Katahdin Book Reviews

Page 123 and the Icepick Test

2006-11-27T03:41:00.000-05:00

There’s more than one way to cut a swath through the field of unsolicited manuscripts sprouting like weeds in every publisher’s mailroom. Apparently a famous New York editor (I don’t remember the name) stabbed each new manuscript with an icepick, lifted away the top half, and read the resulting random page. If that one page intrigued him, only then would he go back to the beginning and read the full manuscript. If that one random page made his eyes glaze over, the rest of the pages were dumped unread and the author received a rejection slip instead of a paycheck.

A bookstore owner told me about the "icepick test" at a booksigning in Damariscotta, Maine. The "Page 123" book game gets the same result, with the added benefit of not requiring you to mutilate the book with a sharp kitchen utensil. The instructions, as reprinted on many blogs:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next three sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around for the most popular or intellectual book you can find. Just pick up whatever is closest.

The nearest book on my desk at the moment is The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, which doesn’t have any actual sentences on page 123. (And I just noticed—how come the word "Players" doesn’t have a possessive apostrophe?) The next nearest book is my own North to Katahdin: What Hikers Seek on the Trail. Here's the result.

"Entire forests were erased, their trees plucked one by one from the landscape. To the north, little Traveler Mountain faded like the slag of a sandcastle, swallowed by the sea. The ocean of fog drowned the green Wassataquoik Valley."

I'm going to break rule #5 now and walk across two different rooms to find my copy of Annals of the Former World, by the great John McPhee. As a speed-reading Woody Allen might say, it's about rocks. Unfortunately, it seems page 123 is half of a map of the world and the only other words are "Major Lithospheric Plates and Some Minor Ones."

So much for page 123.

Tour de France Books

2006-07-29T13:41:00.000-04:00

He's done. He's won. Nope, he's done. Wow! He's won. He's really won. He's standing on the podium. Oops, he's doped. He's done.

That more or less describes Floyd Landis's topographical and emotional yo-yo of a ride at this year's Tour de France. From unheralded contender to frontrunner to his terrible collapse in Stage 16 and remarkable comeback the very next day, Landis has changed from goat to hero to suspect in less than two weeks. And the saga's not over yet.

Whether Landis is guilty or innocent, just think how upset Alexander Vinokourov must be. He was in the clear himself, but couldn't ride because five of his teammates were suspected of doping. And now they've just been cleared. Meanwhile the winner, who used to be in the clear, is now suspected of doping. What a strange year. Better luck next year, Vino. Don't forget to not take your meds.

As Landis zoomed to the finish line in Stage 17, I was thinking he just earned himself a book contract and a place on next year's bestseller list. Sort of like Lance Armstrong's It's Not About the Bike. Perhaps he would've called it It's Not About the Bonk. He still has a book in him, but now it's going to need a new chapter or two. Hopefully it will have a happy ending.

All of this is leading up to a book recommendation: Lance Armstrong's War, by Daniel Coyle. It's more about the race itself and the grueling training that goes with professional cycling than it is about doping allegations, though of course there's some of that business, too. Mostly, though, Lance Armstrong's War is an objective observer's view of an incredibly challenging sport and the personalities and soap operas that accompany it. I'd be rereading the book right now if I hadn't loaned my copy to a friend.

I look forward next year to reading the several volumes that are bound to be written about Tour de France 2006. Ending still to be determined.

The Winds of War, by Herman Wouk

2006-06-14T05:48:00.000-04:00

Imagine starving to death in a snowy, besieged Leningrad, licking the glue off wallpaper for nutrients. Imagine watching human beings, your neighbors, herded like cattle onto trains, en route to a clouded fate about which you and they have heard terrible rumors you cannot quite believe. In Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance, these scenes from World War II seem vividly, shockingly real. Wouk takes you places you’d never want to go but somehow can’t stop reading about.

Two of Wouk’s own characters sum up the appeal of these books. In one scene, Victor Henry, a U.S. naval officer on a Lend-Lease mission to the Soviet Union, and Pamela Tudsbury, daughter and assistant of a British journalist, witness a tank battle close to Moscow. The Germans are winning. The war won’t end anytime soon. That’s bad news, but Pamela remarks:

"…I felt relieved. Relieved! What kind of mad reaction was that?"

"Well, the war’s something different, while it lasts." Victor Henry gestured at the angry yellow flare-ups on the black western clouds. "The expensive fireworks—the travel to strange places—"

"The interesting company," Pam said.

"Yes, Pam. The interesting company."

The Winds of War and its sequel introduce you to characters you come to know and care about, then follow them around the world from 1939 to 1945. This is more than a book of battles and death. It’s a story full of politics (a French Zionist smuggles Jewish refugees to Palestine, Roosevelt maneuvers around an isolationist Congress to convoy supplies through U-Boat infested waters to Britain), long-distance love affairs, cultural clashes, and ordinary people coping with extraordinary hardships.

