Book Review: Berezina

Damn, it sounded good, and the book review I read last week in The Wall Street Journal (which I must have read too quickly) made it sound like an interesting read.  And the cover looked good, too.  It had to be good:   Five guys riding from Russia to France in the dead of winter, retracing Napolean’s retreat from a military disaster, on three Ural motorcycles.  I love motorcycle adventure books.  How could it not be great?

Well, let me tell you how.  Berezina is the name of a river Napolean crossed on the way back from Moscow in 1812, and in colloquial French it’s become a term for anything that’s a disaster.   It’s an entirely appropriate title for this book.  I was hoping for stories about riding in the cold, riding from Russia to France, the challenges in riding motorcycles not known for reliability…in general, a good adventure read.  What I found was a lot of intellectual drivel laden with three-dollar words talking almost exclusively about Napolean and his retreat.  Somehow, for the most part, the author managed to do this without describing the areas he rode through, and without hardly mentioning the bikes or the ride.  He spent a lot of time imagining the misery experienced by Napolean, his army, and bizarrely, his horses.  I would estimate that less than 5% of the book was about the riding.  Getting through this story was a slog, even though the book was mercifully short.

I realized all of the above in the first few pages, but I kept reading and hoping it would get better.  It didn’t.  Berezina reminded me of another motorcycle adventure that was mostly about things other than motorcycle riding (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I also found to be a slog when I read it 50 years ago).  Zen, however, at least spent some time on the bike and the riding.  In Berezina there was precious little of that, and what little there was wasn’t nearly enough.  Save your money, folks.  The best thing about Berezina was that it was only $15.

There’s an old saying:  You can’t tell a book by its cover.  In this book’s case, never were truer words spoken.

If you want a great read about a real motorcycle adventure, buy a copy of Riding the Edge, Dave Barr’s epic story about his ride around the world on a constantly-failing Harley.  If it has to be about riding Russia in the winter, try Riding the Ice, Barr’s sequel about a trip across Siberia in a sidecar-equipped Sportster.  Either of those books is a great read.  Better yet, buy both books.  You can thank me later.

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