adventure travel and exploration

Upcoming programs:

Thursday, March 8 – UAB Neuroscience Café discussing the latest research on epilepsy, 6:30pm

Tuesday, March 20 – Documentaries After Dark presents “Art and Craft,” 6:30pm

(Rotten Tomatoes) Mark Landis has been called one of the most prolific art forgers in US history. His impressive body of work spans thirty years, covering multiple styles and periods. And while the copies could fetch impressive sums on the open market, Landis isn't in it for money, but instead donates his fakes to museums across the country. When Matthew Leininger, a tenacious registrar in Cincinnati, discovers the ruse and organizes an exhibition of the work, Landis must confront his legacy and a chorus of museum professionals clamoring for him to stop. However, it's not so clear that he can. Landis is a diagnosed schizophrenic whose elaborate con is also a means to cultivate connection and respect - feeding what he now understands as an outright "addiction to philanthropy." ART AND CRAFT starts out as an art caper, rooted in questions of authorship and authenticity. What emerges is an unflinching exploration of life with mental illness and the universal need for community, appreciation, and purpose. (C) Oscilloscope

Friday, March 23 – Standing Room Only presents a beer & cheese tasting, ages 21+ only and registration required, 6pm (amandaw@bham.lib.al.us or 205-445-1119)

Sunday, March 25 – Organizational meeting for the library’s newest book group, Lost & Found, discussing lost 20th century classics, 6:30pm.  Contact Gregory for more information at gtlowry@bham.lib.al.us.

Tuesday, March 27 – Genre Reading Group is back, discussing debut novels, 6:30pm

This week, GRG met to discuss books on exploration and adventure travel.  From space, to jungle, to the lightless depths of the Marianas Trench’s Challenger Deep, we discussed them all!

Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya by William Carlsen

In 1839, rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world’s most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would upend the West’s understanding of human history.

In the tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the remarkable story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome—and had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their masterful book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allan Poe as “perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published” and recognized today as the birth of American archaeology. Most important, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, understanding that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the West’s assumptions about the development of civilization.

By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 b.c.), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone. The Maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision. They created stucco and stone monuments and bas reliefs, sculpting figures and hieroglyphs with refined artistic skill. At their peak, an estimated ten million people occupied the Maya’s heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region where only half a million now live. And yet by the time the Spanish reached the “New World,” the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years.

Today, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, if sometimes misunderstood, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Based on Carlsen’s rigorous research and his own 1,500-mile journey throughout the Yucatan and Central America, Jungle of Stone is equally a thrilling adventure narrative and a revelatory work of history that corrects our understanding of Stephens, Catherwood, and the Maya themselves.

The Pacific Tourist: Willimas' Illlustrated Guide to Pacific RR California and Pleasure Resorts Across the Continent by Henry T. Williams (published in 1876, seven years after the transcontinental railroad was completed)
I bought this in an antique mall some years ago and it is one of my prized possessions.  It's not wildly valuable, but I love having it. The preface states that "This volume represents over nine months' actual time spent in personal travel - over 2,500 miles - getting with faithfulness all possible facts of interest and the latest information. Over 40 artists, engravers and correspondents have been employed, and the whole represents an outlay of nearly $20,000: thus making it not only the most elaborate, but the costliest and handsomest Guide Book in the world." The book commences with a chapter on The Pacific Railroad, "America's Greatest Wonder," and then goes on to provide information on towns and sights in: "California, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Montana, the mines and mining of the territories, the lands of the Pacific Coast..." etc etc featuring information on "Pleasure Resorts and Places of Most Noted Scenery in the Far West, All Cities, Towns, Villages, U.S. Forts, Springs, Lakes, Mountains, Routes of Summer Travel, Best Localities for Hunting, Fishing, Sporting." A fascinating glimpse of the American West at the moment that railroad links from the East Coast were making it a tourist, as well as a settlement, destination."

The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage by Anthony Brandt
After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the sixteenth century: find the fabled Northwest Passage. For the next thirty-five years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route, and then, after 1845, to find Sir John Franklin, the Royal Navy hero who led the last of these Admiralty expeditions. Enthralling and often harrowing, The Man Who Ate His Boots captures the glory and the folly of this ultimately tragic enterprise.

