Adventure Reading #1: 📘 Prince of Tides on a Volcano 🌋

Reading Pat Conroy while watching a volcano erupt. Is this real life?

The Book: The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

My Rating: 4.5/5

Book blurb from Amazon.com:

Tom Wingo has lost his job, and is on the verge of losing his marriage, when he learns that his twin sister, Savannah, has attempted suicide again. At the behest of Savannah’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein, Tom reluctantly leaves his home in South Carolina to travel to New York City and aid in his sister’s therapy.

As Tom’s relationship with Susan deepens, he reveals to her the turbulent history of the Wingo family, and exposes the truth behind the fateful day that changed their lives forever.

Drawing richly from the author’s own troubled upbringing, The Prince of Tides is a sweeping, powerful novel of unlocking the past to overcome the darkest of personal demons—it’s Pat Conroy at his very best.

My Review:
This is probably Pat Conroy’s most famous book, and it was my first of his! It won’t be my last.

The Prince of Tides is not an uplifting book. It’s sorrowful and self-conscious and it felt like someone wrapped a mystical shroud around some shard of reality, if that makes any sense.

The main thing I took away from reading this is that Pat Conroy is a freakin beautiful writer. It’s the kind of writing you notice, so if you don’t like the flowery stuff then stay away. One of the highest compliments I can pay is that this book inspired me to see the Southern United States, which Nash and I made happen just a couple months later.

While I was in South Carolina, we accidentally stumbled across The Citadel, the Charleston military college Pat Conroy attended and wrote about in The Lords of Discipline. We also spent a couple days in Beaufort, where the author was raised and where he died only a year before my visit. I can see how South Carolina might soak into your soul and imbue you with white-man-guilt and make you whisper sweet words about it into the air.

The Place: Acatenango Volcano, Guatemala

My Rating: 5/5

My Review:
Acatenango Volcano is one of the three volcanoes that stud the skyline around the colonial city of Antigua. It’s not the most exciting volcano in and of itself. No, instead it’s unique because climbing it gives you one heck of a view of its very active neighbor, Fuego.

In the above photo, you can see what it looks like in the morning.

This is the view at night:

A trip up Acatenango Volcano is rugged, grueling, freezing, noisy, and absolutely spectacular. So much so that I wrote a whole post about every crazy part of it.

Book + Place Pairing

My Rating: 2/5
I was pacing the campsite trying to stay warm, so this wasn’t the most comfortable reading spot. However, reading about the oppressive swampy heat of South Carolina lowlands took my mind off of my numb hands, which saves it from being a terrible combination.

Wait, what is adventure reading?

My favorite hobby! I am a bookworm who loves to travel, so I usually just shove a book in my pack and go. I try to find the most scenic reading spots and spend some time taking it all in, letting the story and the place mingle.

A couple years ago, I started photographing the page I was on. (It’s not a pretty process, since I have to hold the phone with one hand and poking at the screen with my nose to focus.)

All of these posts will have the tag #adventurereading, and I would love to see you add to it - even if the place is your living room or favorite coffee shop!

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” - Pat Conroy