Day: November 18, 2008

Win a free book and two handmade bookmarks!
This week\’s giveaway includes a copy of Kuki Gallmann\’s memoir I Dreamed of Africa and two bookmarks I made from my magazine scrap file, featuring lions and baobab trees in the sunset. This is a used book. It does have some wear from being read several times, and the front cover was creased when I acquired it. It\’s still in quite good shape, the pages inside are all clean. It\’s wonderfully illustrated by many plates of photographs, both color and black-and-white. While I\’ve read this book and enjoyed it, I haven\’t written about it yet, so here\’s an excerpt from the editorial review that serves as its description on Amazon:

This work by a native Italian woman who gave up a comfortable life in her homeland to pursue a dream to live in Kenya should appeal to readers who were enthralled with Isak Dinesen, Elspeth Huxley, and Beryl Markham… Gallman describes her move to Africa at the age of 25 with her husband Paolo and son Emanuele. Both Paolo and Emanuele meet violent deaths, but Gallmann is determined to stay with her newborn daughter in Kenya. She starts a ranch and a foundation to preserve African wildlife from poachers...

You can enter to win by leaving a comment here, until tuesday 11/25, when the winner will be chosen and announced. For an extra entry, blog about this giveaway and link back to this post (please let me know if you do so). If there\’s just three or four entrants, I\’ll pick a name out of a hat. If there\’s more, my daughter will throw them in the air like last time. Open to residents of US and Canada.

by Arthur Roth

About two hundred and fifty years ago, a young man named Allan Gordon quit his job as assistant in a tailor\’s shop and left Aberdeen, Scotland to go on a whaling voyage. He went on a few voyages, first as cabin boy then working as a sailor on the Anne Forbes, before the fateful accident in 1757. Allan was only seventeen when the ship struck an iceberg in the Arctic and overturned, becoming frozen into the ice. Allan was the only survivor.

He faced freezing temperatures, injuries, starvation and overwhelming loneliness. The mental strain alone must have been incredible, and several times Allan almost lost his will to continue struggling to live. When he adopted an orphaned polar bear cub (having killed its mother for meat), caring for it gave him a feeling of purpose and companionship. Resourceful and determined, Allan shouldered aside his fears and found ways to survive on his floating iceberg prison. After several years the iceberg finally neared land and Allan began trekking across the frozen landscape. He encountered a tribe of Eskimos who he thought were descendents of Vikings, and lived with them for some time. Seven years after disappearance of the Anne Forbes, Allan Gordon finally returned to Aberdeen. Hardly anyone believed his story. Many of the details Allan gave of his experience contradicted popular beliefs of the time about the Arctic. Yet as the author points out in his final chapter, when more was learned about those regions, a lot of the things Allan described were later proven to be quite possibly true.

Based on a true incident, The Iceberg Hermit is a fine adventure story describing survival against all odds, the growth of a young man into adulthood, and the friendship of a tame polar bear. The writing is more often than not simple, and I do wish more time had been spend describing Allan\’s period with the Eskimos (most of it is about the time on the iceberg) but it\’s a pretty good book.

Rating: 3/5                     219 pages, 1974

DISCLAIMER:

All books reviewed on this site are owned by me, or borrowed from the public library. Exceptions are a very occasional review copy sent to me by a publisher or author, as noted. Receiving a book does not influence my opinion or evaluation of it

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