Tag: travel

Unexpected Light

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Elliot, Jason. An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan. Picador Press,

Reason read: Victory Day in Afghanistan was on April 28th.

Elliot writes about Afghanistan with a passion that takes you along with him. You can practically smell and see the shops where one can buy shampoo, faux leather watch straps, sticky honey, blank staring heads of goats, army green grenades, prayer carpets, cooking pots, rotting vegetables, astringent medicine, wooly socks, or steel rockets…anything to suit your needs. His mission? To prove to the world that is was possible to travel alone in the places others shunned. (As an aside, what does he think of our world now? It is still possible?)
Besides passion, Elliot also writes with lyrical elegance. His statement about time being a river was stunning. It left me pondering my fishing abilities for days. Words like spectral, silent, ghostly, and luminous describe a simple ride through town, but those words also make the journey extra eerie and dangerous. He takes this imagery a step further by adding a touch of royalty by saying they are “kings in the night on our wild chariot” (p 47). It is a romantic image in a dangerous town for Elliot and his companion are out after curfew and could be shot on sight.
Speaking of danger, the section on the diabolical designs of landmines was difficult to read. I cringed as I read about explosives that were made out of plastic so that they would avoid detection by x-ray in a victim’s body. Or mines that “jumped in the air to about the height of a man’s groin before exploding” to cause a man the most damage and bleed to death…I could go on. My favorite section was when Elliot needed to distract himself from paralyzing fear. He fantasized about riding on the back of a giant fantastical simurgh and seeing with landscape from high above.
Elliot met with people with eyes open; people who supported the Taliban and even defended their actions, pointing out how order has been restored. Perception is truth to most people.
Personal observations: Can you imagine receiving a fax from someone chatting about curtain colors after you have been in the center of incoming tank rounds? It sounds inane.
When Elliot described people ripping off parts of Russian tanks and selling them for scrap I instantly thought of the opening scene to one of the Star Wars movies.
As an aside, I would understand why Elliot would want a guide traveling through unknown territories, but why does he need someone to sherpa (my verb) all his crap, too?

I mentioned before how elegant and lyrical Elliot’s writing is. Here are other examples: a brilliant description of a mood change, “…fell across my feelings” (p 208) or the removal of an ammunition belt, “slithering to the floor like an anaconda” (p 233). When Elliot described a ride in an overburdened vehicle struggling up a steep and windy mountainside I felt his fear as if I were right beside him. Here is another quote of brilliance, “Fear has its own seductive language” (p 265).

One degree of separation from Natalie Merchant moment: When describing the mysterious world of Sufi mysticism Elliot compared it to the ancient tale of the blend men and the elephant. The same story Natalie set to music on her double album, Leave Your Sleep.

Author fact: Elliot has a very simple but cool website. There isn’t a lot of information about him, but it’s still cool. If I could meet Elliot I would ask him if Beat ever read his book and if so, did he recognize himself as the one with the idiotic smile?

Book trivia: An Unexpected Light was the winner of the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award.

Music: Mir Fakhruddin, Pavarotti’s Nessun dorma, and Puccini.

Nancy said: Pearl called An Unexpected Light perceptive and exciting.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Islamic World” (p 126).

Traveling in Wonder

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Carolynn, Autumn. Traveling in Wonder: a Travel Photographer’s Tale of Wanderlust. Autumn Carolynn Photography, 2024.

Reason read: As a member of LibraryThing’s Early Review program, I often get to read interesting new releases. Also, for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge, I needed a book in that fit into two genres. This fit the bill with being a memoir and a travelogue.

Traveling in Wonder presents itself as a memoir about a photographer traveling around the world. It is separated into four sections of Autumn Carolynn’s life: Study Abroad, Flight Attendant, Travel Agent, and Autumn Carolynn Photography. At the end of each chapter is a small selection of photographs from a particular trip. More on the photography later. Traveling in Wonder is an honest memoir, revealing situations of childhood bullying and adult mental health challenges. At times throughout Traveling in Wonder I found Carolynn immature (horsing around the Paris metro, sleeping in public places, drinking too much with strangers, leaving instead of clearing the air with travelmates, etc.), but then there are times her wise beyond her years travel savvy comes to the forefront and I am eager to know more. She was only twenty-two years old and brave enough to travel alone around Europe every weekend while in a study abroad program. I enjoyed her honesty and her writing showed signs of lyrical genius, but more often than not, I was suspicious that the whole thing had been written by AI or put through ChatGPT. Some phrasing just didn’t make sense. Here are a few examples: What exactly is a glorious satisfied defeat? Who has a personality like moonlight’s sparkling snow? How does hair become a heap of excitement? What does “bad times make up for the good” mean? How is a waterfall an eccentric beauty? How is rain designated? I just do not know many people who speak like this.
All in all, I enjoyed Traveling in Wonder although I would not recommend reading it on a phone. The photographs, a major draw of the book, were small and underwhelming when viewed on a phone. There weren’t that many of them to enjoy.

