1 comments about Good Beer Guide West Coast USA: Including Las Vegas, Alaska and Hawaii (Good Beer Guides).

1. I run a small brewing web site (BS Brewing: the Champagne of Blogs) and consider myself extremely knowledgeable about Portland's brewing scene, and couldn't believe two Britons could nail it so soundly. Just about everything you could possibly want to know about Oregon beer is in this book, and I haven't even sampled the other states (Alaska, Hawaii, Las Vegas, California, Washington ...) yet. Sharp, witty writing with great background stories (the McMenamins empire, the Horse Brass, Bridgeport and Widmer) and very current reviews (Hopworks Urban Brewery).
   
   Sadly, a few favorites are missing, including the Green Dragon and Produce Row, but everything else you could want to know about beer in Portland is here. HIGHLY recommended.

5 comments about The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska's Arctic Wilderness.

1. This story grips you like an Arctic winter. It is hard to put down as Heimo Korth lives a storybook life subsisting 28 years in back country of Alaska as a trapper and frontiersman. James Campbell takes you through Heimo and his family's incredible story. If you have any sense of life outdoors or appreciation for living off the land, this award winning book is for you.
   
   Heimo and his family did it their way and Campbell's book celebrates their courage, difficulties and successes.



2. It is hard for me to realize that Heimo and his family live even today in the manner in which they live.The hardships they overcome daily as part of their everyday living shows the will that some people have and develop.I recommend this book highly and it has also made me realize that I am not so tough as I thought I was.



3. Really painted a good picture of what life was like living in the cold Alaskan wilderness.



4. There are not very many people I would like to meet, but Heimo and his family are at the top of my list. Fantastic story of some extraordinary folks.



5. The Final Frontiersman is the true account of the wilderness life of Heimo Korth and his family. Heimo grew up in Wisconsin but followed a dream to live in the bush in Alaska. Heimo is a "successful" subsistence trapper and hunter in the ANWR where you can freeze at -55 in the winter and the clouds of mosquitoes torment you in the short summer. The sun disappears for over a month in the winter and there is no night in summer. Heimo and his family spend most of the year in the bush where their nearest neighbor is more than a hundred miles away--human neighbor that is; bears, wolves, wolverines, caribou, and many other kinds of animals abound. Heimo is successful in the sense that he and his family survive, all except one. Theirs is a tough life, and Heimo is a tough but likable character.
   
   I enjoyed reading this book. The author, Heimo's cousin, has a direct, clear writing style and a good sense of pacing. The story reminded me in some ways of The Big House by George Colt: "Here is the story of my (extended) family and all my weird relatives" and like The Big House this book could have used extensive editing. We get too much detail about Heimo and his brood, who in fact are not really all that weird or exceptional after all.
   
   The author presents this work as a meditation on the meaning of wilderness and a vital but disappearing American way of life, but he never manages to infuse these issues of wilderness and the struggle to survive with a sense of metaphysical profundity. Heimo's work and life all come off as somewhat mundane, if exceptionally lonely and uncomfortable; even deprived and brutal (Heimo kills large numbers of furbearing animals for a living). In the end, the author failed to communicate why Heimo would choose such a life, or what about it is attractive. I got the sense that neither the author, nor Heimo's family, nor Heimo himself understand Heimo. He remains a discomforting enigma.
   
   Like The Big House, The Final Frontiersman is most interesting as an exploration of family and what it means to be involved in this most natural and troubling human institution.

5 comments about Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings.

1. Let me see if I can write a review that does justice to this book and at the same time explain to myself why it is such a great piece of literature.
   
   I think the first point to make is that the writing mirrors the, by turns, eddying, chaotic, reflective quality of the sea itself, leading one deeper and deeper into the author's own meandering introspections about life and, yes, water in a very (to this reader anyway) seductive style, a style which is nothing if not allusive, reflecting Raban's own lifelong fascination with and profound love of literature. The account of Captain Vancouver's voyage along this same passage, taken from many sources, while certainly the most superficially parallel and certainly the most discursively ongoing of the allusions, is not in the end, the most significant and profound. That award must surely go to Raban's recounting of Shelley's last days and ultimate demise in the chapter entitled "Charred Remains", striking a parallel, in a much more profound manner than those accounts of Vancouver's voyage, to the last days and death of Raban's father and to the unsurpassed final chapter in which he invokes Cowper's "The Cast-Away" as a metaphor for his crumbling marriage and his own mortality.
   
