Swimming to Antarctica, by Lynne Cox
Just about every other person in the world seems like an unfocused dilettante compared to longdistance
swimming legend Lynne Cox. Soon At the age of 14, after several years of training hard
in pools and the open sea, she was swimming the 26 mile stretch from Catalina Island to the
coast of California. A year after that, she surpassed a lifelong goal by not only swimming the
English Channel but setting a new men's and women's record in the process. Rather than be
satisfied, Cox aimed still higher, conquering the Cook Strait in New Zealand, the Strait of
Magellan and, the Cape of Good Hope, none of which had been swum before. Being the first to
swim the Bering Sea from Alaska to what was then the Soviet Union is perhaps Cox's most
impressive achievement, requiring a phenomenal amount of physical strength and endurance to
withstand the chilly waters and diplomatic persistence to gain permission from Gorbachev during
the Cold War. Swimming to Antarctica is Cox's remarkably detailed account of her major swims
and all that went right and wrong with them. While there are plenty of highs, as one might expect
in a memoir by so impressive an athlete, all is not sunshine and roses for Cox. She overcomes
extreme physical hardship, predatory sharks, and a swim through a sewage-soaked Nile while
suffering from dysentery. There is plenty in Swimming to Antarctica to encourage even nonswimmers
to work hard to achieve the seemingly impossible, but Cox, a skilled and highly
readable writer, sticks to the swimming, leading the reader by example. For thrills and
inspiration, it's hard to find anyone better than Lynne Cox. --John Moe --
CATCH 22
By Joseph heller
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in
American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary.
At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero
endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts
are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't
even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number
of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to
excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the
Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes
its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions,
but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of
making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to some one
dangerously sane—a masterpiece of our time.
When We Were the Kennedy’s
by Monica Wood
“Every few years, a memoir comes along that revitalizes the form…With generous, precise, and
unsentimental prose, Monica Wood brilliantly achieves this . . . When We Were the Kennedys is a deeply
moving gem!”—Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog and Townie
Mexico, Maine, 1963: The Wood family is much like its close, Catholic, immigrant neighbors, all
dependent on the fathers’ wages from the Oxford Paper Company. But when Dad suddenly dies on his
way to work, Mum and the four deeply connected Wood girls are set adrift. When We Were the
Kennedys is the story of how a family, a town, and then a nation mourns and finds the strength to move
on.
“On her own terms, wry and empathetic, Wood locates the melodies in the aftershock of sudden
loss.”—Boston Globe
“[A] marvel of storytelling, layered and rich. It is, by turns, a chronicle of the renowned paper mill that
was both pride and poison to several generations of a town; a tribute to the ethnic stew of immigrant
families that grew and prospered there; and an account of one family’s grief, love, and resilience.”—
Maine Sunday Telegram
Sometimes a Great Notion
by Ken Kesey 736 pages
This is the Kesey novel that nobody read after One Flew Over the Cuckoos
nest stole all its thunder. Although it was filmed with an great cast
(Henry Fonda, Paul Newman) it never gained the reputation that its
inferior sibling achieved.
This is, quite simply, one of the great
classics of the 20th century. Its pace and moody evocation of the
American North West are stunning. The collision between the traditional
and the modern, the past and the present make riveting, enthralling
reading.
The Stamper family are loggers, rough, hard men and women
who care for no ones opinion but their own. They are fighting the union,
the neighbours, the town, their whole world. Their motto of "never give
an inch" was the title of the film of the book. Into the
strike-breaking start of the book comes the dope-smoking, college
educated half brother, the prodigal son. His arrival triggers a tidal
wave of events that spiral gradually out of control until everything
that has been permanent before is now threatened.
If I seem vague in
this review it is simply that I don't want to deprive you of the
pleasure of discovering this story for yourself. This is one of the
forgotten masterpieces. A book to be read, and then passed on to friends
who are later bullied to give it back to be read again.
Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art
by Christopher Moore
Absolutely nothing is sacred to Christopher Moore. The phenomenally popular New York Timesbestselling satirist, whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls “Stephen King with a whoopee cushion and a double-espresso imagination,” has already lampooned Shakespeare, San Francisco vampires, marine biologists, Death... even Jesus Christ and Santa Claus. In his latest novel, the immortal Moore takes on the Great French Masters. A magnificent “Comedy d’Art” from the author of Lamb, Fool and Bite Me, Moore’s Sacre Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort
of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter who joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed suicide of Vincent van Gogh.
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
By Mark Twain
The novel is a satirical comedy that looks at 6th-Century England and its medieval culture through the
eyes of Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of Hartford, Connecticut, who, after a blow to the head,
awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England at the time of
the legendary King Arthur. The fictional Mr. Morgan, who had an image of that time that had been
colored over the years by romantic myths, takes on the task of analyzing the problems and sharing his
knowledge from 1300 years in the future to modernize, Americanize, and improve the lives of the
people.
Any Hemmingway novel” then sharing common themes
Farewell to Arms
Old man and the Sea,
The sun also rises
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Garden of Eden
Many others.
