Travel Recent Picks
June 2008
The title-underlined links will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.
Do travel writers go to hell? : a swashbuckling tale of high adventures, questionable ethics, and professional hedonism, by Thomas B. Kohnstamm. (2008).
"After pursuing an advanced degree in Latin American studies, Kohnstamm reluctantly took a position as a researcher at a large Wall Street firm. The restless author quickly tired of the corporate drudgery and, after some hesitation, accepted an assignment to update Lonely Planet's guidebook on Brazil. The resulting book (a "chronicle [of] events that took me from bourgeoisie working stiff with a repressed travel habit to a full-time mercenary travel hack, with all the good, bad, and surreal shit that it entails") is a wonderfully picaresque journey through the vibrant Brazilian landscape. Following a marathon bender through the streets of Manhattan with his friend, "the Doctor" (one of the book's many parallels to the work of Hunter S. Thompson), Kohnstamm departed for Rio de Janeiro with little more than his laptop and a few changes of clothes. He awoke the first morning in bed with Inga, a Lufthansa stewardess who proved to be one of many female companions bedded by Kohnstamm, who comes off here as quite the Casanova. Amidst the hard partying and endless nights, however, the author began to realize the difficulty of gathering adequate information about the countless locales he must visit. With his paltry funds dwindling, he reached out to previous Lonely Planet scribes, most of whom were far from reassuring: "Remember that if you are in your room at night writing, you aren't doing enough bar research." Along the way he befriended numerous memorable characters: Nils, a baggage handler from Copenhagen and singer for a grunge band, Synthetic Jesus; Inara, a Brazilian beauty who shares an apartment with the author for a couple of weeks (and who turns out to be a prostitute of sorts); Otto, formerly of the Israeli Defense Force; Mr. Yay, so named for his prodigious coke habit; and Bobby, from whom the author buys Ecstasy tablets in an effort to make some quick cash. Readers will relish the countless stories of the author's misadventures, but Kohnstamm brings more than just anecdotes: He offers a solid understanding of the mechanics of the travel-writing industry and a unique ability to illuminate that world to readers." (Amazon)
Silverland: a winter journey beyond the Urals, by Dervla Murphy. (2007)
"Journey through the wind-blown snowscapes of Far Eastern Russia with the septuagenarian globetrotter Dervla Murphy in this engaging travelogue. As Murphy travels deeper into the hinterland, she encounters a strange world of lynx and elks, indigenous tribes and shamanism, reindeer broth and taiga-berry pie. The slow-train takes Murphy into relatively untouched regions where she meets a host of colorful and generous characters who enjoy fireside debates bolstered by steaming samovars of sweet tea. Insightful, warm, and original, this is an amazing account of the secrets of Siberia and beyond." (Amazon)
A handful of honey: away to the palm groves of Morocco and Algeria, by Annie Hawes. (2008)
"An hilarious and thought-provoking new travel book from the bestselling author of Extra Virgin. Aiming to track down a small oasis town deep in the Sahara, some of whose generous inhabitants came to her rescue on a black day in her adolescence, Annie Hawes leaves her home in the olive groves of Italy and sets off along the south coast of the Mediterranean. Travelling through Morocco and Algeria she eats pigeon pie with a family of cannabis farmers, and learns about the habits of djinns; she encounters citizens whose protest against the tyrannical King Hassan takes the form of attaching colanders to their television aerials - a practice he soon outlaws - and comes across a stone-age method of making olive-oil, still going strong. She allows a ten-year-old to lead her into the fundamentalist strongholds of the suburbs of Algiers - where she makes a good friend. Plunging southwards, regardless, into the desert, she at last shares a lunch of salt-cured Saharan haggis with her old friends, in a green and pleasant palm grove perfumed by flowering henna: once, it seems, the favourite scent of the Prophet Mohammed." (Amazon)
Narrow dog to Indian River, by Terry Darlington. (2008)
