Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful
Review: A friend gave me this book as a gift and it sat on my desk for several months. Admittedly I was put off by the motorcycling aspect, but I'm sad now that that stopped me from opening it sooner. Last Sunday night I was going to file the book in my bookshelf but decided to read the first page before I did so. Needless to say I couldn't put it down. It's a wonderful tale of adventure, a dream and its reality, love, and, yes, ego. The story transcends the motorcycle and in that way is much more than a biker book. The motorcycling aspects are excellent, however, because the author is not one of those leather clad oafs with a humongous midlife crisis on his back. Rather, the descriptions are beautifully written and invite the reader to feel what it was like too. Well done.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: Highly detailed first person narratives and a good "thread" make this a promising book, although overdone with the similes. At times there are so many similes, one after the other, that they bring attention to themselves instead of the images intended by the author. Most unfortunately, however, are the 33 pages missing in mid stream. From page 148, there are 16 pages numbered from 117 to 148, which I'd already read, then it jumps to page 181. At that point I quit. But I'll look for Noren's next book. (Find another publisher)
Rating: 
Summary: 33 Missing Pages
Review: Highly detailed first person narratives and a good "thread" make this a promising book, although overdone with the similes. At times there are so many similes, one after the other, that they bring attention to themselves instead of the images intended by the author. Most unfortunately, however, are the 33 pages missing in mid stream. From page 148, there are 16 pages numbered from 117 to 148, which I'd already read, then it jumps to page 181. At that point I quit. But I'll look for Noren's next book. (Find another publisher)
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I read a ton of travel books, and this one grabbed me early on and never let me go -- I read it in three days, but it took me a week to get back to my own life. Noren is a writer of wide range, able to describe complicated interpersonal relationships, disparate emotions, the thrill of racing a motorcycle over 100 miles an hour, the drudgery of weeks of rain -- and so much more. I'm glad he's given me the Balkans -- and so clearly that I now no longer feel the NEED to see that part of the world. The things that happen to Noren and his darling companion, and the places they see are so vividly described that I now count this trip as one of my own. It is, however, a trip I'm pretty glad I had nothing to do with. I suppose that in every traveler's deck there is the "bad trip" card, and this one did not strike me as a great time. But lousy trips sometimes make for the best reading -- and this is one of those times. At least twenty times I had to stop, lower the book for a moment, catch my breath, and say, "Now how in the world did he come up with THAT incredible string of words?"
Rating: 
Summary: Love and Life in the crucible of the Baltic...
Review: I received this book with great anticipation, and from the moment I started reading it I found it hard to stop. I limited myself to only 2 chapters at a time, I found that way I could savour the pain and the pleasure of their experiences... The book is a great tale of love and life, relationship and partnership, give and take... I could relate to so many of their experiences, the minor tragedies and unexpected turmoils that it felt like a microcosm of many things in my own life, and I think many other readers who have travelled will feel the same. There were parts of this book that made me want to shout at Allen about the stupidity of things said and done (like just go back and say "sorry", or "forget the trip, she's more important than the journey/the bike..."). And when I got to the end, I wanted to say, "No wait... there's got to be more...", it was like leaving a movie theater where you want things to keep going a little longer... Long enough to just find out, to really finish it off (rather like the end of "Castaway"). But that's life... And Love...
Rating:
Summary: Love and Life in the crucible of the Baltic...
Review: I received this book with great anticipation, and from the moment I started reading it I found it hard to stop. I limited myself to only 2 chapters at a time, I found that way I could savour the pain and the pleasure of their experiences... The book is a great tale of love and life, relationship and partnership, give and take... I could relate to so many of their experiences, the minor tragedies and unexpected turmoils that it felt like a microcosm of many things in my own life, and I think many other readers who have travelled will feel the same. There were parts of this book that made me want to shout at Allen about the stupidity of things said and done (like just go back and say "sorry", or "forget the trip, she's more important than the journey/the bike..."). And when I got to the end, I wanted to say, "No wait... there's got to be more...", it was like leaving a movie theater where you want things to keep going a little longer... Long enough to just find out, to really finish it off (rather like the end of "Castaway"). But that's life... And Love...
Rating:
Summary: I saved and savored this traveler's feast
Review: I waited 4 months to start this book. The idea was to save it for a trip of my own and bring it with me on the road. I did. It was a bittersweet compliment to my travels and was so rich and wonderful that I almost forgot to soak in the landscape, folks, and energies of my CA to Seattle trek (granted, a small trip in comparison to Allen and Suzanne's Baltic Sea journey). Storm is one of those rare "pass-this-book-around" gems.
Rating:
Summary: Storm
Review: Not since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Blue Highways has there been a book that so movingly captures the transformational effects of an "on the road" experience. Noren, a first-time author whose prose flows seamlessly, describes the dichotomy between the personal growth he's experiencing on this bike trip around the Baltic and the emotional distance it's creating with his long-time girlfriend. What I believed was going to be a travel narrative turned out to be a probing, self-revelatory, and sometimes disturbing examination of the nature of human relationships. What is remarkable about it is that he doesn't take sides. He peels open the relationship and explores it with great sensitivity and ultimately with great insight. I recommend it to you highly. It's a sleeper!
Rating:
Summary: Storm
Review: Not since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Blue Highways has there been a book that so movingly captures the transformational effects of an "on the road" experience. Noren, a first-time author whose prose flows seamlessly, describes the dichotomy between the personal growth he's experiencing on this bike trip around the Baltic and the emotional distance it's creating with his long-time girlfriend. What I believed was going to be a travel narrative turned out to be a probing, self-revelatory, and sometimes disturbing examination of the nature of human relationships. What is remarkable about it is that he doesn't take sides. He peels open the relationship and explores it with great sensitivity and ultimately with great insight. I recommend it to you highly. It's a sleeper!
Rating:
Summary: Storm
Review: Not since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Blue Highways has there been a book that so movingly captures the transformational effects of an "on the road" experience. Noren, a first-time author whose prose flows seamlessly, describes the dichotomy between the personal growth he's experiencing on this bike trip around the Baltic and the emotional distance it's creating with his long-time girlfriend. What I believed was going to be a travel narrative turned out to be a probing, self-revelatory, and sometimes disturbing examination of the nature of human relationships. What is remarkable about it is that he doesn't take sides. He peels open the relationship and explores it with great sensitivity and ultimately with great insight. I recommend it to you highly. It's a sleeper!
|
