Jack Hitt

Off the Road: a Modsern–Day Walk down the Pilgrim’s Route into
Spain. Jack Hitt. 1994. My friend Pat told me she was reading Paulo Coelho’s Pilgrimage, and she thought I might like it. This led me to re-watch the movie, The Way, and this led me to this title. Emilio Estevez based his script on this book. I loved it! This is not a religious book. Hitt was in a rut with his job and life, and decided to abandon his job and the security that it provided to become a pilgrim and walk the 500 miles from Saint-Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Campostela, Spain, one of Christianity’s oldest pilgrimages. He describes the route and his fellow pilgrims in vivid, clear prose. He also provides a lot of fascinating history of the route. He makes no secret of his disbelief but says his arrogance has changed into “Courteous indifference” so the trip did change him. In the end he quotes T. S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding:” We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.” If you don’t read the book, at least watch the movie, The Way!!!… (more)

Well, it wasn't quite what I was expecting...apart from the synth bio / robotics chapter (which I quite enjoyed).

The chapter on Franklin was a bit blah, not having much to do with invention (when you would suppose there was much fodder there, Franklin being an inventor of several things) but rather, his supposed craziness of character during his time in France. Eh? Whatever.

Then there were great swaths of boring, like the chapter on the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Really? You're writing a book on amateurs in America and the most interesting thing you can come up with is amateur bird watchers? The chapter was boring, long and repetitive. If he'd have said ONE MORE TIME about the educated northerner being partnered with the colorful backwoods yokel I was going to toss the stupid book out the window!

The only thing that kept this book from one star was the synth bio / robotics chapter and the fact that there were fewer errors in this uncorrected proof copy than there have been in most of the published books I've been reading lately!

The amateur astronomers chapter wasn't too bad. It started out strong, then petered out. But, it was better than most of the rest of the book.… (more)