Each time I reread these books they remind me a little of The Lord of the Rings. Both are world-spanning travel epics revolving around a war. In both, the protagonists start out together in a peaceful, naïve, untouched land (The Shire and the United States 1939) but then journey to nations where dark clouds gather. Natalie and Aaron more or less travel into Mordor, with Werner Beck as their own personal Gollum. Stalingrad is the Siege of Gondor, with Lend-Lease like Rohan riding to the rescue. And so forth. In the end, the survivors all gather together again, greatly changed—some with wounds that won't completely heal.

The Winds of War, by Herman Wouk

Harry Potter and the Curse of Katahdin

2006-05-04T00:54:00.000-04:00

At a presentation the other day, I joked that I should’ve called my book Harry Potter and the Curse of Katahdin. Harry, Ron, and Hermione go hiking in Maine but get lost in the fog-shrouded realm of the evil Pamola. It would’ve been a hit.

Actually, I did suggest the title Of Moose and Men to my publisher, but after long discussion and dozens of possibilities, we finally settled on North to Katahdin. No wizards and flying broomsticks, though the book does have an angry Pamola howling at hikers on the mountaintop.

It’s funny how much effort goes into picking a good title and how important those very few words can be. Just for fun, I’ve been trying the think up book titles that would be surefire bestsellers. The Harry Potter Code. The Da Vinci Cod (an exciting tale of lost treasure discovered using clues cleverly hidden in Da Vinci’s sketches of fish).

How about a legal thriller written under the penname Stefan King: The Stand. Or some lucky writer named Jay K. Rowling could publish a novel: Hairy Potter, the story of a hirsute artist. Actually, anything written with the pseudonym Jay K. Rowling would probably do well, until the lawyers put a stop to it.

The cleverest real title I’ve seen is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers—a book I keep meaning to read. I wish I'd thought of that title first. You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can sometimes judge how well a book will do by its title.

The Lord of the Rings: Hiking in Tolkien's Middle Earth

2006-04-22T04:36:00.000-04:00

The last thing the world needs is another review of The Lord of the Rings. Here’s one anyway.

The first time I read Tolkien, the mushroom/Bombadil chapters made my eyes glaze over. The hobbits just kept walking and talking and—oh, look! A shrub! And now it’s raining! How exciting. I skimmed ahead until they got to Bree.

I also remember (with some amusement) closing the book soon after Mt. Doom erupted and Aragorn’s army stood victorious at the gates of Mordor. Obviously the story was over, right? Sure, there were three or four more chapters. But to my ten-year-old eyes they looked like more mushroom/Bombadil filler. It wasn’t until my second reading of The Lord of the Rings that I discovered what is now my favorite chapter, "The Scouring of the Shire."

"Scouring" isn’t just my favorite chapter; it is, in my opinion, the whole point of the book. For the first time, the hobbits must battle an enemy with no help from wizards, rangers, elves, or magic. Gandalf himself explains as he and the hobbits near the troubled Shire:

"Well, we’ve got you with us," said Merry, "so things will soon be cleared up."
"I am with you at present," said Gandalf, "but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you’ve been trained for."

The hobbits left the Shire as children, naïve and dependent on others. They returned as adults.

By now I’ve read The Lord of the Rings enough times to know the plot backward and forward. Yet I keep rereading it. The first couple readings I was eager to press on, to find out what happens next. I tended to skim over the poems and songs. They got in the way of the action. Now I enjoy these parts, too. I can read more slowly, carefully, savoring all the depth and detail of Middle Earth.

As an avid hiker, I get a chuckle out of imagining Tolkien writing a very different kind of book. A Walk in the Shire, perhaps. Or The Appalachian Mountain Club Guide to Hiking Trails in the Old Forest. "Short cuts make long delays" is good advice in any guidebook. Perhaps the next AMC Guide to the Mountains of Mordor could include a warning about poorly marked trails near Cirith Ungol Notch. Several hikers have reported getting lost there and being eaten by spiders.

Recently I reread Tolkien for the umpteenth time. I finally learned to enjoy the "mushroom and Tom Bombadil" sections, with the emphasis on the scenery. I was in no hurry to get to Rivendell; I’d been there umpteen times before. So I deliberately slowed down and hiked with the hobbits through the woods of the Shire, under the dense canopy of the Old Forest, and across the cold, foggy Downs—places I used to hurry through, scarcely glancing at the trees and rivers and wide-open spaces all around me. This time, I actually stopped to visit Goldberry, where before I’d always rushed past rudely without much more then a quick "hello."

The appeal of this epic tale isn’t the writing; it’s the rich detail and history of the world Tolkien created. Reading the Lord of the Rings is like putting on your hiking boots and taking a stroll in Middle Earth.

