[Book Reviews] Drowning! Death! Hiding! Death! Climbing!
The theme for this set of reviews seems to be how not to die. Accordingly, I found Sea Kayaker's Deep Trouble: True Stories and Their Lessons from Sea Kayaker Magazine instructive. Most of the stories were from the Salish Sea area (hat tip: canyonwren), and since that's one of the major places that I have kayaked and intend to do so in the future, I found that particularly relevant if occasionally chilling. The stories were about equally split between "kayakers were stupid, encountered trouble" and "holy crap, Nature is terrifying". I'm usually the safety martinet when kayaking anywhere with currents or cold water, but I'll be doubly so now. Many of the people who ran into trouble weren't using their gear because they didn't think they'd need it, and by the time they realized they needed it the seas were too rough for them to successfully get it out. No PFD? No cold gear when the water's fifty degrees? Failure to check or obey the weather reports and small craft advisories? No maps showing you tides and shoals? Bad idea. Also, I feel utterly justified in my "pack for day trips as if you're packing for an overnight". I'm just not an ultralight kind of girl. However, some of the stories, you just feel for the sheer bad luck of the kayakers. Fifteen foot seas? Arctic storms? Kayaks that pitchpole? I hope I never see the like. (The pitchpoled kayak got an out-loud "holy shit!" from me, causing my partner to ask what I was reading.) The formatting of the book was a little annoying, as their sidebars spanned pages and pages, forcing interruption in reading either the main text or the sidebar and then a several-page flipback to read the other one. I definitely learned a few things from the read, which is what I was looking for, but kayakers outside the Pacific Northwest may find it less directly relevant to their interests than I did. Three and a half lost paddles out of five.
Barbara Neely's savvy detective Blanche White returns in "Blanche Among the Talented Tenth". This book is less hair-raising than the previous "Blanche on the Lam", but what it lacks in gore it makes up in insightful social commentary. The mystery element is present, but backseated to character development and relationships. This book is a little thinner than the previous volume, and the ending of the mystery plot came kind of suddenly, but it's still well worth reading for its insight into American racial dynamics and subdivisions. Three and a half failed love affairs out of five.
I had been looking forward to reading "Wilderness Evasion: A Guide to Hiding Out and Eluding Pursuit in Remote Areas" for some time, as I thought it would be a book about tracking and survival skills. Instead, sadly, it was pretty much a 101 book on survival filled with things I already knew. Much of it is preparation and staging your future wilderness hideaway, rather than "oh shit I'm in the woods what now" or "how to disguise your trail well when being tracked". I did like the section discussing how to make your shelter more or less visible, but there was a fair bit of political rhetoric in the book that I found rather surprising from a former soldier, and moderately aggravating. For the price tag, this book fails to deliver the kinds of wilderness skills I was looking for from it -- had I known, I might have gotten it from the library, but I wouldn't have paid $15 for it. One and a half pursuing federal agents out of five.
If you like supernatural action novels like pre-booty-attack Anita Blake, you may also enjoy Larry Correia's "Monster Hunter International". If you like guns, or your politics are more libertarian than liberal, this book is for you. It's cheerfully an action-packed thriller with the kind of intense geeky attention to detail about guns that I normally reserve for my Linux box. (Yes. It's that geeky.) I enjoyed Correia's subtle and deft touch with the historical references... every time I went Googling to get some context, I found a little Easter egg of historical awesomeness. (I particularly enjoyed the etymology behind the protagonist's father's name.) You can read and enjoy the book without knowing all those little niceties, but it increases one's depth of appreciation if you already know or bother to find out. The protagonist is a little bit of a Marty Stu, but hey, he's not a tenth as bad as Anita Blake that way, and at least he does screw up occasionally. The big plot twist at the end I saw coming a million miles away, but I will forgive much for the number of things I learned by looking up over the course of reading this book. Also, surprisingly/pleasingly/delightfully for books of this particular political bent, it has robust and badass female characters who are not in refrigerators, prostitutes, or just there to be saved and then boinked by the manly manly hero. It's an intelligent take on the over-the-top shoot-em-up action story; four bazookas out of five.
