Adventure New England

Ah, New England! Land of fall foliage, Ben & Jerry's ice cream and salt-water taffy. This particular guide is targeted to the vacationer with a love of the outdoors. Diane Bair and Pamela Wright must be a daring duo, because instead of writing this book stock full of jargon from the tourism bureau, the authors have written about each excursion from their own experience. And it has everything from orienteering to fly fishing to ice climbing. I wonder if they went to all of these places and then decided they were experts enough to write a book about it or if they were commissioned to write and paid the fees for all the adventures.

Outdoorsy people make me jealous. As much as I love hiking and camping, I've done very little of it. Books like this one do inspire me to some degree to do things like canoeing and spelunking. Things like kayaking and downhill skiing however will never make my list. "Wet exit" can't be natural. After reading this book I desperately want to ride aboard the Brilliant in Mystic, CT. I hope she's still floating.

The writing is of a high quality, being both entertaining and fully informative. I would strongly recommend the book if it weren't for one crucial point: it was written in 1996. The contact info, pricing, even locations and proprietor names are outdated to the point that one may as well start their search for adventure with an entirely different book.

Rating - 2

Adventure Classics

Meh. Adventure Classics is part of the Graphic Classics series. It features short stories by the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Zane Grey, but is visualized into graphic novel form.

I like a good graphic novel, especially as an escape from the norm. This, however, didn't hit the spot for me. The illustrations of most of the stories are rough on the eyes and made the story hard to follow. The stories themselves aren't really that adventurous, nor are they really classics, regardless of their being written by classic authors.

No high marks here.

Rating - 1

Adventure Capitalist

Here is another book where the wording of the tagline can make or break the interest of the potential reader: "The Ultimate Investor's Road Trip". To clarify, this is about the road trip that the ultimate investor made, not about road tripping for investors.
I love this book! It's easy for me to enjoy a book about traveling especially when it's a first-hand account of someone who actually spends time in places, getting to know the locals and understanding their culture as much as possible. Jim Rogers is an investor (duh) who decided to drive around the world in three years with his new wife (married during the trip) and a very beastly looking yellow Mercedes.
Because of his background as an investor, and a very successful one at that, Rogers was able to view the world from that perspective. His writing style is exciting, he has very diverse tastes, and he has very strong opinions. I don't necessarily agree with all the conclusions he makes, but his expertise definitely makes one pay attention.

Rating - 4/5

Advantage

I was a bit tentative when I picked up this book by Adam Segal. The tagline is "How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge". In an election year, anything that hints of political territory can put me on edge, but I set aside my own assumptions and read it anyway.

 My first and perhaps most important observation is that Advantage is very hopeful. Instead of listing all the problems with the West or the East, Segal focuses on how and why America should be breeding innovation, mostly scientific, in order to save us from our own economic crisis. I am in no way a science buff, but my husband is in physics, so it provided me a bit of a personal connection to the topic.

 I took so many notes that I wanted to share here, but the play I was in kept me too busy to post, and the notes have since disappeared. I may not recommend the book to everyone just because of the subject matter itself, but if you have any interest in political science or research and development, you should read this book, and soon.

Rating - 3