philip. Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II. Washington DC: Regnery History 2019. Print.

First Sentences:

Harry Stewart was five thousand feet over the Luftwaffe base at Wels, Germany. His flight's element had been reduced to seven planes when the eighth was disabled by mechanical problems. Still, they would be more than a match for the four German fighters they called out below. 

Description:

I knew virtually nothing about the Tuskegee Airmen except that they were a reknown all-Black division of the Air Force fighting in World War II. Then, I somehow stumbled upon Philip Handleman's Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II. and I was hooked on their story of bravery, perseverance, flying skills, and especially dealing with racism in the air and on the ground.

 

Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart Jr, is the subject of this biography, one of the last surviving airman from this squadron. Author Handleman, through interviews, articles, research, and personal contact with Stewart, ably tells this rich history from the first Black aviators, through the formation of the Tuskegee squadron, (the 332nd Red Tails), and post-war lives of these men up to the present day. 

 

It's such a rich, obstacle-laden history as Black men look to the skies and flying for the thrill as well as the escape from the prejudice they faced on the ground.

[They] saw the sky as a medium inherently devoid of the artificial barriers erected by one class of men to block another. The law of the air, their thinking held, is fair and equitable; it applies uniformly without exception to all people regardless of race, color, creed, gender, ethnicity, ancestry, and national origin -- for it is not man's law but nature's law.

Notable Black fliers included aerial display barnstormer Bessie Coleman who went to France in 1921 for training as no US programs would accept a Black woman; James Banning and Thomas Allen who flew transcontinental in 1932; Chauncey Spencer and Dale White flew a two-seater biplane in 1939 from Chicago to Washington DC to publicize the cause of Black aviation.

 

Young Harry Stewart grew up in 1930s New York watching the airship balloons, biplanes, and test airplanes from the nearby base, as well as working on model airplane kits and watching films featuring WWI dogfights. Told by a school counselor that  "Colored people aren't accepted as airline pilots," he later found an article in 1941 (as the War clouds hovering) that said "the Army would start to train an all-Negro flying unit: the 99th Pursuit Squadron. He dropped out of school when he was accepted into the program, only a few days before he was to report for his draft induction.

 

Soaring to Glory carefully follows Stewart through his pilot training and eventual World War II missions. Hardly any military personnel or brass welcomed them:

Major General Edwin J. House of the 12th Air Support Command...claimed that the consensus among his fellow officers and medical professionals was 'that the negro type has not the proper reflexes to make a first-class fighter pilot.'

Author Handleman also notes that:

An earlier 1925 Army War College memorandum asserted that blacks are 'by nature subservient' and 'mentally inferior.'

The Tuskegee Airmen and Stewart were motivated to prove these bigots wrong. During one of his 42 combat flights, Stewart shot down three German planes. The Squadron later handily won a national military aerial competition that highlighted flying, shooting, and bombing skills. 

Returning to the US after the War was a return to the same world of prejudice and closed doors. His 332nd Fighter Group Squadron was stationed in Lockbourne Air Force Base outside of Columbus, Ohio, the first air base not under the supervision of white officers. 

During one flight in that period, Stewart was forced to bail out of his danaged plane, landing in the backwoods of Appalachia (Butcher Hollow, to be exact, home of Loretta Lynn). There he found kind mountain people who cleaned his wounds, gave him moonshine to ease the pain, and helped get him to a doctor. Fifty-seven years later he returned to see his old friends still living there and serve as Grand Marshall of the Van Lear Town Celebration parade.

 

After leaving the military, Stewart found commercial airlines such as Pan Am and TWA, while advertising for former military airmen, told him there were no openings him as a pilot. At Pan Am, he was told by their personnel manager:

"Mr Stewart, I'm sure you can understand our position. Just imagine what passengers would think if during a flight they saw a Negro step out of the cockpit and walk down the aisle in a pilot's uniform."

