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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
This book was a lot of fun. It started off a but slow and then had me laughing thinking it was pure fiction and left me wanting to go on my own adventure. Hit the spot
adventurous
funny
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
This was in part a 'read aloud' book and part a reading to myself book... either way, this book is fantastic. :)
This is a really quick read that I thoroughly enjoyed. The first half of the book is all about the author (an ex-trapper) trying to get together and train his team and it's absolutley hilarious. My boyfriend couldn't read in bed next to me because I kept laughing and disturbing him. As it got into the race, though, the book changes. There is still some funny stuff, but it really focuses on the trials and hardships of the race and the changes that overtake the author. Soul-searching, life-changing experiences and thoughts. He's a different person for having run it, has a different outlook on his dogs and life.
I don't know how I feel about the race as a whole, though. It's dangerous for man and beast, but, at least in the reading, his dogs seem to truly enjoy the experience.
I don't know how I feel about the race as a whole, though. It's dangerous for man and beast, but, at least in the reading, his dogs seem to truly enjoy the experience.
Great audio! About love, adventures and sledding with the 4 legged friends
My friend talked me into doing fantasy Iditarod this year (pick 4 mushers, they get the number of points as their finishing place, so 3rd place is worth 3 points, least number of combined points win, automatic win if you pick the 1st place finisher). Granted, we knew nothing much about the 2024 mushers besides their names.
So I started following the race results and news online (One musher had to dispatch with a moose that attacked the dogs) which led to me acting on a previous suggestion by another friend who knows I love reading about wolves, and dogs, and sports, to read this book. I couldn't find a copy, but I did find the audiobook... and this was a great retelling of one man's journey across the insanity of ice and snow that is the Iditarod.
It's a sports tale of endurance of love like no other and made following along with the 2024 Iditarod all more interesting.
By the way, my team was Amanda Otto, Wally Robinson, Anna Berington, and Bryce Mumford. His team was Jessie Holmes, Sean Williams, Lara Kittleson, and Isaac Teaford. You can look up the results and figure out who won our fantasy contest...
So I started following the race results and news online (One musher had to dispatch with a moose that attacked the dogs) which led to me acting on a previous suggestion by another friend who knows I love reading about wolves, and dogs, and sports, to read this book. I couldn't find a copy, but I did find the audiobook... and this was a great retelling of one man's journey across the insanity of ice and snow that is the Iditarod.
It's a sports tale of endurance of love like no other and made following along with the 2024 Iditarod all more interesting.
By the way, my team was Amanda Otto, Wally Robinson, Anna Berington, and Bryce Mumford. His team was Jessie Holmes, Sean Williams, Lara Kittleson, and Isaac Teaford. You can look up the results and figure out who won our fantasy contest...
The YA author Gary Paulsen writes of the chapter in his life where he was obsessed with running sled dogs and ran the Iditarod. He communicates exactly what kind of madness is required to run a 1000+ race from Anchorage to Nome. The madness involves transformation - transformation from human to dog. In the process of becoming dog, he trains dogs and is supported by his wife, Ruth. About Ruth: I'd like to know what kind of drugs she is on (and is she willing to share) to so calmly support her husband's antics with a warm mug of soup and an almost off-handed, "oh, you're back?" attitude when he shows up after being relentlessly attacked by skunks.
