Word: godforsaken
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...Godforsaken Sea, Derek Lundy, a gifted Canadian writer and amateur sailor, tells the story of the 1996-97 Vendee Globe. It gives readers the adrenaline rush of what Lundy calls "apocalyptic sailing." The sailors' skill is astonishing. "These are guys," an observer tells Lundy, "who can go downwind in 30 knots of wind, surfing on 20-ft. seas, carrying a spinnaker and full mainsail. And in those conditions they'll jibe the boat, with the spinnaker--at night, in the dark, alone!" Getting home alive was victory enough in the 1996-'97 race. Sixteen boats started from Biscay; nine finished...
...experience may provoke grand writing, as it does in three new nautical sagas. Godforsaken Sea (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill; 272 pages; $22.95) is one of the best books ever written about sailing--in this case the extreme sailing required to go around the world solo in the toughest of all sailboat races, the Vendee Globe. Aboard wide-beamed, thin-hulled, 60-ft. racing machines--surfboards for maniacs, once they get to the 50-ft. waves of the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica--the Vendee Globe competitors are bound by brutally simple rules. They stipulate one boat, one person...
...Julia Scully uses the memoir to reveal yourself to you. The primer begins in the emotional void of a San Francisco orphanage where Scully ends up after her father's suicide. By the time she rejoins her hapless mother for a make-do life in a makeshift roadhouse in godforsaken Alaska, "the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke" is perfume to her, the rough miners princes. She works like a dog and builds an inner structure that gets her to Stanford and then to New York City, where she becomes a successful editor...
...vitality of the brew is evident from the first track, When Jesus Left Birmingham, a tent-raising sermon about human nature that sounds unlike anything Mellencamp has done before. His voice grainy and low over a smacking drumbeat and soulful female backup vocals, Mellencamp conjures a godforsaken land of dashed aspirations and sordid pleasures, where "all the people went completely nuts./ They all busted out on a wild night/ Riding high on a golden calf." The song also echoes America's disenchantment with politicians and the economy. "To hell with all the politicians and the lies," Mellencamp sings. "Recovery, recovery...
...vitality of the brew is evident from the first track, When Jesus Left Birmingham, a tent-raising sermon about human nature that sounds unlike anything Mellencamp has done before. His voice grainy and low over a smacking drumbeat and soulful female backup vocals, Mellencamp conjures a godforsaken land of dashed aspirations and sordid pleasures, where "all the people went completely nuts./ They all busted out on a wild night/ Riding high on a golden calf." The song also echoes the national disenchantment with politicians and the economy. "To hell with all the politicians and the lies," Mellencamp sings. "Recovery, recovery...