   Perhaps one, like Raban, has to already have a love of and familiarity both these poets to see what a feat he has pulled of here - though Raban provides the basic biographical background for each. To stick with the last chapter---Cowper isn't a poet much read anymore. But he's always been one of my favourites. One really has to be familiar with his intensely unbalanced life and mind to fully appreciate his poetry. In any event, by this last chapter of the book, we know what it's like to walk in Raban's shoes, to be in his boat, to wander through his mind and heart and to know how much he loves his family. When the hammer falls at the end with his wife and daughter deplaning in Juneau, we feel how crushed he is by it. And Cowper's "The Cast-Away" is the perfect poetic expression of the way we feel he feels, drowned not by the "real" sea he's been traversing, but by Cowper's metaphoric sea of despair. I frequently return to Cowper's "The Task"-A poem given him as a sort of assignment to ward off one of his mental fits-as well as "The Cast-Away" as two of the greatest poems in the language. I NEVER thought I'd see a modern author apparently effortlessly bring the despair of the all but forgotten poet back to life, but......Raban does.
   
   So, yes, readers looking for a "sea adventure" yarn had better look elsewhere. How to know if you will fancy the book? Do you love history, English literature, introspective depths? Above all, do you know the feeling of being drowned by despair? Can you relate to Cowper's couplet?
   
   "But I, beneath a rougher sea,
   And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he."
   
   In short, do you know that INNER Sea? If so, this book will not disappoint.



2. I've read many of Mr Raban's books and loved them all but this is my favorite. This isn't just a "travel" book, it's the history of the beautiful Inside Passage. You really feel like you are on Mr Raban's boat as he travels from Seattle, where he lives, to Juneau. He recounts the history of all the travellers who went before him - how certain Sounds and Inlets got their names - tells you about the people he meets - the things he sees - and shares a little piece of his own life history as he travels. During this journey he deals with the death of his Father and his upcoming divorce from his wife. He is a master storyteller. I live on the Puget Sound and have scuba dived up and down this Passage - this book brings the whole area to life. If you haven't enjoyed Mr Raban's prose before now, start here. You'll be hooked.



3. I tend to ignore author Raban's political diatribes (most of his writing, unfortunately) and revel in the beauty of his books about his personal boat journeys. I had earlier read "Old Glory: A Voyage Down The Mississippi" and felt that it lost focus about halfway through the narrative. That book seemed to reflect the desperate lack of focus and national malaise that the Carter administration brought on in the late 70's, and "Old Glory" would not be a Raban book I'd recommend.
   
   However, Passage to Juneau is different. His solo journey by sailboat from Seattle to Juneau in the late 1990s is beautifully written with haunting scenes of his personal life interspersed with his musings on the sea. During the journey, his father dies and his wife demands a separation, the first personal tragedy giving Raban insight into his personal feelings about life and the sea, the second (at the midpoint of his journey, reaching Juneau) causing him to focus inward for the return trip to Seattle.
   
   Despite his occasional lapses towards anti-americanism (throughout the book I kept wondering why he didn't move back to England or at least move north to British Columbia), Passage to Juneau is an intimate portrait of a man who is facing life's trials and the vagaries of some of the more treacherous seas in the world at the same time.



4. Raban deftly weaves George Vancouver's expedition with his own journey up North America's West Coast two centuries later.
   
   Introspective and heartfelt, the book is in parts auto-biography, travel-guide and biography. As a Passage to Juneau unwinds, Raban describes situations and others with great perception, yet is never afraid to expose his own frailties.
   
   Passage to Juneau is beautifully written and explores Raban's thoughts every bit as much as the miles of water he covers. A tremendous book and fully deserving of the great praise it has received.



5. The best thing about this book is that it tells you what _else_ to read if you really want to learn about the history and culture of the Inside Passage. The worst thing about the book is that Raban's ego, maybe buoyed by the success of Bad Land, is out of control. Bad Land is a great book about a place. Passage to Juneau is half about the place, half about Raban and what an untamable nomad (but somehow a devoted father) he is, and neither is particularly satisfactory.

2 comments about Alaska Birds (Pocket Naturalist - Waterford Press).

1. I have several of these for my class. Great for bird identification for kids!



2. This is a decent field guide for quick reference. But there is only one example for each species and the birds are in their breeding plumage. Good if you are in Alaska during the spring time and only looking for one gender.

1 comments about Alaska: Tales of Adventure from the Last Frontier.

1. I have read all the books S. Walker has published to date and this one is not worth the time and/or effort. Save your money and go to a movie.

5 comments about Looking for Alaska.

