9780062642851
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Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube audiobook

  • By: Blair Braverman
  • Narrator: Blair Braverman
  • Category: Polar Regions, Travel
  • Length: 9 hours 8 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: July 05, 2016
  • Language: English
  • (4650 ratings)
(4650 ratings)
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Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube Audiobook Summary

A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman confronting her fears and finding home in the North.

Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was nineteen, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska.

By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair’s endeavor to become a “tough girl”–someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless. As she ventures into a ruthless arctic landscape, Blair faces down physical exhaustion–being buried alive in an ice cave, and driving a dogsled across the tundra through a whiteout blizzard in order to avoid corrupt police–and grapples with both love and violence as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.

Brilliantly original and bracingly honest, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of the journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.

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Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube Audiobook Narrator

Blair Braverman is the narrator of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube audiobook that was written by Blair Braverman

BLAIR BRAVERMAN is a writer, dogsledder, and adventurer who uses innovative storytelling to make the outdoors accessible. She is the author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, a contributing editor to Outside magazine, and a contributor to The New York Times, Vogue, This American Life, and elsewhere. She lives in the northwoods with her husband, Quince Mountain, and their team of sled dogs.

About the Author(s) of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube

Blair Braverman is the author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube

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Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube Full Details

Narrator Blair Braverman
Length 9 hours 8 minutes
Author Blair Braverman
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date July 05, 2016
ISBN 9780062642851

Subjects

The publisher of the Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Polar Regions, Travel

Additional info

The publisher of the Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062642851.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Kalen

December 15, 2016

I didn't read any of the reviews of this book until I finished it. I loved this book and if you want one that features fewer men and their feelings, goddamn write it yourself. This is Braverman's story and she told it the way she wanted to.

E.K.

March 23, 2016

Slightly outside of my usual wheelhouse, this ARC is a memoir. I met the author at the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association Author Social last week, and she was awesome. Also it's a great title.It's about dog-sledding and growing up and, it must be said, the horrible thing that men do to girls and women. But it's mostly a story about loving something, and not letting go of it, no matter what the world does around you, and I like that sort of thing in fiction, so reading about it for REAL was even better.The book comes out in July, and I really recommend it.

Dav

September 17, 2016

This is a somewhat strange, but very well written and edited memoir of an unusual young woman with a fascination of the North. The strangeness mostly comes from Blair's disassociative style, and the dry observation tone that seems to be a Scandinavian trait as the tone felt similar to the Swedish memoir The Fly Trap. There is a subdued emotional intensity throughout, and frankly I teared up about half a dozen different times toward the end for various reasons. As a father of daughters, some parts of it were hard to read in the beginning, but Blair revealed some truths that we fathers need to reckon with.

Ava

March 21, 2016

Love the north? Want to comfortably experience it from afar? This excellent first book is an account of an achingly young person growing into the realities of young-womanhood in all its nuanced harshness, set in situations even harsher - wrestling hungry dogs, negotiating the social hierarchies of frost-bitten mushers and stoic Norwegians. The story is as gentle as a sled ride over rough terrain, but with pitch-perfect dialogue and crisp, unflinching portraits of difficult people and difficult places, Braverman's memoir reads as if written by a seasoned journalist. If Farley Mowat and John McPhee had a genius granddaughter...

Ellis

July 08, 2017

This is a book about how men are scum:"I thought of a another man, the day before, who had wrapped his arms around me from behind. Treasure, he'd whispered, you're north of the moral circle now."But he was tugging my long underwear off my hips, kissing me even as I pressed my mouth shut. Pulling a condom from his pocket, rolling it on. As soon as I saw it, my heart sank: he had come here for this. I pressed my knees together. He shoved them apart easily. 'Please stop-' I whispered, but he put a finger to my lips. 'Shh,' he said. 'We don't want everyone to hear us.'""But one night, two of the male guides stood and watched me, murmuring about the way my wet shirt stuck to my skin. I felt intimately exposed, humiliated, as I dipped my head once more into the bucket to rinse the last soap from my hair, feeling their eyes on my back, making my body theirs. By the time I stood up, they were gone. I wondered what they would have done if I wasn't Dan's girl. I stopped washing my hair, and wore more hats.""Though there were a few female mushers, the men on the glacier dominated social life; their authority came with and edge of sexism that seemed at once inevitable and disconcerting. In my first weeks, men flicked their gaze down my body, then caught my eye and smiled. Someone walked behind me in the snow, and when I slowed to walk beside him, he urged me forward: 'We don't get this kind of view much around here.'"and although I was hoping for more dog sledding, I'm pretty partial to Norway & misandry, so this was quite enjoyable.

