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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
I did not get this book finished in time for the discussion and didn't enjoy it enough to continue reading. However, it was good to learn there there were other women aviators than Amelia Earhart.
Amazing read. Some of the most beautiful sentences ever. Fab to read on or just after safari.
Hands down, the best memoir I've ever read. Markham epitomized courage, launching into pioneering endeavors as a matter of course, as if living on the edge was, for her, pre-ordained. She was mauled by a lion as a girl, and it's as if she was thus marked for greatness - her sympathy for the lion serving as proof.
A good companion read for this book would be Saint-Exupéry's NIGHT FLIGHT or WIND, SAND AND STARS. The early pilots were a breed apart, contemplating the essence of life as they hurtled across the heavens, often unsure of what awaited them below.
A good companion read for this book would be Saint-Exupéry's NIGHT FLIGHT or WIND, SAND AND STARS. The early pilots were a breed apart, contemplating the essence of life as they hurtled across the heavens, often unsure of what awaited them below.
Wonderful narrative, impressive, amazing, remarkable life story albeit truncated.
This book was an interesting memoir that I enjoyed thoroughly. Beryl Markham was a "first woman" at many things, but she doesn't really focus on that or even act like it's something out of the ordinary. And the things she saw were so captivating or odd that I just kept listening.
I would have never picked this memoir of pilot Beryl Markham on my own, but I thoroughly enjoyed her stories of lions, horses, dogs, elephants and a host of British colonial and native people she encountered during her upbringing in Kenya in the 1930s.
A very well written account of one woman's extraordinary life - from growing up in the African wilderness to raising racehorses to flying planes across that same wilderness and beyond, one could never say Beryl Markham's life was dull. It almost makes the book, how she describes and writes the events she's lived through with nonchalance - not the kind to where she would seem stuck up, but the kind that shows such deeds are entirely possible. The book is mostly divided chronologically into different stories of her adventures, and in this format it works so well. Definitely recommend to anyone interested in the Africa of the early 20th century (even though it is a colonized view of Africa, it still works), inspiring women or exactly how flying works. In relation, I would love to now read an account of this era by a native African, without the social views of the Western world.
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
I've read Beryl Markham's memoir "West with the Night" a few times and it never disappoints. If you're looking for fierce women who broke through the gender barriers set up in their generation, Markham has to be high on the list. She raised and raced horses in Africa she was barely out of her teens, then learned to fly and became the first woman to cross the North Atlantic (though she crash landed before reaching her goal of New York.)
The book is beautifully written and segues nicely between the different periods of her life. I was interested to learn that she was friend with Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dineson) who she must have tortured by sleeping with Denys Finch-Hatton and spending so much time on safari's with Karen's ex-husband (in what at least appears to have been an affair from the outside.)
At any rate, Markham was fascinating lady who wrote a fascinating book.
The book is beautifully written and segues nicely between the different periods of her life. I was interested to learn that she was friend with Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dineson) who she must have tortured by sleeping with Denys Finch-Hatton and spending so much time on safari's with Karen's ex-husband (in what at least appears to have been an affair from the outside.)
At any rate, Markham was fascinating lady who wrote a fascinating book.