A Pirate Looks at Fifty

Like many people my age, I first became aware of Buffett thanks to the song "Margaritaville" and the album Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude. And while I have never denied enjoying his raucous party tunes, over the years I have come to appreciate and even prefer his quieter, more introspective songs. With lyrics such as "...painting liquid brushstrokes like Renoir" ("Beautiful Swimmers") and "...then sent me a smile as she reached for Flaubert" ("Love in the Library"), you know the man is well-read and--dare I say it?--cultured.

I have wanted to read this book ever since it came out in 1996, but I have held off until this year because, well, I turned 50. Now I am no pirate, and I am not sure I really have a desire to be one, but show more I was more than curious to see how someone whose work--musical, political, and philanthropic--I admire spent his half-century mark. And spend it well he did, taking family members and friends--along with his two planes--on a jaunt around Central and South America, describing the scenes and situations as only someone with Buffett's eye for the unusual and the sublime can. Along the way, he provides short flashbacks into events of his life, but he doesn't dwell on them, nor does he turn this into a full-blown memoir. Rather, he provides them as back-story into the whys and wheres of this particular escapade, giving the reader glimpses into the people, places, and things that shaped his world.

A Pirate Looks at Fifty is an easy, enjoyable read--perfect for the beach or the hammock, the two spots which I read the bulk of the book. One doesn't need to be a Parrothead, much less a casual Buffett fan, to enjoy this little adventure. All one needs is a taste for the unusual and the ability to sit back and see the world through the eyes of someone "...who has found/If you leave it then somebody else is bound/To find that treasure, that moment of pleasure/When yours it could have been...."

Find this treasure and make it your own. show less

This is a quite easy to read and an enjoyable memoir--a travelogue of a Caribbean and South American trip Buffet and family took to celebrate his 50th year. Wonderfully discursive and wandering in and out of the past, this can be read at any point. Buffet looks back to his Vietnam-era college years in Mississippi after growing up in Alabama and then transmogrifying into a musician on the Bourbon Street stages. (He intriguingly promises to write a book about these wild and seminal French Quarter years in a future book.) A few of the short chapters and vignettes focus too much on the technical minutiae of flying and fishing for me, but over all I found it a warm and pithy memoir waxing philosophical along the easygoing and show more nonchalant"Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes" vein. show less

An excellent read, interesting and well written. Glimpses of JBs fortunate life that he made for himself and the insight that this guy is more pilot and sailor than singer-song writer. I also leaned more about the Caribbean and its history. He weaved his trip, early life, and regional facts together well.

This was a typically unique Jimmy Buffett experience whereby he weaves his personal "songline" into an entertaining narrative to be enjoyed by Parrotheads, fishermen, "flying boat captains", and anybody with an adventurous spirit! I gave this 5 stars for the sheer entertainment value...it may not be a literary masterpiece, but it's a lot of fun!

I once read a review that stated that this is more of a man's book. As a woman, however, I found these sections very interesting. Granted, flying planes and fishing aren't my hobbies, but learning something new is always fun. I don't think gender should influence one's decision to read this book - just keep an open mind!

...and I especially enjoyed the vivid explanations of Caribbean history.

Although I'm not a big Buffett fan I liked it. It was very much a stream of consciousness journal describing his life. It contains a lot of humor and his exploits flying his twin engine seaplane around the Caribbean.
There are many fun things to quote and some points he made might even reflect some of the lifestyle I would have liked to have included as my own.

A globe trotting reminiscence by Jimmy Buffet. Not my normal read at all, but I do like some of his music & it was interesting. He gets side tracked a lot, which makes it better. We get a pretty good & honest over view of his life as he tells us about his 50th birthday & the trip he took to celebrate it. Within a few months of that age myself, I found it entertaining.

Publishers Weekly
The breezy pop craftsman of "Margaritaville" and "Cheeseburger in Paradise" famously spends most of his time sailing, trotting out 1970s chestnuts on the summer tour circuit--and writing. Buffett's bestselling Tales from Margaritaville (1989) and Where Is Joe Merchant? (1992), among other books, created a world of sun-baked characters whose doings bore some resemblance to those of their author. This memoir draws back the curtain between fact and fiction, and genially takes stock in a manner likely to appeal to the Me generation. Though he rambles, repeats himself and may even raise hackles ("I have been too warped by Catholicism not to be cynical"), Buffett is earnest and unapologetic in his hedonism, seeing his mock show more pirate's life as the antithesis of the conformity foisted on him as a child in Alabama. In a series of loosely chronological vignettes, Buffett quickly takes us from his bar-band beginnings to a brush with death when he crashes one of his fleet of seaplanes. A lower-latitude voyage with his family (in a newer, bigger plane) to celebrate his 50th birthday makes up the bulk of the book, and takes them from Florida to the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Colombia and the Amazon. The diaristic logbook that Buffett keeps along the way provides endless opportunities to muse on the music business; his older, wilder ways; navigation and, on the horizon, approaching mortality. Buffett's prose won't itself win him more "parrotheads" (as his fans are called), but those with enough patience or reverence to wade through long descriptions of beloved gear, favorite books or "fucking tikki pukki drinks" will find beneath these amblings a disarmingly direct character. Simultaneous audio, CD and large-print edition; author tour. show less