As an aside, how do you mistake a Jewish Synagogue for the Roman Colosseum?
Confessional: since she listed food and drink she wanted to try in each foreign country I wish she had written more about those experiences, especially when she decided to become vegetarian.
Contradiction: She claims to want to enjoy the silence in the new places she travels and yet, she listened to Bon Iver as she hiked around a lake.
Confessional: Caryolynn seems to get along better with guys than girls. I could relate. I was the same.

Setlist: Ann Wilson, Beatles, Blink-182, Bob Marley, Bon Iver, Death Cab for Cutie, Dropkick Murphys, Ellie Holcomb, Flogging Molly, George Harrison, Heart, Jack Johnson, John Lennon, John Mayer’s “Stop This Train”, “La Vie En Rose”, Mozart, Nancy Wilson, Paul McCartney, Police’s “Roxanne”, Ringo Starr, Shania Twain, “Strawberry Fields”, Sufjan Stevens, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, “Yellow Submarine”

As another aside, I thought the same thing when she mentioned “Irish” music and mentioned The Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly. As pointed out by another reviewer, they are bands from the United States. When Carolynn mentions the buskers in Dublin, I had to wonder if one of them could have been Dermot. That would have been cool.

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs

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De Bellaigue, Christopher. In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: a Memoir of Iran. Harper Collins, 2005.

Reason read: Iran celebrates its new year in March.

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs made me want to travel through the Middle East if only to see the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, the seven thousand graves, each with a photograph of the dead man buried below. That must be an impressive sight.
Through riding in a taxi and listening to the radio De Bellaigue offers up a snapshot of current events: Saddam’s activities burning oil wells in Kuwait, Colin Powell’s outward facing response to send more troops in aground campaign without telling the public what that really means. And speaking of taxis, what is it about taxi drivers? They are by turns an opportunity for confession and a source of information. There are little Easter egg surprises within In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. The mini explanation of Rumi’s birth into the world of poetry was one such treasure. The personal details of how De Bellaigue met and courted his wife, Bita. Speaking of De Bellaigue’s wife and in-laws, I had to wonder how his personal life with them altered his journalistic approach to writing In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. The language was far more introspective and dare I say romantic?

As an aside, when De Bellaigue said some characters were a compilation of more than one person I instantly thought of Natalie Merchant’s Miss Tilly. Merchant created Miss Tilly from a variety of strong women she has known throughout her life.
As another aside, there is a point where De Bellaigue succinctly describes the premise of a show called “The Good Place.” Tell me if this doesn’t sound familiar, “At the end of our lives we must compile a log of our activities and present it to the authorities. Points are totted. Heaven, Purgatory, or hell; you go to one, and your performance on Earth determines which” (p 66).
Final aside, Here is the menu for a 1971 dinner in the ruins of Persepolis:

  • Raw camel (carpaccio camel?)
  • Stuffed quail eggs
  • Caspian caviar
  • Lamb with truffles
  • Roast peacock

Author fact: Christopher De Bellaigue has his own website here.

Playlist: Led Zeppelin, Tarkan, Ibrahim, Shirley Bassey, and Googoosh.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the obvious chapter called “Iran” (p 108).

The Royal Road to Romance

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Halliburton, Richard. The Royal Road to Romance. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1925.

Reason read: Halliburton was born in January. Read The Royal Road to Romance in his honor.

The Royal Road to Romance opens with Halliburton’s Princeton days when the mere scent of apple blossoms could distract him from his studies. Indeed, he had an adventurous spirit from a very young age and was a self-proclaimed “horizon chaser.” Later he calls himself the “devil’s pet protégé”, unable to resist the call of the road.
Halliburton was a reckless adventurer. He yielded to illegal temptations all the time. He told a stranger he was “in quest of the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow” (p 102). For some reason he and his roommate wanted to climb the Matterhorn so badly that they were willing to lie about their mountaineering experience and hide their lack of equipment. They traveled without an itinerary; going where the fancy took them. Halliburton made impetuous decisions – jumping off a train somewhere in Switzerland because he couldn’t get a sense of the countryside by rail, breaking into the gardens of the Generalife by scaling a wall protected by thorny rose bushes, or using lies to get where he anywhere needed to go. He told one farmer he was a horse doctor so that he could acquire a donkey. After he was arrested he told a guard he was a train robber and bigamist and then stole a copy of the Short History of Gibraltar as a souvenir of his penal adventure.
Other adventures include climbing the pyramids at night, swimming naked in the Nile, trekking to the city of Ladakh where only twelve white visitors are allowed each year (because he wants to see a town that practices polyandry) and climbing Mount Fuji in the offseason, just to say he did.

