
The essay that I loved the most, was the title essay that was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1996, which is otherwise titled as “Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise”. The author is on a ship named the Nadir and is extremely bored of the “absolutely nothing” that he is doing there, that he is supposed to enjoy! It’s a long essay, but it’s remarkably funny. I was hooked from the start till the end!
Every thing about the word ‘luxury’ makes me cringe – which is one reason why this was the perfect book for me. Another is that I’m not fascinated much by the ocean; I love nature, but there is only a finite number of minutes for which I can look at endless blue water and not get bored. And I’m not into fish! I’ve never been on a cruise, and I really don’t think I ever want to be; specially not now after reading this book!
I read about the essay somewhere, before I got my hands on the book(or my mouse…or cursor?) and there was this quote: my single biggest peeve about the Nadir: they don’t even have Mr. Pibb; they foist Dr. Pepper on you with a maddeningly unapologetic shrug when any fool knows that Dr. Pepper is no substitute for Mr. Pibb, and it’s an absolute god-damned travesty, or, at best, extremely dissatisfying indeed. The total randomness of this is what made me want to read the essay! And I wasn’t dissatisfied at all!
For me on a list of five Supposedly Fun Things that I’ll Never Do, on the fifth position will be ‘going to a fancy restaurant, where you have to eat teenie portions with knives and forks’; and the remaining four positions on the list can be filled by one thing: shopping! What about you?!