But the book is about Stewart's dreams, his striving, surviving, and triumphing in the face of incredible odds. From US segregation and bigoted people to German fighter pilots to closed-off jobs, Stewart kept working, going to night school for an engineering degree, and achieving success in major corporations in his undying efforts to carve a life for himself and his family. He was even presented, along with the other Tuskegee Airmen, the Congressional Gold Medal, ironically shaking the congratulatory hand of Senator Robert Byrd, a former KKK member.

 

It is a book full of history, both shameful and glorious, revealed through the life of one determined man and his race. Terrifically written, Soaring to Glory has interesting stories and information about our country and its pilots on every page. 

The joy and skills involved in military flying, the danger of the missions, and the camaraderie of these Black pilots reveal what a vital role these men played during the War. Not to be missed.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Dahl, Roald. Going Solo.   

Early diary entries and commentary from the author Roald Dahl on his World War I aviation career during a time when flying a plane was as dangerous as facing an enemy pilot. Brilliantly written. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentencen Reader).

 

Food for Thought

Brown, Alton. Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations. New York: Gallery Books 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

I am sitting in front of a bowl, a spoon a box,and a bottle, and I'mbeginning to break out in just a wee bit of a cold sweat.

Description:

I been a long-time fan of Alton Brown and his goofy, informative cooking shows such as Good Eats (16 seasons) and Iron Chef America (13 seasons). These television entertainments provided even non-cooks like me an entertaining introduction to the wonders and science behind preparing delicious food.

Now Brown had created a book, Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations, chock full of his memories and wide-ranging thougts about his career with food. 

These short essays cover such diverse topics as "Biscuiteering," "Bad Day at the Bakeshop," "Luau from Hell," "The Turkey Man Cometh," "The Sip of the Civilized" and "Cooking: The Final (Marriage) Frontier." In other words, Brown shares everything running through his mind, from making the perfect martini to cooking hacks, as well as his disastrous introductions to Cap'n Crunch cereal and s'mores.

It is not a book of recipes, although he does share his Horcrux meal (something that contains a part of him), the perfect martini (stirred, not shaken), and a few other tips on meal preparation and tools. And believe me, he has strong opinions. It is not a How-To book, but more of a collection of his rambling thoughts.

Here's a sample from inside his brain:

• The Son of Blob story about the discarded bread dough Brown had put into the restaurant dumptster that expanded to gigantic size and oozed out of the metal container;

• The first bite of a Cortona, Italy pizza which was so delicious that he used it to define his life "before the bite and life after the bite....To say it was just six simple ingredients would be like saying Pollock's Autumn Rhythym is just four colors of paint";

• He self-taught himself to cook in college to "lure" plan to woman to be interested in him. First, he will give her a simple, cheap meal (spaghetti and meatballs). Then, if all goes well, a second invitation to a slightly more costly one (coq au van). Finally, a third meal to close the deal with an expensive serving (sole florentine au gratin. Unfortunately, his first date cancelled at the last minute and he thoroughly enjoyed the meal by himself;

• [Note: About that seduction-through-meals-plan] - Brown states, "I harbored no illusions of actually bedding anyone; a bit of hand-holding on the sofa or a good-night kiss would have ranked as a major victory." He only cooked one more meal to win a woman's affection and burned the spaghetti, but won her heart and she eventually married him]; 

• "The word chef when preceded by the adverb yes becomes a subtle yet effective form of "f**k you." 

• He conceived of a new type of cooking show to be "a juxtaposition of unrelated forms" based on the style of Julia Child (practical), Mr. Wizard (science), and Monty Python ("laughing brains are more absorbant');

• The theme song for Good Eats was, at Brown's insistence, catchy and only 10 notes long in order to be used in the new 1997 cell phones and their customizable ring tones;

• Eating with chopsticks helped him lose weight;

• To get youngsters to eat food they refuse, just tell them they can't have any of it anyways because it is adult food;

• Once after sampling a soup on Iron Chef America" that contained oysters (which he is allergic to) he threw up repeatedly on the set and ended up in the ER.

I could go on and on with engaging tidbits from Brown, but I'll leave the rest of the discovery to those who read his book in full. Haven't laughed out loud at a book in a long time, so as you can tell I really enjoyed his behind-the-scenes stories, quips about life, and of course, cooking advice/failures/triumphs. 

