| I dare your reading blues to withstand three of the most adventurous and true stories I can think of! The first is rolling off the publishing presses next month. David Grann, a writer who steers clear of adventure, is nonetheless the master of describing what happens to humans under the most extreme conditions. His book “The Lost City of Z” was an exceptional book about the pursuit of a mirage-like treasure against all odds. His new book, “The Wager,” chronicles competing tales of an 18th century shipwreck of a vessel on a secret mission and the court-martial that followed. He writes in the author’s note: “I have spent years combing through washed-out logbooks, the moldering correspondence, the half-truthful journals and the surviving records from the troubling court-martial.” The second adventurous must-read is Blair Braverman’s “Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North.” Braverman, who lives in northern Minnesota, published this terrific memoir, travelogue and adventure story in 2016 and if you’ve somehow missed it, make a note to read it this weekend. We accompany Braverman back to Norway after she’s had a miserable experience there as a high school exchange student. This time we see her come to terms with a foreign, insular and strange life. And my last true adventure story is “The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean” by Susan Casey, published in 2010. Casey introduces us to the people who pursue and survive some of the world’s biggest waves: surfers, ships captains and scientists. She writes: “The ocean doesn’t subscribe to the orderly explanations that we would like it to. It’s a mosh pit of variables.”
— Kerri Miller | MPR News | 