Reading About Alaska

A few days ago, I finished a sports adventure book for a book club meeting I didn't attend. Isn't it usually the other way around -- you go to the meeting but you haven't read the book? The book is Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, written by Gary Paulsen. The whole time I was reading the book, I thought of Hemingway's style, replete with short, direct sentences that capture the story with simplicity and accuracy. It was, therefore, an easy, quick read that made me want to read my rarely used copy of The Old Man and the Sea. It's written at the fourth-grade level and is used in comparison to your own writing's grade level when you do a readability analysis in a Word Perfect document. I've read bits and pieces of The Old Man and the Sea, but not the whole thing. What has kept me away from it is that I fear it would be a one-dimensional, short and simple story with no real plot, about an aged and slow fisherman. It would probably be all over within a few minutes, or not more than a few hours, though, and then I'd know for sure. After I finished Winterdance, I read the back cover, which compared Mr. Paulsen to Mr. Hemingway. Isn't it usually the other way around, you read the back first, and then the story? And since when do I read sports adventure books? Since now, I guess.
So how was the Winterdance book? The simplicity of the story complements the starkness of the Alaskan wilderness and the nature of dogs -- straightforward living, raw honesty, you get what you see, and you know it will be gritty and overwhelming. The story moves quickly and is suspenseful, descriptively picturesque, comedic in spots, and doesn't make me want to go to Alaska.