Category: Books

Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow

Wow, where to start when talking about this amazing book?!

Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow has to be one of the most thought provoking books ever dealing with mountaineering. It looks at the effect that following a risky passion has on partners left behind.

Admitedly, I had my doubts before I started the book. It would be so easy to treat mountaineers in a sigularly critical manner, but hers is a perspective that balances criticism with admiration.

Coffey begins with a search for why people climb in the first place, and in particular why they continue after close calls. She quotes Jim Wickwire, “One of the addictive aspects of climbing is that it allows you to be in the present moment in ways that are impossible in ordinary life.”

Similar thoughts come from Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, which finds that the “enjoyment of risk comes not from the danger itself but from managing it, from the sense of exercising control in difficult situations.” And then, there’s the ultimate mountaineering existential futility of Camus’ Sisyphus facing an “unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing...Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”

Coffey relates the stories of the wives, lovers, parents and children with an empathy that can only come from one who has shared experience. (Her boyfriend of 2+ years, Joe Tasker, disappeared from the Northeast Ridge of Mount Everest more than twenty years ago.) A combination of admiration and exasperation with their risk-taking loved ones is a common thread throughout this book. There is the expected pain of separation as their loved one is away for three or more months on yet another expedition, but they also must deal with the frustration of trying to maintain a “normal” home with while faced with the specter of a spouse or parent in near-constant peril. Some strive to build a life of their own, separate and distinct from that of their climber. Others network with the partners of other climbers, sharing news, monitoring the progress of each expedition from base camp or home.

Every personal story is different, from the individual epics related by the survivors of incidents on Denali, Everest, Annapurna, The Eiger, K2 and other legendary mountains, to children’s memories of a parent removed from their life long before they were capable of understanding.

But what makes this book truly exceptional is Coffey’s ability to address big picture picture issues without losing sight of the personal and “small moments.” The personal testimonies about coming to terms with loss and dealing with grief are true not only for losses under such circumstances; there are universal truths - particularly for anyone who has had to deal with death and the “loss of a future.”

By the end of the book, I was just flat-out speechless, wanting to turn back to the beginning and start again.

Books for the rainy season

Nick and I pledged to KUOW during their spring pledge drive last week. Our premium is a copy of Nancy Pearl’s book “More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason”. We haven’t gotten it yet, but I like the idea of a recommended reading list from someone else to get you inspired, especially now that it’s the spring rainy season. What better way to pass the time than curled up with a cup of hot cider and a good book?

The following list was compiled from a mail-list I belong to where everyone piped in with what they were currently reading. They all sounded so interesting, I thought I’d post the collection here. If you’ve read somthing interesting recently that you think would make a good addition, post a comment and tell us about it.

• Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya by Jamaica Kincaid
  Novelist Kincaid tells of her journey into the foothills of the Himalayas in search of rare plants to bring home to her Vermont garden.
• Blink by Ted Dekker
  An intoxicating tale set amidst the shifting sands of the Middle East, Blink touches on geopolitical conflicts as ancient as the earth itself.
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
  Diamond probes the questions: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?
• Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
  A witty collection of essays that recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language.
• Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
  Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp.
• Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley
  One has to admire the pluck of an author who dares satirize what may be the touchiest subject in the country today: Arab American relations.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
  A precursor to Collapse, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world.
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  This one can’t be summed up in one sentence. Just read it.
• My Boyfriend’s Back by Donna Hanover
  This book explores the myriad ways rekindled love is different from new love and why so many couples are reuniting now.
• Plutarch’s Lives Volume 1 by Plutarch
  Written at the beginning of the second century A.D., this book is a social history of the ancient world. Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus and Theseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many more powerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome.
• Queenan Country : A Reluctant Anglophile’s Pilgrimage to the Mother Country by Joe Queenan
  I think the title says it all.
• Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
  The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind.
• Sandman by Neil Gaiman
  Neil Gaiman weaves the story of a man interested in capturing the physical manifestation of Death but who instead captures the King of Dreams.
• The Next Big Thing by Johanna Edwards
  Debut novel about a plus-size heroine becoming a reality TV show contestant.
• The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore
  Subtitle is “a heartwarming tale of Christmas terror” Intriguing...
• The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo
  The tale of 12-year-old Rob Horton who finds a caged tiger in the woods behind the Kentucky Star Motel where he lives with his dad.
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  The story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course.
• The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell
  I think this is *the* book on viral marketing.
• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
  Ekhart Tolle’s message is simple: living in the now is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment.
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
  In this darkly comic short story collection, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation.
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
  The true story about the love between a spiritual mentor and his pupil.