As an aside, Halliburton got me to look up the painting of Lady Recamier and the champagne, Paul Roget.

Lines I loved, “How many successes are plunged into failure by not letting well enough alone?” (p 87), “…we deliberately set about finding some way to circumvent our restrictions” (p 237), and “A common tongue is not vital to understanding when there is congeniality of spirit” (p 317).

Playlist: I only noticed Beethoven mention.

Book trivia: The Royal Road to Romance was dedicated to Halliburton’s Princeton roommates.

Author fact: It is my personal opinion that some of Halliburton’s escapades were greatly exaggerated. The attack of pirates and subsequent murders on the high seas was hard enough to swallow, but Halliburton’s reaction to it seem implausible.

Nancy said: Pearl said Halliburton’s books are a bit dated.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the interesting chapter called “Where in the World Do These Books Belong?” (p 258).

A Full Net

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Daignault, Susan. A Full Net: Fishing Stories from Maine and Beyond. Islandport Press, 2023

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing, I occasionally review cool books.

Disclaimer: I have to say this upfront for the sake of being completely honest. I am not a fishing person. The last time I “fished” for anything, it was off the side of a 7′ skiff with my dad. We were dropping lines (complete with lead sinkers) for mackerel that were running in the harbor of Monhegan. I do not remember eating anything we caught, but I do remember winding up the line and the excitement I felt bringing up those beautiful speckled silver and blue fish. [As an aside, the general store used to smoke mackerel in a converted old fridge. They were delicious.]
Having admitted that I am not an avid fishing fan, it makes sense that I could not fully relate to Daignault’s acute passion/obsession for reeling in the biggest big one or the agony of the one(s) that got away. With the latter, I can only equate it to the pain of a DNF in the world of running road races. [There is nothing more embarrassing for a serious runner than a “did not finish” result attached to your bib number. But again, I digress.]
More importantly, because I am not passionate about fish when Daignault went deep into the fishing terminology I felt like she was speaking a foreign language. Luckily, she translates often.
Aside from fishing, as a person, I found Daignault to be an inspiration. She enthusiastically forged her way through what was considered a man’s world with fishing and her chosen career in the Coast Guard. She was the first woman assigned to the 180-foot buoy tender named Firebush in Kodiak, Alaska. Two years at sea in Alaska is no small feat!
Confessional: Beyond the fishing terminology I found A Full Net hard to read at times only because the stories are all over the place and have a chaotic timeline. One minute she is describing something from her childhood and then the story will jump to the 2020s. There is a bit of repetition I needed to battle as well (How many times could she say her family summered on Cape Cod where she had sand in her toes and salt in her hair?). It was if the chapters were written as stand-alone essays.
One last comment. The subtitle of A Full Net is Fishing Stories from Maine and Beyond. Because Daignault is so secretive about her favorite fishing spots, particularly in Maine, she could have titled her book Fishing Stories from the Southern Side of Pluto. I felt she mentioned other locals such as Costa Rica, Louisiana, Florida, the British Virgin Islands, Alaska, and Cape Cod just as often as Maine.

Book trivia: there is an abundance of photographs which add to the charm of Daignault’s story.

Maine Bucket List

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Gonzalez, Shirley. Maine Bucket List Adventure Guide: Explore 100 Offbeat Destinations You Must Visit! Canyon Press, 2022.

Reason read: I have the Maine bug. What can I say?

