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A review by jl27
To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret by Jedidiah Jenkins
2.0
I have a lot of opinions on this book.
I started having hunches at around 50%: "Did he just write this as an excuse to try to sound cool about (eating mushrooms on a mountain in Colombia? riding a bike a really long way, but supported by some level of financial privilege? to say he lived through things that most people live through on a daily basis?)." My hunches seemed to come to a sad fruition by 70%, so I put down the book. And note that I am rating this book on every aspect *except* the memories themselves, bc I stand by my "I don't get to rate other people's memories" statement.
But I am glad to rate the delivery of said memories. And this delivery was a bummer.
I've read a lot of memoirs. I've read a number of "journey" memoirs in that process. Into Thin Air was good. Strayed's Wild is a good one, too, despite some minor beef I had with her story. Brianna Madia's Never Leave the Dogs Behind is fantastic, because it's raw and honest and relatable. A lot of these journey-type memoirs start with someone feeling somewhat-to-extremely unprepared to do The Thing They Commit To Doing, and they figure it out along the way, all the while learning about themselves. Sometimes it is a relatable journey, sometimes not; and sometimes, the journeyer gets more lost along the way.
Jed, in this memoir, doesn't seem to learn much about himself. That was unsurprising, especially after he gets pissy (but thoughtfully so) about having his faith questioned, and nothing really gets resolved or "learned," in my opinion. He has luxuries in this story that other travelers of this kind have not had have or could afford during their own travels, so his story smacks of privilege, at times, in his responses to things and the decisions he makes, as well as in his descriptions of things. It seemed immature, and I got tired of it.
Basically, I have a lot of "meh" feelings about this book, because I had expectations/hope that this book was about some kind of journey of actualization. To say all of this, though, is not meant to take away from the physical feat of his riding all those miles. I have put many, many road miles in on a bike. But what he did on some garbage equipment is impressive, to be fair.
To state my feelings in a nutshell, which is how I felt about Crying in H Mart and some others: memoirs are meant to be written, but not all are meant to be shared/read. And that's okay. And writers need to be okay with that, too.
Other reviewers seem to echo a lot of these sentiments, which I waited to read until after I put down the book.
I started having hunches at around 50%: "Did he just write this as an excuse to try to sound cool about (eating mushrooms on a mountain in Colombia? riding a bike a really long way, but supported by some level of financial privilege? to say he lived through things that most people live through on a daily basis?)." My hunches seemed to come to a sad fruition by 70%, so I put down the book. And note that I am rating this book on every aspect *except* the memories themselves, bc I stand by my "I don't get to rate other people's memories" statement.
But I am glad to rate the delivery of said memories. And this delivery was a bummer.
I've read a lot of memoirs. I've read a number of "journey" memoirs in that process. Into Thin Air was good. Strayed's Wild is a good one, too, despite some minor beef I had with her story. Brianna Madia's Never Leave the Dogs Behind is fantastic, because it's raw and honest and relatable. A lot of these journey-type memoirs start with someone feeling somewhat-to-extremely unprepared to do The Thing They Commit To Doing, and they figure it out along the way, all the while learning about themselves. Sometimes it is a relatable journey, sometimes not; and sometimes, the journeyer gets more lost along the way.
Jed, in this memoir, doesn't seem to learn much about himself. That was unsurprising, especially after he gets pissy (but thoughtfully so) about having his faith questioned, and nothing really gets resolved or "learned," in my opinion. He has luxuries in this story that other travelers of this kind have not had have or could afford during their own travels, so his story smacks of privilege, at times, in his responses to things and the decisions he makes, as well as in his descriptions of things. It seemed immature, and I got tired of it.
Basically, I have a lot of "meh" feelings about this book, because I had expectations/hope that this book was about some kind of journey of actualization. To say all of this, though, is not meant to take away from the physical feat of his riding all those miles. I have put many, many road miles in on a bike. But what he did on some garbage equipment is impressive, to be fair.
To state my feelings in a nutshell, which is how I felt about Crying in H Mart and some others: memoirs are meant to be written, but not all are meant to be shared/read. And that's okay. And writers need to be okay with that, too.
Other reviewers seem to echo a lot of these sentiments, which I waited to read until after I put down the book.