I am an expedition by myself, complete with rations, a weapon, and a book to read. - Beryl Markham
This past year included over forty flights, eight road trips, and approximately four dozen books. Looking back at what I read in 2019, it’s easy to spot some obvious parallels: like reading Wake in Fright while road-tripping across the Australian Outback, or finishing up Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia while flying to Apia, Samoa.
I read my usual fair share of non-fiction adventure stories, but I also picked up a few things outside my wheelhouse: the memoir of a famous actor. A guide to effective public speaking. A novel about love.
I will always enjoy stories of extreme endeavors in remote places (and you’ll see several included in the list below), but variety is the spice of life. The diverse collection of books I read this year offered up inspiration, comfort, affirmation, challenge, pain, and most importantly new perspectives.
Pickets and Dead Men by Bree Loewen
January | Nantahala Outdoor Center
I turn around to look at my tracks, to feel I’ve made solid progress, that I’m doing okay.
After reading Bree Loewen’s book FOUND: A Life in Mountain Rescue I knew I wanted to complete a Wilderness First Responder course. So it felt natural to bring a copy of Loewen’s earlier book, Pickets and Dead Men, to a week of WFR training at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. It is a collection of stories about her experiences working as a park ranger at Mount Rainier.
During my three seasons at Mount Rainier I learned a lot about mountain climbing and rescues, about politics and camaraderie in the mountains, and about what being a woman climber means. The greatest skill I ever had, though, was the one I started with: being able to suffer for long periods of time and not die. In exchange, I got to see some amazing things.
Raw honesty and sheer grit characterize both Loewen’s experiences and her written words. I love the simple, yet hard-hitting tone she employs to describe her mentality in the mountains.
Looking down at the foot of the glacier, way, way below me, I was happy for the first time in a long while. There weren’t any distractions. There was just me here, and I only had one thing that I could do: go up. Simple as survival.
The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
February | Durham
Love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm.
This is what happens when your best friend is a professional sex therapist: you randomly pick up a book from her coffee table and start reading it. Intrigued, you keep reading. Two days later, you finish the book, order a copy for yourself, and compile two full pages of notes from your favorite passages. You tell anyone who will listen: you must read this book.
Any time I bring it up in conversation, my friends raise their eyebrows.
“It’s a novel about love? That doesn’t really seem like your type of book Marley…”
“I know! That’s a testament to how good it is!”
The Course of Love is the story of two people who fall in love. It begins with all the the typical stuff — infatuation, sex, and intimacy. But the majority of the book details all the ways in which the two lovers disappoint, frustrate, and betray each other. It may be a novel, but it feels like the most real love story I have ever read.
She retreats to a sad but oddly comforting and familiar place inside her head where she hides when others let her down (as they tend to do) and takes comfort in books and music. She is an expert in self-protection and defense; she has been in training for much of her life.
Reading this book not only helped me make sense of past loves — it brought clarity to some of my own insecurities and coping mechanisms. It provided a more balanced perspective on the ups and downs of my parents’ marriage and a better understanding of my brother’s depression. It is not just a book about the complications of love and romance. It is a book to help us make sense of how humans relate to each other.
The trick is perhaps not to start a new life but to learn to reconsider the old one with less jaded and habituated eyes.
Educated by Tara Westover
February | Florida Keys
“But the world is about end!” he said. He was shouting now.
“Of course it is,” Mother said. “But let’s not discuss it over dinner.”
In early 2019, it seemed like just about everyone I knew was reading and talking about this book— the true story of a young woman who grew up in a survivalist cult in rural Idaho. Tara Westover’s family did not believe in schools or hospitals. She did not set foot inside a classroom until she was 17-years-old.
After my dear friend (and fellow bibliophile) Kim Spurr told me to read it, I finally picked it up.
It was just one of those things. A decade later, my understanding would shift, part of my heavy swing into adulthood, and that the accident would always make me think of the Apache women, and of all the decisions that go into making a life—the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event. Grains of sand, incalculable, pressing into sediment, then rock.
Of all the true stories I have read, Westover’s is one of the most heartbreaking. Even though she managed to “escape” the confines of her cultish family and receive an education, she never fully breaks free from the emotional and mental confines of an immensely traumatic childhood. Reading about the abuse she endured from her father left a visceral, sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach.
While her deeply disturbing experiences present a stark contrast to my life story, I still found some parallels, especially in her feelings of not belonging. Imposter syndrome affects all of us — sometimes to a completely debilitating degree.
Clothes could not fix what was wrong with me. Something had rotted on the inside, and the stench was too powerful, the core too rancid, to be covered up by mere dressings.
Find a Way by Diana Nyad
March | Honolulu, Hawaii
A thousand sit-ups and fifty chin-ups every day. Never 999, never 49.
I’ve already written a bit about this book in this post.
To put it simply, Diana Nyad is a superhuman. Her level of discipline and tenacity is so, so much higher than the average person. But still, I have at least one thing in common with her:
The sunrise is uplifting for all of us. Since I was a kid, always up before the sunrise, I’ve not wanted to miss it. There is power, promise, in watching the light emerge and bathe the Earth.