Oxford Atlas of Exploration
From the ancient Polynesians who struck out across the vast Pacific in dug-out canoes with only the stars to guide them, to the Victorian missionaries and adventurers who opened the way for European colonial expansion, and the intrepid scientists of our own time, explorers have long tested their courage in an uncharted world. 

The Atlas of Exploration, now in an updated Second Edition, is a splendidly illustrated and authoritative history of these bold adventures. With a vivid and informative text, supported by nearly 100 specially drawn maps and 300 photographs and illustrations, it traces these journeys of discovery from the earliest recorded trips, ranging from the time of the Phoenicians' voyages in the North Atlantic through the launch of the first Pluto explorer. We follow Cortes in Mexico, La Salle on the Mississippi, Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, James Cook in the Antarctic, and many others. In each section, graphic relief maps highlight the main routes of exploration, while photographs, paintings and engravings brilliantly capture the variety of terrain through which these courageous men and women passed. Also included are maps from different historical periods which reveal cartographers' growing knowledge of the shape of the world's continents and oceans. The final section of the atlas, thoroughly updated and expanded, covers many of the discoveries of the last decade. The Second Edition also contains new biographical details on many great explorers, geographers, and cartographers, plus a revised time chart which summarizes the history of exploration over 5000 years.

From the High Andes to the ocean depths, from the Sahara desert to the outer planets, The Atlas of Exploration allows us to rediscover the extraordinary journeys of humanity. Opening its pages is taking the first step on a grand adventure.

James Cameron's Deepsea Challenge
As a boy, filmmaker James Cameron dreamed of a journey to the deepest part of the ocean. This film is the dramatic fulfillment of that dream. It chronicles Cameron's solo dive to the depths of the Mariana Trench-nearly seven miles beneath the ocean's surface-piloting a submersible he designed himself. The risks were astounding. The footage is breathtaking. JAMES CAMERON'S DEEPSEA CHALLENGE is a celebration of science, courage, and extraordinary human aspiration.

Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions, and Gravity-Breaking Adventures by Karen Bush Gibson

When Valentina Tereshkova blasted off aboard Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963, she became the first woman to rocket into space. It would be 19 years before another woman got a chance—cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982—followed by American astronaut Sally Ride a year later. By breaking the stratospheric ceiling, these women forged a path for many female astronauts, cosmonauts, and mission specialists to follow.

Women in Space profiles 23 pioneers, including Eileen Collins, the first woman to command the space shuttle; Peggy Whitson, who logged more than a year in orbit aboard the International Space Station; and Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space; as well as astronauts from Japan, Canada, Italy, South Korea, France, and more. Readers will also learn about the Mercury 13, American women selected by NASA in the late 1950s to train for spaceflight. Though they matched and sometimes surpassed their male counterparts in performance, they were ultimately denied the opportunity to head out to the launching pad. Their story, and the stories of the pilots, physicists, and doctors who followed them, demonstrate the vital role women have played in the quest for scientific understanding.

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher
Published to rave reviews in the United Kingdom and named a Richard & Judy Book Club selection—the only work of nonfiction on the 2008 list—Blood River is the harrowing and audacious story of Tim Butcher's journey in the Congo and his retracing of renowned explorer H. M. Stanley's famous 1874 expedition in which he mapped the Congo River. When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the legendary Congo River and the idea of re-creating Stanley's legendary journey along the three-thousand-mile waterway. Despite warnings that his plan was suicidal, Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a pygmy-rights advocate, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers. An utterly absorbing narrative that chronicles Tim Butcher's forty-four-day journey along the Congo River, Blood River is an unforgettable story of exploration and survival.

The Stowaway: A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica by Laurie Gwen Shapiro
The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties’ most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica.

It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier? There wouldn’t be another encounter with an unknown this magnificent until Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage. And then, the night before the expedition’s flagship set off, Billy Gawronski—a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard.

Could he get away with it?

From the soda shops of New York’s Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Jazz Age celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.

Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis
On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Mount Everest’s North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain’s finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a young Oxford scholar of twenty-two with little previous mountaineering experience. Neither of them returned. 
 
