Friday, January 28, 2022

Book Review - Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living

Title - Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living
Author: Nick Offerman
Date Read: January 2022
Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍

Review: Great book by one of my favorite authors. Nick Offerman has had quite the life and thankfully has the writing chops to pass on his knowledge of what is necessary to live a meaningful life.

Description (Audible): Parks and Recreation actor Nick Offerman shares his humorous fulminations on life, manliness, meat, and much more in his first book.Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman - who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson? Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking - he runs his own woodshop - Paddle Your Own Canoe features tales from Offerman's childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois - "I grew up literally in the middle of a cornfield" - to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally. It also offers hard-bitten battle strategies in the arenas of manliness, love, style, religion, woodworking, and outdoor recreation, among many other savory entrees. A mix of amusing anecdotes, opinionated lessons and rants, sprinkled with offbeat gaiety, Paddle Your Own Canoe will not only tickle readers pink but may also rouse them to put down their smart phones, study a few sycamore leaves, and maybe even handcraft (and paddle) their own canoes.

Monday, January 10, 2022

Book Review - Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

Title - Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
Author: Nick Offerman
Date Read: January 2022
Rating - 👍👍👍👍👍

Review - Wow, it's been a while since I've read a book that combines all my favorite things: wit, wisdom, outdoors, travel, and conservation. Nick is a master writer who has officially become my favorite author. I must say though, his conservation ethics seemed a  bit disingenuous when he buys a gas hog truck to pull a humoungous 30 foot Airstream to travel the country.  Especially after his quite convincing admonitions on the tendency of people to over consume.  

Description (Audible) - Nick Offerman has always felt a particular affection for the Land of the Free - not just for the people and their purported ideals but to the actual land itself: the bedrock, the topsoil, and everything in between that generates the health of your local watershed. In his new book, Nick takes a humorous, inspiring, and elucidating trip to America's trails, farms, and frontier to examine the people who inhabit the land, what that has meant to them and us, and to the land itself, both historically and currently.

In 2018, Wendell Berry posed a question to Nick, a query that planted the seed of this book, sending Nick on two memorable journeys with pals - a hiking trip to Glacier National Park with his friends Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders, as well as an extended visit to his friend James Rebanks, the author of The Shepherd's Life and English Pastoral. He followed that up with an excursion that could only have come about in 2020 - Nick and his wife, Megan Mullally, bought an Airstream trailer to drive across (several of) the United States. These three quests inspired some “deep-ish" thinking from Nick, about the history and philosophy of our relationship with nature in our national parks, in our farming, and in our backyards; what we mean when we talk about conservation; and the importance of outdoor recreation, all subjects very close to Nick's heart.


Saturday, January 1, 2022

Happy New Year 2022 - Haiku

A new year begun • 
Hope it will be better than • 
Twenty twenty-one 

Another new year • 
With many resolutions • 
Soon to be forgot