Reginald Spittle's Blog: See my book blog, page 26
December 19, 2020
Something New: Books and My Backpack
What’s in your backpack?Get out your drum and give it a roll; my blog has a new name, Books and My Backpack. I offer you spoiler-free reviews of books that will take you on adventures around the world. Selections include the Pacific Crest Trail, Costa Rica, the Silk Road, and Mont Blanc.
If journeys of the mind are your thing, authors include the Dalai Lama, Thoreau, Hesse, and Seneca. See the drop-down menu for a list of book titles (and quick links to each review).
There’s much more coming from the trails and pages ahead, so stay tuned.
Where am I in my wife Sue’s photo? In the Alps, taking a break from the Tour du Mont Blanc, which will be part of my next book. My first book is Camino Sunrise: Walking With My Shadows.
I hope you like my blog’s new name. Have a suggestion for a book or a trail? Please send it along.
December 16, 2020
Two Treks, Two Writers, Two Stories
Michael Tyler and his wife walked more than 40 times as far as Dan Karmi, but distance is not necessarily the defining measure of their accomplishments.
In Walking Thru, Tyler recreates his journey of more than 2,000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. I am pulled to the PCT because of its incredible challenges in the desert of Southern California, over peaks more than 13,000 feet high in the Sierra Nevada, and through two more states, Oregon and Washington. Sue and I have walked five European distance treks, but none compare to the length and difficulty of the PCT.
Karmi, from Israel, walked 60 miles of the 110-mile Tour du Mont Blanc, but I have to give him credit for attempting something unlike anything he had ever done. Sue and I had done two other treks by the time we walked around Mont Blanc, something we could not have done without experience. Karmi’s story, My Journey Around Mont Blanc, is an honest sharing of his unusual experience.
Neither book was a gripping account, but I was drawn to their stories. Their adventures were so unalike, but distance walkers will find value in their words.
December 7, 2020
Ready Player Two: Does It Measure Up?
Imagine an alternate reality where people can do more than see, hear, and control a “game.” Instead, the events are real and the library is massive. And in the new world, people are actually reliving (that means all the senses) a person’s experience, feeling everything that person felt. Adults can choose something they would like to do and in whose body they would like to do it. For up to 12 hours a day. Yep, even sex.
Do you see problems with this alternate world? Ethics? Addiction? Confusion? Privacy? A devaluation of “real” life? An end of the world as we know it?
Those were some of my questions as I read the first part of Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline’s sequel to the hugely successful Ready Player One. I expected Cline’s story to explore more about these dilemmas within an adventure story comparable to the action of his first book. But, most of the time, I was left considering my questions on my own.
There was plenty of action. Maybe too much, too fast. Fans of John Hughes’ movies, Prince’s music and life, even the Lord of the Rings, may love the rapid-fire references.
The book is full of riddles, avatars, time travel, teleporting, dark events, “needle drops,” and more. It kept my attention most of the way. But, unlike how I felt while I read the first book, I was not on the edge of my seat.
December 5, 2020
Nomadland: Read the Book, See the Movie
If you haven’t read Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century, I urge you to read it before seeing the film.
Director Chloé Zhao’s acclaimed adaptation of the non-fiction book is due for theatrical release in February. No word yet on where it will be streaming. It has swept awards at several film festivals and is creating Oscars buzz. Frances McDormand plays a woman in her 60s who loses everything in the Great Recession, then travels the West in her van, working various jobs.
Click here to see my review. One of my favorite books of the year.
December 1, 2020
Land’s End: What a Finish
It may not look like it, but Sue and I saved the best for last. Soaked to the skin after our finish at Land’s End on England’s South West Coast Path, we were exhausted, but exhilarated. We had walked in horizontal rain that pounded us all afternoon, but it was a perfect ending to our near-monthlong backpacking trip. The trek is one of four adventures in my second book, due out soon. Write me through “contact” on my website (regspittle.com) to get early word when it is published.
November 30, 2020
A Story With a Perfect Ending
What a finish! Sue and I pose with Mont Blanc, which we circled during a 110-mile trekking adventure through three countries. It was a journey that we would not have believed possible just a few years before. The Tour du Mont Blanc is one of four adventures in my second book, due out soon. Write me through “contact” on my website (regspittle.com) if you want early word when it is published.
November 29, 2020
Good Things Do Find Endings
Two years after I began writing, I am near the last page of my second book. I can’t wait to see how it ends, but I don’t want the writing journey to be over. That’s how Sue and I felt in Scotland at the finish line of the West Highland Way. Like all four adventures in the new book, the day was bittersweet. Write me through “contact” on my website (regspittle.com) if you want an early word when the new book is published.
November 28, 2020
Saying ‘The End’ at St. Peter’s
Like books, long-distance treks sometimes save the best for last. There were countless highlights (and some lows) during our 260-mile journey that began in Tuscany, but the finish at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City moved Sue and me. Like reading a great book, we didn’t want the month-long trek to end. The Way of St. Francis is one of four adventures that make up my second book, due out soon. If you want to be among the first to hear when it is published, send me a note through “contact” on my website, regspittle.com.
November 25, 2020
The Boy Between: A Gripping Story About Depression
There is a scourge that does not discriminate, regardless of gender, race, nationality, or sexuality. It often finds its way to victims through social media. And it does not watch a clock–it hits some during the prime of life.
Depression tightens its grip on Josh Hartley when he goes away to England’s Southhampton University. He watches fellow students have the time of their lives, but for him, university life heightens the loneliness and despair he has experienced for years.
In The Boy Between: A Mother and Son’s Journey From a World Gone Grey, English novelist Amanda Prowse describes her struggle to lift her son from the depths of depression. She gains new hope as he heads off to university.
In alternating chapters, mother and son describe the journey. Josh’s narrative is especially powerful as he buries his shame under the covers of his bed. How do you come clean that you are not perfect? That you failed in college? Or, he asks himself, is it easier to check yourself out? For Josh, the book was a way to open the mental health conversation, especially for boys and men, with a message. He encourages males to say “I cry,” or “I suffer” and admit, “I need help.”
He is thankful he has a loving family to support him, but he and his mother now know those who have depression must lead their fight to get better. He pleads that other sufferers hang in there. “You are not alone.”
This is a book for the mentally ill, but also for those who want to understand an illness that affects so many. It holds a message of hope. It offers education through a story that relates the pitfalls of ignorance, like when someone tells a suffering youth to “Man up.”
As a sufferer of anxiety and depression as long as I can remember, I have found solace and much more on the long-distance trails of Europe. Like Josh, I told my story in a book (Camino Sunrise: Walking With My Shadows), which was cathartic for me. I am most touched when readers write that my story helped them with their own struggles. Like Josh writes, we are all in this together.
November 15, 2020
Alex Woods: A Coming-of-Age Story Rooted in Friendship
A meteorite strikes, changing lives. A mother tells the future. A boy battles seizures. An old curmudgeon walks a dog named after Kurt Vonnegut. Mix in some marijuana, a fatal diagnosis, an unlikely friendship, and a journey borne out of love.
The Universe Versus Alex Woods is a coming-of-age story that is one of my favorite books of 2020. In his debut novel, Gavin Extence tells the story from a boy’s point of view as the bookish, bullied 10-year-old forges a seven-year friendship that leads him to incidents he never would have imagined. Extence creates a boy’s voice that reminds me of Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Not as dark, but equally observant of the world and the people around him. Laughs and tears guaranteed.
