Todd Tyrtle

Too much self-promotion, self-congratulation and just flat out mentioning of his name. Someone in another review said it read like an infomercial and I agree with that 100%.  Some good information - enough to make a nice article packed in with several hundred pages of chaff. Somehow I had this idea I really had to finish it but it was impossible and others later told me that I already got all the important parts of the book by reading the first little bit. So into the DNF pile it goes. 

I have a soft spot for books like this and this one didn't disappoint. It also sent me down the rabbit hole of the insanity that is RAAM.

I have to admit, as little as I liked carrying camping gear and loads of heavy equipment on my bike in the past, the more I read stories about riding through this part of the world, the more the Route 66 bicycle route map set calls out to me. Someday - when the Canadian dollar is worth a bit more again...

Decent book with some good points. BUT oh man, the repetition. Concepts were beaten to death even going so far as to literally say at the end “We presented the same list in the introduction...” and then proceeding to copy and paste the content from the beginning all over again. I know repetition helps learning but maybe it also helps bulk up a book when you need to get it to print and you haven't quite got enough content also?

Still, it was an inspiring read despite this obvious flaw.

Not a book that would have caught my attention were it on the shelves - I read this one entirely at a friend's suggestion. And even if I had picked it up on my own, I'm pretty sure that I would've given up in the first fifty or so pages, her relationship with ‘S' seeming to dominate the story and truth be told, generating more than a few eye rolls on my part. However, that aspect of the book made what came that much more powerful. To see so much love, kindness, and strength in someone whom I judged at first to be tremendously boring and shallow really made me question my judgments of people in my own life. Very thought provoking. Thanks to my friend, Melissa for suggesting it.

It was an odd experience to find the book simultaneously so inspiring and yet find the author so irritating. Fiercely competitive in the way that turned me off anything athletic for 90% of my life, sexist (eff anyone using the word “Chicked” to describe the humiliation (eyeroll) of being passed by gasp a woman), and not without at least one racial slur.

Still, for some reason I persisted, and I did really resonate with the idea of “doing what needs to be done” and pushing through challenges instead of giving up.

Would I recommend it to others? Probably not. I bet there are way more inspiring books out there by people that wouldn't bug me as much. Still, I suppose that having found this on the side of the road in a free box it was worth every penny.

Very entertaining. I started reading it some time before my first trip to India then had to take it back to the library. Finished it after returning and really enjoyed the “visit back”. Now I want to go back again. The method of exploring a city - in spiral format, is a really interesting idea and makes me wonder how it would be to do that in my own city on foot, or in a bigger project, by bike.

I love most of Tahir Shah's work but I found this one a bit jarring. It was like the literary equivalent of someone doing jackrabbit starts and stops in traffic. Each story felt like it ended too early and I didn't get to spend enough time in them before moving on to another.

Of course I might have been missing something...

I really wanted to like this because it's such a great idea but I feel like something was missing. Maybe it was the lack of any sort of stakes for the author. To me it read like an expanded to-do list, ticking off people to thank.

But I love the idea and I'm glad it's done - I just feel like something got lost in the translation because I just couldn't get invested in it. I suspect he had some trouble at times as well - especially toward the end where he didn't even know how many people he had thanked. 957? 1015? Oh I don't know, I'll call it 1000. Good enough. That feels like a metaphor for what I saw as the biggest shortcoming of the book.

I love most of Tahir Shah's work but I found this one a bit jarring. It was like the literary equivalent of someone doing jackrabbit starts and stops in traffic. Each story felt like it ended too early and I didn't get to spend enough time in them before moving on to another.

Of course I might have been missing something...

A few good recipes - pancakes and vegan mac & cheese were things we made a bunch of. That said, I think the fact that this is a cookbook based on what was served at an intentional community whose kitchen had to cater to the palates of many made for what I find to be a collection of overwhelmingly bland recipes. The kind of food that non-vegetarian people are incorrect in thinking vegetarian food is all about.

I'm a huge fan of mid-century and brutalist architecture and, in fact, even live in a brutalist building myself. I loved the photos - I wish there had been more text and discussion but it certainly whet my appetite for more writing on this subject.

Now, in the midst of the pandemic, though, I'm missing seeing lots of these spaces, particularly some of the iconic indoor spaces mentioned in the book such as Eglinton West station.

Sometimes I want to read an introspective travel book where the author explores their own psyche as much as they explore the outside world. Other times, it's fun to just read about someone having interesting adventures in far away places. This book's a fine example of the latter category. A very light, quick read but also quite enjoyable.

Really fun read. I have memories of hanging out with friends for a season, summer, or grade in school and everything is amazing. You all have so much fun together doing ridiculous things and living like siblings. Reading this felt like being a fly on the wall for a lifetime spent like this among three friends. Yes, they were famous and that informed some of the stories - but the interesting part wasn't that they were famous - it was capturing that friend-meets-family dynamic.

One of those books you're sad is over because now you can't experience it again.