Ghost Rider

My path to this was more than a little roundabout. After watching the "Time Stand Still" documentary, I found myself thinking of the documentary before this, when they talked about the events that became this book. As I was in enthusiastic about what I had to read, I decided to give this book a try to see if there was some fresh content from the band to consume.

The book details the events that took Neil's daughter and then his wife, and his multi-year struggle to reconstruct his identity and life after his loss. Written as a part travelogue, part memoir, it covers his travelling and his attempts to put the pieces back together.

The look into his process of painfully going back to see who he is now is raw, fascinating and unflinching. It takes him a solid two years to pick up a pair of drumsticks again (and a few years after that to rejoin the band and move forward musically), and he freely admits his flashes of bitterness at seeing couples and families that remind him of what he's lost.

Equally interesting are his observations while on the road. He skewers a lot of the fellow travelers as fat and incurious, and displays a grasp of Western environmental issues (water rights) that many Americans don't have.

His reading rate is equally impressive, he devours books (and writes in his journal and letters to friends and family) at an amazing rate.

At its root a travel book. Wave away some of those trappings and it's a personal journey toward healing from the deaths of loved ones. Peart is an outstanding writer, never seemingly concerned with propriety, always (it seems) brutally honest. And he's riding a motorcycle, which is exceptionally cool.