In this magisterial work of history and adventure, based on more than a decade of prodigious research in British, Canadian, and European archives, and months in the field in Nepal and Tibet, Wade Davis vividly re-creates British climbers’ epic attempts to scale Mount Everest in the early 1920s. With new access to letters and diaries, Davis recounts the heroic efforts of George Mallory and his fellow climbers to conquer the mountain in the face of treacherous terrain and furious weather. Into the Silencesets their remarkable achievements in sweeping historical context: Davis shows how the exploration originated in nineteenth-century imperial ambitions, and he takes us far beyond the Himalayas to the trenches of World War I, where Mallory and his generation found themselves and their world utterly shattered.  In the wake of the war that destroyed all notions of honor and decency, the Everest expeditions, led by these scions of Britain’s elite, emerged as a symbol of national redemption and hope.
 
Beautifully written and rich with detail, Into the Silence is a classic account of exploration and endurance, and a timeless portrait of an extraordinary generation of adventurers, soldiers, and mountaineers the likes of which we will never see again.

Sir John Ross’s Second Expedition to the Arctic
We especially enjoyed seeing the images and maps in these two beautiful volumes of Sir John Ross's account of his second attempt to find the Northwest Passage.  Explore the images for yourself in the University of Glasgow's Special Collections by clicking here.

Real Life Adventures

The August 25th meeting will be dedicated to books that have been adapted into film, fiction and nonfiction alike.  Your choice :-) 

Buckle up and hold on to your hats!  Real life adventure was up for discussion last night and the books ranged far and wide; from Africa to Spain to Utah to the furthest reaches of the solar system.

Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway

(powells.com) His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon in 1932), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December of 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in — and fascination with — big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip. In examining the poetic grace of the chase, and the ferocity of the kill, Hemingway also looks inward, seeking to explain the lure of the hunt and the primal undercurrent that comes alive on the plains of Africa. Yet Green Hills of Africa is also an impassioned portrait of the glory of the African landscape, and of the beauty of a wilderness that was, even then, being threatened by the incursions of man. Hemingway's rich description of the beauty and strangeness of the land and his passion for the sport of hunting combine to give Green Hills of Africa the freshness and immediacy of a deeply felt personal experience that is the hallmark of the greatest travel writing.

Only Pack What You Can Carry: My Path to Inner Strength,Confidence, and True Self-Knowledge by Janice Holly Booth

(powells.com) Magnetically written by former CEO of a North Carolina Girl Scout Council and award winning CEO for the Western New York chapter of a national arts-in-education organization, this uniquely engaging travel journal describes four keys to unlocking personal and spiritual fulfillment: solitude, introspection, courage, and commitment. Through a series of compelling travel essays and deeply thoughtful memoirs, Janice Booth draws readers into each adventure—ranging from a solo hike through Northern California to galloping across the fields of Ireland to a short stint with the Circus Arts learning the flying trapeze—and shares her secrets to a fuller life through traveling alone. Step by step, she demonstrates why leaving everything—and everyone—behind for a few days (or more!) is the best path to inner strength, confidence, and true self-knowledge.

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants ofthe Ocean by Susan Casey

(powells.com) For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories—waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of peo­ple as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, a 100­-foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists’ urgent efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves—from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that recently leveled part of the Alaskan coast. Like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, The Wave brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious.

Disaster at the Pole: The Tragedy of the Airship Italia, a Harrowing True Tale of Arctic Endurance and Survival by Wilbur Cross

(powells.com) In 1928, defying Italy's Mussolini and the entire fascist party, aviator Umberto Nobile, undertook a daring expedition to the North Pole in Italia, one of several successful airships he had designed. The tragic crash of the airship on the ice and search for survivors was the most extensive in Arctic history, involving seven nations. Although Nobile and eight crew members survived, those lost included not only their tragic companions but searchers, including the famous explorer, Roald Amundsen. The Italia tragedy was described by The New York Times as one of the most astonishing episodes in the history of aviation.

The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell

(powells.com) The Voyager spacecraft are our farthest-flung emissaries; 11.3 billion miles away from the crew who built and still operate them, decades since their launch.

Voyager 1 left the solar system in 2012; its sister craft, Voyager 2, will do so in 2015. The fantastic journey began in 1977, before the first episode of Cosmos aired. The mission was planned as a grand tour beyond the moon; beyond Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; and maybe even into interstellar space. The fact that it actually happened makes this humanity’s greatest space mission.

