all in all, a pretty inspiring read. she hits the motivational nail on the head quite heavily at times, but she is a writer of children’s books and I guess quite used to putting it out there in as simple a manner as possible.

i did get kind of tired of her preaching about her lifestyle and her kids and her needing to find another place to go in order finish writing her book about her nomadic lifestyle, but if you ignore all that and just take it for what it is – the ramblings of a pretty adventurous woman who has changed her life around so she’s living it the way she wants to, it’s pretty good.

This book fascinated me at the beginning, but ended by annoying me. At the beginning of this woman’s nomad phase of life, she started out curious and wanting to know about the world and she began her journeyings with that in mind.

But somewhere along the line, her story really began to annoy me. For example, she never hesitates throughout the book to say condescending, judgmental and derogatory things about missionaries she meets in her travel, yet she also does not hesitate to take advantage of them at every opportunity, as if she believes these people have nothing better to do than cater to her every, often unreasonable whim. Long about New Guinea, she started to reveal herself as self-important, self-involved, and out of touch with reality. She decides to visit New Guinea simply to check out the place. No problem. Lots of people do things like that. She signs herself up for a packaged tour which is supposed to begin in about a week. Despite the fact that she has been informed that there are no commercial flights, boat rides, bus rides, camel rides, or any other established and regular form of commercial transportation to there, she decides she simply has to visit a remote and inaccessible part of the New Guinea while she waits for her tour to begin. As a matter of fact, about the only way into or out of this area she plans to visit is - you guessed it - a series of small aircraft run by missionaries for the purpose of transporting people to and from home, taking people to medical care, and flying vital necessities to people living in this otherwise inaccessible place. At the time she wants to visit this remote place, she is informed that she should not rely on the missionary aircraft because they have several aircraft down for repairs and they have a lot of flights that are already scheduled for people with a lot more important needs than just wanting to kill some time before they join their tour group. The woman catches a flight to the inaccessible location anyway and then complains and rants because they are not going to drop everything and fly her back to the place she needs to be in order to meet up with her tour group on time. And why was she going to the interior of New Guinea? To save a life? To help someone? To deliver something life-changing? No. She was curious. She was also completely mystified and angry about this missionary aviator who didn’t jump to accomodate her in her selfish demands.

It’s an interesting book, but bail out before you get to the temper tantrum of the New Guinea phase. The woman becomes more impressed with herself and even more puffed up from that point out.