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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
Really surprised by this one! Read for a work book club, not something I would have picked up on my own, but I really enjoyed it.
I had such complaints about Circling the Sun with regards to feeling let down about the lack of her as a pilot when that is how the book is sold. While this biography tells some of her background there is so much more flying. And no scandalous relationships. And it is just as fascinating (Maybe even more so). If you read Circling the Sun read this too. You will get a more well rounded story.
Witty, profound, astounding, and - above all - shockingly underappreciated. Simply beyond description.
Certainly something that would need a full-blown bloody essay to review its humble genius.
Certainly something that would need a full-blown bloody essay to review its humble genius.
This is not the finest book ever written, but I loved it. Markham's passion for experience, and her ability to reflect on herself and her surroundings are delightful. The book, unsurprisingly, does not examine too closely the colonialism, racism, and sexism that are more or less the structure that in many ways defined the life memorialized here. But the writing is, in the main, delightful, and the author an inspiration. If colonial Africa is romanticized, and it is, the one doing the romanticizing is also the one with the lion scars, the one who left her last parent at 17 in British East Africa with little more than a horse to her name, the one who flew miles and miles over Africa when the hope of help in case of trouble was only the slimmest of hopes. I'd be interested to hear her take today, with another 80 years of social progress, but I am delighted to be able to soak in her account of her youth as she recalled it from the nearer distance of the 1940s.
I'm not much into horses or planes, but I really enjoyed reading about Beryl Markham's life. It is quite something to grow up as a white girl in Kenya, go hunting with the natives as a child, be a horse trainer and incredible flyer when you're in your late teens and early twenties, and all that as a woman in the early decades of the 20th century.
I'm not sure why I wasn't expecting much from this book but it was really excellent. Even Ernest Hemingway gave it lofty praise. It was on the 'suggested reading list' for Kenya.
This is the memoir of an amazing woman, Beryl Markham, pioneer, successful horse trainer and crackerjack aviatrix. She was the first person to fly non-stop (solo) from Great Britain to North America in 1936. The memoir (drafted in 1942) is beautifully written. She recounts her days in the wilds of Kenya (then British East Africa) where she was raised during the early 20th century. Each chapter tells another interesting story about her fascinating life, the people she met (including boisterous ex-pats), the prideful natives she worked with and the untouched wilderness that she got to explore.
Having already read the fictional account of her life in 'Circling the Sun' (which I enjoyed), I felt it only right to read her actual memoir.
On learning to fly:
"We began at the first hour of the morning. We began when the sky was clean and ready for the sun and you could see your breath and smell traces of the night. We began every morning at the same hour in what we were pleased to call the Nairobi Aerodrome, climbing away from it with derisive clamour, while the burghers of the town twitched in their beds and dreamed perhaps of all unpleasant things that drone - of wings and stings and corridors of Bedlam."
On flying:
"One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day this will be an airborne life. But by then men will have forgotten how to fly; they will be passengers on machines whose conductors are carefully promoted to a familiarity with labelled buttons, and in whose minds knowledge of the sky and the wind and the way of weather will be extraneous as passing fiction."
On Elephants:
"Elephants, beyond the fact that their size and conformation are aesthetically more suited to the treading of this earth than our angular informity, have an average intelligence comparable to our own. Of course they are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves -- nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin's lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it. This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets -- and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other."
On getting stuck in Italian territory under Mussolini (this made me laugh):
"I sometimes think it must be extremely difficult for the Italian people to remain patient in the face of their armies' unwavering record of defeat (they look so resplendent on parade). But there is little complaint...However futile the Italian military, there is real striking power behind the rubber stamps of Italian officials...There is no hell like uncertainty, and no greater menace to society than an Italian with three liras worth of authority"
On a drunken night with friends:
"At some bar...there began a historic session of comradely tippling and verbose good-fellowship which dissolved Time and reduced Space to an anteroom. On the table between these good companions the whole of history was dissected and it's moldy carcass borne away in an empty ice bucket. International problems were solved in a word, and the direction of Fate forseen through the crystal windows of two upturned goblets"
On leaving Africa:
"Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change but a land of moods and it's moods are numberless. It is not fickle but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradled not only cities but civilizations - and seen them die, and seen new ones born again - Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom."