In The Interstellar Age, award-winning planetary scientist Jim Bell reveals what drove and continues to drive the members of this extraordinary team, including Ed Stone, Voyager’s chief scientist and the one-time head of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab; Charley Kohlhase, an orbital dynamics engineer who helped to design many of the critical slingshot maneuvers around planets that enabled the Voyagers to travel so far; and the geologist whose Earth-bound experience would prove of little help in interpreting the strange new landscapes revealed in the Voyagers’ astoundingly clear images of moons and planets.

Speeding through space at a mind-bending eleven miles a second, Voyager 1 is now beyond our solar system's planets. It carries with it artifacts of human civilization. By the time Voyager passes its first star in about 40,000 years, the gold record on the spacecraft, containing various music and images, including Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, will still be playable.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

(powells.com) In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.

Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. Digging deeply, he takes an inherently compelling mystery and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.

When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's storytelling blaze through every page.

The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless

(powells.com) In the more than twenty years since the body of Chris McCandless was discovered in the wilds of Alaska, his spellbinding story has captivated millions who have either read Jon Krakauer's iconic Into the Wild or seen Sean Penn's acclaimed film of the same name.

And yet, only one person has truly understood what motivated Chris's unconventional decision to forsake his belongings, abandon his family, and embrace the harsh wilderness. In The Wild Truth, his beloved sister Carine McCandless finally provides a deeply personal account of the many misconceptions about Chris, revealing the truth behind his fateful journey while sharing the remarkable details of her own.

Exposing the dark reality that existed behind the McCandless's seemingly idyllic home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Carine details a violent home life, one where both parents manipulated the truth about a second family — a deception that pushed Chris over the edge and set the stage for his willing departure into the wild. And though he cut off all family ties, Carine understood — through their indelible bond and some cryptic communication — what Chris was seeking.

This understanding, kept under wraps for years as Carine struggled to maintain a relationship with her parents, now comes to spectacular light in the pages of The Wild Truth. In the decades since Chris's death, Carine and her half-siblings have come together to find their own truth and build their own beauty in his absence. In each other, they've found absolution, just as Chris found absolution in the wild before he died.

Beautiful and haunting, told with candor and heartbreaking insight, The Wild Truth presents a man the world only thought they knew — and the sister who has finally found redemption in sharing the rest of their story.

The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit by Shirley MacLaine

(powells.com) It has been nearly three decades since Shirley MacLaine commenced her brave and public commitment to chronicling her personal quest for spiritual understanding. In testament to the endurance and vitality of her message, each of her eight legendary bestsellers — from Don't Fall Off the Mountain to My Lucky Stars — continues today to attract, dazzle, and transform countless new readers. Now Shirley is back — with her most breathtakingly powerful and unique book yet.

This is the story of a journey. It is the eagerly anticipated and altogether startling culmination of Shirley MacLaine's extraordinary — and ultimately rewarding — road through life. The riveting odyssey began with a pair of anonymous handwritten letters imploring Shirley to make a difficult pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain. Throughout history, countless illustrious pilgrims from all over Europe have taken up the trail. It is an ancient — and allegedly enchanted — pilgrimage. People from St. Francis of Assisi and Charlemagne to Ferdinand and Isabella to Dante and Chaucer have taken the journey, which comprises a nearly 500-mile trek across highways, mountains and valleys, cities and towns, and fields. Now it would be Shirley's turn.

For Shirley, the Camino was both an intense spiritual and physical challenge. A woman in her sixth decade completing such a grueling trip on foot in thirty days at twenty miles per day was nothing short of remarkable. But even more astounding was the route she took spiritually: back thousands of years, through past lives to the very origin of the universe. Immensely gifted with intelligence, curiosity, warmth, and a profound openness to people and places outside her own experience, Shirley MacLaine is truly an American treasure. And once again, she brings her inimitable qualities of mind and heart to her writing. 

Balancing and negotiating the revelations inspired by the mysterious energy of the Camino, she endured her exhausting journey to Compostela until it gradually gave way to a far more universal voyage: that of the soul. Through a range of astonishing and liberating visions and revelations, Shirley saw into the meaning of the cosmos, including the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, insights into human genesis, the essence of gender and sexuality, and the true path to higher love.  With rich insight, humility, and her trademark grace, Shirley MacLaine gently leads us on a sacred adventure toward an inexpressibly transcendent climax. The Camino promises readers the journey of a thousand lifetimes.

