Cork Boat is a great book, and was a fantastic book to start out the read-a-thon. Although I’m not quite finished yet, I thought I should post again. I thought I would be doing more posting, but I’m reading slowly and milling around a bit, plus I’ve been enjoying a lot of other people’s blogs.
There were several jokes in the book about the front of the boat looking inadvertently like someone flipping the bird.
Cork Boat is about following through with an amazingly difficult project against huge obstacles. I can’t believe how much work went into it’s construction, how much dedication Pollack and his friend Garth showed, and how many people really pooled around their project to help them. It’s really an inspiring story, but you really feel the grit of how many things really got in their way. Part of the frustration from Pollack’s point of view that really shows through is his strained relationship with his architect and parter on the project Garth.
At first I was a little bit put off by the potential environmental impact of their project, especially after they decided that used corks were going to take way too long to collect and decided to accept a donation of new corks from a cork manufacturer. But Pollack does a lot of research and teaches us in the beginning of the book that trees aren’t actually cut down to make corks. The outer layer of bark is stripped off and then corks are punched out of it, with the average cork tree living to be at least 200 years old.
Currently reading: Cork Boat: A True Story of the Unlikeliest Boat Ever Built
Pages read in current book: 198
Pages read total: 198
3 Comments so far
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Ruby Ramblings 
Happy Read-a-Thon day! Can you believe we’re already a quarter done? Have fun today and enjoy the wonderful books you have lined up 🙂
Comment by alitareads October 24, 2009 @ 6:27 pmI’m not sure if you’re participating in the read-a-thon, but if you are, keep up the reading!
Comment by Eva October 24, 2009 @ 6:49 pmI didn’t know that about cork. Keep up the fantastic reading & blogging!
Comment by Rebecca October 25, 2009 @ 12:46 am