If you want a compilation of a bunch of random places to visit in Maine and you like your information willy nilly, Maine Bucket List is the guide for you. It comes with some caveats, though. Comprised of 125-ish places in Maine, Bucket List is sorted into “regions” and includes GPS coordinates for Google maps for each spot. Speaking of maps, though, there is not a one included. Not even one of the entire state of Maine. To make matters worse, I strongly disagree with the so-called regions. I found the organization of regions to be strange because if you don’t know the state of Maine, you have no idea why Gonzalez starts in Lewiston. Actually, I know Maine and have no idea why she chose to start with that town. To explain further – Lewiston, Augusta, and Bangor are the first three locations mentioned, but not one of them is in the same county (Androscoggin, Kennebec, and Penobscot respectively). They are all approximately an hour from each other. Gonzalez goes back to a Lewiston locale 75 pages later. Here are more head scratchers: Peaks Island (near Portland) is the page before Lubec, which is some 4-5 hours away. Then Lubec is followed by Gorham (again, 4-5 hours away). Baxter State Park is not in the table of contents under B for Baxter, nor is it under M for Millinocket (where the park is located). You can find Baxter State Park Park under B for Bangor…which is ninety miles away. As an aside, Millinocket has a pretty cool half marathon every December to help support the town.
But, enough of the “region” complaints. I think I made my point. My next gripe is the inclusion of just Will Kefauver’s studio gallery. Why not include any of the other hundreds of fantastic galleries? Why nothing about the Wyeth family or the gallery of Paul Niemiec? I hoped to see the Rockland Breakwater walk mentioned. It wasn’t. I was disappointed that while Gonzalez included the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens she didn’t mention their fantastic Gardens Aglow event that happens every Christmas. It is an outrageously beautiful display with thousands and thousands of Christmas lights. Every color of the rainbow lights up a winter wonderland. Walking through the park after dark with a cup of hot chocolate is an event not to be missed and so much more exciting than a bunch of trolls.
The guide isn’t all bad, though. Maine Bucket List introduced me to facts about my home state that I was not aware: there is an official memorial to the Underground Railroad, Robert E. Peary graduated from Bowdoin and you can tour his house, and Swans Island has a music festival. I made special mention of the Devil’s Footprint. I will have to check that out the next time I am home.

You know I can’t get away from being critical about information regarding Monhegan Island. I would disagree with the best times to visit the island. Gonzalez says between April and October. I would change that to June to September. Most of the “day tripping” boats don’t start running until Memorial Day weekend. Hotels do not open until the last week of May so if you arrive before the daily boats I hope you know someone to bunk with! Most accommodations are closed by the first or second week of October.                                                

Book trivia: editors of Maine Bucket List had a hard time spelling Mount Desert. It was either Mountt or Deseret. Other missed mistakes include the hours for a monastery: “daily mass at 7:30 a.m. on weekends and 8:00 a.m. on the weekends.” I think the first weekend mention should be weekDAYS. As they say in Maine, hard telling, not knowing. I suppose I could look it up…

Setlist: “State of Maine”

And a Right Good Crew

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Kimbrough, Emily. And a Right Good Crew. Illustrated by Mircea Vasiliu. Harper and Brothers, 1958.

Reason read: A pleasant end of the year read.

Sophie and Arthur Kober, Howard and Dorothy Lindsay, and Emily Kimbrough make up the “right good” crew. This is the story of the five of them are canal cruising aboard first the Venturer and then the Maid Marysue. They travel between Staffordshire and London with plenty of adventure along the way.
Parts about Kimbrough that made me laugh: she was a self proclaimed arguer. She liked a persuasive dialogue challenge. Throughout And a Right Good Crew she was witty and humorous. I loved how she described herself and her companions as heathens who didn’t know how to make a proper pot of tea. She shamelessly uses her daughter’s pregnancy to gain special treatment while traveling and desperately wanted to see how a game of darts was played. I think I would have liked to be friends with Emily Kimbrough.
A few scenes I enjoyed: shopping in 1950s England. They didn’t supply shoppers with containers for their purchases, (What is old is new again. Maine does provide shopping bags, either.) Arthur Kober’s attempt to steer the Maid Marysue, and the ringing of the bells.
Beyond a pleasant memoir, And a Right Good Crew includes some practical late 1950s information about traveling by canal: a glossary of terms, a step by step directive of how to take a boat through a lock, a list of books for suggested reading, and a tally of basic expenses.

As an aside, if you order a Bloody Mary in London, are you swearing at Mary?

Author fact: Kimbrough grew up in Chicago and developed a sense of wanderlust early on.

Book trivia: be forewarned, the details are a little dated. Case in point, the hire fee for a boat was twenty-nine pounds per week. A charge for a lad was six a week.

Head scratching lines, “He had phrased her incompetence delicately” (p 7), “We continued to impose our involuntary shock treatment” (p 180), and “Neither activity came even in the neighborhood of my comprehension” (p 224).

Setlist: Gershwin’s “A Woman is a Sometime Thing”.

Nancy said: Pearl included And a Right Good Crew as a humorous book about cruising. She had more to say about the book but you should check it out for yourself in Book Lust To Go (p 253).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Water, Water Everywhere” (p 253).