Take a Seat (DVD) "Take a Seat: Sharing A Ride Across America" is an inspirational documentary focused on the adventurous human spirit. The film follows British adventurer Dominic Gill as he journeys across America on a tandem bicycle with the help of ten companions, all of whom are physically disabled. Gill brings viewers into the lives of his travelers and provides an expose on the every day struggles they face while they deal with disabilities like muscular dystrophy, blindness, and Parkinson's disease. Gill shows that fervor, determination and hope can transcend physical ailments and that spirits propelled by passion can ascend any apex imaginable.

View the full documentary film here: http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi3356335129/

The Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman

(powells.com) It started as a daydream. Poring over a map of the world at home one quiet Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor — actor and self-confessed bike nut — noticed that it was possible to ride all the way round the world, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. It was a revelation he couldn't get out of his head. So he picked up the phone and called Charley Boorman, his best friend, fellow actor and bike enthusiast. 'Charley,' he said. 'I think you ought to come over for dinner...'

From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. As the miles slipped beneath the tires of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls' testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads.

And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride over 20,000 miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process. As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. Long Way Round is the result of their adventures — a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realizing their dream.

The Long Way Round (DVD) Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman prepare to hit the road on their motorcycles in an epic journey around the world.

View the first episode here: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi832612121

truth is stranger than fiction

On most people’s bookshelves at home there’s a title or two they’ve been meaning to read or on a to-be-read list like so many of us keep going in our heads, on a social book sharing site like GoodReads or Shelfari, or even on good old-fashioned paper.  September’s meeting will be your chance to select that never-before-read potential favorite!  We’ll be meeting on Tuesday, September 24^th at 6:30pm to discuss “Books You Wish You’d Read!”  From classics to bestsellers to children’s books, you pick it.  We’ll discuss it. 

Other than our next GRG meeting, September is chockablockfull of fun stuff to do. 

Each Wednesday night in September is Wild West Wednesday!  Join us in the meeting room each Wednesday at 6:30pm for classic western film.  For film titles and/or program information, contact Matt at 204-445-1141 or mlayne@bham.lib.al.us.

Our next Cities for Life event is on Thursday, September 12^th at 6:30pm.  Dr. Douglas Moellering will be back with us to talk about making room in your life for physical activity and a healthy lifestyle.

On Thursday, September 19^th at 6:30pm, Western Supermarkets head wine steward Scott Atkinson will be back with Caroline Pryor to share some of the wine shop staffs’ favorite wines.  This event is limited to ages 21+ only and registration at 205-445-1121 is required.  Call and reserve your spot today!

One of the premiere wine tasting events of the year falls on Friday, September 27^th from 6-9pm at the Birmingham Zoo, Western Supermarkets Fall Food & Wine Festival!  Proceeds from the Festival benefit the Library.  There’ll be over 600 wines open for tasting with knowledgeable staff on hand to answer your questions and the Jeff State Culinary School will be on site preparing some of the best food you’ll ever eat.  Tickets are $50 in advance, $60 at the door, and $40 each for groups of 10 or more.  Purchase your tickets at the Emmet O’Neal Library, at Western Supermarkets, or purchase them online.

Zara’s Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa by Peter Beard
From adventurer, explorer, photographer, writer, pied piper Peter Beard—eleven irresistible tales, told to his daughter in his tented encampment at Hog Ranch, Kenya, about life, about living, about Africa.

He writes of the East African hills he came to know so well over four decades, where time slows to infinity in a great bottomless, bottle green underwater world . . . about Nairobi in the 1950s, still a quaint, eccentric pioneer town, full of characters of all stripes and tribes, where rhinoceros roamed the streets and local residents went to the movies in pajamas.

He writes of the camp he built twelve miles outside of Nairobi so that he would never be off safari, a forty-acre patch of bush called Hog Ranch (abutting Karen Blixen’s plantation), named for the families of warthogs who wandered into camp, a camp populated with waterbuck, suni, dik-diks, leopard, giraffe, and occasionally lion and buffalo.