Update: As if this list isn’t long enough already, I got another great-sounding recommendation from Dawn at playapixie.org. She writes: “Have you read George Lakoff’s book “Don’t think of an Elephant: Know your values and frame the debate”?  It’s all about frames, and about how the conservatives are so much better at evoking frames than we are, to the point that they even have *us* using their terms and frames, which reinforces their views.  Scary.  But it’s the first thing I’ve read that helps me really understand what happened in the election, and it also gives me hope that we can use the same principles to spread the *real* American values of opportunity, responsibility, pursuit of happiness, justice, and protection, the values that most Americans really do believe in and which are the foundations of the progressive movement.  Great read, and it sure explains a lot.”

Occupational Adventure

It’s an interesting phenomenon of bloggers to read other bloggers’ sites and share with people what they read/follow. I don’t have a “blog-roll” or link list like many sites have. Not sure why; I just don’t.

There is one site though that I want to share - Curt Rosengren’s Occupational Adventure blog. It’s part career advice, part self-help, part just plain ol’ sound advice for being a good person. I check it as often as I remember and always find a kernel of insight that sets me to thinking about something in a new way.

Here are some of my favorite posts recently:

• Are you a possibilitarian? - Nick and I have been a little down on some aspects of our new jobs lately. This post got me thinking about what I do when sucked into a quagmire of negativity: “Am I being a possibilitarian, or am I wallowing in the negative? What would a possibilitarian see here? What would a possibilitarian do here?”
• How to be happy and have fun changing the world - There’s a link to a free e-book with the same title by Michael Anthony in this post. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve downloaded it and intend to. Who wouldn’t want to be happy and change the world?
• How do you moodle? - Moodle is another word for mind-doodle, I think. How often do you slow yourself down enough to give your brain time to doodle?
• Focus on money, prestige, success is a recipe for unhappiness - Okay, so this sounds like what poor people say, right? Actually this is backed by a study, showing that happy people concentrate on their own successes and don’t compare themselves - their income, their family time - with others.
• Invest in yourself, invest in your future - This post makes a convincing argument for setting aside money for self-improvement, whether it’s a class on a subject you’ve always wanted to know something about or a book about something you should know for your job.

This list barely scratches the surface. Take a look when you have a second. It’s well worth it!

“Eats, Shoots & Leaves”

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation: ”Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

(Ha! Ha! The English-major nerd in me just loves this joke!)

If you are one of the few on this planet for whom apostrophe catastrophes, quotation bloatation, mad dashes and other comma-tose errors squeak like chalk across the blackboard, then Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss is the book for you.

Relax with a good cup of tea (English Breakfast, preferably) and nod knowingly as Truss takes you on an urbane, witty and very English tour of punctuation. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with.

Of course, if you miss the humor of the panda joke, this might be just the book for you, too. Entire chapters are devoted to individual forms of punctuation. Over 130 pages of the text concern apostrophes, commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, question marks, and exclamation marks.

American readers pay attention, however. This book is admittedly written by an English woman, about English grammar. No attempt has been made to Americanize the contents for this side of the Atlantic. Where we would say “parentheses,” she writes “brackets.” The American “period” is the equivalent of the British “full stop.” And, most vexing of all, is the difference between terminal punctuation in relation to quotation marks. ("What the heck?” you say.) Where Americans place almost all terminal punctuation inside closing quotation marks, British usage sometimes “picks and chooses”. (Like that.)

Regardless of these small differences, this book is a worthwhile read. Using a mix of humor and anecdotes, Truss manages to create a highly readable and enjoyable primer that not only explains how punctuation works but why it is important.

Eat Smart Play Hard

If you’re anything like me, you’re tired of hearing about the low-carb, high-protein diet plans like South Beach or Atkins. Not only are they boring and one dimensional, they’re expensive to maintain and sap you of the energy required to exercise and stay active. Enter Eat Smart, Play Hard by Liz Applegate.

Whether you spend all day on a golf course, hours in a bike saddle, 45 minutes at a local running trail or a half-hour on a weight bench, it’s no doubt that eating well can help you perform better. Eat Smart, Play Hard offers advice on fueling your body to maximize your effort and minimize your recovery time.

In part 1 of the book - New Fueling Basics - Applegate offers a revised food pyramid. She adapts the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid to fit an active lifestyle, relecting a greater need for nutrients, fluids and yes, fats. She also offers the latest information on how to eat smartly befor, during and after exercise. In part 2 of the book - Advances in Fitness Eating - you get the most up to date research on energy bars, gels, sports drinks, supplements and performance foods. What works, what doesn’t and what falls somewhere in between. Part 3 - Eat to Reach Your Goals - talks about eating for 14 specific fitness pursuits, including the Weekend Warrior approach to fitness.

This book has been criticised for being overly simplistic or too common sense. I found the detailed diet plans for morning, noon, afternoon and evening exercise worth the cost of the book alone. The revised food pyramid was also a refreshing dose of sound nutritional advice in the sea of high protein nonsense. Even if you think you’re nutrition-saavy, I’d recommend picking up a copy.