This incredible book details all of her badassery — from surviving deadly jelly fish stings to surviving sexual assault. But it also illustrates the many ways in which she is indeed human. I especially love her stories about friendship:
I’ll never in my life forget Bonnie’s voice that night. During that second half a second before the downstroke that takes my head back underwater, I hear my buddy: “Come on!” “That’s it!” “You’re doing great!” “That’s the way!” “Awesome!” “You’re so tough, Diana.” Fifty times a minute for six hours. Eighteen thousand times.
And I find great comfort and affirmation in these words:
The life inventory began. On the people score, I gave myself a high grade. I may have blown the love of my life, but I had been fiercely loyal to my closest loved ones, and for that, I was at peace. My relationships are my life-blood, and I nurture them with all my heart. If only my epitaph will read: “The best friend on Earth.”
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
April | Nyngan, Australia
Being lost in Australia gives you a lovely feeling of security.
When I first visited Australia back in 2013, my dear friend Jess Boyd gave me this book as a Christmas present. I skimmed through it, but didn’t make a point of reading the entire thing until I returned to Australia this year. Chatwin (a British author) is also an outsider visiting the wild, weird land of Australia in hopes of better understanding Aboriginal culture.
“It’s a weird country,” I said.
“It is.”
“Weirder than America.”
“Much!” he agreed. “America’s young. Young, innocent, and cruel. But this country’s old. Old rock! That’s the difference. Old, weary, and wise. Absorbent too. No matter what you pour onto it, it all gets sucked away.
To read more about my perceptions of Australia, check out this post: Lessons from the Outback.
Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook
April | Broken Hill, Australia
Once he was in Sydney, who knew, he might never come back.
While Al and Nick drove our little rental car across hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of Australian Outback, I sat in the back, devouring this book. A haunting story that immediately sucks you in, it’s a quick read (I finished it in two days).
In the remote towns of the west there are few of the amenities of civilization; there is no sewerage, there are no hospitals, rarely a doctor; the food is dreary and flavorless from long carrying, the water is bad; electricity is for the few who can afford their own plant, roads are mostly non-existent; there are no theaters, no picture shows and few dance halls; and the people are saved from stark insanity by the one strong principle of progress that is ingrained for a thousand miles east, north, south and west of the Dead Heart - the beer is always cold.
When we watched the sunset at Mundi Mundi, these words reverberated in my mind:
Eventually the sun relinquished its torturing hold and the plains became brown and purple and then black as the sky was pierced by a million bursts of flickering light from dispassionate worlds unthinkable distances apart.
The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni
May | Birmingham, Alabama
I like owning next to nothing. Six cameras. A tripod. A couple pairs of jeans. Nothing more.
A conversation about one of my favorite science writers led me to this book. Even though it’s a work of fiction, I found immediate (and obvious) connections to my life. I absolutely love how Geni writes about living and working on a remote island.
My love affair with the islands has continued. At times I feel drugged, wandering the shoreline with a stupid grin on my face, camera aloft. Each snapshot seems like a benediction. We may never know what another person is thinking — never truly get into anyone else’s head — but photography brings us as close as anything can.
The ways in which she describes photography resonate unlike anything I have read before:
The camera is nothing more than an eye that records what it sees. I could have found beauty in an ordinary life. I could have settled down. I could have had stillness and permanence. I could have mined art out of the raw ore of the visible realm.
The shutter clicks. Every boulder, wave, and curl of cloud included in the snapshot is severed irrevocably from what is not included. The frame is as sharp as a knife. The image is ripped from the surface of the world.
Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade
July | Honolulu, Hawaii
“You wouldn’t believe the fucking shit that goes on on these ships, ya know?”
Rachel Slade is a powerhouse. The amount of time, research, and first-person experience she put into writing this book blows my mind. Considered one of the worst maritime tragedies in modern times, Slade details how and why the cargo ship El Faro sank during Hurricane Joaquin in 2015.
But this book doesn’t just recount the tragedy. She threads together a captivating narrative while providing critical context from the maritime industry:
Shipping is the engine that drives our modern world. It's our t-shirts, diapers, beer, and crisp new sheets. It's everything we wear, everything we touch, the parts inside our cars, our laptops, and our dinner. More than 90% of the things people need come by ship.
A hurricane is not a point on a map. It is not an object that exists in space and time. Rather, it’s a huge catharsis — a brief, explosive event when nature’s forces combine to spin off the ocean’s heat into wind. Over its brief life span, a hurricane expends the power of ten thousand nuclear bombs. It’s a spectacular display of thermodynamics in a complex, evolving, moving system.
A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston
August | Greenfield, Ohio
Actors feast on challenging language. We are nourished by words.
When I visited my dear grandparents this summer, I had a good bit of free time. I decided I could re-watch old episodes of Breaking Bad, or I could read the memoir of the phenomenal lead actor from my all-time favorite TV show: the one and only Bryan Cranston.
I happened to grab this book off my brother’s bookshelf a week earlier (I just wanted something to read before bed) but it turns out Cranston’s writing is damn near as good as his acting.
