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This book is a very solid 3/5. Just the right amount of interesting that I was engaged whenever I listened to it, but not so engaging I was tempted to listen to it in times other than when walking places or doing the dishes. Perfect audiobook choice.
It's a nonfiction book written by a woman about her experiences traveling/living in Alaska around 1900 for 18 months. It is, shall we say, very much of its era. For example: I was amazed at how casually racist she could be about the native peoples while at the same time having a great deal of respect and caring for a number of native individuals. But overall I was pretty impressed by May, though I never grew particularly fond of her. Being a woman in gold-rush Alaska at that time was clearly not easy or comfortable, and she worked HARD, and seemed to be overall very pleased with her experiences despite various difficulties.
I was glad this book was rather more personal than the last 19th century woman's travel memoir I read (the one about the woman who went to Australia). But again I am deeply curious about aspects of the author's life that were elided over. May is a married woman, but the reason for her traveling for such long periods of time without her husband was never explained, and whenever she talked about her "dear ones" at home it always seemed to be in reference to her family of origin (her mother in particular) and never her husband. So I'd be interested to know more about their relationship - why she doesn't seem interested in talking about him much, and why he's okay with her being so independent, and all that. She talks about this for like one sentence in the introduction and that's ALL. Also also: May mentions in her introduction that there are aspects of her experiences that were far greater trials that she doesn't write about, and I'm definitely interested to know what these were.
(the other thing I want to know: DAMMIT MAY YOU CAN'T TELL THE STORY ABOUT THE CAPTAIN WHO WAS LOST IN A SNOWSTORM AND NOT LET THE READER KNOW WHETHER THE FOUR NATIVE PEOPLE WHO WERE TRAVELING WITH HIM ALSO MADE IT OUT OKAY.)
Unrelated to the book itself, but I just had to share: I got the audiobook from Librivox, and when I started listening to it I started helplessly giggling right away, because the reader sounded SO EXACTLY in intonation like a tv/radio announcer type person and it was just so incongruous in an audiobook narrator! (I got over it, and actually quite appreciated the quality of the reader - she's definitely one of the better Librivox readers I've listened to - but it was very disconcerting at first!)
It's a nonfiction book written by a woman about her experiences traveling/living in Alaska around 1900 for 18 months. It is, shall we say, very much of its era. For example: I was amazed at how casually racist she could be about the native peoples while at the same time having a great deal of respect and caring for a number of native individuals. But overall I was pretty impressed by May, though I never grew particularly fond of her. Being a woman in gold-rush Alaska at that time was clearly not easy or comfortable, and she worked HARD, and seemed to be overall very pleased with her experiences despite various difficulties.
I was glad this book was rather more personal than the last 19th century woman's travel memoir I read (the one about the woman who went to Australia). But again I am deeply curious about aspects of the author's life that were elided over. May is a married woman, but the reason for her traveling for such long periods of time without her husband was never explained, and whenever she talked about her "dear ones" at home it always seemed to be in reference to her family of origin (her mother in particular) and never her husband. So I'd be interested to know more about their relationship - why she doesn't seem interested in talking about him much, and why he's okay with her being so independent, and all that. She talks about this for like one sentence in the introduction and that's ALL. Also also: May mentions in her introduction that there are aspects of her experiences that were far greater trials that she doesn't write about, and I'm definitely interested to know what these were.
(the other thing I want to know: DAMMIT MAY YOU CAN'T TELL THE STORY ABOUT THE CAPTAIN WHO WAS LOST IN A SNOWSTORM AND NOT LET THE READER KNOW WHETHER THE FOUR NATIVE PEOPLE WHO WERE TRAVELING WITH HIM ALSO MADE IT OUT OKAY.)
Unrelated to the book itself, but I just had to share: I got the audiobook from Librivox, and when I started listening to it I started helplessly giggling right away, because the reader sounded SO EXACTLY in intonation like a tv/radio announcer type person and it was just so incongruous in an audiobook narrator! (I got over it, and actually quite appreciated the quality of the reader - she's definitely one of the better Librivox readers I've listened to - but it was very disconcerting at first!)
