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In Search of Sundance, Nessie...and Paradise by Simon Bennett (view source)
Revision as of 14:52, 3 September 2020
, 14:52, 3 September 2020no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=In Search of Sundance, Nessie...and Paradise
|author=Simon Bennett
|reviewer= Lesley Mason
|genre=Travel, Autobiography|summary= A surprisingly charming little book about one family's roam around Scotland following a child's dream of meeting a dolphin, but just generally searching for low-key adventure, family bonding and that greatest of joys: the making of memories. Hopefully , it will both provoke some of your own and encourage you to go out and create some more. An unashamedly personal and feel-good book.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|date=December 2016
|isbn= 978-1524666170
|websitecover=Bennett_Search|videoaznuk=1524666173|amazonukaznus=<amazonuk>1524666173</amazonuk>
}}
What makes a book worth reading? How can you tell if you've read "a good book"? I use the past tense advisedly because (despite what we reviewers and the more highly considered literary critics will tell you) you will only know it's a good book once ''you'' have read it. Books are personal. There are three things that signal good books to me: how I feel while reading them and in the enforced spaces between reading them, the degree to which I bore everyone around me for ages afterwards by quoting them and talking about them, and whether I remember how, when and where I first read them. That last criterion can only be judged later, but on the first two ''In Search of Sundance…'' definitely qualifies.
By any objective criteria I feel I ought to be disparaging of this book. After all, it is little more than one man's diary of one family holiday – complete with snaps. As his wife says in the forward it wasn't a far-flung destination, it wasn't an extended duration travel, it didn't involve life-changing encounters. It was just an ordinary family hiring a motor-home and heading north for two weeks, with their own motivations. It wasn't even a free-form adventure. It had all been meticulously planned – although we all know how long plans survive. The original quote says something about ''encounters with the enemy'' but my experience suggests that the word ''holiday'' can easily be substituted at the end there. I've long since figured out that the only Plan B you need is "''do something else instead''.
So, let's ditch objectivity, and come back to my primary point that books are subjective. Personal. We decide for ourselves what is worth reading and what isn't. We decide the definition of 'worth' and allow it to mean whatever we, Humpty-like, choose it to mean.