A thrilling account of a dangerous but tantalizing aspiration.
A pilot recounts three attempts to reach the magnetic north pole by plane.
While at an air show in Wisconsin in 1978, debut author Taylor and his two buddies Pat Epps and Verner Martin decided to embark upon a “fantasy mission”: reach the magnetic north pole by aircraft. Taylor, Epps, and Martin—nicknamed Super, Klondike, and Zip respectively—determined their “ever-wandering” mark was somewhere along the southern border of the Arctic Ocean, piled into Epp’s single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza, and began the 2,000-plus–mile journey. They were frightfully unprepared—they didn’t have a weather radar or any survival gear—and intended to make their way by magnetic compass alone. The author’s goal was to “roll the pole”—an “aerobatic gesture” that entails inverting the aircraft while directly over the magnetic north pole, something no one had ever done before. However, a persistent engine problem they couldn’t confidently diagnose compelled them to abort the trip. Taylor, though, never gave up on his dream and made two other attempts in 1979 and 1980. The author vividly describes all three attempts and the challenges posed not only by the inhospitable elements, but by the distance between his eagerness for adventure and responsible preparation. More than a pilot’s tale, this is an account of the insatiable ambition for more, a candidly personal chronicle in the spirit of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Airman’s Odyssey. The author explains that his “memoir is not all about airplanes. It’s about a few people and their relationships. It’s about some ambitions, dreams, sacrifices and failures. And, in a loosely framed way, it’s about their achievements and how those achievements led to other challenges.” Taylor’s account is a gripping one, told with humor and without a whiff of gratuitous melodrama. Also, his philosophical asides are intriguing, especially regarding the reasons he’s so powerfully drawn to the “experience of isolation and imminent peril.” This is an engagingly thoughtful book about the lust for life and the sometimes-inscrutable form such a lust assumes.
A thrilling account of a dangerous but tantalizing aspiration.Pub Date: May 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9987528-1-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Full Quark Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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