The book tracks his training, his amateurish rigs and almost fatal mistakes, and then takes the reader/listener along on the Iditarod with him. He communicates wonder at the landscape that is actively trying to kill him, and never takes himself too seriously. Paulsen, best known for YA wilderness classics like Hatchet, died in October 2021, which makes the end of this book all the more poignant. He is diagnosed with heart disease and has to give up dog racing. However, I read his wikipedia entry which says,
So I spent my time with Paulsen marveling at a full life, a person who embraced his animal nature as well as his creative urges, and enjoying the hearing about the fine madness of running the Iditarod from a great storyteller. This is my first book for the Ten Year Clear* and it was an almost perfect choice. Seasonally apt, I listened to Winterdance over the course of our first snowy weekend of the year. It took me a moment to remember why the Me of 2012 had added this and several other books about the running of the Iditarod on my TBR - we had traveled to Alaska in 2011 to celebrate my Mom's 70th birthday and I was nursing a sustained fascination with the landscape that I discovered on our trip. My mom is now 80, my fascination with Alaska as waned somewhat with the passage of time but I remain a lifelong lover of insane adventure narratives, and this book totally delivers that. It prompted me to pull out the photo album of that trip and to try to conjure up the memories of my then-small-children, my then-alive sister-in-law, my then-beardless husband, my then-more-vital mother. I settled on this idea for my reading project mostly as a way of just knocking down my TBR, but I hadn't expected for this to be a portal in time, to the time I went to Alaska and didn't want to leave its wonder behind.
Choosing this book also has the added bonus of freeing me from reading anything else about the Iditarod, so I am removing multiple other titles from my deep TBR, calling that chapter complete.
* The Ten Year Clear is my reading project for 2022. I have 80+ books on my TBR that were added 10 or more years ago. This year, I intend to either read or delete those books from my TBR as a way of embracing an if-not-now-then-when approach while also accepting that I cannot possibly read all the books on my TBR.
The book tracks his training, his amateurish rigs and almost fatal mistakes, and then takes the reader/listener along on the Iditarod with him. He communicates wonder at the landscape that is actively trying to kill him, and never takes himself too seriously. Paulsen, best known for YA wilderness classics like Hatchet, died in October 2021, which makes the end of this book all the more poignant. He is diagnosed with heart disease and has to give up dog racing. However, I read his wikipedia entry which says,
"In 1983, Paulsen entered the 1,150-mile (1,850 km) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and placed 41st[19] out of 54 finishers, with an official time of 17 days, 12 hours, 38 minutes, and 38 seconds. In 1990, suffering from heart disease, Paulsen decided to give up dog sledding, which he described as the most difficult decision he had ever made. Paulsen would spend more than a decade sailing the Pacific before getting back into dog sledding in 2003. According to his keynote speech on October 13, 2007, at the Sinclair Lewis writing conference in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he still intended to compete in the Iditarod. He is listed in the "Withdrawn/Scratched" section of the 1985 and 2006 Iditarod. Paulsen was an outdoorsman (a hunter and trapper), who maintained a 40-acre (160,000 m2) parcel north of Willow, Alaska, where he bred and trained sled dogs for the Iditarod.[15]
So I spent my time with Paulsen marveling at a full life, a person who embraced his animal nature as well as his creative urges, and enjoying the hearing about the fine madness of running the Iditarod from a great storyteller. This is my first book for the Ten Year Clear* and it was an almost perfect choice. Seasonally apt, I listened to Winterdance over the course of our first snowy weekend of the year. It took me a moment to remember why the Me of 2012 had added this and several other books about the running of the Iditarod on my TBR - we had traveled to Alaska in 2011 to celebrate my Mom's 70th birthday and I was nursing a sustained fascination with the landscape that I discovered on our trip. My mom is now 80, my fascination with Alaska as waned somewhat with the passage of time but I remain a lifelong lover of insane adventure narratives, and this book totally delivers that. It prompted me to pull out the photo album of that trip and to try to conjure up the memories of my then-small-children, my then-alive sister-in-law, my then-beardless husband, my then-more-vital mother. I settled on this idea for my reading project mostly as a way of just knocking down my TBR, but I hadn't expected for this to be a portal in time, to the time I went to Alaska and didn't want to leave its wonder behind.
Choosing this book also has the added bonus of freeing me from reading anything else about the Iditarod, so I am removing multiple other titles from my deep TBR, calling that chapter complete.
* The Ten Year Clear is my reading project for 2022. I have 80+ books on my TBR that were added 10 or more years ago. This year, I intend to either read or delete those books from my TBR as a way of embracing an if-not-now-then-when approach while also accepting that I cannot possibly read all the books on my TBR.
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
This story was hilarious. I also learned a lot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing