Climbing Days by Dorothy Pilley | Introduced by Dan Richards | Book Review | Canongate

 

Ever since I read Climbing Days by Dan Richards, I have been intrigued by Dorothy Pilley. Dan's great-great-aunt was a pioneer mountaineer, and someone that the last few decades have somehow allowed to fade into some obscurity. Having finally had the chance to read her original account, Climbing Days - here republished in a stunning edition by Canongate, and introduced by Dan Richards - I am surprised and saddened that this book isn't one of the canons of British climbing literature.

But saddened no more! Here, again, is the book in all its glory, and what a surprising, delightful and exciting read it is. Tracing Dorothy's climbing journey from her very first forays in the UK all the way to her pioneering ascent of the north-north-west face of the Dent Blanche in Switzerland, this is a complete and satisfying climbing journey that takes all the great climbs in its stride. Equally though, it is tender escapism, inspiring dreams of distant mountains many of us will never see. Mountains of the mind, and all that. 

Climbing Days takes in the Lakes, Wales and the Isle of Skye - with Dorothy expressing equal amounts of awe as anyone doing the same today will experience - and then further to Switzerland, France and Spain for adventures in alpinism as her skills, confidence and social circles grow.

One must constantly remember (with both awe and horror), when reading this fine piece of mountaineering literature, that what we think of today as 'climbing' took a very different shape in the 1930s, when this book was first published. I often felt a thrill when remembering that when Dorothy says 'abseil', she means wrapping a rope around her thigh and shoulder and lowering herself just so. No Grigri, no belay or rappel device, just a rock with a rope slung around it to hopefully keep one safe. Equally, climbing looked rather different: there is no mention at all of harnesses, and though carabiners were coming into fashion around this time, they weren't widespread yet. Pitons - metal spikes to drive into the rock and use as a step or anchor - were more common, but falling, generally, still wasn't a safe option, just something hopefully avoided or mitigated mid-air. 

In the same vein, reading about rescue operations she occasionally took part in is fascinating. At the time, there was no official mountain rescue - just a handful of (hopefully) experienced climbers, who happened to be staying in a nearby hut, and were gracious enough to go looking for a missing colleague who hadn't returned. She shares tales on hut etiquette, rationing and packing (for example, how they slowly moved away from carrying heavy tins to spartan rations), and even her first close encounter with a crevasse. In a way, Climbing Days is a beautiful glimpse into the development of mountaineering and alpinism in the early twentieth century.

But then, so much more too: I am so pleasantly surprised by how funny Dorothy is. Considering Climbing Days was first published in 1935, it reads as easily as any modern climbing memoir, and her often tongue-in-cheek, self-mocking yet awe-filled rememberances fill the pages with life. Not always plain-sailing; sacrifices had to be made. 'I haunted second-hand bookshops for climbing literature,' she writes, 'going without a new hat or sacrificing lobster salad for a bun and coffee lunch.'

Lyrical, too; developed from her diaries that she kept throughout her entire life, Dorothy had plenty of material to draw on and develop into vivid descriptions of landscape and experience.

'After supper I went outside, wrapped in blankets, to watch the moonlight moulding the backs of a sea of clouds in the valley and cutting the upper glacial world into heraldic simplicity of sable and silver.'

The two Climbing Days - that of Dorothy Pilley and that of Dan Richards - are a brilliant match, and if any of this appeals to you, I would advise reading them both. The order doesn't matter, though Dan's book is perhaps a great contextual introduction to Dorothy's work. I am just glad that, to my ever-growing library of badass, inspiring female climbers' memoirs, I can now add this wonderful account.

 

Horizon | Barry Lopez | Book Review

 

When the film 'A Life on Our Planet' with David Attenborough came out in 2020, it was signposted as his witness statement. Horizon by Barry Lopez is very much in a similar vein.

I first came across Lopez's writing through Robert Macfarlane, who considers Lopez a 'friend and inspiration', and through buying a copy of Arctic Dreams. Of similar length to Horizon at over 500 pages, it is a beautiful exploration in the Arctic, and any and all life within it. It reads, indeed, like a dream, covering so much territory and offering beautiful, intimate glimpses into this remote world. Lopez was always drawn to the most remote places of the planet, and held a special place in his heart for Arctic landscapes - something that is crystal clear from his writing, whichever page you happen to open Arctic Dreams on.

Horizon is slightly different in that it seems to carry a warning that cannot be ignored. Its deep dive into certain places, peoples or histories all look to the same issue - of climate change and the imminent threats we are facing if we don't change our ways. And yet it still offers respite every now and again through its lyrical, often tongue-in-cheek but always humble descriptions of breath-taking scenery and sights. 

I am nowhere near qualified to review, let alone completely understand all the deep ideas and thoughts that have gone into the creation of this book. But I hope I can give you a glimpse, and hope that you come away from reading this piece with at least one reason why you might pick up Horizon.

"To triumph. To win."

In this last message to us, Lopez doesn't circumvent difficult topics. He questions governments, our constant drive towards betterment, our refusal to stop and consider. He asks whether progress really is the only, the ultimate and at the same time unachievable aim for humanity - whether there's not so much more that we should be, and need to be, focusing on. "... are these questions now thought to be anachronistic, questions no longer relevant to our situation?" he asks. 

There is often a desperation that comes through his writing, grown out of many years of travelling the world - over 80 countries in his lifetime - getting to know its peoples, and observing first-hand the hand- and footprints that humans are leaving on the environment. Cultures disappearing, knowledge evaporating, and the value of those he refers to as 'elders' no longer taken into account. "History tells us," he writes, "that with every great empire comes great barbarism, that the two are inseparable ... This forces the question of what, really, civilization brings to people that they did not already have. And why is civilization so hard on the people who turn it down?" This is a recurring idea throughout the book, from observing the forced extinction of certain species on the Galápagos Islands to revisiting the prisons of Port Arthur and considering its living history that many would be all to happy to bury and label as 'of the past'. Lopez, on the other hand, makes the connections that are too uncomfortable to point out - those to modern-day concentration camps, of arms sales, of how little we have changed on certain fronts to this day. History, he argues, isn't to be buried. It is - and this, I think is the central plea of the book - to be learnt from.

The humility in his writing is comparable to none, and it inspires reckoning within ourselves too. He is all too conscious, at all times, of his privilege, his outsider status, and tries to handle this with as gentle a hand as possible. He never exempts himself from the philosophy he is exploring. And this connectedness, the idea of us forming part of one large community rather than being islands on our own, cuts especially deep during his time spent camping near the Turkwel River in Kenya, looking for fossils in the ground. Where his team, five Kamba men and himself, meet representatives of the Turkana people, ancestral inhabitants of the land. The clash of the modern and of ancestry come into sharp focus during a short exchange about the team's right to camp. "He [a member of Lopez's team] listens patiently while the other man explains the tenets of traditional hereditary land ownership among the Turkana people ... One senses he and his ancestors have been losing this argument for more than a hundred years now." He finishes the section: "The only ethics I really needed to probe in this situation, anyway, were my own. What were my own reasons for not asking permission? For not having knocked?"

And why don't we, dear reader, tend to knock?

"We are darkness as we are, too, the light."

Besides the philosophy, of course, the scenery is breathtaking. Lopez travels from near his own home at Cape Foulweather to the Canadian High Arctic, to Africa and Australia, to the Arctic circle and the Galápagos. He dives under sea ice, assists in archelogical efforts, visits zircon crystals dated as over 4.27 billion years old, and lays eyes on an immense emperor penguin colony on a polar expedition. These unbelievable sights, sounds and experiences are carefully intertwined with his musings on human history, often taking the examples of well-known explorers - Cook, Amundsen, Scott and Darwin, to mention but a few. His extensive reading and knowledge of these lives gives a deeper shade of colour to the ideas and images presented to us, helping to leave a lasting impression.

A long-term view

"What if the perspective you could imagine for yourself, the foundation for your ethics and your politics, was not the condescending now of right now?" Lopez asks. This is what this book can do for you, what it did for me - it looks forwards and back, it brings the then into the now to give a better perspective on today. Why is the history of our species' development relevant here? How does an encounter with a bear, observed through an indigenous perspective, give us better insight into the knowledge we are losing?

Lopez helps shift our focus and questions the obvious to change our priorities. It's as if he's placing a virtual reality lense on our eyes, giving us sight, sound, experience as if we were in it - and in reality, we're reaching into the void around us, helplessly. 

This is a vital call to action, a stark reminder of our place in the universe, written in gorgeous, lyrical language and composed almost like a piece of music. 

It is best read slowly.

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron | Introduced by Dolly Alderton | Book Review | Transworld

How does one discover that Nora Ephron was, and is, the queen of pretty much everything?

Perhaps it starts on a lonely evening, when one craves one of those classic romantic comedies that alone have that special power of cheering one up at any given moment. I have to admit I was hugely behind on this education. The first time I saw When Harry Met Sally... was when an American friend of mine forced her will on a small group of us and put it on to play on my laptop, propped on the tiny student dorm room desk.

I'm sad to say we were all baffled by it and soon rebelled against her will, forcing her to turn it off.

