Book reports
Mar. 12th, 2012 10:37 pmI recently read Collen Mondor's The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska, which caught my eye for two reasons: one, come on, that title is definitely arresting, and two, I will read practically anything about Alaska, and especially about bush flying. I blame Northern Exposure.
I would like to recommend this book, which is a memoir of the author's time working for a bush commuter/freight company in the 1990s, sprinkled with bits about the history of aviation in Alaska and what appears to be information from her graduate thesis on causes of aviation incidents in the bush. Unfortunately, the style didn't really work for me. It's too precious, too purposefully broken and incomplete, and overly-reflective without really giving enough information for the audience to join her in her reflection. I also didn't care for her conceit of pretending the pilots she worked with (and I assume interviewed for the book) and she were sitting around a table chatting about the events she was recounting in long, perfectly-formed sentences with just the right amount of slang, that no one except a character in a book would ever say.
However, there was one section that I found very affecting. It has nothing to do with flying, but it's perhaps the best part of the book, if in an awful way. Under the cut for length and subject matter (suicide): ( This will always be the saddest flying story I ever heard. )
I also read Fried Green Tomatoes recently, and it was a lot of fun. I've never seen the movie, so I went into it blind. I actually found myself just a smidge more interested in the scenes with Evelyn and Ninny in 1985 than the bulk of the narrative, if only because it seemed to spread the urban south of my childhood open for me to see again in the details Flagg chose to include, such as Evelyn shopping at a Piggly-Wiggly or the Tennessee-Alabama football game being on TV in the background of a scene.* The bulk of the story, set in the 1930s and a few years surrounding it, was also really good. I love stories about tiny, quirky communities and the weird people who live in them, so this was right up my alley. Idgie was fabulous. And there was canon femslash! I was not expecting that at all, but it was a happy surprise.
* Well, okay, not that football was ever on the TV when I was a kid or now, but trust me, UT football talk is always in the air out in public.
I would like to recommend this book, which is a memoir of the author's time working for a bush commuter/freight company in the 1990s, sprinkled with bits about the history of aviation in Alaska and what appears to be information from her graduate thesis on causes of aviation incidents in the bush. Unfortunately, the style didn't really work for me. It's too precious, too purposefully broken and incomplete, and overly-reflective without really giving enough information for the audience to join her in her reflection. I also didn't care for her conceit of pretending the pilots she worked with (and I assume interviewed for the book) and she were sitting around a table chatting about the events she was recounting in long, perfectly-formed sentences with just the right amount of slang, that no one except a character in a book would ever say.
However, there was one section that I found very affecting. It has nothing to do with flying, but it's perhaps the best part of the book, if in an awful way. Under the cut for length and subject matter (suicide): ( This will always be the saddest flying story I ever heard. )
I also read Fried Green Tomatoes recently, and it was a lot of fun. I've never seen the movie, so I went into it blind. I actually found myself just a smidge more interested in the scenes with Evelyn and Ninny in 1985 than the bulk of the narrative, if only because it seemed to spread the urban south of my childhood open for me to see again in the details Flagg chose to include, such as Evelyn shopping at a Piggly-Wiggly or the Tennessee-Alabama football game being on TV in the background of a scene.* The bulk of the story, set in the 1930s and a few years surrounding it, was also really good. I love stories about tiny, quirky communities and the weird people who live in them, so this was right up my alley. Idgie was fabulous. And there was canon femslash! I was not expecting that at all, but it was a happy surprise.
* Well, okay, not that football was ever on the TV when I was a kid or now, but trust me, UT football talk is always in the air out in public.
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