Re: [Paddlewise] Book suggestions, please

Sid wrote in response to a post by Susan about good books:
>Try Chris Duff's On Celtic Tides books.  You can find an except by going to
>members.aol.com/kayaktours and following the link to the Millenium Trip.  I
>have not completed the book but am finding it interesting reading.

I'm almost all the way through "On Celtic Tides". I just did a short review
of it for Wavelength Magazine (even though I wasn't finished). Sea Kayaker
Mag. has just reviewed it as well. I'm getting bogged down in it a bit. I
love the way Chris can put into words, feelings that we all have out on the
sea or as we interact with the land-sea interface. He does manage to avoid
grounding on the reefs of taxing, muddled prose that some adventure writers
have a hard time navigating around (such as in God Forsaken Sea). However,
Chris spent a lot of time "in his head" on the trip, and it makes his story
a little unbalanced and hard to plow through at times. Don't get me wrong,
it is a great book and a lot less dry than some of Paul Caffyn's books. You
just need to be in the right mood to read it.  

This brings up a interesting question for me. A friend of mine is writing a
book about sea kayaking adventures on the west coast of Vancouver Island
(many of the trips I was with him). He hasn't asked me for input, but I'd
like him to achieve a nice balance between expressing the inner joys of his
discoveries and journeys as well as the descriptive "travel log" part of
the writing. He can be kind of dry at times. (he does have a great article
in the latest issue of SK Mag called "My Deck, Your Deck" about easier
assisted rescues we teachat our club in Victoria - everybody should read
and practice the technique). As readers, do we paddlers want good balanced
reading, or should a person tell their story in the exact way they want to,
and forget about any consensus?

I've read articles by some of the Paddlewisers, here and there, in a number
of publications. Arthur Ehbert did a great job in an SK article about is
crossing of the Gulf of Mexico. Some of my friends felt the article was
overly macho. I didn't think so, and if it was, he probably should be
allowed to tell the story from his perspective, because what he wrote was
what he was feeling - not what someone else was. Some of Don Diamonds stuff
is a bit too straight forward (but then he crossed all the Great Lakes at
their geographical center, and crossings are kind of, er, "straight
forward"). So, should I offer my friend some opinions, or just let him be?
Just thinking out loud, I guess.

PS PW'er, Kevin Whilden, has a great article out on tides and GPS use. One
of the best SK technical articles I've read in a long, long time.

PPS A Boat in our Baggage: Around the World with a Kayak  by Maria Coffey
is a great read. She is a local Vancouver Island paddler. She also has a
book out about her husband who died on Everest attempting the ascent
without oxygen due to certain pressures inherent in the buisness. I can't
recall the name of the book, unfortunately. 


BC'in Ya
Doug Lloyd  
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