Friends of Baxter State Park

2006-04-12T22:19:00.000-04:00

It’s spring, which means the thru-hikers have started their long walk north from Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. By the time they arrive in New England later this summer, they’ll be thinner, wearier, and smellier. There aren’t many opportunities to take a shower along the Appalachian Trail. When I worked at the observatory on Mount Washington, we could always tell in an instant by the smell whether a person was a day hiker or a thru-hiker.

Everyone interested in hiking should read Bill Bryson’s hilarious A Walk in the Woods if they haven’t already. I’ve heard complaints that Bryson’s book is not a "real" Appalachian Trail book because Bryson never finished the whole trail. Actually, that makes his experience typical. Several thousand hikers intend to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail each year, but most give up long before they set foot on Mount Katahdin.

Katahdin, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, has an interesting story of its own. Percival Baxter, Governor of Maine in the early 1920s, tried and repeatedly failed to convince the Maine legislature to establish a "Mount Katahdin State Park." Finally, exasperated, he bought the land himself and deeded it to the state, on condition that the land stay "forever wild." Thus, Baxter State Park was born.

He started with a tiny parcel. Over the years he bought more and more land. Baxter State Park gradually became the big splotch of green you see on road maps: over 200,000 acres. A campaign is underway right now to add another 6,000 acres to the park around Katahdin Lake. You can support this effort and read more about it at the Friends of Baxter State Park web site.

You can also listen to me ramble on about Katahdin, Thoreau’s scary experience on the mountain, Pamola, moose, and the joys and pains of hiking. This 30-minute interview aired on New Hampshire Public Radio in August 2005. Someone else’s review of my book about Katahdin is available at the Bookslut website.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

2006-04-07T23:41:00.000-04:00

Je suis un américain stupide. That’s pretty much all that’s left of my high school French. (Translated literally, it means, "Excuse me, I’m lost.") Sometimes, listening to Quebec radio, I’ll understand every tenth word. Numbers jump out at me, though. Once I watched a tennis match on a Quebec station; the commentators’ voices sounded like this: "la la la la la forty fifteen la la la la la Martina Hingis la la la third set."

Madame Bovary is a book that makes me wish I had better French, so I could read it in the original. What makes this book so special? Not the plot about an adulterous love affair (considered steamy and scandalous enough in its day to ban the book and put the author and publisher on trial). Not the humor (of which there’s plenty, especially in the beginning. I laughed often. Oddly, Flaubert himself never seemed to realize he’d written a funny book. In one of his letters, after the success of Bovary, he expresses befuddlement at being asked to write a comic!? opera).

The real strength of Madame Bovary is the poetic, almost musical, quality of the language. Flaubert chooses each word carefully, like a note in a symphony.

I’ve read every translation I could get my hands on. The best, in my opinion, is the one by Paul de Man, based on the Eleanor Marx Aveling translation. I also liked the Mildred Murmur version. These best preserved the rhythm and lyricism of Flaubert’s writing. For some reason, the widely available Francis Steegmuller translation fell flat to my ears. It was like listening to a familiar melody played on out-of-tune instruments.

Steegmuller’s collections of Flaubert’s letters make good reading. But when it comes to translations of Bovary the novel. . . .Paul, you de man.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Down the River, by Edward Abbey

2006-04-04T19:33:00.000-04:00

If you could combine Henry David Thoreau with George Carlin, you'd get someone like Edward Abbey. He is (was - he died in 1989) the funniest nature writer out there. I tried some of his fiction, such as his best-known novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, and didn't like it. His nonfiction, though, is insightful, descriptive, and hilarious.

Down the River is my favorite collection of Abbey's essays. In the first long essay, "Down the River with Henry Thoreau," Abbey and friends take a trip down the Green River on the eve of the 1980 Presidential election. Abbey brings along a copy of Thoreau's Walden. For the next 40-odd pages, he contemplates nature, muses about politics, ridicules his vegetarian friends, and simultaneously pays homage to and pokes fun at Henry David Thoreau.

In one amusing passage, Abbey imagines a marriage of two reclusive literary oddballs, Thoreau and Emily Dickinson:

EMILY (raising her pen): Henry, you haven't taken out the garbage.
HENRY (raising his flute): Take it out yourself.

Down the River is available here, and also as an audiobook: Down the River, by Edward Abbey

Up, up, and away. . .on a bike.

2006-04-01T00:17:00.000-05:00

Spring is here, the ice has melted, and the highway department has finally gotten around to cleaning up the road salt and sand. At last I can hop on my bike and pedal away.

I like riding uphill, especially this time of year. The leaves are barely budding, so distant vistas open through the trees. I climb higher, following a ridgeline street. Nestled in the valley below, the houses and buildings of Berlin, New Hampshire shrink to tiny, toy-like proportions. Up here, it almost feels more like flying than riding—like Superman soaring above Metropolis.

