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A Pirate Looks at Fifty
 
 
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A Pirate Looks at Fifty [Mass Market Paperback]

Jimmy Buffett (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (223 customer reviews)
Price: CDN$ 9.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details
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  • This item: A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett Mass Market Paperback

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  • Tales from Margaritaville: Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions by Jimmy Buffett Paperback

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Product Description

From Amazon

Tales from Margaritaville (stories) and Where Is Joe Merchant? (a mystery) secured songwriter Jimmy Buffett's niche reputation as an affable, poetic beach bum. A Pirate Looks at Fifty, a travel-diary-cum-autobiography, features Buffett behind the wheel of his Grumman Albatross seaplane, safely piloting family and friends through a three-week trip around South and Central America and the Caribbean. He blends gentle scenic narration with rambling, unplugged life stories meant to convey that he's made peace with the whole aging process. For Buffett, turning 50 "can be a ball of snakes that conjures up immediate thoughts of mortality and accountability. (`What have I done with my life?') Or, it can be a great excuse to reward yourself for just getting there. (`He who dies with the most toys wins.') I instinctively chose door number two."

On this tack, Buffett plans an opulent, laid-back trip for his brood and goes into so many details about his favorite possessions (three pages on knapsacks!) that the cheerful vagabond in flip-flops is nearly eclipsed by the rich, domesticated businessman/dad he's become. In addition, stinging losses and limitations--his dad's Alzheimer's disease, his own terrifying solo plane crash in 1996--creep into his cozy yarns. Yet Buffett's infectious, grinning attitude towards life eventually finds resurrection in extended riffs on fly-fishing, solo piloting over water, and surfing. In such passages, he earns his claim to a "saline psyche," a legacy inherited from his grandfather, skipper of a five-masted barkentine that ferried lumber from New Orleans to the Caribbean. Sailing and soaring over Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific seas, Buffett looks at 50 and sees a very good life. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The breezy pop craftsman of "Margaritaville" and "Cheeseburger in Paradise" famously spends most of his time sailing, trotting out 1970s chestnuts on the summer tour circuit?and writing. Buffett's bestselling Tales from Margaritaville (1989) and Where Is Joe Merchant? (1992), among other books, created a world of sun-baked characters whose doings bore some resemblance to those of their author. This memoir draws back the curtain between fact and fiction, and genially takes stock in a manner likely to appeal to the Me generation. Though he rambles, repeats himself and may even raise hackles ("I have been too warped by Catholicism not to be cynical"), Buffett is earnest and unapologetic in his hedonism, seeing his mock pirate's life as the antithesis of the conformity foisted on him as a child in Alabama. In a series of loosely chronological vignettes, Buffett quickly takes us from his bar-band beginnings to a brush with death when he crashes one of his fleet of seaplanes. A lower-latitude voyage with his family (in a newer, bigger plane) to celebrate his 50th birthday makes up the bulk of the book, and takes them from Florida to the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Colombia and the Amazon. The diaristic logbook that Buffett keeps along the way provides endless opportunities to muse on the music business; his older, wilder ways; navigation and, on the horizon, approaching mortality. Buffett's prose won't itself win him more "parrotheads" (as his fans are called), but those with enough patience or reverence to wade through long descriptions of beloved gear, favorite books or "fucking tikki pukki drinks" will find beneath these amblings a disarmingly direct character. Simultaneous audio, CD and large-print edition; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews

223 Reviews
5 star:
 (108)
4 star:
 (40)
3 star:
 (27)
2 star:
 (27)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (223 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars A big kid's fantasy, July 13 2004
By 
Tina Y Young (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: A Pirate Looks at Fifty (Mass Market Paperback)
Each time I read this book, I pick up previously missed "words of wisdom", and am transported along with him to all the adventures he describes so intimately, all over the world. Here is a man who went for his dreams, freely admits when he screwed up, and made it in a way we can only imagine. I absolutely loved this book.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Another Caribbean Soul, May 18 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: A Pirate Looks at Fifty (Mass Market Paperback)
I first read this book on my honeymoon on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and it has truly inspired me. A fellow sailor from childhood, I had lost touch with my ties to Mother Ocean as I pursued a career in engineering that was successful by conventional standards but left me feeling like something was missing. This book reminded me what it was. Jimmy Buffett is an incredible storyteller, and has lived a life many (like me) only dream of. He makes you want to visit each and every place he describes. Some may claim that this book does not deserve 5 stars because it is not a literary masterpiece, and if you want a literary masterpiece, this book is not for you. If you are looking for an enjoyable vacation read, or for inspiration to truly live life instead of following the status quo, then this is a 5-star book for you!
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5.0 out of 5 stars The man behind Margaritaville, May 11 2004
By 
therosen "therosen" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Pirate Looks at Fifty (Mass Market Paperback)
Playing on his classic song "A Pirate Turns Forty", Jimmy Buffett weaves an autobiographical tale that takes you to that mystical place in our minds called Margaritaville.

The book is long on facts, going through Jimmy's life as a youngster, covering the famous story of how he picked up the guitar to meet girls, and through the life as a family man and musician.

An interesting point that comes across is that Jimmy Buffett is not just this carefree guy who sings on stage all day long. He has his own nuances, such as a need to overpack. How does that fit into the life of the troubador? It doesn't, and that peek behind the illusion makes this journey a personal one.

The one downside is that if you're not a Parrothead, the book is probably not for you. If you are a Parrothead, get out the blender, set the chair just right on the deck, and enjoy the book on a lazy sunny afternoon.

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