Review: The Best Travel Writing, vol. 9

Title: The Best Travel Writing, vol. 9: True Stories from Around the World (edited by James O’Reilly, Larry Habegger & Sean O’Reilly).

Description: A collection of short creative non-fiction about or inspired by travel.  

Source: It was one of the travel books I got to judge this spring.

Writing style: It’s a collection, so of course the style varies by author. That’s one reason that this book didn’t place in my rankings (maybe a personal prejudice, but I like a consistent style throughout a book).

Audience: Folks who like to read about travel.

Wrap-up: I enjoyed picking up the book and reading one or two entries from time to time; I can’t read a book like this straight through or everything becomes a jumble. There were some well-written, powerful  selections, and others that weren’t quite so affecting. 3/5*

Review: Secret Journeys of a Lifetime

Title: Secret Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Best Hidden Travel Gems

Description: This book, published and edited by National Geographic, gives short (one page) descriptions of 500 lesser-known travel destinations and why they’re worth the trip.  

Writing style: Not so much a travel guide (although a few travel hints are offered, mostly websites) as a wishlist generator. The photography is stunning and every page has color photos.

Audience: Armchair travelers.

Major ideas: Just because you haven’t heard of a place doesn’t mean it’s not worth going to.

Wrap-up: Another book that it’s fun to just leaf through a few pages at a time—keep your bucket list handy! 3.5/5*

Book Review: Hoosh

Author: Jason Anthony

Title: Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine

Description: Anthony, a seasoned Antarctic traveler himself, has written an extensive survey of food in Antarctica. Starting with the earliest explorers, he goes into extreme, sometimes disgusting, always interesting detail about what was eaten, how it was prepared, and how it was transported to the Antarctic.  

Source: One of seven books nominated for Foreword’s award in the travel category (I’m a judge this year). I chose this book as the best of the seven.

Writing style: Meticulously researched, yet always interesting and sometimes funny. It is a lot of writing on one subject, and would probably be tough to read straight through in a couple of sittings, but read a bit at a time, it’s fascinating.

Audience: People who are interested in travel, history, exploration, and extreme endurance.

Major ideas: Well, none of us will probably need to use the practical knowledge in this book (how to make pemmican, prevent scurvy, or boil water under polar conditions), but it’s certainly an example of how deep research and an engaging style can produce a good book out of nearly any subject matter.

Wrap-up: I chose this book for first place because Anthony took a topic that one might think had almost no information available, and managed to write a well-researched, informative, and most of all, interesting book, entirely on Antarctic cuisine. Anthony uses both historical accounts and personal experience in his roughly chronological approach. One might think that after permanent bases were established in Antarctica that eating would be less of a challenge, but he proves that it is still fascinating. 4/5*

Book Review: Safari Jema

Author: Teresa O’Kane

Title: Safari Jema

Description: O’Kane and her husband take several months to make an overland tour of Africa, starting in the north and ending up in South Africa. This is the story of their journey.  

Source: One of seven books nominated for Foreword’s award in the travel category (I’m a judge this year).

Writing style: O’Kane is funny and self-deprecating. The incidents she chooses to relate are usually quite interesting, but the book overall comes across as a little too loosely connected & episodic.

Audience: People who enjoy reading accounts of travel and different cultures.

Major ideas: It’s possible to travel if traveling is really your dream. If you are prepared for a little discomfort and open to others, you can have some wild adventures.

Wrap-up: This book ended up in second place in my list of honorees. I enjoyed it because of O’Kane’s attitude of wonder, curiosity, and acceptance, and because of her knack for knowing what would be interesting to a reader and what might come across as merely boring. I don’t know if I could endure parasites in my feet, though—I’d prefer to just read the book! 4/5*

Book Review: The Unsinkable Mr. Brown

Author: Brian David Bruns

Title: The Unsinkable Mr. Brown

Description:  Bruns (his name means “Brown” in Romanian, thus the title) arrives in Romania to visit a girl he barely knows, Bianca. The first part of the book describes their time together in Romania; when they fall in love, Bruns decides to join her in her occupation—crewing on a cruise ship. He starts as a waiter, a job which is almost never held by an American, and moves up to working the art auctions.

Source: One of seven books nominated for Foreword’s award in the travel category (I’m a judge this year).

Writing style: Humorous and a bit disjointed.

Audience: Would probably appeal more to humor readers than travel readers, though Bruns has gained somewhat of a following among cruisers for his other books about life as a Carnival employee.

Major ideas: Working on a cruise ship isn’t as glamorous as you might think.

