Brendan Leonard

“Even if you’ve never considered the absurdity of sleeping on the ground in a place where bears live, pooping in a bag on a glacier, or trying to teach someone you love a sport that scares them to the point of loudly threatening to kill you in front of strangers, Bears Don’t Care About Your Problems will still make you laugh.” (from the back cover)

Oh my! I absolutely loved this book. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t exactly educational as you would expect based on the titles of some of the chapters/essays in it (The Importance of Big Dreams, What’s the Best Rain Jacket?, A List of Fun Things You Can Do on Your Bicycle,…), but if you’ve ever read Brendan’s blog, you know that expecting serious educational content to be the main part of this book would be like expecting rain in the middle of summer in Death Valley.

Brendan has the gift of writing somewhat educational content buried under a pile of humor and sarcasm, however, even he can put that away and write an essay like The Benefits of Discomfort or It Turns Out You Can Buy Happiness and get a serious message across loud and clear while remaining friendly.

The essays in this book are accompanied by charts and illustrations drawn by Leonard himself, and more often than not, they also carry a good amount of humor or serve a good educational purpose.

If you’ve ever read any of Brendan’s articles on his blog Semi-Rad and wanted to keep reading, if you’ve stepped outside at least once in your life, or even if you’ve only listened to your friends doing some kind of outdoor sport and couldn’t understand why on earth they would put themselves through it, this book is for you.