Just Up the Road

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Diehl, Chelsea. Just Up the Road: A Year Discovering People, Places, and What Comes Next in the Pine Tree State. Islandport Press, 2023.

Reason read: This is a very special Early Review book from LibraryThing. I am super excited I won it.

Confessional: I was born in Maine. I have roots in Maine even though I am currently displaced. My family is still in Maine. Needless to say, my heart is still in Maine. And. And! And, mark my words, I will retire to Maine. I predicted I would love Just Up the Road and I did.

I love scavenger hunts. As soon as I read the subtitle of Just Up the Road I had this hope that the book would contain tons people and places I could discover for myself. I was not disappointed. I started a comprehensive list of places to go, activities to try, and restaurants in which to eat. In all, Diehl mentions twenty-three places to hike, thirty-seven activities beyond hiking, and twenty-three restaurants. She also includes a smattering of black and white photographs and fifteen stories of Maine from the perspective of others. Quoting Maine in other people’s words was a touch of humbleness I didn’t expect. While I wanted to call this a guide to Maine, it is most definitely not. There are no maps of the places mentioned. There is no contact information. No hours of operations, emails, or websites. It is a strictly a travelogue/memoir with perfect inserts of Diehl’s opinions, past triumphs, and future dreams with husband, Andrew and daughter, Harper. As an aside, the decision to include Monhegan Island was a no-brainer in my mind, but then again I am uber-biased. Diehl does an excellent job avoiding trope and superfluous flowery language about my hometown. Nowhere in her description does she talk about the magical light or spell-bounding beauty. Blah, blah, blah. She even avoids talking about fairy houses. Bless her heart.
While Diehl is heavy on hiking, she does not seem to be into music. For great places to see music I would add Camden’s Opera House, Rockland’s Strand, Portland’s State Theater, and Brownfield’s Stone Mountain Arts.
Confessional: I wanted to see Home Café in Rockland, the Orono Bog on Bangor, the Rockland Breakwater, or Newscastle Publick House in Newcastle. Just a few of my favorite Maine places beyond music venues.

Playlist: “We’re Off to See the Wizard”, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”, “the Family Madrigal”, Ella Fitzgerald (spelled wrong), Bessie Smith, “Pretty Woman”, and “Shake Rattle Roll”.

Author fact: I am pretty sure this is Diehl’s first nonfiction.

Book trivia: I know I said Diehl doesn’t include maps or any other business information related to the places she goes, but she does include beautiful black and while photographs.

Unsuitable for Ladies

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Robinson, Jane. Unsuitable for Ladies: an Anthology of Women Travellers Selected by Jane Robinson. Oxford University Press, 1994.

Reason read: I needed an anthology for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.

What a difference one hundred years makes. The idea of not being able to travel as a woman by oneself is unfathomable to me. This made Robinson’s Unsuitable for Ladies even more of a joy to read. Her comments after some of the entries were appreciated and sometimes very much needed, even though I didn’t always agree with her.
All in all, I loved the writings of smart, courageous, and independent women. While most traveled with a purpose, (serving in the war was a popular excuse to go abroad), it was the women who traveled out of curiosity and leisure that fascinated me the most. Wealth was the great commodity and motivator in the days of opium pills and ether treatments.
Notable women included one woman who dreamed of riding an ostrich; another who felt that plain boiled locusts were the most palatable. Another woman was funny about bugs like fleas while another desired to be immune to scorpion venom. One woman worried about being seen as a woman while she traveled dressed as man. Another woman had a more pressing concern as she watched her horse fall over a cliff. Still another survived a bear attack. Yet another willingly joined her husband on a funeral pyre.
These were very different times. Imagine a time when it was acceptable for ladies to view battlefields of Waterloo and Crimea, with all of their bloodshed and death. Imagine wearing the elaborate and heavy diving equipment of 1910. Imagine watching a native receive a tattoo by rat or shark tooth.
In truth I think Robinson missed an opportunity to publish a really robust book. It would have been great to see maps of the time period these ladies traveled, illustrations of the fashions, and maybe some photographs or illustrated portraits of the more notable lady travelers.
Favorite women: Florence Nightingale saying her mind was out of breath; Myrtle Simpson trying to figure out how to travel with a newborn; the alias Honourable Impulsia Gushington; Barbara Toy naming her Landrover “Polyanna”; Robyn Davidson bringing her camels to the beach for the first time.
Questions I have: is it still true you could lose your shoes outside a temple in Cairo? Can you really cure hiccups (hiccoughs) by holding your right ear with you left forefinger and thumb and bringing your left elbow as far as possible across your chest?

