The Sourtoe Cocktail Club: The Yukon Odyssey of a Father and Son in Search of a Mummified Human Toe ... and Everything Else by Ron FranscellMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A good travel book allows you to experience something vicariously -- a place, a time, a people. A well-written memoir gives you a sense of someone, intrigues and entertains you with the personality of the subject, catches you up in the events of a life. A clever humor book buoys your mood with laughter; a sensible self-help book makes you think you might be able to better yourself; an ingenious mystery keeps you guessing what the twist at the very end will be.
A great book transcends all of those accomplishments and turns a mirror upon your soul to make you feel alive with understanding.
The Sourtoe Cocktail Club is a great book.
If you enjoy confessional autobiographies, this is a book for you. If you hate confessional autobiographies but get a kick out of a good adventure story, this is a book for you. If you are fascinated by people, journeys, and exotic locales, if you are in need of a true and heartfelt laugh, if you hunger for the awesome beauty of some spectacular wilderness, if you have ever been a father or a son, or had a father or a son, or needed a father or a son -- if you more than anything want, from your head to your toes, for life to mean something, this is a book for you.
Ron Franscell took a journey and wrote about it. But he didn’t write about it so that you would understand his journey. He wrote about it so that you would understand that your journey is before you.
This book is a true accomplishment -- a rarity, a treasure.
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i love biographies, but they end up making me feel so inadequate, almost wasting my life in comparison to others, and i don't like to feel that way, so i move on and read something else...
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing about this one is that it's really more of a story about a distinct event rather than a biography, and the author is refreshingly open about providing a warts-and-all perspective on his experiences, so I don't think it's as likely to provoke feelings of inadequacy as some might be.
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