Years later (specifically, this year) I came back to it, by now having found out about its cult standing, not to mention that it was written by the one and only Nora Ephron, along with films so dear to my heart, such as Bewitched (controversial), You've Got Mail and Julie & Julia.

By now, I've also read Heartburn, in turns hilarious, heartbreaking and educational - I've learned the ultimate secret to mashed potatoes, for example (cutting cubes of butter into it as you go, spooning it from the bowl in bed), and other life lessons.

And so we come to I Feel Bad About My Neck, a short collection of writings from Ephron that take on topics such as wrinkles, parenting, ageing, beauty regimes and falling in love. Oh, and crucially, reading.

Observation power

If you've seen any of her films, you instinctively have a familiarity with the tone of voice of her writing too. Nora has eyes on the back of her head and all over her body, in fact: she sees and points out things we, ordinary people, might disregard or take no notice of or perhaps are just lazy to point out. It's a personal victory to read her thoughts on women's handbags - finally someone gets it! "In a modern world, your arms have to be free. ... That's one of many reasons why you don't see the guys-with-purses trend catching on." It's a shame that she didn't settle with the backpack solution, like yours truly, though clearly she had a preoccupation with fashion that I, fortunately, don't have or have to have.

I still hold true that the way she writes about food makes you want to drop everything and rush to the kitchen with an armful of fresh herbs, quail's eggs and with a rock-solid determination to make hollandaise sauce from scratch. Her words make food come alive, and as she writes about her imaginary conversations with food mentors, of Julia Child's 'nicer and more forgiving' directions than 'sterner and more meticulous' Michael Field's, you can't help but start your own imaginary conversations with Nora.

But the essay that spoke to me the most, of course, is On Rapture, which is a brief piece on the joy and pleasures of reading - of getting lost in a book utterly and completely, of its escapism and of surfacing again after a deep plunge into extraordinary worlds and ideas. She talks about remembering sofas and rooms as the setting for each beloved book and all too well I recall my own kingdom of imagination in our first home: my room with blue cupboards, glow-in-the-dark stars and an extremely bouncy bed that I'd have to strip from any bedding each day, to be tucked into the inside compartment and taken out again at the end of the day to remake the bed. I'd lie there engrossed in treasure hunts, cowboy and Indian tales, teenage detectives and a girl with a horse. And I know all too well that most annoying feeling of all, of having to put a book down for such ridiculous reasons as having to go down for dinner or, in more modern times, having to make said dinner.

Timing is everything

I'm so lucky to have picked up this book in my youth, because it is full of advice. I can now avoid Nora's deep regret of not having worn a bikini for the entire year she was twenty-six ("If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four.") and I can heed all her points in What I Wish I'd Known - some free tips from her to you include:

• Write everything down.
• You never know.
• You can order more than one dessert.
• There's no point in making piecrust from scratch.

If you want my advice though, get yourself a copy of this book, whatever your age, state of mind or state of your kitchen.

9/10

Coast to Coast with William Finnegan

A review quote on the back of my copy of Barbarian Days by William Finnegan reads: "I don't know anything about surfing, but I was gripped by the intensity of his language" (Olivia Laing, Guardian). This most likely sums up the experience of many of Finnegan's readers. But I also find this quote near-offensively simplistic.

Finnegan is perhaps best known for being a long-standing staff writer at the New Yorker, reporting often from conflict and war zones, including South America, South Africa and Sudan. So what does it say about his talents that he also won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2016 with his 500-page epic, Barbarian Days?

Part-memoir, part travel epic, definitely surf-epic, the book charts Finnegan's journey from childhood to adulthood - a journey in both a physical and chronological sense. To all four corners of the world and back, always chasing the perfect wave, this is a life lived on the road and an adventurous example of how we're always searching for something new. It's a true life, yet reads like a mesmerizing piece of fiction to many of us.

You may be hesitant due to the simple fact that you don't care about surfing, but I would urge you to read on before you make your decision.

Why should you read it?

As all good travel writing, Barbarian Days has more to say than describing waves. If I had to identify a theme, it would have to be something like coming of age - though I'd rather not. Because we might think of coming-of-age books as finished by the age of around 25, while what Finnegan shows is that we never really stop coming of age. After finishing school, he embarks on an epic journey, circumnavigating the globe and stopping at the most isolated spots to surf, seemingly never quite satisfied, always ready to move on to the next best thing. This is the first element that makes the book hugely relatable.

