What I Read -- The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley

I try not to read more than one book at a time.  I'm a slow reader and also don't have a great memory, so reading multiple books simultaneously does not usually work out very well.  But recently I found myself reading four at once! 

I was reading The High Adventure of Eric Ryback, but since I have a first edition, I didn't want to take it with me when I was traveling; books always get really beat up under those circumstances.  I was (and still am) reading Sum, but those are short little think pieces that I like to sit with for a day or so after reading, rather than plowing right on to the next one.  I was reading Older, But Better, But Older, but that one is both dense and heavy, and a pretty quick read, so I didn't want to carry it while traveling especially knowing I would need to take another book anyway because it wouldn't last me the whole weekend.

So I moved on to my fourth book, The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley.  This one is a long-overdue element of my 2022 Reading Challenge (it being the June selection), but it looked fairly light and amusing, and seemed like a good candidate to dip in and out of while traveling. 

And it was!  The story was delightfully Irish, amusing, and just unrealistic enough to not matter that I wasn't devoting sustained and dedicated attention to it.  It was playful despite the nominally serious turns in the plot.  It suited my needs perfectly.  And I blew threw it (finishing the day after I returned from my weekend trip), which is unusual for me.

It was a fun little romp (sometimes literally) through an undertaker's Dublin.

What I Read -- Older, But Better, But Older

When K and I were shopping in Jackson, WY, earlier this summer, we we laughed so hard we nearly cried when I opened to a random page of Older, But Better, But Older. 

Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that we probably, by total chance, had landed on the best page in the book.  When I started at the beginning, I was appalled by how cliche the whole thing seemed; it was just a collection of trite, canned sayings, lists of semi-random thoughts, and the like.

As I got into the last third, it began to develop into a little something.  There were more short essays and fewer lists.  Somehow, these seemingly random, miscellaneous thoughts began to coalesce into a general sentiment approaching satisfaction - not with the book itself, but with life, and the idea that you don't have to meet other people's expectations all the time.  Everything will be fine, even if you're yourself.  Perhaps most especially because you're yourself.

So that was nice reassurance, but at the end of the day, these are pretty much all things that smart, successful ladies already know.  I didn't need a book to tell me this.

I will give credit to the layout designers though.  It was a pleasure to turn the pages in this book.  The combination of text (in varying fonts), pictures, and page layout changes kept it all visually fun to move through.

The High Adventure of Eric Ryback -- Take 2

I feel like I need to start my commentary on The High Adventure of Eric Ryback with the controversy I mentioned in my opening post.  Eric Ryback was (and to some degree still is) lauded as the first person to through-hike the "Triple Crown": the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail.  Everyone seems to agree that he was the first person to traverse all of these mostly on foot.  I haven't found any concern that he did truly walk the entirety of the Appalachian Trail, which he did as a high schooler.  His PCT hike came the summer of 1970 upon his high school graduation, and the following year led to the publication of this very book.

In the years after publication, there was some question regarding whether Eric had actually hiked the whole distance or whether he had hitchhiked portions of the PCT.  When his publisher said his claims my not have been accurate, he reportedly sued them for $3 million.  However, when the statements of the drivers who gave him rides were presented, the suit was dropped.  A few years later, Eric hiked the Continental Divide, much of it with his younger brother Tim.  There was no "trail" as such at the time, but the CDT (such as it is) now approximates the route he hiked.  (There is also a book about that one: The Ultimate Journey: Canada to Mexico Down the Continental Divide.)

So, what to make of all this?  Did he hitch a ride for portions of the PCT?  Who knows.  Probably he did.  But it's still quite an accomplishment, even if the whole way wasn't "on foot" as he claimed.  It's also interesting that he elected to go from north to south.  Most through-hikers these days go from south to north, starting in the southern deserts in the spring and giving the Cascade Mountains a little bit of time to warm up before they arrive in the fall.

Often, travelogues are terribly tedious to read.  Especially one like this, where each day is just getting up, packing, up, walking, pitching camp, and sleeping.  Boring with a capital B.  But somehow this one keeps the story going.  Most chapters are short, and there are photos included from his time on the trail, so both those things help.  And, though Eric does have a certain sensibility to his writing that could come off as highfalutin, it's tempered in my mind when I remember that he was roundabout 19 years old at the time he wrote it.  Bearing that it mind, it comes off as much more sincere, genuinely awe-inspired, than it otherwise might.

I enjoyed it so much I may even read The Ultimate Journey.

Movies -- A Recap -- Part XXVIII -- The Wild Ride Edition

The Rescue is the completely amazing story of the 2018 rescue of the twelve Thai children and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand.  The footage that was captured is stunning, and the story behind it -- everyone coming together to save these stranded children -- was even more incredible.  The commitment shown by all the rescuers was inspiring.  Totally worth watching.

If you're in the mood for something funny and heartwarming, try Come as You Are.  Two guys in wheelchairs and one blind guy hire a driver (played by Gabourey Sidibe) to drive them to Montreal to visit a brothel that specializes in sex with disabled people.  This one is a win.

The King's Man is apparently the third in the Kingsman series.  I never saw the second one, but I can decidedly say that it is worse than the first, Kingsman: The Secret Service.  Despite that qualification, it is nevertheless a type of movie which it's hard to screw up too badly.  Here are the hallmarks: the story is usually slightly overly-complicated but nonetheless predictable, there's lots of shooting, there is some sort of love interest or flirtation, the good guys win.  This one fits the bill, but loses points because it takes itself just a little too seriously.

The Green Inferno is terrible.  I'm really only including it here so that you don't make same mistake I did and try to watch it.  I didn't even finish it, and I don't often give up on movies -- they're not that long generally, and I'm pretty willing to at least try to understand what a filmmaker was doing.  But this one was just ... bad.  It starts out okay, with some student activists who decide to head to the Amazon in an effort to save the rain forest.  It goes sideways with some characters that were too easy to hate.  It gets worse with gratuitous violence.  It completely goes off the rails with an inexplicable plot, and that's where I quit.

I heard about The Poseidon Adventure from Ira Glass during an episode of This American Life.  I wasn't sure about it, but after some of our recent successes with older movies (which are vastly better than most of the new junk that's out there), we decided to give it a try.  Count on the good ol' library to have a copy on DVD.  First of all, it has a spectacular cast.  Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine are probably the two most famous names, but you'll surely recognize Shelly Winters, Roddy McDowell, Jack Albertson, Red Buttons, and others.  In the movie, an ocean liner capsizes.  A gaggle of passengers, led by Gene Hackman with the help of a young boy who had thoroughly explored the ship try to find a way out before the ship goes down.  It's more intense and dark than I expected.  Just goes to show what kind of good stuff they jammed into those old movies!

Every Which Way But Loose is a wild ride if ever there was one.  Clint Eastwood plays one of two trouble-making brothers, sons of a spit-fire of an old lady who really was the star of the show, in my opinion.  Other than, that is, his pet orangutan named Clyde.  There is really no explanation for why Clyde is there, but he sure does add some comedic value to the film.  In truth, I fell asleep and missed probably the last 20 minutes, but I feel like that actually wasn't the important part of the movie, so I'm going to go ahead and include it on this list anyway, even though I have no idea what happened and can't tell you whether it's worth watching.