The White Mountain Chronicles - a Review

(Note: a review of my eBook, 'The White Mountain Chronicles' as added to Smashwords on September 16, 2010 by Brian McCarthy.)


The White Mountain Chronicles - a Review

I'm a huge fan of Laudizen King! I've read "The White Mountain Chronicles" at least a 1/2 dozen times. You can't imagine how much I can relate to this work.

I enjoy his writing style and the way he speaks of the White Mountains and the time he spent there. I share so many of his sentiments about the area, but one that stands out most to me is his thoughts on hiking alone, "I'd rather hike alone than share the mountains with someone who does not appreciate them the way that I do".

I'm a bit embarrassed by it, but I often think how great it would be to have a hiking partner like him, someone who loves the whole mountain experience: the drive up as the weight of the world starts to leave your shoulders, the satisfaction of a long hard hike, the pleasure of a warm camp fire and cold beer afterwards, gazing at the stars from a tent in Dolly Copp, and all of the other great things that come with the mountain experience.

I actually just stayed at Dolly Copp on Sunday night before hiking King Ravine on Monday and was thinking of this book. I'm curious what his favorite site was. I was putting up my tent in the rain, remembering the story 'May Camp', of arriving late in the evening at Dolly Copp, and getting his tarp set up in the rain. His writings are so vivid that it's impossible to be in the area and not recall a story or two of his about the area you're in.

Laudizen King's writings mean a lot to me. I think you will enjoy them as well. When your schedule, the weather, or life in general won't let you be in the mountains, Laudizen King's writings are the next best thing to being there yourself!

Brian McCarthy
September 16, 2010

(Use the following link to see the review at Smashwords.)

Review

Laudizen

ChoSun Galbee, Korean BBQ in Los Angeles

A friend at work, Sam Soon Kim, asked my wife and me to join her for dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant in Los Angeles. Shirley and I accepted, and after Sam told us we were going to the ChoSun Galbee Korean BBQ off Olympic Blvd in Koreatown, I went and looked up some reviews.

Non-Asians (or non-Koreans) did not seem to like the service. Many said it was pricey, and that parking was an issue. Many reviewers loved it. Forewarned and forearmed, Shirley and I met Sam at ChoSun Galbee on Tuesday night.

The restaurant was already busy at 6:30 pm, so I pulled into the small valet-parking lot. We met Sam and were shown to our table. If you want BBQ you get a table with a grill in the center. Sam is Korean so we already had an 'in' as she handled the discussions in Korean as to what was good and fresh that night, and she also ordered drinks. One review that I had read earlier said that the best thing to have with dinner was an ice-cold Hite beer, so I asked Sam to order me one.

We ordered two plates of prime beef to BBQ, one plate marinated and one not. We also ordered Galbee Jjim, a cooked short-rib dish. A plethora of small dishes appeared: kimchi, pickled radish, broccoli with a piquant sauce, and many more. There was rice and seaweed soup as well, and a large green salad with a tasty dressing.

Everything was delicious. The BBQ was exquisite, just take it off the grill in front of you and place it on your salad, and we grilled peppers, garlic, onion and mushrooms along with the meat. As for the Galbee Jjim, it was absolutely the best short-rib dish I have ever tasted, the beef melted in my mouth. The seaweed soup was surprisingly good. We were never rushed, and the wait-staff was not cold and distant as much as they were busy; the place was packed.

The three meat dishes we ordered cost between 26 and 31 dollars each, and valet-parking cost two dollars. I'm not sure about the cost of drinks as Sam picked up the tab. But it was impressive that the restaurant was busy as it was.

If I had to choose between a restaurant that was empty and a busy one with difficult parking, well, I'd take the busy one every time.

We had a wonderful dinner, and we had a great time talking to each other and enjoying the atmosphere.

My review: It was excellent.

Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles: icon, historical figure, friend and destination for many around the world, died in November 1999, in Tangier, Morocco, at the age of 88. The expatriate writer, composer, and traveler, became part of Gertrude Stein’s artistic circle in 1931, and during that year, he made his first visit to Tangier with the great American composer, Aaron Copeland. In 1947, he moved to Tangier permanently, where he received such varied quests as Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs, and the Rolling Stones.

When Paul Bowles died, I had just finished reading “The Sheltering Sky”, and my paperback showed many turned-over corners that I used to mark interesting passages or prose. On everyone’s list of the 100 Greatest English Novels, it is an engaging and hypnotizing view of the edge of civilization in North Africa, set in the period just after World War II, as seen through the eyes of a world-weary and disenchanted American couple and their friend. That period in Europe and North Africa following World War II is such fertile ground for expression and is rich soil to plant a seed in; the post-war despair amid the growing tide of nihilism in regards to all things human. There is the life we know, and the life out there in the desert, just beyond our horizon and experience, the one in which all things are possible. As for the life out there, (in which we may find the meaning of ourselves, or in which we may lose everything), that life awaits us if we seek it. As for the life we know, that is moving inexorably to its end, along with us and our possibilities, as we head for our cosmic end and the ironies beyond.

“How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Paul Bowles, “The Sheltering Sky”