There's also the simple fact that Finnegan's life reads like an adventure novel, albeit a very realistic one. I couldn't help shaking my head almost constantly. At the then uninhabited Tavarua Island in Fiji, he nonchalantly describes coming to grips with the dadakulachi, the three-step snake, so nicknamed due to estimated distance you would be able to make after it bit you (supposedly the world's sixth-deadliest snake). Other times, he writes that "Frequently, there came a moment when I thought, No, never mind, this is getting too heavy, I want to go back to shore. But it was always too late then." Reading about this controversial mind-set he faces almost every time he arrives to shore - the waves are too big, I definitely shouldn't go in, here I go - was one of the best elements of the book, as well as how he learnt to control himself in life-threatening situations and not lose his head. Surfing reads almost like a religion.

It is an in-depth glimpse into the obsession, the philosophy and mind-set of this world, one completely foreign to me. Yet due to his powerful descriptions and awe that shine off the pages, it looped me in. And despite the fact that a life of surfing can leave you mentally and physically impaired, Finnegan keeps coming back to this one constant element of his otherwise rather malleable existence. Like one long, continuous wave, it ebbs and flows throughout the book. 

What was I not massively fond of?

Sure, there were times where for me, the surfing descriptions got a little too long, where I didn't feel as connected to the narrative as before. Some sections are action-packed, and some will just be ordinary days of a life, working and surfing and quarreling and surfing again. But I can hardly complain about the author telling a true story.

Finnegan is honest throughout, and there will be some decisions we may disagree with or scratch our heads in confusion - the logical isn't always the answer. It's hard to imagine that this is only one person's story. Finnegan builds lives in so many different places in the world, only to deconstruct them a month or two later, that he comes to embody almost a spiritual existence, a metaphor of the vagabond. And yet, he's as real as can be. Perhaps it's good for us to read something so far removed from our comfy sofas and daily commutes. 

Overall...

What is the worst way you imagine yourself to die? For me, it is drowning under a giant wave. Nothing is scarier. I've tried surfing once, in knee-high water, and even that was terrifying. So to read a memoir of someone living a life doing the thing that scares me most was a fascinating experience.

Finnegan will make you feel like a newbie, an amateur, a poser; he talks about how surfing went from something completely unknown to 'sport' status, how it became a symbol. Now it's due to be an official sport in the Olympics. So here's an honest account of what it feels like to devote a massive chunk of your life to this obsession, while coming to grips with jobs, settling down, starting a family and what happens to our values in the meantime. 

Despite its exotic aspects, this is not escapism: it is a stressful, beautiful human account of the search.

8/10

Unbreakable Ellie Kemper

For those few readers (Grandma and Granddad <3) who have been following this blog since its inception back in July, you will know that I have now very nearly read all the books I set out to read in my very first blog post. Time flies when you're having fun!

Although looking back now, out of the four reviewed so far, only really one has received positive commentary... should I be worried that my taste in books is faltering? (Nah. This is what reading contemporary authors is all about!)

Ellie Kemper's My Squirrel Days was a hotly anticipated debut (by me). Mostly because she is such a cutie. For those who don't know Ellie, she's an American actress, known for her roles in the American version of The Office (yet to watch), a supporting role in Bridesmaids (yet to rewatch) and, of course, her first leading role in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

This book is a collection of personal essays, covering things like growing up, having a crush on David Letterman and staging plays for the family at Christmas, where even a single forgotten word could mean catastrophe. Basically, a semi-fictional autobiography. How can it be semi-fictional, you ask? Hang on...

What did I like about it?

... Semi-fictional because finally someone owned up to the fact that we forget things. So some stuff will be made up. There is no way in hell that everyone can remember decade-old conversations word for word, and small, insignificant scenes from high school, and significant scenes that they must be too nervous to remember - except for me. Or I am really missing something. Were we supposed to take notes?

I liked that I read the whole thing in Ellie's voice. (There's a downside to this, but again, hang on.) She is alive in the pages, and is pretty much exactly how I imagined her. Minus fits of rage over missing lentils from a dish. Crazy stuff.

The essays are short, sweet and make for light reading. Juicy details about the lives of actors are always fun to read, and especially when names like Steve Carell (who is the only one allowed to touch the bagels on set) and Tina Fey (who may or may not be interested in taking up spin classes) pop up. It's a great insight into Ellie's life in general, and it's interesting to read about her journey from working in a cupcake shop (honestly, what did you expect?) to sort-of-stardom.

What was I not massively fond of?

Let's be honest - this book is superfluous. It's super cute too, it's fun because we like Ellie, but it's not a piece of great literature, and it doesn't really do much above promoting Ellie herself. This is not to say I didn't enjoy reading it, on the contrary. But I did wonder occasionally what I was hoping to get out of it, or why I was reading it in the first place.

