O'Harass someone else!

In keeping with the impatient streak in my personality, I’m reviewing this book before I’ve even reached halfway. I absolutely recommend it to anyone. It is an adventure, a true story, well told and well written, and with good details and pacing. The book: Running the Amazon: The story of the only expedition ever to travel the full length of the Amazon river, from its source high in the Andes to its union with the Atlantic Ocean by Joe Kane.

I’m not sure if the blurb after the title is actually the subtitle or if it’s a blurb to summarise the book. It does seem like a long subtitle, I probably would have done something more like Running the Amazon: From the tip of the tail through the guts the wrong way and out the gaping mouth.

I never thought of it this way, but, in rivers slop is running from tail to mouth and in most animals slop progresses from mouth to the base of the tail. Vewwy intewesting.

Anyway the author does a great job giving enough backstory to grab us and make us wonder what will happen to them as they set out. He helps us understand the magnitude of the situation, but also makes the expedition quite real by narrating the various landscape, towns, and people they encounter.

When I was a kid, I almost never considered non-fiction. I wonder if it bordered too much on a school assignment / history book / chemistry book vibe.  Not only have I learned since then that there was a point to making us read all those facts and figures, I have also learned that those facts and figures can be interesting. I also learned that real life isn’t all that boring to read (or write for that matter) about.

This is totally off the topic:

It would be 2 days ago now, on Tuesday I was on the train, and happened to have my hearing aids going, which isn’t all that often, I’m preserving what little hearing I can wring from my cochs each day, anyway - the last leg of the trip I’m pretty sure the announcer had been assimilated.