Allen

August 08, 2016

http://www.themaineedge.com/adventure...The quest to discover where we truly belong can be an arduous one. So many people spend countless months and years striving to figure out just who they want to be. It’s a journey that can prove to be daunting, surprising, rewarding and terrifying – sometimes all at the same time.That is the journey laid out by Blair Braverman in “Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North.” It’s the story of a young woman whose inner compass continually pointed north, to the lands of ice and snow; places where environmental hostility and overarching masculinity conspired to create an inhospitable domain for an inexperienced woman.Places in which Braverman was determined to survive…and thrive.From a young age, the California-born Braverman knew that her destiny lay somewhere in the north. She lived there briefly with her parents at 10 and had an ill-fated run as an exchange student at 16. While still a teenager, she made her way to multiple isolated outposts – she was an exchange student in Norway, where she also spent time at a folk school – a school devoted to teaching the traditions of Norwegian outdoor life; things like dogsledding and wilderness techniques.She also spent time as a tour guide atop an Alaskan glacier, a place where she found what she thought was love and turned out to be something much less. She learned much about the care and maintenance of sled dogs while also providing cheerful assistance to a variety of tour groups. She went to college (Colby College, to be exact) and asked herself the hard questions and ultimately found that she still needed the North.Much of the story takes place in the small Norwegian town of Mortenhals, an isolated hamlet where Braverman fell in with an aged shopkeeper named Arild. Slowly, she becomes a part of the fabric of the town, assisting Arild with his work at the shop and helping him with a project aimed at maintaining a connection to the history and traditions of the place.As she bounces back and forth through space and time, the threads of her identity spin together. The reader bears witness as she battles through obstacles external and internal alike in an effort to become the version of herself that she truly wants to be.“Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube” is a stunning piece of work. Braverman lays herself bare, exposing all of her desires, her insecurities and her triumphs in a compulsively readable tangle of raw nerves, brutal honesty, self-deprecation and biting wit. She allows room for not just her inner strength, but her doubts and fears as well, striking a balance that brings her story into vivid focus.The landscape is a constant presence throughout; Braverman renders her environments with such meticulous detail and loving language that they are essentially characters in their own right (and primary characters at that). We are deposited onto the snow and ice right alongside Braverman; we suffer alongside her and cheer her triumphs. Her victories and defeats are ours. Her broad and celebratory spirit shines through on every page; truthfully, this combination of compelling storytelling and beautiful prose reaches heights to which every memoir should aspire.“Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube” is a chilly breeze blown across a snowy field, a cup of coffee shared around a tiny table on a frigid morning, a full-tilt dogsled ride that is both dangerous and under control. It is a grizzled shopkeeper and a scorned lover and a woman who is far stronger than even she understands. It is sharp and smart and poignant and wildly funny and just plain wild.And last but not least – it is an absolutely phenomenal book.Fans of adventure writing, fans of autobiographical writing – hell, fans of GOOD writing – all will be rewarded for embarking on the journey that Blair Braverman has laid before them.