Lines of Robinson’s I liked, “This broken link in memory’s chain…” (p 3), “There is a fine line to be drawn between the urge to travel and the search for freedom, and for many of these women no line at all” (p 4).
Other quotes to quote, “I particularly hate snakes, and the incident upset me a good deal, but not for long. I had too much to do” (p 197), “Eighty days of siege life does wonders” (p 258), .

Author fact: Robinson wrote more than what I am reading for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Unsuitable for Ladies in a companion volume to Wayward Women. I only have Unsuitable on my Challenge list.

Playlist: “Greensleeves”, “Ballad of the Fox”, and the waltzes of Strauss.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Unsuitable for Ladies.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very obvious chapter called “Lady Travelers” (p 142).

Rome From the Ground Up

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McGregor, James H. S. Rome from the Ground Up. Bel Knap Press, 2015.

Reason read: Kisa and I are going to embark on a roman holiday at the end of the year.

McGregor starts off by saying Rome is an agglomeration of historical cities. That statement alone fires the imagination and makes one want to read on. Rome was not a planned city. It has gone through multiple redesigns. Each city section had its own purpose, much like New York City has it’s myriad of regions within the five boroughs. Yes, McGregor will walk you through every section of Rome and describe everything along with way with meticulous care. He encourages readers to take Rome from the Ground Up as a guide book to the city. He does not include restaurants or the best places to stay, as those will change over time.
Here are some of the things I gleaned from reading Rome from the Ground Up: the Mouth of Truth may have been an ancient manhole and sewer cover. There were two palaces of power, the Vatican and the Quirinal. Julius Caesar was assassinated and his body burnt on a pyre in the Forum. Later, a temple was built on the spot and dedicated to him. As an aside, I bet all dictators wish they had temples built in their honor. Laurel trees were sacred to Apollo. Read Rome from the Ground Up if you are into minute details descriptions of architecture, including details on the art within every museum, church, or chapel.

Some things I would like to research while in Rome: is the fig tree still standing in the Forum? Can you still see the collapsed bridge that was never repaired from 1598? What about the Seated Boxer? Is he still near the Baths of Constantine on the Quirinal Hill? What about the final resting place of St. Valentine? Are they still in the Chapel of San Zeno?

As an aside, if you know me then you know I find connections to music all over the place. When McGregor mentioned Stations of the Cross performed in the Coliseum by the pope every Good Friday, I thought of Josh Ritter.

Line to like, “Vows of celibacy could be difficult to maintain; pilgrims far from home turned into randy conventioneers” (p 193).

Author fact: McGregor has written a bunch of “From the Ground Up…” books. I am only reading about Rome for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Rome from the Ground Up has the most wonderful photographs and architecturally detailed plans.

Nancy said: Pearl said Rome from the Ground Up is great for architecture and history buffs.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Roman Holiday” (p 188).

Za’atar Days, Henna Nights

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Masood, Maliha. Za’atar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East. Seal Press, 2006.

Reason read: October is hero month and I would consider Masood a sort of superhero for traveling around by the seat of her pants.

Masood straddles that line between American and Pakistani, Pakistani and American. Born in Pakistan, her family moved to America when Masood was in middle school. Now, eighteen years later, Masood is traveling haphazardly through the Middle East. She bought a one-way ticket with no intention of having a specific itinerary. It was a journey just be to on a journey. One could call it a trek to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey as some sort of spiritual quest to find herself or get back to her ancestral roots. Did she? I’m not really certain. To be sure, Masood had some crazy adventures (some more dangerous than others), she had a few cultural misunderstandings, and she relied heavily on the natives she befriended (I felt bad for the men who fell in love with her). All in all, she survived her seventeen months of travel relatively unscathed.

As an aside, I had no idea pollution was a thing in Cairo.

Confessional: Tommy Rivs got me interested in the poetry of Mary Oliver. Masood includes one of Tommy’s favorites, “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and call it a life?”
Second confession: Because of Natalie Merchant’s album “Keep Your Courage” I have been paying attention to mentions of Walt Whitman. Masood also reads Walt.

Reason read: there is such a thing as za’atar days, the celebration of the spice.

Playlist: “Staying Alive”, U2, Phil Collins, Pavarotti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake”, Umm Kulthum, “Enta Omri” (as an aside, Masood spelled Umm’s name as Om Khoulsoum and the song as “Inta Omri”. I couldn’t find singer or song with those spellings) Amr Diab (as another aside, this guy is very good looking), Fairuz, Saleh, Wadi al Safi, Jose Fernandez, Elvis Presley, and Billy Joel.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Za’atar Days.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “A Mention of the Middle East” (p 148).