But that's stardom, isn't it? If you're famous and you have some time on your hands (or if your publicist thinks it's a good idea) you are going to end up writing a book. Following from this then, of course, is the fact that only people who know Ellie will pick this up.

I also found that, although I really enjoy watching her on TV, I don't think her style of humour is particularly suited to written form. Her comedy forte in Kimmy was her attitude, her smile, her incessant enthusiasm, and I think this is stronger on screen.

Overall...

Despite everything, a person like Ellie is someone to aspire to be. Because she seems always happy, always optimistic (take the essay called Hysteric in which she describes her emailing habits. What's wrong with laughing in caps?).

And a little bit of light reading never hurt anyone.

6/10

... And I knew there was no help, no help from you

In my very first post on this blog, I already had my mind set on this book. Remember?

After reading my very first self-help book this year (You Do You by Sarah Knight) in a moment of weakness, I was hoping for nothing short of a total mindset change. I thought the book sounded so good, surely it would boost my confidence, give me permission to live life to the fullest, achieve total zen and all that. ... Not quite.

Marianne Power was already well-read in the self-help universe when she set out on her project of reading 12 self-help books in a year and following them to the fullest, to test whether they would really help her change. Help Me! is the recounting of the year (and a bit), and the result was really quite surprising and not at all what I expected. There is a dark side to all this self-help stuff... and Marianne explores it there and back again.

What did I like about it?

The most loveable aspect of this book is that it's clearly an honest account (to the extent a book can be - sometimes names and timelines need to be changed for the sake of a good story, of course). Marianne doesn't shy away from describing how she felt in any given moment - what she worried about, how things terrified her, what decisions lay behind other decisions. To give you a taster, she goes from skydiving through making 'vision boards' to bashing pillows with baseball bats. Quite the spectrum, wouldn't you agree?

It turns out it takes a certain bravery to do as much digging as she does in our own heads. It can mess with your mind quite a bit - you pick at thoughts and feelings you're very uncomfortable with, and aspects of your personality you didn't even know existed. It's quite a fascinating exploration of how layered people really are and what happens when we force ourselves out of our comfort zones, both physically and mentally.

Marianne's writing feels very familiar to read. While I'm not overly fond of 'yay' and the overuse of exclamation marks (which she admits to, by the way), I do think her enthusiasm at little successes comes out clearly, which works. She succeeds in involving us in the story, which is key for something so personal as this.

There were also sections that really resonated with me. Rejection therapy, for example - the idea of getting rejected on purpose every day to kill our fear of rejection. Also muting the negative mantras in our heads that play all day, every day without us even noticing. Every morning, the minute I swing my feet out of bed, my brain jumps to: what did I have for dinner again? How big is my tummy today? How much do I need to exercise to get rid of this fat? How can I be so fat again?... Maybe that's something to work on.

What was I not massively fond of?

For me, there was a point that I think would have made the perfect ending, and I almost wish Marianne had finished the book there and then. The arc of the story starts upwards, then drops very suddenly, climbing back up slowly in what feels like the recovery and reconciliation. But then we get another low, and another climb, and a few minor ups-and-downs still, which - although they make sense story-wise - I think kill the momentum.

Sometimes, the writing felt a bit too cringeworthy for me. I think that non-fiction can get away without descriptions like "It had been raining that morning and the grey concrete was damp. Clouds sat heavy in the sky". I also know it's very human to get high on revelations, and in those moments to have embarrassingly silly thoughts like "I'd like to be those trees, I thought. I bet nothing bothers them," but I still winced at these moments. These thoughts, to me, felt fluffy like Disney-clouds and after everything Marianne had experienced in that year, I would have thought she'd be more down-to-earth.

Overall...

I was in two minds throughout this reading experience. On the one hand, I knew this is what being human is - constantly having new revelations, thinking we finally figured it out, then being disappointed again and again. We get stupid things into our heads, believe in them then throw them away in search of something new.

On the other, I judged. Hard. And I feel bad about this. I am the type of person who can't help not feeling for someone who spends thousands of pounds on expensive retreats in search of themselves, only to come back not having found anything. When I feel lost and depressed, I exercise, I feel sorry for myself for a short period then shake myself and go at it again. But then, I am not (yet) seriously prone to depression and I am also quite young. So I guess it's easier for me.

One thought that really stuck with me though: "I realized then that you can't love others when you're busy hating yourself. It's just not possible." One to remember for me especially.

It's an interesting read and the outcome is not at all what I expected. I'll tell you one thing though - I will not be buying another self-help book anytime soon.

6/10