Wrap-up: I enjoyed this book, but I did find it somewhat scattered. I wasn’t convinced by the love story either; Bianca comes across as capricious and self-centered. 3/5*

Review: Among the Islands

Author: Tim Flannery

Title: Among the Islands: Adventures in the Pacific

Description:  I’m reading lots of travel  books for the contest, but this was one I just happened to pick up from the library at the same time. Flannery, a mammal specialist from Australia, made several journeys to remote islands in the South Pacific doing animal surveys. He explains the theories of mammal migration—how mammals made it to these very remote islands. Unfortunately, small islands only support small mammals, so most of the book is about rare bats and rats. Flannery is enthusiastic enough about them to make a fairly interesting read.

Writing style: The book reads like a travelogue; Flannery knows enough to write about the islanders and his coworkers as well as the small mammals he encounters and has a good ear for interesting scenes.

Audience: The book will appeal most to those who enjoy accounts of travel and to those who are interested in natural history.

Major ideas: There are still undiscovered species, and there is a chance to save endangered species, but as habitat is destroyed by human settlement and logging, the chance is rapidly diminishing.

Wrap-up: I didn’t regret reading it, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for. 3/5*

Review: Dark Waters

Author: Jason Lewis

Title: Dark Waters (The Expedition Trilogy, Book 1): True Story of the First Human-Powered Circumnavigation of the Earth

Description: Lewis and his partner attempt a circumnavigation under only their own power. This book is first in a planned trilogy, and covers the building of their pedal boat, the Moksha, their bicycle ride across Europe, their Atlantic crossing, and their crossing of the U.S., Stuart by bicycle, and Jason by roller blade.

Source: One of seven books nominated for Foreword’s award in the travel category (I’m a judge this year).

Writing style: Lewis is funny and pretty self-aware. He admits his shortcomings when he sees them. Lewis moves fluently between life-threatening danger—rogue waves, pirates, lack of food—daily drudgery, and his efforts to discover the meaning of life.

Audience: those who enjoy high adventure.

Major ideas: Writing about the meaning of life (or trying to) is a dangerous temptation. All too often, someone will spend hours in meditation and contemplation and come up with profound revelation, only to fail hopelessly to put it into words that rise above the trite. Of course, I’m tempted to go into long digressions here about the nature of language and its relation to reality, but I’ll resist.  I’ll also refrain from telling you the meaning of life—it’ll be much more exciting when it’s revealed to you in the book.

Wrap-up: Definitely worth a read. 4/5*

Review: Kilimanjaro

Author: MG Edwards

Title: Kilimanjaro: One Man’s Quest to Go Over the Hill

Description: Edwards decides to tackle Kilimanjaro as a sort of midlife challenge to himself as he debates the path his life will take in the future. With three like-minded friends, he plans an attempt on Kilimanjaro. He takes us with him through the process from planning to aftermath.   

Source: One of seven books nominated for Foreword’s award in the travel category (I’m a judge this year).

Writing style: Edwards’ writing style grew on me. He gives some personal detail without giving too much information, and the same can be said of the climbing detail. The result is a saga of the trip that doesn’t get bogged down or go too fast. He does seem to relate his own climb to Hemingway’s Snows of Kilimanjaro story a little much—the book would stand on its own without this conceit.

Audience: Those who enjoy first-person travel narratives or stories of people tackling bucket-list type quests.

Major ideas: Edwards knows that the climb will be the most physical challenge he has ever tackled. He’s having difficulties in his career, and figures if he can master Kilimanjaro, he can face the challenge of changing his life’s path in other ways.

Wrap-up: I enjoyed this book. It’s an independent publication, so the quality (i.e. small black and white pictures) could have been better, but overall, I would recommend. 4/5*

Review: Notes from a Small Island

Author: Bill Bryson

Title: Notes from a Small Island

Description: Bill Bryson was an Iowan who took a trip to England, met a girl, married her, and stayed. After quite a few years there, the family decided to move to the United States. Bryson decided to take a trip around Britain, sort of by way of saying good bye.   

Writing style: Bryson has become quite a well-known author since he wrote this book, and I’ve read and enjoyed several of his other books (A Walk in the Woods, In a Sunburned Country). He is sort of a humorist, but not a laff-a-minute guy like Dave Barry. One thing I didn’t enjoy about this book is that Bryson made lots of in-jokes and references that only British folks would get.  The book has also become dated.

Audience: English people.

Major ideas: England is a small island with some very polite people, but it is being destroyed by commercial development.

Wrap-up: I was disappointed with this book, but looking back, I probably expected it to be as good as the others that I mentioned. As an earlier effort, and maybe with a very specialized intended audience, it just didn’t live up to the others. 2/5*