In “Big Pig at Hog Ranch,” Beard tells the story of Thaka (translation from the Kikuyu: “handsome stud”), Hog Ranch’s number-one, fearsome, 300-pound warthog, who came into camp and dropped to the ground happy for a vigorous tummy rub, and who one night, “lying in his favorite position, munching on corn and barbeque chicken,” was encroached upon by a bristly haired, wild-looking boar hog. All three hundred pounds of Thaka exploded straight at the hairy intruder, the two brutish, bony heads crashing together thundering through the camp and Peter witnessed the unleashed power—the bullish strength—of the wild pig . . .

In “Roping Rhino,” Beard tells of his first job in Africa, rounding up and relocating rhinos for the Kenya Game Department with his cohort and neighbor, a weather-beaten native of Old Kenya who thrived on danger and refused to bathe—and of the enormous silver-backed rhino bull that became their Moby Dick . . .

He writes of his quest to photograph overpopulated and habitat-destroying elephants for Life magazine on the eve of Kenya’s independence . . . of his close encounter with the legendary man-eating lions of “Starvo” (descendants of the famed beasts rumored to be immune to bullets, who in the late nineteenth century halted the construction of the Mombasa railroad, devouring railroad workers and snatching sleeping passengers from their Pullman berths in the dead of night to make a meal of them), who charged the author, “coming in slow motion, like a bullet train erupting out of a tunnel, soundless, like an ancient force.”

He tells of his round-the-clock adventure tracking and studying crocodiles with a game warden–biologist at Lake Rudolf, a tale that begins with one crewmember being grabbed from behind by a ten-foot crocodile and another doing battle with an almost prehistoric monster fish—a 200-pound Great Nile perch! . . . and he writes of the final wildlife encounter that ended his safari days, an incident that proved Karen Blixen’s motto: “Be bold, be bold . . . be not too bold.”

Zara’s Tales confirms to our constant surprise and delight that “nothing out of the ordinary happens. It’s just Africa, after all.”

Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel
More than a quarter of a million Americans crossed the continental United States between 1840 and 1870, going west in one of the greatest migrations of modern times. The frontiersmen have become an integral part of our history and folklore, but the Westering experiences of American women are equally central to an accurate picture of what life was like on the frontier.

Through the diaries, letters, and reminiscences of women who participated in this migration, Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey gives us primary source material on the lives of these women, who kept campfires burning with buffalo chips and dried weeds, gave birth to and cared for children along primitive and dangerous roads, drove teams of oxen, picked berries, milked cows, and cooked meals in the middle of a wilderness that was a far cry from the homes they had left back east. Still (and often under the disapproving eyes of their husbands) they found time to write brave letters home or to jot a few weary lines at night into the diaries that continue to enthrall us.

Trail of Feathers: Searching for Philip True by Robert Rivard
In December 1998, San Antonio Express-News reporter Philip True vanished during a solo backcountry trek in western Mexico, home of the reclusive Huichol Indians and the Chapalagana, the Twisted Serpent Canyon, a 150-mile long gash that twists and plunges through the heart of the Sierra Madre. Five days later his editor, Robert Rivard, was part of a small search party that, nearly miraculously, tracked a trail of feathers that had leaked from True's sleeping bag to find his body.

Trail of Feathers is the story of the search for True and of the quest to bring his killers to justice. It is also the story of another perplexing mystery: Why had True taken such a dangerous trip, into such a raw, uncivilized wilderness, alone and without sufficient safety preparations, in the first place? After an unhappy and unsettled youth, True was at the age of fifty finally settling down to a career and a wife he loved. His first child was about to be born. What was he running from, or to?

Rivard's search for answers to these questions leads him deep into the Sierra Madre Occidental, one of Mexico's last true wildernesses, and deep into the secrets of Philip True's past. It also leads him into his own past, and an acknowledgment of the ways in which his life and True's mirrored each other. Suspenseful, atmospheric, and moving, Trail of Feathers is more than a true crime tale; it's a classic tragedy about how the past reverberates destructively into the present — for individuals, for cultures, for nations.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.  Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.  It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard.  So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini.  In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails.  As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.  But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion.  His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

