I had a hard time reading the ending because I knew how it would end for her and Denys. That's the negative thing about reading a book about real people. You know how it all will end. Also, it was a bit hard to read about her and Denys because in my mind he and Karen have always been a couple since the first time I saw Out of Africa. I loved Beryl and Denys together, but at the same time, I felt that they were betraying Karen. It's tough sometimes to read books. The transition to becoming an aviator comes late in the book. The connection to riding dangerous unruly stallions is not hard to make. Despite the experience of a number of friends dying in airplane crashes, she can’t resist the opportunity of learning to fly from her friend Tom. I loved McLain’s account of her affinity for this new challenge and way of seeing the world. : When Beryl is quite young, she reflects that “softness and helplessness got you nothing in this place.” Do you agree with her? Or do you think Beryl placed too much value o Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who live and love by their own set of rules. But it's the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl's truest self and her fate: to fly.

Astronomer Carl Sagan in his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World offered a similar non-disprovable analogy called the Dragon in the Garage as an example of skeptical thinking. If Sagan claimed there was a dragon in his garage, you would wish to verify it for yourself but if Sagan's dragon was impossible to detect: No, I don't think he was a good parent. He was so busy training horses and trying to make a living that it seems he almost forgot about her. Lady Delamere did remind him that Beryl was a girl and she was running wild. Then her father tried to "tame"... - annar The first time I read about Beryl Markham was in a short story collection, Almost Famous Women: Stories. That was really the first time I had ever even heard about her. This book was nothing short of amazing. Like its high-flying subject, Circling the Sun is audacious and glamorous and hard not to be drawn in by. Beryl Markham may have married more than once, but she was nobody's wife." --Entertainment WeeklyMany orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. [2] The Line – The publisher has requested that no quotes be used until the book is published late July. I’ll respect that and actually must, as you’ll discover if you read the rest of my comments. Various proposals were put forward in the past to explain the discrepancy, including the existence of another planet, called Vulcan, even closer to the sun, Bloomer said. But eventually, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity solved the conundrum.

Beryl Markham is a flawed character - certainly , probably as flawed as the real person that this fictional autobiography is based on and as flawed as most of us , but I could not find a flaw in the way this story was told. The writing from the first sentence describing her plane , the one she flew across the Atlantic , is mesmerizing and then moves to the unbelievable descriptions when she first arrived in Kenya as a little girl and in the days beyond - simply beautiful writing. This novel is a fictionalized account of a remarkable woman, Beryl Markham, who lived in the early part of the 20th Century in Kenya as a horse trainer. The story is very captivating and maintains a solid pace throughout. Though I read this a couple of years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed it and it remains somewhat clear in my memory (I have recall issues from a Traumatic Brain Injury 9 years ago). So, it made a very positive impression! The narration by Katharine McEwan was good, but her voice fits better the young naive Beryl of her youth rather than the determined woman she came to be. It was slow, which I like. Sometimes I could not distinguish every word clearly. She could not relate to her lovers, and there are several! Primarily because the one she loved most (Denys Finch Hatton) wasn't accessible. Denys was a free-spirit, like her, but I do believe Beryl would have married him if she could have. There are other reasons too. The social milieu of the expat community to which she belonged abounded with extramarital love affairs. Her inability to connect to others must also have been shaped by her mother's early desertion. In the book, very little is explored concerning her father's decision to move to Cape Town, and subsequently her hurried first marriage. How good a father was he? What were the psychological consequences of this for Beryl? We are only told how much she adored him. Look at values-friendships-marriages-failed marriages-births-abandonment-dreams-dreams at all costs-family loyalty-gossip-secrets-loss-love-freedom--I loved this book! Beryl Markham was a very strong, independent woman. She was a horse trainer and also learned to fly. I wish I could have known her. I plan to read more about her. While I didn't always agree with the choices she made, I liked that she was so determined and accomplished so much. I felt sad about her relationships and that she struggled in that area of her life. What an amazing life she lived though. Famed aviator Beryl Markham is a novelist’s dream. . . . [A] wonderful portrait of a complex woman who lived—defiantly—on her own terms.” — People (Book of the Week)

I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely. [3] Analysis If it was a very long night, and sleep didn't come at all, I would let every guard down and think of Denys. Perhaps he was sloped in one of Karen's low leather chairs by the millstone table, reading Walt Whitman and listening to some new recording on the gramophone. Or in his storybook cottage at the Muthaiga, sipping at nice scotch, or off in the Congo, or in Musai country after ivory or kudu or lion, and looking up, just then, at the same tangle of stars I could see from my windows.Before Kenya was Kenya, I threw a spear and a rungu club. I loved a horse with wings. I never felt alone or small. I was Lakwet. Upon becoming an adult, she doesn't know much except horses and farming. With abandonment issues, now from her father as well, Beryl finds that horses and other men respond well to her. But the men in her life eventually leave her, as they sense she is meant for independence, not to mention great adventures, something hard to fathom from a woman in that time and place.

She also experiences more than one man, which only reminds her that she needs to find her own way, to know what she stands for. Richly textured . . .Markham’s life is the stuff of legend. . . . McLain has created a voice that is lush and intricate to evoke a character who is enviably brave and independent.” —NPR Entirely coincidentally, the next book I read was “Almost Famous Women” by Megan Mayhew Bergman. One of the stories in Bergman’s book, “A High Grade Bitch Sits Down For Lunch,” is about Beryl Markham and her training of the wild and dangerous horse, “Messenger Boy,” which was covered in “Circling the Sun.” The reference to her being a “high grade bitch” is a quote from Ernest Hemingway in reference to Markham’s 1942 book, “West With the Night:” What our ancestors could figure out was the analemma, the plot of the sun's position in the sky at noon observed from a single spot on Earth over the year. Eventually she finds love with a different sort of man, a gentle and wealthy aristocrat from England who claims a desire to fulfill her ambitions to have her own horse farm in the land she calls home. But on a visit home with her and their infant son, he changes his mind under the influence of his dominating snobby mother. The scenes with her visiting her son, telling him stories of Africa and promising to show it all to him someday, were particularly moving for me.While it has been a long time since I read The Paris Wife, I remember liking it a bit more than Circling the Sun. In fact, Paris Wife is what encouraged me to try several Ernest Hemingway novels. If I had not already read it, Circling the Sun may have encouraged me to read Out of Africa as its author is one of the main characters. In fact, it probably comes as no surprise once you know that, Circling has a very similar feel to Out of Africa.