The elephant hunting is a bit depressing but the moral compass of those times was unfortunately different. A nicely written memoir with flowing narrative and well organized...
I'm looking forward to Kenya...
This is the memoir of an amazing woman, Beryl Markham, pioneer, successful horse trainer and crackerjack aviatrix. She was the first person to fly non-stop (solo) from Great Britain to North America in 1936. The memoir (drafted in 1942) is beautifully written. She recounts her days in the wilds of Kenya (then British East Africa) where she was raised during the early 20th century. Each chapter tells another interesting story about her fascinating life, the people she met (including boisterous ex-pats), the prideful natives she worked with and the untouched wilderness that she got to explore.
Having already read the fictional account of her life in 'Circling the Sun' (which I enjoyed), I felt it only right to read her actual memoir.
On learning to fly:
"We began at the first hour of the morning. We began when the sky was clean and ready for the sun and you could see your breath and smell traces of the night. We began every morning at the same hour in what we were pleased to call the Nairobi Aerodrome, climbing away from it with derisive clamour, while the burghers of the town twitched in their beds and dreamed perhaps of all unpleasant things that drone - of wings and stings and corridors of Bedlam."
On flying:
"One day the stars will be as familiar to each man as the landmarks, the curves, and the hills on the road that leads to his door, and one day this will be an airborne life. But by then men will have forgotten how to fly; they will be passengers on machines whose conductors are carefully promoted to a familiarity with labelled buttons, and in whose minds knowledge of the sky and the wind and the way of weather will be extraneous as passing fiction."
On Elephants:
"Elephants, beyond the fact that their size and conformation are aesthetically more suited to the treading of this earth than our angular informity, have an average intelligence comparable to our own. Of course they are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves -- nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin's lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it. This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets -- and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other."
On getting stuck in Italian territory under Mussolini (this made me laugh):
"I sometimes think it must be extremely difficult for the Italian people to remain patient in the face of their armies' unwavering record of defeat (they look so resplendent on parade). But there is little complaint...However futile the Italian military, there is real striking power behind the rubber stamps of Italian officials...There is no hell like uncertainty, and no greater menace to society than an Italian with three liras worth of authority"
On a drunken night with friends:
"At some bar...there began a historic session of comradely tippling and verbose good-fellowship which dissolved Time and reduced Space to an anteroom. On the table between these good companions the whole of history was dissected and it's moldy carcass borne away in an empty ice bucket. International problems were solved in a word, and the direction of Fate forseen through the crystal windows of two upturned goblets"
On leaving Africa:
"Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change but a land of moods and it's moods are numberless. It is not fickle but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradled not only cities but civilizations - and seen them die, and seen new ones born again - Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom."
The elephant hunting is a bit depressing but the moral compass of those times was unfortunately different. A nicely written memoir with flowing narrative and well organized...
I'm looking forward to Kenya...
Bought this book on impulse at Half-Price Books because I was thrilled to find a book about a woman pilot that wasn't Amelia Earhart, scattered among the many biographies of Lindbergh, the Wright Brothers and other famous male pilots. Don't get me wrong, I love Amelia Earhart, but there are so many more kick-ass women pilots out in history that we never hear about. Beryl Markham is one of them. Her prose reminds me of Hemingway and I can see why he enjoyed her work a lot. There are definitely some quotes that will knock around in my brain for a while.
This is worth a read. It took me a little longer than usual to get through it, but it was a good read to just knock out a chapter or two at a time. I would love to see a full biography on her; her life is incredibly interesting.
This is worth a read. It took me a little longer than usual to get through it, but it was a good read to just knock out a chapter or two at a time. I would love to see a full biography on her; her life is incredibly interesting.