The Man Who Rode the Thunder: The True Story of the Most Incredible 40 Minutes in History and the Man Who Lived Them by William H. Rankin (NOT IN THE LIBRARY SYSTEM)
Lieutenant Colonel William H. Rankin (1920–2009) was a Marine pilot and veteran of both World War II and Korea when a Cold War accident literally catapulted him to fame. On July 26, 1959, the engine of his F-8U Crusader, a carrier-based jet fighter, suddenly stalled and the fire warning light on his instrument panel began flashing. Rankin triggered his ejection seat, which shot him through his plane’s cockpit canopy. He was flying at an altitude exceeding 45,000 feet, without a pressure suit—and he exited the plane at the top of a gigantic thunderstorm cloud mass. His harrowing experience riding the thunder down has few parallels; if it were fiction, it would be hard to believe.

Alcatraz Island Prison and The Men Who Live There by Warden James A. Johnston (NOT IN THE LIBRARY SYSTEM)
Alcatraz is possibly the most famous prison that has ever existed.  In this book, prison warden Johnston offers a fascinating history of this island in San Francisco bay, with interviews and biographies of some of the notorious people who called it home.

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
The stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon

In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets.

Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford’s early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia’s eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest.

More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford’s great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained.

Fordlandia is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

GENERAL DISCUSSION: The PBS American Experience documentary series has a program about Henry Ford.  Check it out from the library (click here to check the catalog) or watch it online here.

Black Wave: A Family’s Adventure at Sea and the Disaster That Saved Them by John and Jean Silverwood
An exhilarating true-life adventure of one family’s extraordinary sea voyage of self-discovery and survival, tragedy and triumph

Successful businessman John Silverwood and his wife, Jean, both experienced sailors, decided the time was right to give their four children a taste of thrilling life on the high seas. And indeed their journey aboard the fifty-five-foot catamaran Emerald Jane would have many extraordinary and profound moments, whether it was the peaceful late-night watches John enjoyed under the stunning celestial sky or the elation shared by the whole family at the sight of blissful pods of dolphin and migrating tortoises. John and Jean had hoped to use the trip as a teaching opportunity, with the Emerald Jane as a floating classroom in which to instruct their children in important lessons–not only about the natural world but about the beauty of human life when stripped down to its essence, far from the trappings of civilization.

Yet rather than flourishing amid the new freedoms and responsibilities thrust upon them, the children were sometimes confused, frightened, and resentful. The two oldest, fourteen-year-old Ben and twelve-year-old Amelia, missed their friends and the comfortable life left behind in San Diego, while the two youngest, Jack, seven, and Camille, three, picked up on the stressful currents running above and below the surface–for throughout the journey, the Silverwood family found its bonds tested as never before.

John and Jean, whose marriage had weathered its share of storms, would wonder again if they had taken on too much as the physical, emotional, and financial strains of caring for the expensive catamaran and their children brought old resentments to the surface.

John’s dream trip that began on Long Island Sound ended almost two years later as a nightmare in treacherous waters off a remote atoll in French Polynesia, where, in an explosion of awesome violence, the terrifying brunt of the ocean’s anger fell upon the Emerald Jane.

Gradually, in the crucible of the sea, a stronger, more closely knit unit was forged. The Silverwoods became a crew. Then they became a family again. But just as it seemed to them that they had mastered every challenge, their world was shattered in a split-second of unimaginable horror. Now their real challenge began, forcing them to fight for their very lives.

Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
Seven Years in Tibet  relates the author's account of the seven years he spent living in the remote and then little-known country of Tibet after escaping from a British internment camp in India in 1943. The chief value of the book is in its privileged glimpses into the Tibetan way of life -- customs and rituals, morals and manners, politics, religion, festivals and costumes. It is a rare and fascinating record of a now almost extinct culture. Harrer's description of Lhasa is particularly vivid, and he is generous in his praise of those Tibetans; it is fair to say that Harrer portrays quite accurately the Tibetan national character, at least as it once was, prior to the Chinese invasion in 1952. The book concludes with Harrer return to Europe and the fate of Tibet still very uncertain. Harrer's final statement reads: "My heartfelt wish is that this book may create some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world."

GENERAL DISCUSSION: We got into a discussion of road trips and their place in literature as well as real life.  Here is a great article about a great American road trip from Paul Theroux writing for Smithsonian magazine in September of 2009. 

What has been YOUR greatest adventure, reading or otherwise?

Holley