Amusing and candid stories of a rich life lived in the natural world.
Field and Stream editor-at-large Heavey (It's Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It: Misadventures of a Suburban Hunter-Gatherer, 2014, etc.) compiles another group of humorous and thought-provoking essays on what it means to be an outdoorsman.
The date range of the pieces begins in 1988 and ends in 2014. The author’s extensive knowledge of the natural world is evident in each story, whether he’s in a blind shooting canvasback ducks on Chesapeake Bay, fishing a stream in West Virginia or preparing for a deer hunt in Kansas. He brings readers into the immediate action with his vivid descriptions, quick wit and honest assessment of each situation. On catching bowhunting fever: “ ‘Hooked’ would be an understatement. I was filleted, battered, and deep-fried….I loved the feeling of stored energy in the bow’s limbs as the let-off kicked in, the Zen of relaxed strength, the way you maintain form and look the arrow home after it has sprung from the bow….In my dreams, every branch in the forest turned into antlers.” Heavey also brings readers into his personal story of grief and renewal with his chronicle of a series of touching events that provides a more rounded view of an individual best known for his wild adventures in the woods and waterways of America. Whether he’s trying to catch the largest trout, bag the biggest buck, finally learning to accept his father or navigating the rules of online dating, Heavey demonstrates the importance of the intent behind the action over the actual outcome. Readers will sense that it’s possible to fail at your mission and still have a grand time if you don’t take yourself too seriously. “Every so often,” he writes, “I take stock of the jerks, losers, and whack jobs who are my friends and resolve to associate with a higher caliber of people.”
Amusing and candid stories of a rich life lived in the natural world.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0802123022
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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