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Title: Swimming to Antarctica : Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer by Lynne Cox ISBN: 0-375-41507-6 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 13 January, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.89 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: What an athlete! What a person!
Comment: I have to say that I'm a pretty cynical person, but this book actually changed the way I look at certain aspects of life. Lynne has a strong personal philosophy that guides her actions and interactions. She tries to make things better than they are. She succeeds. Her athletic adventures read like a series of thrilling short stories. When I try to describe this book to friends, I always find myself saying: "You just won't believe what this woman has accomplished!"
Rating: 5
Summary: I've never been so cold!
Comment: Lynne is not only an incredibly disciplined and inspired athlete but an equally adept story teller. As a swimmer, who has never introduced myself to the outer limits Lynne does, I am thoroughly caught up in the thrill of her adventures. She gently reminds each of us that we need to take our talents and exploit them no matter how daunting that may appear.
Rating: 5
Summary: Lynne Cox and Peter Hillary a winning combination
Comment: I took Amazon's ``better together'' advice and bought both Lynne Cox's ``Swimming to Antarctica'' and Peter Hillary's ``In The Ghost Country'' -- and I'm absolutely thrilled that I did. It was a very canny pairing, Amazon. On the face of it, they're about similar endeavours, extreme adventure and loneliness -- and while they are both inspiring (perhaps Cox has the slight edge here for creating a golden glow because her story is less marred by tragedies) and deeply moving (where Hillary has the edge) they're very different books. What's interesting is they were both fated from a young age to follow their terrible, wonderful, maddening bliss.
Cox, the long distance swimmer with heroic bona fides, starts her story in the pool as a young girl, and everyone in the squad wanting to get out of the water because it's too cold. There is a Readers Digest feel to the writing that turns more poetic and arresting when she gets into deeper and darker waters. It's a very easy read, a comfortable page turner, and you're rooting for her all the way -- although in the end, after taking us along on these rollercoasting marathons, and being a generous tour guide, Cox remains heroically removed from us. It's like she constantly wears a layer of fat to keep her emotionally dry underneath, while remaining chatty, candid and generally very likeable rather than wholly intimate. For the reader, the deeper insights come after putting the book down, and letting its cumulative power soak through.
Where Cox throws herself into churning immensities, Peter Hillary followed in the footsteps of his legendary father Sir Edmund Hillary to the top of the world (and as a climber, if not as a figure of history, has eclipsed his father with the sheer scope and range of his adventures). The boy Peter first saw Mount Everest when he was seven years old. He was on a rope on a snowy slope with his father when he was 10 years old. And while Sir Edmund hoped Peter would go to college and become a scientist, his son committed to a life on the edge very early on. In high-altutude terms this means living and struggling and striving in a state of near death. And this is something Hillary makes clear in a way I hadn't previously understood. That these guys are literally dying -- walking corpses -- as they make for the summit.
By the time Hillary set out to walk to the South Pole at the age of 44, he had in his mind a horrific roll call of the dead, including his mother and sister, many great friends. On his South Pole trip, with no companionship, and with the brain-washing effects of a blank white landscape, Hillary's dead friends rise up to keep him company. While he's spent years avoiding thinking about them too much, he's now glad to see them. And that's how this extraordinary memoir is structured: as visitations from the dead on the march to the bottom of the world. Where Lynne Cox has her transcendental momnents (well placed and just so), Hillary's book (co-authored with a journalist poet named John Elder) is very beautifully written from page one. And it needs to be, to make tangible Hillary's hauntings.
Two great achievments, and heartiest congratulations to Lynne Cox and Peter Hillary (and Elder).
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Title: In the Ghost Country : A Lifetime Spent on the Edge by Peter Hillary, John Elder ISBN: 0743243692 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 14 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: By a Fraction of a Second by Lois Ruskai Melina ISBN: 0964778238 Publisher: Sports Publications Inc. Pub. Date: 07 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Open Water Swimming by Penny Lee Dean ISBN: 0880117044 Publisher: Human Kinetics Pub Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson ISBN: 0060730552 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance by Kenneth Kamler ISBN: 0312280777 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 20 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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