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421 reviews for:
Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
Blair Braverman
3.89 AVERAGE
421 reviews for:
Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
Blair Braverman
3.89 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse
Moderate: Animal death
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Sexual harassment
Blair writes in an interesting style alternating chapters between the events of her growing up and discovering her love for the North and sled dogs, with the events of "current day" Blair in Norway rediscovering her sense of purpose.
It's a well written and engaging book, a definite must read for any #UglyDog
It's a well written and engaging book, a definite must read for any #UglyDog
It took me a while to get into this book and I was thinking about DNFing it for a little while, but I’m glad I pushed through. Blair has a really interesting story to tell and a life not many people get to experience. I would love to read more about her adventures mushing and the dogs in her life.
This beautiful and meditative book was a perfect way to begin 2017.
It's as much about the way (bad) men (or men who don't mean to be bad, but society...) often control women as it is about dogsledding, Alaska, and Norway, and I loved it.
It's as much about the way (bad) men (or men who don't mean to be bad, but society...) often control women as it is about dogsledding, Alaska, and Norway, and I loved it.
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Despite my aversion to all things cold, I really related to Blair’s experiences with men, her mistrust of herself and what is normal, and growing into her own. I loved this book (and read it while nice and toasty on the beach) and it brings what I love from memoirs: learning about new things and people through thoughtful reflections on the writer’s history.
I came for the dog sledding but stayed for the powerful and introspective woman who is Blair Braverman. I listened to the audio book, which is narrated by the author and now just wasn’t to hear Blair speak Norwegian to me all day!
I’m not sure what I expected from this book—more on dogsledding, maybe, but it was a bit torturous to finish. The writing style and the content made my brain itch, and I couldn’t get comfortable with it. Transitions from time to time were jarring and rough, and I found myself without empathy for the author. I’m not sure why I finished it, frankly. Curiosity, perhaps...which was not abated by the end.
book tw: assault, rape (though she doesn't call it that herself, it 100% is)
How arrogant of my heart to jump at the words sea of ice.
As I was reading this book, I found myself close to what I would call "enthralled." It felt like a 4 or a 5 star book. But the more I've thought on it, the more I've decided it's a 3 star. It's not that the writing is bad, or that it's hard to follow. Braverman has a very clear and direct voice, and beautiful lines that sometimes read like poetry.
My qualm with this book is that it isn't really about the Arctic. I was so compelled by the premise: an American girl goes to the cold, learns to be a dog musher, learns how to live in ~ perfect ten below ~ weather. I will never live the life, but I can live vicariously through this book (and after all, isn't that what books are for, to dip into a life you will never live?)
Instead, Braverman writes about what it's like to be a woman, with the Arctic as a backdrop, the dogs as an escape. I found myself thinking, "I don't want to hear about your shitty boyfriend, I want to hear about the dogs." I found myself unsure why she was so drawn to Norway, when it seems like the only person she really likes there is Arild, because he's a father figure (even though she has a mother and father of her own who are fully present — I forgive her for this because I have lots of father figures in my life, too, despite having a very active one of my own). The rest of the time she's in Norway or any of the surrounding areas, she seems to be desperate and alone and bored out of her mind. It seems like it would be a great exercise in meditation to move to Norway. I couldn't figure out why she was so drawn to it, even after she was with Quince, and kept leaving him for months on end.
In all, the most exciting part of the entire book for me, the original pull of the dogs, gets so little screen time that it feels like a total case of false advertising to put them on the cover. There is a chapter at the very end where Braverman describes a fall into a pit with the dogs, and I said to myself, "Here we go, the story finally seems to be happening, with 2 pages left." She mentions such fascinating tidbits about being a dog sledder — for example, that dogs wear mascara to protect their eyes from the sun — as nothing more than a filler part of a sentence. I do thank Braverman for telling me about 69North (or, as they would say there, 69 Nord), and I wish I had the guts to brave the cold and learn to mush.
Lines I liked:
The water was sweet and piercing cold. It made my knuckles ache. It tasted healing, I thought, and then I corrected myself, embarrassed at my own emotion. The water was water. The place was a place. It was no more healing than a kiss to a bruise.
I learned quickly that the stories rarely ended on a conclusive note. They started and stopped on the terms that decades of retelling had choreographed them to start and stop. A century-old tale was fresh as yesterday, and yesterday's news well-worn as myth: often, stories set two hundred years ago began with the words, "Remember that time—?" and people would nod because, in a way, they did. In their stories, time collapsed.
That maybe nice was the word men called women they didn't bother to get to know.
How arrogant of my heart to jump at the words sea of ice.
As I was reading this book, I found myself close to what I would call "enthralled." It felt like a 4 or a 5 star book. But the more I've thought on it, the more I've decided it's a 3 star. It's not that the writing is bad, or that it's hard to follow. Braverman has a very clear and direct voice, and beautiful lines that sometimes read like poetry.
My qualm with this book is that it isn't really about the Arctic. I was so compelled by the premise: an American girl goes to the cold, learns to be a dog musher, learns how to live in ~ perfect ten below ~ weather. I will never live the life, but I can live vicariously through this book (and after all, isn't that what books are for, to dip into a life you will never live?)
Instead, Braverman writes about what it's like to be a woman, with the Arctic as a backdrop, the dogs as an escape. I found myself thinking, "I don't want to hear about your shitty boyfriend, I want to hear about the dogs." I found myself unsure why she was so drawn to Norway, when it seems like the only person she really likes there is Arild, because he's a father figure (even though she has a mother and father of her own who are fully present — I forgive her for this because I have lots of father figures in my life, too, despite having a very active one of my own). The rest of the time she's in Norway or any of the surrounding areas, she seems to be desperate and alone and bored out of her mind. It seems like it would be a great exercise in meditation to move to Norway. I couldn't figure out why she was so drawn to it, even after she was with Quince, and kept leaving him for months on end.
In all, the most exciting part of the entire book for me, the original pull of the dogs, gets so little screen time that it feels like a total case of false advertising to put them on the cover. There is a chapter at the very end where Braverman describes a fall into a pit with the dogs, and I said to myself, "Here we go, the story finally seems to be happening, with 2 pages left." She mentions such fascinating tidbits about being a dog sledder — for example, that dogs wear mascara to protect their eyes from the sun — as nothing more than a filler part of a sentence. I do thank Braverman for telling me about 69North (or, as they would say there, 69 Nord), and I wish I had the guts to brave the cold and learn to mush.
Lines I liked:
The water was sweet and piercing cold. It made my knuckles ache. It tasted healing, I thought, and then I corrected myself, embarrassed at my own emotion. The water was water. The place was a place. It was no more healing than a kiss to a bruise.
I learned quickly that the stories rarely ended on a conclusive note. They started and stopped on the terms that decades of retelling had choreographed them to start and stop. A century-old tale was fresh as yesterday, and yesterday's news well-worn as myth: often, stories set two hundred years ago began with the words, "Remember that time—?" and people would nod because, in a way, they did. In their stories, time collapsed.
That maybe nice was the word men called women they didn't bother to get to know.