A resourceful couple’s exhilarating recollections of sailing to India and beyond.
In this debut travelogue, a husband and wife share their observations, insights, and inspirations during a cruise that starts and ends in Australia, with a treasure hunt thrown in.
The Beales set out on a big adventure after Michelle was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2009. After saving their pennies and battling the tumor to a standstill, they set sail from Sydney on May 20, 2013, on a cruise that would take them west on the Sea Princess through Indonesia to India (where they stay a few days and catch up with the ship farther on). Then the vessel heads to the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, the Panama Canal, Hawaii (“Paradise is all around and unavoidable”), Samoa, and so forth, arriving in Sydney 104 days later. Readers learn about life on the high seas—and the endless work it takes to run and maintain the Sea Princess—the challenge of doing laundry, the daily routines, the friendships, the colorful ports of call: all that one would expect. As background, readers learn of the Beales’ history together, Michelle’s cancer (a battle not yet won), and their life philosophies. Each page is a log entry, complete with daily status (weather, position) and an inspirational aphorism or reflection (for example, “I have not told half of what I saw”—Marco Polo). Off Somalia, the ship stations crew members to look for pirates. In Scotland, readers learn of the astounding Falkirk Wheel. Edward handles much of the photography and the technical stuff; Michelle is the writer, and not just good, but gifted. At one point, she says of the Sea Princess in the middle of the ocean, “We are all in the same boat,” a cheekily resuscitated metaphor. She also recalls a stirring sunrise at sea, where “a fireworks show of boiling blues and raging reds bubble out” from the horizon. Then there is the inventive treasure hunt based on hints made throughout the volume. Who can resist such a lure? And the log format makes this a book for dipping into anywhere—perfect on the nightstand. Readers should enjoy spending time with the Beales, especially gutsy Michelle. Bon voyage!
A resourceful couple’s exhilarating recollections of sailing to India and beyond.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-38310-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Expeditionaire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