Read it even if you don't know anything about food or its preparation, but love delightfully written stories that will definite make you at least smile and msybe even laugh out loud as I did.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Pepim Jacques. The Apprentice.   

The autobiography of the chef who popularized French cooking in the United States. Includes his recollections about his French training, apprenticeships, and first restaurants, all told in his clear, personal writing style. Highly enjoyable, even for non-foodies. (Previously reviewed here.)

 

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 435 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Going Solo

Dahl, Roald. Going Solo. New York: Penguin 1986. Print.

First Sentences:

 

The ship that was carrying me away from England to Africa in the autumn of 1938 was called the SS Mantola. She was an old paint-peeling tub of 9,000 tons with a single tall funnel and a vibrating engine that rattled the tea-cups in their saucers on the dining-room table.

Description:

Roald Dahl's autobiography, Going Solo, proves again that a reader does not have to know anything about a topic or situation to become totally immersed in the action. Dahl, the well-known author (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, etc.) had another much different life prior to his literary career: that of an World War II RAF fighter pilot. Going Solo recounts his memories starting with his 1938 voyage from London to Tanganyika as an 20-year-old inexperienced agent for Shell Oil through his three-year enlistment and training as a pilot in Egypt, including his aerial battles in Greece, and finally his return to his home in England.

 

Dahl puts the reader right inside his mind: a confident, curious, sometimes reckless youth driving all over Africa to meet with Shell clients and take orders. We sit with him on these desert trips as he marvels at the fearless animals he sees which completely ignore him. His favorite activity is to walk among a herd of giraffes, wandering among their legs and calling to them as they indifferently continue with their grazing of trees.

 

He never lost his fear of African snakes, however, and recounted several encounters with both deadly black and green mambas. (He carefully notes learning the difference between "poisonous" and "deadly" snakes), but continually avoids both.

 

After volunteering for the RAF, Dahl joyfully takes readers up into the air during his training flights in the two-seater Tiger Moth bi-plane. 

We could loop the loop and fly upside down. We could get ourselves out of a spin. We could do forced landings with the engine cut. We could side-slip and land decently in a strong cross-wind...and we were full of confidence.

But he had no actual air-to-air combat training before being sent to Greece to engage German planes. He had to learn to fly modern Hurricanes (which he had to cram his 6'6" body into a cockpit with his knees against his chin). Readers again are inside his mind during each dangerous mission: thinking his thoughts, sensing his emotions, and feeling his pain both physical and emotional for the loss of fellow pilots, civilians, and even German enemies. 

 

Flight after flight in Greece, his 15-airplane squadron is hopeless outnumbered by the hundreds of German bombers and fighter planes on missions nearby. Dahl flies 3-5 missions a day trying to protect Allied boats unloading cargo, ammunition, and supplies. He is forced to fly his plane directly at the enemy fighters since his machine guns are fixed in his wings and could only shoot straight ahead, albeit through the rotating propeller, a phenomenon Dahl could never understand.

Each flight is perilous. Once completed, he and his meager squadron wait back at their home runway to see which of their fellow pilots return and which did not make it back. He maintains his fearlessness in flying into incredible situations and, with the exception of one horrific crash, emerges in one piece each time.

As you might surmise, I was totally engrossed in this book chock full of Dahl's adventures and thoughts presented in his clear, straightforward, yet gripping writing style. Highly recommended for lovers of personal memoirs of flying. 

(Note: This is the second book in Dahl's autobiography series. The first book, Boy recounts his early childhood, while Going Solo picks up where Boy ends.)

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  Markham, Beryl. West With the Night: A Memoir.   

The autobiography of Markham, the woman pilot raised in Kenya who became the first female commercial pilot and air mail-carrier in Africa, as well as the first woman to fly non-stop from Europe to America. She was a friend to Karen Blixen and Denis Fitch Hatton (depicted in the film Out of Africa). Most importantly, this memoir is beautifully written, full of life, adventure, and challenges. It was highly-praised by Ernest Hemingway who said Markham "could write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers." (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).