1. The most remarkable thing about Peter Jenkins is how he got so many "real" Alaskans, often a highly reclusive lot, to open up to him and tell their life stories. Granted, his residual fame as the author of "Walking Across America" opened a number of doors for him, but very few people could, for example, trustingly follow a bush veterinarian and his family to the shores of frozen Chandalar Lake, fit in with them so well and paint such a vivid, affecting portrait of their lives. Mr. Jenkins is not only a good storyteller, but he also is a quite extraordinary collector of stories, due to this sense of trust that he seems to engender with his subjects.
   In a genre rife with either "carpetbagger" authors who don't really get Alaska, or with indigenous writers lacking top-notch skills, Mr. Jenkins finds an effective middle ground. He did actually reside in Alaska for a time, and tried to live as the locals did, so he at the very least scratched the surface of what the place is all about. And, while he made a few silly factual mistakes, and his prose is not the most sparkling I've ever seen (I actually think that his daughter Rebeccah is the more lively and interesting writer), he is nonetheless effective in communicating the stories of those Alaskans whom he genuinely admires. Another five years or so up North, and I think he'd have truly gotten it right.



2. I have thus far reviewed more than 100 books. Of the 112, this is only the third audible book review I have thus far posted. That should tell you this book is special - it joins my review of Stephen King's On Writing and T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom as the best in its class. At surfreviewandreport dot com I will name this book as the 2006 Audio Book Extraordinaire - Bill Anderson.
   
   Initially I found the monotone a bit of an annoyance. I wondered, "Why didn't he inject some emotion?"
   
   Later I figured out why. Peter Jenkins correctly chose to have his words, not his voice, emphasize the the beauty and freedom that once predominated America and now exists only in Alaska.
   
   I found his inclusion of brief statements by those whom he visited and of the honey-rocket to add unimaginable value! A literal stroke of genius!
   
   Hobo Jim - I have been fortunate to listen to some of his music before. He reminds me of a cross between Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen and John Denver, seasoned with a dash of Arlo Guthrie and and of Phil Ochs. Aside from those guys and Sam Hinton, no other musician I have ever heard has made me so proud to be American nor more frustrated at how often each of us falls short of our potential to improve our world. Oh, but I digress. The little bit of Hobo Jim's live voisterous audience yodeling was far too short.
   
   I do have two serious complaints: This book is far too short. I could listen to six months of this adventure. Also, it needs more interviews and sounds of Alaska.
   
   Yes, the included audios of people and nature made this book my absolute all-time favorite audiobook. This book also is in my Top-10 list for books on Alaska and also for Adventures In The Far North, and it probably will be in my Top-10 Adventure Books list.
   
   I found myself swelling with pride to hear that people in Alaska live a lifestyle intent on the old values of people and nature without the trappings of prejudice and demands for conforming to other's expectations that permeated America during the 50s, 60s and 70s, yet that also does not vilify or censor those who are not politically correct.
   
   In other words, it seems Alaska is what America could have been if only we'd possessed the need for a honey-rocket and a rebellious Che-inspired balladeer who yodels and sings songs of heroism about guys named Redington.
   
   Confused? Get download the audiobook and get listening!



3. I read this book before a trip to Alaska, and admittedly, ours was only a small boat cruise in the inside passage, so I knew I would experience only a part of Alaska from a tourist's vantage point. I wanted a bigger view of this remarkable state and hoped Jenkins would deliver that in this account of his family's 18-month residence in the state. It did - most of the time. I felt Jenkins took me to places I would never be able to go and gave me a true sense of the state. His was a journey based on the day-to-day interactions, discoveries, struggles and surprises of one who intends to know a place and its people more deeply. Jenkins creates a vision of the landscape and the people, and in its richest moments, this book is almost as good as the real thing.
   
   But - it is too long (editing would have cured this), and poorly written (editing would have cured this as well). More than once, I puzzled over sentences that I wanted to correct. When speaking of the caretaker near a family living in the bush, we read this about the neighbor's disposition: "If the current one, Dave, was a bit grumpy one day, he'd try to tell Mike and Pete how to snow-machine the winter trail, except he'd never done it." Or this for example: " In the early morning, the kids' chores began. Eric wanted Mike and Pete to go across the lake about two miles. I went along to help; we were going to retrieve some doghouses to keep the team in."
   
   I am quite willing to labor over a complex but beautiful sentence to get at the essence, but his is just plain bad writing. Too many examples like this slow the pace and distract the reader. At 434 pages, strenuous editing could have achieved more with less.
   
   That aside, when Jenkins lets the landscape and the people speak for themselves, the reader gets a sense of the real Alaska. On the whole, I enjoyed it and felt it prepared me for the little bit of Alaska I was about to see. Just allow yourself enough time to wade through the verbal bush.



4. We've been to Alaska twice and are planning our third trip soon. This is an extraordinarily capturing and surprising place. Our trips there avoid the touristy cruise ship or resort hotel thus allowing us to stay in towns much like Jenkins did during his 18 months there. This style allows you to be with and enjoy Alaskan residents.
   
