In 2006, Tom Allen set off to ride his bicycle around the world. He began at his home in England, and along the way he passed through places like Iran, Yenem, Syria, the Arctic, Ethiopia, Armenia, and Mongolia.
Tom and his travel companions took video logs and wrote journals along the way, and upon their return, Tom wrote a novel about the journey, and a documentary was made. I'm only half way through his novel, and am entranced by the questions he asks, the sights he sees, and the endurance he is committed to. He's great inspiration for any travel junkie. Check out this website to get all the details on the trip, and then check out Tom's personal blog where you can get all the up to date ramblings of a man in search of adventure, philosophy, and inspiration. JANAPAR.COM TOMSBIKETRIP.COM/ABOUT-ME/
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It has been weeks since completing "All The Light We Cannot See", and I have since read and finished three other books. In spite of my shameful tardiness in writing about what I am "currently" reading, I couldn't help stepping back in time to tell you all about this novel. USA TODAY notes that Anthony Doerr's novel "Proves its worth page after lyrical page ... Each and every person in this finely spun assembling is distinct and true." Among many other soaring reviews and comments on the lyric perfection of this novel, this review is precisely how I felt while reading through the pages of such a magnificent story. Set in the early and later days of the second world war, in France and Germany, the story follows a blind girl, Marie-Laure, through the constant unfortunate events that begin first with the loss of her sight, then the escape from Paris into the walled coastal town of Saint-Malo where her life goes on with one loss after another until the fanatical finale blows the reader completely out of the water. An complimentary storyline follows an orphan boy in Germany, Werner Pfennig, who finds himself recruited into Hitler's Youth army. Werner grows up learning how to fight for the Fuhrer at all costs. As the war progresses, becomes more hostile, and intense, and other lives and worlds connect, so do Marie-Laure and Werners' lives grow and change until they are intertwined in a way that will change both of them forever. Those of us who struggle with writing good poetry, and decent short stories, and even the daunting novel, can't help but be awed by the placement and connection of each word in this novel. Every phrase, scene, and section seems to have been crafted masterfully and without err. It took Doerr ten years to complete "All The Light We Cannot See", and it is an absolute masterpiece. The novel's win of the Pulitzer Prize, and praise from readers, editors, and critics, are completely justified and deserved; for a novel as beautiful and poetically written as this one is a rarity and should be revered in our highest respects. This memoir, written by Vera Britton and first published in 1933, recalls Britton's experience when war broke out in Europe in 1914. She follows the years of the war, through letters, journal entries, and relevant poems that were either written by authors of the time, by herself, or by the men in her life who had gone to fight their "enemy". As I read through the pages of this epic novel, I am continuously struck by Britton's perspective on the war. Where we so often see what went on from films and stories and poems coming from the male side (no less important than any other point of view), we rarely experience what life was like for the women who were left behind, or who went into the Voluntary Aid Detachment to become nurses on the home soil and abroad. A highly personal, poetically infused, and historically relevant text, Brittan's elegy is a fresh and haunting tale of the disastrous war that changed the scope of war, feminism, and youth, and helped to shape the world we live in today. Britton writes her novel with such elegance and grace, as well as with an amazing record of events coming from dated letters and journals, that it is a hard book to put down. It's easy to become involved in the world that Britton records, and to feel her suffering alongside the rest of her "lost generation". If you are looking for a deep read, a tale of war and love and loss, a well written and highly attachable story, then I would recommend you pick up a copy of this book. You may learn not only what the war looked like from Britton's point of view, but also from the men in her life, her family, and an entire generation of young people sent off to defend their homeland, and who upon their return fell into the anonymity and carelessness of mainstream society, where most would never rise from. |
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