- Paperback: 185 pages
- Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project (Jun 1 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 098262512X
- ISBN-13: 978-0982625125
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 227 g
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,047,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Bermuda Shorts is a memoir from James J. Patterson, reflecting on his life's journey. . . . With a strong dose of humor and some off beat wisdom, Bermuda Shorts is very much recommended." —www.MidwestBookReview.com (September 2011)
Product Description
In clothing, Bermuda Shorts are a kind of casual formal wear – and in this collection of essays, Bermuda Shorts is the perfect metaphor for James J. Patterson’s fundamentally serious but playful literary style. Patterson writes like the love child of Henry Miller and Mary Karr, with all the contradictions that implies — a philosopher who thinks best over a glass of fine wine; an ex-Catholic still haunted by the image of the Crucifixion; an irreverent political satirist whose patriotism flies the flag of another iconoclast, Thomas Paine. Patterson grew up with a foot planted in each of two worlds — one in Washington DC, the Capital of the Empire as he calls it, where the wheels of power spin, and one in rural Ontario, where his Canadian mother insisted the family spend their summers. His father, one of the wizards of twentieth century newspaper publishing, introduced him to the city’s wheels of money and power, which he would later navigate as an entrepreneur, starting his first business at 20. But those Canadian summers introduced him to a different world – one where a cedar strip boat was better than any car, and where the ghosts of those who'd previously inhabited the family’s island house floated out over the water of Lovesick Lake. It is those two worlds that blend in this collection, in reflections both serious and playful, on what it means to be a man, an artist, an iconoclast, a patriot, a lover, as the 20th century rolls over into the 21st.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
disappointed,
By
This review is from: Bermuda Shorts (Paperback)
I have enjoyed JP's books so much! This is the first ebook I have DL to my new Kindle. I was so anxious to read something that I did so without checking the book first. Instead I went on my past experinces with JP's books. For me this book was a mere rambling of words and not an enjoyable captiviating book that I am used to when reading something by James Patterson. I have no one to blame other than myself for making this error in selection. Buyer beware :)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (30 customer reviews) 13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bermuda Shorts Takes the Long View,
By Joanna Biggar - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bermuda Shorts (Paperback)
Happily, early on, James J. Patterson discovered that the bumpy road through life was lined with books. Clearly, somewhere along the way he pulled out a volume of Montaigne. The young 20th century rebel must have found much to admire in the French Renaissance thinker's essays, and especially the meaning of the word essayer, to try - both as a philosophy of living and as a style for writing. The essays in Patterson's delightful volume, Bermuda Shorts, highlight the ways in which life and literature intertwine. And, like the 16th century master, Patterson makes this literary form his own invention.His essays are by turns insightful, funny, poignant, polemical and intimate. Above all, they are conversational. You find yourself engaged in a conversation that you really don't want to end, so you stay with him in a dimly lit bar somewhere, one that never seems to close, and glass in hand, you're good for another round. While Patterson extols the virtues of solitude and the joys of reading, especially in the lyrical sections about his boyhood days in Canada, it is the cast of characters who make strolling through these pages so memorable. Meet the wild yound musicians on Huidekooper St., near Georgetown, the fellow band member and roadie of The Pheromones, Al, and the hockey fans who gather faithfully to cheer on the Washington Capitols: Blond Bombshell, The Sage, The Irish Barrister, and the Mayor of 417, Patterson himself. Enter into the "Conversation You Were Born Into" with Patterson, and you'll be grateful you didn't miss it. 8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
High Recommend for "Bermuda Shorts",
By Robert Kibler - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: Bermuda Shorts (Paperback)
Inside the front cover of James Patterson's "Bermuda Shorts," he suggests a literal set of pants as metaphor, presumably, for what is to be found inside: short essays that have about them the lightness of a summer island, but the sober air of a philosophy. And a fine combination it is too. Patterson has the nifty ability to talk with his reader, essay by essay, to converse casually about his world and ours, to see them as one and the same. What do we talk about? Summer vacations with old boats on silent lakes, friends and mentors. We talk of lovers and art, poetry and politics, music, baseball, and God--all of course over several drinks. Above all, or through all, we talk about the beauty of the world and of its people. Patterson brings a wondrous look at human beings engaged in their work, in their living. While the emphasis in his essays is clearly on humor, character, and just plain good old fashioned story telling, he stands up against the harder aspects of the human condition too, putting beneath our feet an always resurgent sense of loss, of death, and of ineluctable change.Once I started reading "Bermuda Shorts," I never wanted to put it down. It is a wise book, pithy but never heavy, nostalgic but never maudlin, irreverent but never ridiculous. And some of the characters to whom Patterson introduces me I feel honored to have met, among them Chubby Blewett the boatmaker, Charles Winston Young, mad painter, and the mysteriously dark and sexy musician, Amanda Gay. Highly recommend. 13 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful,
By Vaughn J. Howland - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bermuda Shorts (Paperback)
What a refreshing surprise - an autobiographical work without narcissism. Imagine that. Instead, Patterson explores formative years, politics, sports, some philosophy and other topics of interest to nearly all of us (certainly me) in the most engaging way. As soon as I had finished one essay I wanted to turn the page immediately to find out what was in the next. A thoroughly delightful and often thought provoking read. Five stars - absolutely.--- Vaughn Howland |
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