Ancient Shore

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Hazzard, Shirley and Francis Steegmuller. The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Reason read: We are planning a trip to Italy in at the end of the year. At the time I put this on my list I didn’t know if we would make it to Naples or not. It turns out, we will not be going to Naples this time. Something for the next trip!

Hazzard begins Ancient Shore with an abbreviated autobiography of her childhood and how she discovered Italy. From there, different essays connect Naples to its culture, politics, history, and endless charm. Hazzard remembers Naples of the 1950s so there is a nostalgic air to her writing. Because Ancient Shore is a little dated, I wondered if some of the details are still accurate. I guess I will have to travel there to find out!
Hazzard’s husband, Francis Steegmuller, steps in for a story about a violent mugging he experienced. His tale is terrible. Terrible because he was warned many times over not to carry his bag a certain way. Terrible because the violence caused great ever-lasting injury. Terrible, above all, because he knew better. This was not his first time in Naples.

Lines worth remembering, “There can be the journey to reconciliation, the need to visit the past of to exorcise it” (p 17), “Like luck itself, Italy cannot be explained” (p 125), and my personal favorite, “We are encouraged to stop defining life, and to live it” (p 126).

Author(s) fact(s): I am reading four of Hazzard’s books. Ancient Shore is the second on the list. Steegmuller was a man of many hats. He died in 1994.

Book trivia: Ancient Shore is a very short book, but please take your time reading it. The photographs are wonderful, too.

Playlist: Diana Ross.

Nancy said: Pearl called Ancient Shore a lovely little book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Naples” (p 146).

Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety

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Baier, Molly J. The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety: On the Road in the Former Soviet Union. Lost Coast Press, 2001.

Reason read: I read somewhere that the Baltic Singing Revolution took place in August. Well, to be fair it took place between June and September 1987 – 1991.

The problem with reading some travel stories is that they become outdated and if you aren’t up on your geography or travel laws, the content becomes muddled. Example: are hotels in Eastern Europe still charging in 24-hour increments from the time you check in? Do trains still give provodnitsa-issued toilet paper to passengers? If you travel by bus in the Arctic, do you still pay by the kilometer and not the final destination? Is Finland still one of the most expensive countries? What about maple syrup? Do they know the breakfast condiment? Despite all these questions, Bier’s three-month solo trip in 1999 was a fun read. Her sense of humor peppers a no-nonsense travelogue. Some of my favorite moments were every time she challenged a ticket seller with Article 62 of the Russian Constitution, stating it was unlawful to sell a tourist an inflated priced ticket, whether it be for a museum or train ride. This happened a great deal. (Theroux mentions the same maddening system in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.) A final comment. I was impressed with Baier’s travel philosophy. Her itinerary was not planned out to the minute. She seemed to go from place to place by the seat of her pants, never knowing how she was going to go from place or where she would stay when she got there.

Confessional: Bad timing on the title of this book. On the day I started to read it one of the buildings on my campus was hit by lightning and caught on fire. Despite only being a two-alarm fire, I heard the building is a total loss. On the day I finished The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety Maui was on fire. This fire took the lives of many people.

Author fact: Baier is not a prolific writer. I only have one book written by her for the Challenge.

Book trivia: The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety is illustrated by Lisa Jacyszyn.

Nancy said: Pearl; did not say anything specific about The Fire Escape is Locked for Your Safety.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “The Baltic States” (p 34).

Ghost Train To the Eastern Star

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Theroux, Paul. Ghost Train To the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Greatest Railway Bazaar. Houghton Mifflen, 2008.

Reason read: July is Train Month.


