Review: A Pirate Looks At Fifty

It spent about a year reading this book. It didn’t take me so long because I didn’t like the book, or because it’s long; it’s just the kind of book that you can read for a while, put down, and come back to weeks or months later. There’s no pressing need to read it all at once. I’m not sure if that was planned, but it seems right for a Jimmy Buffett autobiography/travelogue. It’s mostly a travelogue. Buffett gives us a brief history of his first 50 years on earth, then tells us about his birthday present to himself: a 4700-mile trip around the Caribbean. As with all Buffett books, the experience is more like listening to somebody in a bar tell a story than reading. Buffett writes in a very conversational tone and isn’t worried about getting side-tracked. He talks about sea-planes, sailboats, fishing, pirates, and whatever else crosses his mind. Buffett obviously has a sense of history, and the book is filled with stories of and facts about the pirates, revolutionaries, and settlers who came before him. Buffett leads the kind of life every 10-year old boy dreams of: he’s a rock star by profession, and a sailor, pilot, and world traveler by choice; he’s at home in exotic places; and his friends seem like extras from some Indiana Jones movie. Not a bad life, and it makes for good reading.