Ron

May 25, 2016

Californian Blair Braverman falls in love with the North and moves to Norway while still in her teens to learn how to drive sled dogs. After a stint as a tour guide in Alaska she returns to Norway to run a quirky small town museum and work in a general store. She constantly struggles to become a “tough girl” as a young woman in a man’s world. Since the success of books like A Glass Castle, Running with Scissors and Wild, memoirs have at times seemed almost a contest of dysfunction where the most horrific experiences “win.” Braverman captures in a brilliant and unique voice the less dramatic but no less real fears more often felt, despite the exotic locations detailed here. The best work of NF I’ve read in 2016, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube is this years’ H is For Hawk.

Rene

February 25, 2018

I don't read a lot of memoirs, but this was enthralling. I read it expecting sled dogs, but instead I got a coming-of-age story as Braverman confronts the magnet that pulls her north to cold, deserted places, and examines what it means to be one of the few women in a lot of these spaces. This story is honest as it is uncomfortable, and i hope that Braverman is in a better space now--compelling reading is often not fun to live through. If Braverman ever does write a book about racing sled dogs, I will be all over it--the brief passages in this book that addressed her relationship with mushing and her dogs were compelling, and I'd love to read more.

Amy

July 31, 2016

Another in the "love to read about adventures I'd never do but am happy other people did and then wrote about them so I could read them" series.

Paige

January 27, 2020

My God. I feel like I just took a masterclass on writing. I have never been so blown away by writing as I was in this book, Blair Braverman is... incredible. And I mean that beyond writing as well. The adventures she has, the life she has lead. Incredibly, she does not boast or seem to think of herself as unique. I LOVED this memoir. This book feels like it may be marketed wrong — it’s not so much about dog sledding or surviving life in Norway/Alaska as much as it is purely about Braverman and her navigating her life. Plus the many, many colorful characters that she encounters. Definitely a coming of age novel. It took me a while to get into the Old Store/Arild storyline (I kept wanting more from her younger years), but by the end I completely understood why she structured the book like that. I mean, what a triumph this novel is. And to think she’s only early 30s! What else will she accomplish? How else will she push herself? And how can I read every single thing she ever writes from here on out?!?!

Fernanda

April 02, 2019

** spoiler alert ** I only discovered this book because I found Blair’s dogs on twitter. I fell in love with her storytelling there, and was curious about her book. I started reading thinking it was going to be a light and fun reading, just like her tweets, but what this book gave me was a deep story and deeper reflections. Her stenght has always inspired me, and reading about her struggles to get where she’s at today is almost breathtaking.Reading that last chapter, where she says that the hardest race until that point was a 42-miles in preparation for bigger ones (200, 300, 1000 miles one day in the future) and seeing her completing the Iditarod a couple weeks ago, a 1000-miles race that was her dream for so long, brought tears to my eyes.

Ellie

January 27, 2023

Less dog mushing and more introspection. But a beautiful look into the people who live in northern Norway. Blair is vulnerable and genuine in her recounting if her time in the north.

Patti

October 06, 2017

A someone was always fascinated by Alaska.....and even more so by everything Norway I COULD NOT put this book down. It is so well written and the characters have this certain quietness and depth through such good writing. I am probably old enough to be the author's mother and I was in awe of her courage to take fear on and own it. Like Julia Child's My Life in France, here was another woman determined to embrace and live by the norms in her adoptive lands. I think this a great read, especially for young women and teens who may be thinking about their own futures. I found her struggles with predators Far and Dan especially important to the book. Despite the dangers of being in The North, Braverman could never let down her in guard in the company of men and her struggling in figuring out whether she was making a "big deal" of things or even those men were repugnant (they were) there is lesson especially for younger readers who are likely experiencing similar encounters. The irony was that despite her fears of living in a dangerous, cold place it was those close to her that she had to worry about. I find it astounding that so many readers complained that she discussed issues with men to such a degree and that this element should not have been so much a part of the story. It seems to me that as a woman, a foreigner or simply a stranger in a strange land, these encounters had a huge impact on her experiences. I don't know anyone would come home from a study abroad experience and NOT be deeply affected by Far's actions. That fact that she didn't fall apart into herself but instead went back in testament to her strength. Her relationship with Arild was fascinating and poignant and one of the few people she could genuinely trust.

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