"Having survived their adventure through France to Carcassonne, you might have expected septuagenarians Terry and Monica Darlington (not forgetting Jim the whippet) to retire to a corner in the nearest public house. But no, seized by the spirit of Columbus, they looked to the New World and the massive and little-explored Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway which stretches from Virginia to the Gulf of Mexico… No-one had sailed a narrowboat in the US before, for reasons that became clear during the 1,150-mile voyage of the Phyllis May - including thirty-mile sea crossings, waves, storms, fog, tornadoes, hurricanes, savage fish, poison algae, killer spiders and starving alligators. But the real danger came from the Good Ole Boys and Girls of the Deep South who were waiting along the shore. Captains and Colonels, bums and heroes, fishermen and plantation owners, weathergirls and gongoozlers and beautiful spies, dancing dicks and the walking dead - all wanting to meet the Brits on the painted boat and their narrow dog and take them home and party them to death. The beautiful eastern coasts of the US - the Carolinas, Charleston, Savannah, the wilds of Georgia and Florida - are unknown to many, and few have experienced the countryside and the people as closely as the crew of the Phyllis May. This is America with a smile on its face and an arm around your shoulder… Beautifully written, lovingly observed and very funny, Narrow Dog to Indian River takes you on a sometimes dangerous, always entertaining voyage through a wonderland but a few steps off the track." (Amazon)
A summer in Gascony: discovering the other South of France, by Martin Calder. (2008)
"With charm and gentle humor, Martin Calder describes one extraordinary summer spent working on a family farm in a remote hilltop village on southwest France's Gascony coast. A Summer in Gascony is a tale of village festivals, dusty roads, and sun-baked wine country, all dotted with lively and colorful characters. It evokes the spirit of a place, all told in sensuous detail by a man who understands the Gascon way of life." (Amazon)
America unchained: a freewheeling roadtrip in search of non-corporate USA, by Dave Gorman. (2008)
"Dave Gorman is disenchanted with America. He loves the people, the comedy, the language and the architecture, but during a nationwide tour he realises he's unable distinguish one small town from another. Then one night, while stalking the streets in search of buildings built in his favourite futuristic Googie style, he is struck by the unhappy realisation that the America he's been living in is not the America he's always admired from afar. What ever happened to the land of optimism, of opportunity? With the corporations having taken over, it must be hard for a local coffee shop to thrive when a new Starbucks opens every five nanoseconds. Do the ever encroaching chains herald the end of the American dream? And so a plan begins to loosely form. What if he was to avoid all chains, choosing instead to only support local, independent businesses, could he find America's lost soul? Is it possible during this time of rampant globalisation to find places to stay, places to eat, drink, caffeinate and be entertained without handing any dollars over to The Man? After all, this challenge would be easy. All he had to do was: - Go to America - Buy a car - Don't give any money to The Man - Drive from coast to coast - Sell the car And so he sets off on an epic journey from West to East, a trip designed to hark back to an America that may or may not have ever truly existed. An adventure that takes in every US state, well, okay not Alaska or Hawaii, a whole spectrum of real-life eccentrics, and pushes his quintessentially American 1970 Ford Torino (the car that Starsky and Hutch used to drive!) to the limits. But of course, once it begins his quest mutates into something, bigger, bolder, and more extreme than anyone was reckoning on. Oh, and funnier too. An epic American road trip - with a difference..." (Amazon)
Finding Nino, by Marc Llewellyn. (2008)
"The fear that twenty years from now you'll be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did can cause people to take extraordinary leaps of faith. Abandoning the rat race for an isolated Mediterranean island to learn to fish and barter for your daily bread is one thing. Doing it as first-time parents and a crazy dog called Tetley is a whole other kettle of fish.This is a story about a man, a woman, a baby and a dog who follow their dream to settle on Lipari, one of the spectacularly beautiful 'Islands of the Winds' floating in a volcanic archipelago off Sicily. He plans to get back to nature and learn to live like an islander, she to escape her worst nightmare of becoming a suburban mother obsessed with designer prams, nannies and school waiting lists. But abandoning all you know to make a new life on the other side of the world is never as easy as it looks and much harder than you can ever imagine. Relationships can be strained. People can be strange. And having time to stop and think is confronting in more ways than one. But then along comes a man called Nino who could teach Zorba - and the author - a thing or two about life, love, growing olives and finding your place in the world. Finding Nino is about making the dream of a sea change a reality - and learning what really matters in life from someone who's seen it all." (Global)
Still no fixed address, by Jackie Hartnell. (2008)
"Following on from 'No Fixed Address', this book finds Jackie continuing her worldwide adventures. From revelling in the festivals of Spain, to walking through Aotearoa, to cruising through rain and fjords in Norway, these are the entertaining stories of a 60-plus-year-old woman travelling on the cheap - and loving every minute of it."
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