Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival

DNF @ pg 18

No, like absolutely not. I was reading this because I thought it sounded like an intense survival memoir. From the reviews I've read, that sounds somewhat true, but this kept shifting back and forth between the crash and Ollestad's life preceding it. I was ready to press on regardless, but the things he shares from his life before the crash are just... absurd. He talks about being a 10-year-old literal peeping tom, how he saw his neighbor “fucking” a woman and pressed his face right up to the glass to watch, and how much it turned him on. Excuse me? On the next page he recounts shamelessly looking up a girl's skirt at the beach. I put this down then and there. Perhaps these completely irrelevant memories of him objectifying women will turn into something, but I sure won't be there to see it. A boy with no self-control is one, albeit very sad, thing but an adult man who thinks these moments define him and his life? Yikes.

Men have it rough in our world, and boys have it even rougher. Norman Ollestad tells the story of the tough time he had growing up with a demanding father and a demanding stepfather. The trials he suffered as a boy served him well when he had to find a way to survive after a plane crash.

I liked this book but I think men would find it even more captivating. It seems to be a rare book these days, a coming-of-age memoir of a boy.

A thrilling tale of putting the lessons learned in a life lived on the edge to the test, told without emotion or excitement. And using quite a few similes. That's not to say that there isn't some beautiful writing to be found here, but I found most of it to be as cold as the ice-covered mountain into which the author's plane crashes.

I would have been interested to hear more about the author's father; some very interesting insights into being a G-man for Hoover in the early days. Tragic that much of this man's history was lost in the cold along with him.