Since I'm temporarily grounded, it seemed like a good time to read about climbing and figure out what good technique ought to look like. That way I'll do better once I can get back out there. Accordingly, I picked up a pair of Eric Hörst's books, "Learning to Climb Indoors" and "How to Climb 5.12". 5.12 is pretty well beyond me, but I figure that there's no harm in getting into good habits well before I would *really* need them. The less I'd have to unlearn later, the better. There's a fair bit of repetition between the two, and even per book, but I still found them worth reading for guidelines towards improved technique, where I should be focusing my climbing gym time (sadly, much more bouldering than I'd prefer), and where the effort to reward curve peters out (I am pleased to hear that skill matters much more than muscle, but I'm never going to start trying to lose muscle mass in order to become a better climber). "Learning to Climb Indoors" was a more basic book, and by itself probably would have been all I needed to know, but I nevertheless feel reassured having read them both. Sometimes it's good to know where your interest tops out. Four monkey swings out of five.
Barbara Neely's savvy detective Blanche White returns in "Blanche Among the Talented Tenth". This book is less hair-raising than the previous "Blanche on the Lam", but what it lacks in gore it makes up in insightful social commentary. The mystery element is present, but backseated to character development and relationships. This book is a little thinner than the previous volume, and the ending of the mystery plot came kind of suddenly, but it's still well worth reading for its insight into American racial dynamics and subdivisions. Three and a half failed love affairs out of five.
I had been looking forward to reading "Wilderness Evasion: A Guide to Hiding Out and Eluding Pursuit in Remote Areas" for some time, as I thought it would be a book about tracking and survival skills. Instead, sadly, it was pretty much a 101 book on survival filled with things I already knew. Much of it is preparation and staging your future wilderness hideaway, rather than "oh shit I'm in the woods what now" or "how to disguise your trail well when being tracked". I did like the section discussing how to make your shelter more or less visible, but there was a fair bit of political rhetoric in the book that I found rather surprising from a former soldier, and moderately aggravating. For the price tag, this book fails to deliver the kinds of wilderness skills I was looking for from it -- had I known, I might have gotten it from the library, but I wouldn't have paid $15 for it. One and a half pursuing federal agents out of five.
If you like supernatural action novels like pre-booty-attack Anita Blake, you may also enjoy Larry Correia's "Monster Hunter International". If you like guns, or your politics are more libertarian than liberal, this book is for you. It's cheerfully an action-packed thriller with the kind of intense geeky attention to detail about guns that I normally reserve for my Linux box. (Yes. It's that geeky.) I enjoyed Correia's subtle and deft touch with the historical references... every time I went Googling to get some context, I found a little Easter egg of historical awesomeness. (I particularly enjoyed the etymology behind the protagonist's father's name.) You can read and enjoy the book without knowing all those little niceties, but it increases one's depth of appreciation if you already know or bother to find out. The protagonist is a little bit of a Marty Stu, but hey, he's not a tenth as bad as Anita Blake that way, and at least he does screw up occasionally. The big plot twist at the end I saw coming a million miles away, but I will forgive much for the number of things I learned by looking up over the course of reading this book. Also, surprisingly/pleasingly/delightfully for books of this particular political bent, it has robust and badass female characters who are not in refrigerators, prostitutes, or just there to be saved and then boinked by the manly manly hero. It's an intelligent take on the over-the-top shoot-em-up action story; four bazookas out of five.
Since I'm temporarily grounded, it seemed like a good time to read about climbing and figure out what good technique ought to look like. That way I'll do better once I can get back out there. Accordingly, I picked up a pair of Eric Hörst's books, "Learning to Climb Indoors" and "How to Climb 5.12". 5.12 is pretty well beyond me, but I figure that there's no harm in getting into good habits well before I would *really* need them. The less I'd have to unlearn later, the better. There's a fair bit of repetition between the two, and even per book, but I still found them worth reading for guidelines towards improved technique, where I should be focusing my climbing gym time (sadly, much more bouldering than I'd prefer), and where the effort to reward curve peters out (I am pleased to hear that skill matters much more than muscle, but I'm never going to start trying to lose muscle mass in order to become a better climber). "Learning to Climb Indoors" was a more basic book, and by itself probably would have been all I needed to know, but I nevertheless feel reassured having read them both. Sometimes it's good to know where your interest tops out. Four monkey swings out of five.