#paperback trails

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Paperback Trails: American Odyssey

 by Robert Conot.

Time considerations force me to be succinct here, even if this book is not.  American Odyssey is a delightful text; a thorough and engaging history of the rise & fall of the city of Detroit (and, by extension, American urbanism and industry) from 1650-1980.  The writing is germane, insightful, often humorous and presented in coherent, digestible chunks that keep central ideas from becoming lost whilst also allowing memorable details sufficent space to memorably flourish, a neat trick to hold up for 750+ pages.  This brings me to American Odyssey's biggest failing as a Trail companion . . .

. . . It's f-ing huge.  This bad boy weighs more than 7 lbs, which is great if you're trying to prop up a busted couch leg, but terrible if you're trying to walk up and down mountains every day.  Realistically, the tome could haveb been reduced in size by 25% or so, but Conot is prone to the garrulous habit of informative tangents, typically including entertaining yet spotty miscellany whenever the occasion present itself.  Kind of like how if I were to ask my Dad if he'd ever been to Montreal he would tell me yes or no, and then offer an analysis of what percentage of Canada's native population lives wihtin 100 miles of the United States border.  Interesting, yes, but weighty.  Oh, so weighty.

That said, American Odyssey is a keeper.  Well, hopefully a keeper.  When I finished the book, I sent it home to Jenn and she wrote back that "[T]he book you sent home smeels so much like mold that it stunk up my whole apartment.  Right now it has to live in the laundry room.  We'll see if the smell goes away."

Much the same could be said for we Hospital Hikers ourselves.

American Odyssey,  Robert Conot: 2015 miles (out of a possible 2,190)

The author (Wayne State University Professor Robert Conot)

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Paperback Trails: Tai-Pan

When one battles the elements, converses about gear and pees outside as much as we do, they likely fancy themselves something of a masculine archetype.  Provided, that is, that one has not read James Clavell's TAI-PAN.

Acquired from the Hot Springs, NC public library for a price of .25 cents, TAI-PAN was this reviewer's first foray into historical adventure fiction since the Gary Paulsen era.  By now the text has been consigned to my personal archives in Chicago, but from memory the back sleeve copy read something like this:

Every five or ten years there arrives a novel that storms through the world's consciousness as never before.  Enter James Clavell's TAI-PAN!

TAI-PAN follows the brutish yet hallowed quest of Dirk Straun, the greatest smuggler and rogue of the China trade.  Beset by piracy, typhooons, storms, cutthroat competitors, disease and the walled, mysterious infinity of Mandarin China, Straun sets out now on his quest to bring HONG KONG into the global trade and rule it with an iron fist.

Intrigue, bloodshed, glory, power and sex dominate life on the nascent island fortress, though not always in that order.  For Dirk Straun, however, the only thing more dangerous than being in the fight of his life is the alternative. 

TAI-PAN

In its entirety, this book had a very sincere and enjoyable charm, like the political incorrectness of an ornery veteran.  Through the novel's 600 pages, Dirk Straun engages in banquetry, warfare, smuggling, adultery, anti-catholicism, swearing, drinking, sleeping in the nude and at one point goes on a spanking rampage that spans 3 whole pages.  That said, the meticulous research and clear excitement with which Clavell writes render the book a most enjoyable read, particularly for the price of a gumball. 

Overall Score: 2000 miles (out of a possible 2,180)

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Paperback Trails: Volume I

Wherin the Harpooner reveals a demure, seductive literary ken.  A little more than you'd expect from the hired muscle, eh?

Everyone has their own preferred means of whiling away the long night-time hours on the AT.  One hiker we met carries an expert-level sudoku book around with him.  Another approaches strangers trying to trade Vicodin for food.  Myself?  I'm on a quest to read as many mind-rotting paperback novels as I can.  This wasn't my leisure-time plan from the start (the pushups & nude calesthenics routines having been vetoed by my traveling companions), but most of my book purchasing for the next five months will be taking place in grocery stores.  In case you've not peered through your local supermarket's bestseller rack in some time, they usually contain three types of books:

Harlequin Romances.  I have a Fabio complex.  No thank you.

Books about horrible murders and other scary things happening in the woods.  These novels always have strangely embossed covers and frequently have Dean Koontz's name on them.  No thanks.

Other books.  Some by Glen Beck, some about a woman's quest to save her pet orangutang from poachers, others about a high stakes game of cat & mouse that inevitably end with a shootout in the Oval Office.  A veritable crapshoot.

Here's what I've gotten through so far:

Tom Clancy's Endwar: The Hunted written by David Michaels

They say the devil is in the details.  If that's true, the apostrophed 'S' at the top of this one stands for "Satan."  I overlooked that grammatical note of consequence when purchasing this book and paid dearly for the error.  Instead of an above-average military-political thriller, I was forced to muddle through 400-some odd pages of speculative military-technology porn (soldiers' high tech balaclavas are described in detail at like five separate points), predictably formulaic action sequences, a convoluted plot (though I admit I wasn't exactly monitoring the story like a hawk) and an off-putting overutilization of the word "guy."  Seriously, I think there are somewhere around 50 stock characters referred to only as "guys" (e.g., Rocket Launcher Guy, The Terrorist Guy, Bad Guy, Other Guy, etc.) and each of them is summarily dispatched via strangulation, grenade attack, being thrown over a railing or some other such nonsense.

I'm tired of writing about this book.  In lieu of an actual review, I'll just post my favorite Amazon user review of the novel, which in its own way tells you all you need to know about this bad boy:

The first novel in this series dealt with a special forces team fighting a weak Russian invasion of Canada. This novel just focuses on a Ghost Recon team chasing down a woman named "Snow Maiden". That is it. There is really nothing spectacular about this novel except one twist near the end. There is really nothing of the war mentioned in this book except for a Russian "invasion" of a country that is pretty ridiculous and unbelievable (it mentions that the Russians sent one battalion into this country and once you find out what country it is you will realize how stupid this plot device is because it would take far more than one battalion to "invade" this country and of course it is never explained how they managed to fly in this one battalion and make it past all the air defenses of this country).

Overall Rating: 195 miles (out of a possible 2175)

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth

I enjoyed Blood Oath quite a bit.  It was kind of like a more creatively formulated National Treasure, only not so painfully corny.  Also, it has vampires and a character I was easily able to picture as Justin Long. 

Briefly, the novel's premise is centered around the idea that in 1867 an abandoned whaling ship was found off the coast of the U.S., the crew dead, but for a lone survivor found drinking the blood of his erstwhile shipmates.  The perpetrator was to be put to death but President Andrew Johnson granted clemency at the last moment, thereby binding the vampire to the Office of the President of the United States.  The term you're searching for right now is "Wookie Life Debt."

Anyway, the author does a fine job of acknowledging the silliness of the premise; the prose seems to stifle knowing grins consistently throughout the book.  As far as characters go, there isn't much new ground broken, but the familiar characters are fairly sound, allowing the reader freedom to focus on the nuggets of "historical" context woven into the story and the psuedo-scientific facts and explanations offered as an examination of mythical critters such as vampires, werewolves, frankensteins and the like. 

Long story short, I read through this book in two days.  it won't change your life, but there are certainly worse ways to kill ten hours.

Overall Rating: 1824 miles (out of a possible 2175)