Reginald Spittle's Blog: See my book blog, page 27
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.
November 5, 2020
Costa Rica: Explorer Searches Jungle for His Lost Son
“In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, the son of legendary Alaskan explorer Roman Dial walked alone into the untracked rain forest of Costa Rica’s remote Pacific Coast. “I’m planning on doing 4 days in the jungle,” he wrote his father before leaving, “it should be difficult to get lost forever.” Then he vanished… (From the book cover)
Roman Dial raised his son Cody to be a fearless adventurer, but when the 27-year-old’s heart led to a solo venture in a remote Costa Rican jungle, his father felt responsible. Cody hadn’t checked in for days, then weeks, then months. Was he lost? Had he been murdered? Had he been bitten by a poisonous snake? Was he being held captive?
In Costa Rica, Dial pleads for help from local and national authorities as well as American and Alaskan officials. He and friends comb the jungle for clues, finding deadly snakes as they blazed their way. He investigates Cody’s last hours and days before his disappearance. Meanwhile, he imagines that his son will walk out of the rain forest.
In The Adventurer’s Son, author Roman Dial recounts Cody’s upbringing and their journeys together in Alaska, Borneo and Bhutan. His absorbing narrative of the Costa Rican search will keep you on edge until the moving conclusion.
October 23, 2020
Books: Find Your Next Page Turner
Here are links to book reviews I have published:
Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century, Jessica Bruder
Gillybean in China, Gill Puckridge
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Escape From the Ordinary, Julie Bradley
The Trail Provides: A Boy’s Memoir of Thru-Hiking the PCT, David Smart
Narcissus and Goldmund, Hermann Hesse
Henry David Thoreau: A Life, Laura Dassow Walls
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World, Hans Rosling
How to Practice, Dalai Lama
Opiod, Indiana, Brian Allen Carr
Land of Lost Borders, Kate Harris
Trespassing Across America, Ken Ilgunas
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The Accidental President, A.J. Baime
The Salt Path, Raynor Winn
Way Out There, J. Robert Harris
Beyond Religion, Dalai Lama
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
Big Little Man, Alex Tizon
Walden on Wheels, Ken Ilgunas
Beyond the Pale, Ken Grossman
On the Shortness of Life, Seneca
The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner
How Not to Get Married, George Mahood
If Cats Disappeared from the World, Genki Kawamura
Sedona Hiking Guide, Greg Stevenson
The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz
Nomadland: Moving Tales of Survival
In an era of expensive tiny homes, giant motor homes, and slide-outs that extend from every side of RVs, an American subculture on wheels follows good weather and seasonal work, out of necessity. The itinerants live in rustic, converted vans and RVs of all sizes, moving from campground to campground. Luxurious RVs may surround their modest homes, but they represent a life that couldn’t be farther away.
As camp hosts, they clean bathrooms and quiet rowdy campers. They work in Amazon warehouses and fill orders from an America unaware how much effort (and injury) go into millions of deliveries. Some move their rigs from street to street, hoping to avoid attention and eviction.
New York Times journalist Jessica Bruder drives Halen, her camper van, for part of a three-year journey as she follows a lifestyle that is invisible to many. In Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century, she tells the story of Linda, who supplements her small Social Security check and dreams of one day owning land and a modest home. Like others chronicled in Nomadland, Linda’s story will tug at your heart and keep you turning the pages of this compelling book.
September 19, 2020
Gillybean in China: What a Trip!
“Is it alright if we join you?” said the tallest of three lanky guys in their early 20s.
“Er, uh, yes, of course,” I stuttered, exhausted after an exhilarating day touring Shanghai with California college students I had accompanied on a three-week study abroad journey. I sat in our hotel bar, enjoying the opportunity to recharge with a Chinese beer. My students were upstairs in their rooms, giving their professor a break.
“Thank you,” the young man said as he and his two buddies sat with me in chairs around the low-profile table. “What a day!”
To heck with recharging. I was curious. “Tell me about it.”
I ordered three beers and leaned forward to hear their story. The Norwegians had flown the previous day to Germany, where they looked up at the departures board for a place to go. They found three seats on an overnight flight to Shanghai and off they went, without reservations. They had grabbed the last room in the downtown hotel and, as we sipped our beers, they picked my brain for ideas for their weeklong adventure.
When she turned 60, Scottish native Gill Puckridge planned to leave her life in South Africa for three months in Central America, but got sidetracked by a cheap flight to China. Three months later, her experiences had exceeded her expectations and she left China a changed person and traveler. She has been on the road ever since (for six years) and I eagerly await her next book.
Her story is Gillybean Goes to China: The Adventures of a Wandering Sexagenarian. The book often made me wonder, “Could I do that?” as I read about her daily adventures, accommodations, social life, and much more.
Gill Puckridge did not share the youth of my three fellow beer drinkers in Shanghai. And she was alone in a country that can intimidate even the most worldly traveler. But she packed courage and a thirst for new experiences in her seventh decade of life.
Her story is captivating. Like the Norwegians, she embraced China as a place full of opportunity while she employed her natural charm and curiosity.
August 28, 2020
A Treasured Adventure Book on a Favorite Blog
One of my favorite books is featured on a blog you should check out: The Chronicles of History by highly successful blogger Samantha James, pictured below. Samantha republished my review. Hint: The book is about a bicycling adventurer who rides above 17,000 feet.
Thank you, Samantha!
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August 17, 2020
Discover Inspiration on the Oregon Coast
Looking for inspiration for your book, short story, poem?
Or maybe just a place to let go?
West of Coos Bay, Oregon, park in the day-use lot at Sunset Bay State Park. Take the trail toward Cape Arago, along the clifftops, about four miles with a few modest dips and climbs. You will hear the sea lions before you see them. Keep an eye out for the lighthouse.
I hope you remembered lunch to enjoy on an ocean-view bench at Cape Arago.
On the way back, treat yourself to a easy detour through the gardens at Shore Acres. Don’t miss the rose garden. Not a bad place to eat the candy bar you saved from lunch.
This is about as good as it gets in Oregon. Or anywhere.
August 6, 2020
Catcher in the Rye: Holden Caulfield’s Voice Resonates
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Holden Caulfield’s voice as the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye is the masterful creation of J.D. Salinger, a man who often wanted to be left alone.
The words of the 17-year-old New Yorker take readers on a journey that feels so real we can all get lost in his world. Having flunked out of a boarding school for boys, Holden is isolated by depression, a distrust of shallow people, and vulgar language. He is more sensitive than he admits, still mourns the death of his brother Allie, and adores his younger sister Phoebe. He has not found a fit in four private schools.
The book’s first sentence sets the tone for Holden Caulfield’s story:
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Salinger’s most famous book, set in the 1950s, was written for adults, but it remains a favorite of youth, selling hundreds of thousands of copies a year. Its popular use in high schools has gotten teachers in trouble for its themes of morality, violence, sex, underage drinking, mental health.
Most of us had a Holden Caulfield in us. Ferris Bueller did. Many of us still do.
Five decades after I first read Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s words make me laugh, make me sad, make me want to tell him to be kinder to himself. And, sometimes, to others.
I can still learn a thing or two from Holden Caulfield–and I’m not just saying that.
