On My Bookshelf
Travel Writer? Try Shopping At These Top 10 Markets
Pyramids via camel. Check. Gorilla trek in Bwindi Impenetrable Park. Check. Sunrise hot air balloon over The Valley of the Kings. Check. Blue footed boobies eating my fries. Check. Getting published in National Geographic….(insert pause here) Now what? Doing the “do” is easy. Writing about it all is even easier. Beyond the blog posts where [...]
Jann’s Frank Diary: A Review of Falling Backwards
Only Jann Arden can get away with repeatedly mentioning “vagina” and “retarded.” Her just released memoir, Falling Backwards, is quintessentially Jann in 3D. Like her songs, it’s not all sunshine and cotton candy. Her book will seat readers on a see-saw that dips up and down between hyena-like laughter and the insidious penetration of bone-deep [...]
Do Something Dangerously Memorable
When you buy a purebred dog from a breeder, the puppy undergoes a battery of reactionary tests to determine its placement suitability. An umbrella is suddenly opened to see if the pup is easily startled. A shaken jar of coins simulates noisy outbursts and challenges the dog’s confidence or potential anxiety. Lastly, the pup gets [...]
Have a Little Faith
When I started Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven, I had already convinced myself that the book was going to be as flaky as baklava. I was certain that it would be a tacky spin-off of Michael Landon’s Highway to Heaven with the sap content of Touched by an Angel. By God, [...]
An Unexpected Life
When a local game ranger brought a malnourished and sickly chimpanzee to Shelia Siddle in Zambia in 1983, she never anticipated that one day her cattle ranch would become the largest chimp sanctuary in the world. With only a copy of Jane Goodall’s In the Shadow of Man to refer to, Shelia and her husband [...]
Digging a Hole To China
I’m surprised Colin Angus didn’t succeed in digging a hole to China when he was a kid, because the guy is an unstoppable force. And if it were possible to find China in a sandbox, he would have done it. A few times. Angus has defied death more than once, voluntarily putting himself in situations [...]
Land of A Thousand Hills
“Here’s a book written by a friend of Dian Fossey’s,” my sister said, adding to the stack of books under my arm at a bookstore just outside of Lake Louise. “I didn’t think she had any friends.” Six months into her initial research on the northern slopes of Karisimbi, Congolese soldiers raided Dian Fossey’s camp and forced her down [...]
Finding Lily
Finding Lily? I’ve lost interest. But, it’s astonishing how $4.99 will keep me commited to the end of a book I bought on a Chapters clearance table. Finding Lily, by Richard Clewes, wasn’t intended to be a feel-good cartwheel-inducing book. Readers are immediately thrown into the pile of writhing snakes that fill Clewes head as he attempts [...]
Growing Up a Bird Brain
“To my favourite sister, who secretly inspired my love of birds…” On safari in Kenya, Masai Mara National Park This is written on the inside cover of my copy of To See Every Bird on Earth by Dan Koeppel, a book that my sister Kiley was thrilled to send me for my [...]