Reading about his long, arduous road to stardom, I found many parallels between being a professional actor and being a full-time freelance science journalist. Both require constant hustle for the next gig. Sometimes you get hired. Sometimes you don’t.
Talent alone doesn’t cut it. If you want to be a successful actor, mental toughness is essential. Lay your whole self-worth on getting the role, on the illusion of validation, before long you’re left angry, resentful, and jealous. You’re doomed. Rejection is part of the living.
Into the Planet by Jill Heinerth
September | South Pacific Ocean
For me, living my wildest dream has meant learning to accept and welcome fear.
When you’re living and working in the middle of the ocean, it’s nice to read about a completely different topic— like cave diving. I am not nearly the badass Jill Heinerth is, but she and I seem to be taking similar paths in life:
Family expectations and convention forced me into a predictable life-script: Grow up. Go to university. Work in a professional career. Have kids. Toil until retirement and delay satisfaction until you have earned it. But what if I never made it to retirement? Why couldn’t I live happily now and let the rest of my life sort itself out? I felt as though my thoughts were traitorous or selfish, as if I was betraying society, my family, or womanhood. Each diving experience shifted me toward a road less taken, but I wondered if I would lose my friends and family if I abandoned the expected path.
Travels by Michael Crichton
September | Big Island, Hawaii
It turned out I didn’t need any of that stuff I thought I needed. In fact, I felt a lot more alive without it.
Before reading this book, the only association I had with Michael Crichton was Jurassic Park. But when one of my dear friends and mentors recommended this (thanks Mason!), I knew I had to read it.
If you’re a writer, the assimilation of important experiences almost obliges you to write about them. Writing is how you make the experience your own, how you explore what it means to you, how you come to possess it, and ultimately release it.
Reading this book while traveling (while sitting in airports and on a plane) felt particularly affirming.
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, and your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes—with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina
October | Quito, Ecuador
“Takes a pirate to catch a pirate.”
The more time I spend in the ocean, documenting the incredible lifeforms in both shallow and deep water, the more I struggle to justify my consumption of seafood. This book sealed it. I no longer eat fish—not just for the ocean’s sake, but for the sake of humanity.
By 2015, about ninety-four million tons of fish were caught each year, more than the weight of the entire human population.
In the outlaw ocean, the victims are many—above and below the waves—but the abuse of the men who help put food on our plates was a shock to me. As consumers, there is a growing sense that cell phones have become a kind of police force to counter such abuses in almost all aspects of life. In something bad is happening, it will likely be captured and posted on YouTube. But that rarely happens at sea, where indentured servitude remains a standard business practice.
At the front of the trawler, a shirtless, emaciated man huddled with a rusty metal shackle around his bruised neck and a three-foot chain anchoring the collar to a post on the deck. The man had tried to escape the boat, the captain of the fishing vessel later explained, so he locked the metal collar on the man and chained him up every time another ship drew near.
TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson
November | Beaufort, NC
If you’re going to tell a story, make sure you know why you’re telling it.
After giving three talks in less than a month, I made this executive decision: I need to improve my public speaking skills. Not to say that my presentation abilities are bad, but like all skill-sets, they can be better.
My travel schedule prohibits me from doing something like a Toastmaster’s class. In lieu of that, I decided to read this book. And I’m really glad I did.
Presentation literacy isn’t an optional extra for the few. It’s a core skill for the twenty-first century. It’s the most impactful way to who you are and what you care about. If you can learn to do it, your self-confidence will flourish, and you may be amazed at the beneficial impact it can have on your success in life, however you might choose to define that.
If you’re going to tell a story, make sure you know why you’re telling it, and try to edit out all the details that are not needed to make your point, while still leaving enough in for people to vividly imagine what happened.
What I was Doing While you were Breeding by Kristin Newman
November | New York City
I say that plane tickets replacing cats may be woman’s greatest progress as a gender.
My favorite thing about this book is the title. I just wish I had thought of it first.
After visiting Devon and Maddy (a couple that is opting to not have children) and many conversations about being a young woman not interested in reproduction, Maddy recommended this book.
You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip.
The only thing I don’t like about this book is the ending. Spoiler alert: She marries a guy and has a kid. I wish y’all could see me rolling my eyes — “settling down” is not the only kind of happy ending for us adventurers. The book I write one day may have a similar plot (a young woman travels the world and has all kinds of amazing experiences and romances) but I promise it will have a very different ending.
Don’t be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson
December | The Florida Keys
With today’s new individual science communicators comes a bit of rebelliousness.
My fourth (!!) trip to Florida this year was the best. And reading this book while working alongside my dear friend and colleague Kate Gould was perfect.
“Kate, I just started reading this book – have you heard of it?”
“Yes!” she replied enthusiastically. “Read it aloud!”
Science, like art and most other professions, requires a mixture of two elements—creativity and discipline. Science without creativity is dull, but science without discipline is dangerous.
Discipline is the rigid, regimented, more robotic objective component that has to be brought to bear for science to work properly. Wild ideas are fine but without discipline they become a waste of time and energy.
Creativity is the more human, liberated, unrestrained element that must be let loose for it to work. Science without at least a little bit of creativity is just plodding detail that does not expand our understanding of the world.