Beyond a passion for yachting and flying, sharing adventures in memoir is my true passion. For better or worse, the soul cannot return from a hair-raising adventure as the same person. From roller skating across France as a teen, to sinking ships, being circled by pirates, or surviving an airplane crash, writing these stories brings true action to the pages. Writing memoir also forces me to learn and share life lessons so others won’t have to do it the hard way. Reading true adventures and memoirs lets me share the soul of my fellow travelers for a moment, and live that adrenaline high from the comfort of a reading chair.
I wrote...
French Roll: Misadventures in Love, Life, and Roller Skating Across the French Riviera
From the icy peaks of Germany to the steamy beaches of France, this coming-of-age story begins when Michael, 19, gets a letter from his girlfriend asking him to meet her in Barcelona. He quits his daredevil job at the top of the German Alps and plots a risky two-month trek across the coast of southern France—alone, on roller skates.
Even being chased down impossibly steep mountain roads by tour busses and ritzy sports cars can’t keep an American teenager down, especially when he’s delivering an engagement ring… and a dark confession. It was supposed to be fun and easy, but when disaster strikes his love life and a spectacular wipeout leaves him a heartbeat away from roadkill status, Michael must learn some difficult lessons about growing up.
Beyond the eloquence in Strayed’s prose is a gritty story of a young lady on a long, perilous mission to accomplish nothing. There is no prize money for her effort, she had no team coaching and inspiring her to win, and not a sponsor or charity in sight to claim a victory for. I found the sheer power of “I can do this thing” drives the story step by step, page by page. A solo travel memoir reveals gold nuggets when the author puts us on the road with them, equally feeling the need to complete the mission.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
Bryson makes us all laugh. His years in England baked in a dry, straight-man humor to complement his midwestern goofiness, and brings home a basket of laughter in every chapter. From the pithy title of the book (for such an ominous adventure) through a fabulous story of endurance, his need to walk 2,100 miles is often questioned internally without a quality answer. “Because it is there” is a sentiment for those with a screw loose, and one I resonate with and deeply admire.
From the author of "Notes from a Small Island" and "The Lost Continent" comes this humorous report on his walk along the Appalachian Trail. The Trail covers 14 states and over 2000 miles, and stretches along the east coast of America from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. It is famous for being the longest continuous footpath in the world. It snakes through some of the wildest and most specactular landscapes in America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas.
Blunt and perturbed, Heller’s inspirational tale astonishes and delights with laughter in this cringeworthy and vulnerable novel that will have you rereading passages with a lump in your gut. One of my most powerful reads in years, The Dog Starsreminds us of the fragile society we live in, and how it all could change with marshal law survival at stake. Trust no one, leave no trace, and fly the airplane like your life truly depends on it. As a professional pilot, I found the aviation scenes accurate and believable, even with a dropped jaw of disbelief through the tough passages. Heller’s unique prose is like nothing I’ve read before or after; a style that says so much with so few words.
THE ROAD - but with hope. Hig, bereaved and traumatised after global disaster, has three things to live for - his dog Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour, and his Cessna aeroplane. He's just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys, and saves his remaining fuel. But, just once, he picks up a message from another pilot, and eventually the temptation to find out who else is still alive becomes irresistible. So he takes his plane over the horizon, knowing that he won't have enough fuel to get back. What follows is scarier…
Amazing true adventures are the heart and soul of memoir. As Jimmy Buffet and his crew plan a seaplane adventure to celebrate his 50th birthday down Latin America, across to Colombia, and further into the Caribbean, I was ready to read the depth of stories the likes of which might inspire so many of my favorite songs. The adventure was lost on me when he followed the seaplane by jet, meeting the crew in Costa Rica. Further south, they ran into “trouble in Cartagena.” As a boat captain and pilot with Colombian pirate experience, I was looking for stories of real, relatable trouble. Good stories, but the grit I was looking for from a Jimmy Buffet adventure wasn’t there.
For the millions of fans of Jimmy Buffett's music as well as his bestselling books, Tales From Margaritaville and Where Is Joe Merchant?, here is the ultimate Jimmy Buffett philosophy on life and how to live it. As hard as it is to believe, the irrepressible Jimmy Buffett has hit the half-century mark and, in A PIRATE LOOKS AT 50, he brings us along on the remarkable journey which he took through the Southern hemisphere to celebrate this landmark birthday.
Jimmy takes us from the legendary pirate coves of the Florida Keys to the ruins of ancient Cartegena. Along the…
Gladwell observes coherent insights and delivers answers as to what made an extraordinarily successful person. Outliers, as I now understand them, are not entirely self-made, but the product of a few lucky circumstances, ethnicity, genetics, family background, and breaks combined with 10,000 hours of practice and hard work in their field. My perceptions of success and being successful have changed. If you work that hard at anything, I believe the luck and the breaks will ultimately find their way to your door.
In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Regarded by many as the most gifted and influential author and journalist in America today, Gladwell has the rare ability to connect with audiences of tremendously varied interests. There are over 10 million copies of his books in print. Now, Gladwell's landmark investigations into the world around us are collected together for the first time. Beautifully repackaged and redesigned, with newly added illustrations throughout each book, COLLECTED is a perfect treasury of prose…
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
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