I slow to drink some water and admire the view. A house stands just down the road, and a dog—a golden retriever—plays in the yard. The dog has a chew toy, a small tire from a Tonka truck. The dog shakes his head, the tire slips out, lands on its edge, and starts rolling. Faster, faster, faster. That tire isn’t going to stop. It’s a good mile before the road levels off.

On my bike, I zoom to the rescue. The dog seems happy to get his chew toy back.

On the other side of town, at the top of a long, steep street, more heroics are called for. I’m coasting back down the street after a hard, fast climb when I pass a yard where a boy and his father are playing with a beach ball. The boy kicks the ball and—oops! It rolls into the street and starts bouncing downhill, picking up speed. Boing! Boing! Boing! It looks like one of those menacing killer spheres from the TV show The Prisoner, descending on the helpless village below.

I barely manage to chase the ball down on my bike. Tucking it under one arm, I return it to the yard from which it tried to escape.

That’s enough rescues for one day. But who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Whatever happens, I’ll be ready. Helmet, check. Sunglasses, check. Bicycle tires fully inflated, check. All I need now is a secret identity and a cape. I can be a superhero. (Bikeman?) Returner of Runaway Toys, Protector of Golden Retrievers. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s...me, defending the sleepy village below from things that go boing boing boing.

Children's Books

2006-03-27T00:38:00.000-05:00

Something strange happened a few years ago. All of my friends started having babies. As a result, I've been reading (and writing) a lot of children's books lately.

Harold and the Purple Crayon is one of those books that makes me want to slap my forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that first!" The book has a neat concept. All of the pictures are drawn by the main character, Harold, who's trying find his bedroom window so he can go to sleep. interesting adventures ensue. He's lost, so he draws a police officer in order to ask directions. To get a better view, he draws a balloon--and rises into the sky. And so forth.

It's the best children's picture book I've seen. It should be at your local library, but you can also see several pages online (and buy it) at the amazon link below:

Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson

Time Travel

2006-03-25T18:54:00.000-05:00

Speaking of resetting time, I want to recommend the book Replay, by Ken Grimwood.

A forty-something man with an unhappy marriage and a job he despises feels a sudden pain in his chest, which he assumes is a heart attack. He collapses. When he wakes up, he's not in a hospital bed—he’s lying on his back in a college dorm room. A vaguely familiar-looking college dorm room. He looks in a mirror and he sees himself—at age 18.

This is a book full of intriguing questions. What if you could relive your life? Would you have the same friends, choose the same career, marry the same person? What if you knew everything that was going to happen for the next twenty years? Yet you can barely remember your college friends’ names, or what courses you’re supposed to be taking, or what happened "yesterday." What do you do? What is it like to interact with parents and teachers when you’re actually older than they are? Could you change history? Could you, say, stop the Kennedy assassination? What would happen if you tried?

Every few years I reread this book and enjoy it every time. It’s amusing when the main character can’t find anything but "oldies" on the radio. In fact, he can’t even find the FM dial.

The culture shock of going suddenly from the 1980s back to the early 1960s is part of what makes the book so interesting. I wish the author, or anyone else, would write a sequel set two decades later. It would be fascinating to watch a character who has seen the end of the Cold War, the explosion of the Internet and the home computer market, the Challenger and Columbia disasters, September 11, etc., suddenly thrust back into 1979.

Replay, by Ken Grimwood

Hiking the Knife Edge

2006-03-25T18:17:00.000-05:00

Speaking of hiking, here's a shameless plug for some of my mountain photographs and bumper stickers. I used to hike with a Nikon camera all the time, until I started annoying everyone (including me) by stopping every two minutes to set up the tripod again and take some more pictures.

This and other magnets, mugs, and photos are available here: http://www.cafepress.com/twowheelsgood
And here: http://www.cafepress.com/gneiss_ideas

"I used to be invincible."

2006-03-25T17:35:00.000-05:00

"I used to be invincible. I don't know what happened."

"It's called turning thirty, Eric," an acquaintance explains. The rest of the group just laughs at me. They're all older. We're hiking up Mount Washington on a windy day. I remark that the mountain is a little steeper than it used to be. Apparently there's been some sort of tectonic uplift in New Hampshire during the past few years.

When my next birthday rolls around, I've decided to be 29. Again. I tried out the thirties, and didn't like them. Maybe in a few years I'll give 40 a shot, but until further notice I'm going to reset my clock to age 29. I'm pretty sure I was still invincible then.

Or maybe it's hopeless. Time is my kryptonite.

Just the other day I was visiting a college campus and overheard a group of kids say, "Who's that? A new student?" At first that made me feel really good. I still looked young enough to be mistaken for a college student! (At least from a distance.) Then I realized--when people thinking you're younger than you are makes you feel really good, that's the one sure sign that you're really old.