   What Jenkins did was is to involve himself far more deeply than our experiences and that made this book remarkable for us. I liked his writing style as it made for a comfortable read. Yes, there are errors, but they are few. What's memorable is that each of his chapters highlights some adventure or someone's personality. It's been some time since I finished it and yet I still think back on this work and recall much of it. Peter Jenkins left a series of images in my head that are going to be there for a long while. My only regret was that we missed Hobo Jim. An interesting guy (check out his web site). He will be on our agenda next trip.
   
   I'm on the Amazon site as I am ordering some copies for friends. Looking for Alaska is a terrific book and a must read for any of you with a sense of wonder for the wilderness. It is easy to not only tout Jenkins's book but Alaska as well. Destination and book are tops.



5. I am still in the process of reading this book but what I have read so far is really great. I am looking to travel to Alaska in 2009 and a travel consultant I have been talking to recommended that I read this book.
   
   The book really gives a great insight into the ordinary every day Alaskan lives which has just made me want to see Alaska even more.
   
   I recommend this book to anyone whether you want to see Alaska or not. It is just a great read.

2 comments about Hiking Alaska, 2nd: A Guide to Alaska's Greatest Hiking Adventures (State Hiking Series).

1. This is a great book with a great mix of hikes throughout the state. There is good balance of short and long as well as easy and more challenging hikes. It does not try to be exhaustive in its coverage, but gives you enough ideas to occupy your time in any area of the state. It should be useful to either a once in a lifetime tourists or a resident who has an opportunity to hike the different regions of the state.
   
   This was a great book in its first edition, this second edition takes a good design and makes it near perfect. The hike maps are superb, most hikes have elevation profiles, great reviews as well as all the important info you could need - distances, fees, maps, difficulty ratings...
   
   I've read a lot of Alaska hiking books and this one stands out as a state-wide guide for finding hikes to take. It is not the strongest guide to equipment or technique. But if you want a book to give you great suggestions for hikes, pick this one up.



2. My boyfriend and I purchased this book before our trip to Alaska and it was great. It provided very specific directions to various hikes and accurate descriptions as to the conditions of each trail and their overall difficulty. We only did 3 hikes in this book, but plan on using it when we return to Alaska...hopefully in the next year! The waterproof cover is an added bonus.
   
   Note: The book does NOT cover Denali, other than the few trails around the national park entrance.

1 comments about Frommer's Cruises & Ports of Call 2008: From U.S. & Canadian Home Ports to the Caribbean, Alaska, Hawaii & More (Frommer's Complete).

1. I found this book to be a valuable resource as I prepare for my first cruise. I'm sure I will refer to it again & again for any future cruises (which I hope are many!).

2 comments about Alaska's Southeast, 11th: Touring the Inside Passage (Alaska's Southeast).

1. Glad I took this on our Alaskan cruise. Very informative and worth the cost.



2. We took this book on our recent cruise to Alaska. What a great book to explain about the different ports. I carried this in my backpack and would reference it for places to eat and things to do while in various Alaska cities. This is a good guide to let you read about some places most tourist don't know about. It includes maps of the cities, description of things to do in each town, and some local merchants if you wish to shop or even set up a kayak trip for the day.
   I would highly recommend this book for anyone wanting a concise text on Alaska's inside passage. It has many good points on what to wear, what the temperature will be like, wildlife you may see, and best time of year to go.
   I plan on keeping mine for the next time we venture up north.

2 comments about Denali National Park Guide to Hiking, Photography & Camping.

1. This book is worth the entire price of the book if you just take in one piece of advice from the author - Get off the bus! The author gives over 40 options for getting off the bus and truly experiencing the park. There is a suggestion for every situation from a leisurely stroll to a back-breaking, multi-day, circuit around glaciers and passes. But don't forget that there are thousands of other options in the park that are beyond the scope of this book.
   
   Also, the author shares a lot of photography advice that is often as specific as which bus to catch and which side to sit on to improve your chances of getting the shots you want. In general, the photography advice is not overly technical, but his intimate knowledge gained over the years comes through well. All in all, a very good book.



2. Denali National Park is different from the majority of US parks, as most of the area has no developed trail system (as opposed to Yosemite or Olympic which have very well-established trails). You are encouraged to hike around and explore on your own, which can be a bit daunting. Hence, a lot of visitors stay on the shuttle buses, content to just watch the scenery flash by.
   
   Ike Waits brings your attention to how beautiful this park can be with just a bit of exploration off the bus stop. With the low-lying vegetation (most of the park is tundra, not forest), it is hard to get lost, and the rewards in terms of natural splendor and wildlife viewing grow exponentially.
   
   This book brings dozens of easy-to-understand trail areas and maps to the Denali visitor. Informative, well-researched, these descriptions come with a background of decades of hiking and exploring Denali. You couldn't be in better hands, so step off the bus and go explore the park!