Theroux first made this journey in 1973, thirty-three years earlier. He was eager to make comparisons as he followed the old travel itinerary of The Great Railway Bazaar (with a few exceptions like skirting Iran and Pakistan and being able to enter Cambodia as it was no longer controlled by the Khmer Rouge, for examples). [Confessional: I wanted to read these books backwards so that I could understand Theroux’s references. I guess you could say I wanted that 20/20 vision and I appreciated his admittance of half truths in The Great Railway Bazaar.]
Retracing his own steps affords Theroux the ability to look up hotels he previously visited and people he met thirty-three years ago. He is pleasantly surprised when they remember him and dismayed to learn others thought him a pompous jerk on his first visit.
In addition to writing about a journey, readers get a glimpse of Theroux’s personality. I found it curious that he doesn’t like people eating and walking at the same time (no street fairs for him). By 2006 he hasn’t wanted to learn the lesson of his first marriage – it is self-indulgent to travel for four months, leaving a wife and/or family behind. The family sees this extravagance as abandonment. (Although the second wife was wiser thanks to technology. She demanded Theroux take a smart phone.) My favorite part of Ghost Train was Theroux’s conversation with Haruki Murakami about his first marriage. It felt like an honest, soul-exposing confession. The real Theroux came out, author to author.
Theroux also gauges a country’s cultural acceptance by their use of pornography. Not sure why, because if you think about it, pornography is only tantalizing because it is often hidden from view. If sex was as commonplace as talking or breathing no one would be scandalized by it. Uncommon to the eye is scintillating. As the book goes on, Theroux’s running commentary on the varying sex trades increases. As an aside, I will have nightmares about the kun kraks.
In terms of idioms, I felt Theroux was overly negative in his descriptions of towns: acid, broken, beleaguered, cruel, crummy, crumbling, dirty, dim, dark, derelict, dreary, dilapidated, disorder, desperate, decaying, fatigued, foul, filthy, gloomy, lifeless, muddy, miserable, melancholy, mournful, nightmare, neglected, poisonous, primitive, pockmarked, rust-stained, ramshackle, ragged, smoky, sticky, shadowy, stale, stink, stinky, sooty, tough, threadbare, unfriendly, ugly, wrecked, wasteland to name a few. But, as another aside, I love authors who use the word hinterland. Don’t ask me why. I think it’s a very romantic word.

Confessional: sometimes when I am traveling by car or train (ground level), I will spot someone and imagine their life as mine. What would be like to be mowing the lawn when a speeding train rushes by? Fishing on the banks of a river when a car rattles over the bridge? Would I glance up and wonder about the passengers? Where are they going?

Second confessional: because I am somewhat obsessed with the music of Josh Ritter, I thought of his lyrics all about trains while reading Theroux’s book.

Lines I liked, “And sometimes you just need to clear out” (p 13). Amen. “Luxury is the enemy of observation” (p 63). Interesting. And one last one, “But just when I thought that this icebound city represented nothing more than a glacial point of departure, I was sitting in the hotel bar and the gods of travel delivered to me a horse’s ass” (p 461).

Author fact: Theroux’s list of fiction and nonfiction is impressive. I am reading ten of his works (but only completed Mosquito Coast and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star).

Book trivia: while there is an illustration of a map of Theroux’s journey, there are no photographs to speak of. Bummer.

Nancy said: Pearl mentioned Theroux is a connoisseur of long train rides.

Setlist: Stevie Wonder, Thelonious Monk’s “Espistrophy” and “Crespucule with Nellie”, Elvis, Mahler, and Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo theme.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Making Tracks By Train” (p 139).

Berserk

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Mercy, David. Berserk: My Voyage to the Antarctic in a Twenty-Seven Foot Sailboat. Lyons Press, 2004.

Reason read: June is the month to celebrate the ocean. Nothing celebrates the ocean more than sailing on it.

From the very onset, David Mercy is a little berserk. Who signs up to sail to the Antarctic with two other men he met only a week earlier? Mercy does. He agrees to travel in a twenty-seven foot sailboat with a twenty-one year old Norwegian and an immature Argentine. The book opens with the three of them, practically strangers, in the middle of a hurricane off Cape Horn. But Mercy is no stranger to adventure – he has already been to the Congo, Outback of Australia, Tibet, China, India, the Bering Sea, and Mexico. He has been on every continent save one. Antarctica. Mercy is not tethered to the normal trappings of adulthood – no job to clock, no romantic or plutonic relationships to miss, pets nor even a vehicle to look after; nor is he afraid to try new things (like touring the La Paz prison system with a cocaine-dealing inmate). This is the perfect time to sail to the Antarctic with a couple of strangers. What could possibly go wrong?
Aside from the adventure it was to reach the Antarctic, Mercy’s story is primarily about getting along (mostly not) with his shipmates. His rash choice to travel with these men is a little suspect. “Jarle had seemed competent enough in the ten minutes we had spent together” (p 31). Sure. Then there’s whiney Manuel. This man wants to go home at the first sight of whitecaps or hard labor. Stating the obvious, the infighting begins immediately. I don’t know about you, but I would think it a red flag to travel to the Antarctic (or anywhere) with someone who has never heard of Shackleton. Just saying.

As an aside, I am not a fan of inconsistencies. Mercy says “I undress, stripping off my wet clothes” but several sentences later someone “grabs me by the collar of my Richard III sweater” (p 5). What gives? Did he undress or not? Is it that I don’t understand what a Richard III sweater is? As an another aside, Mercy seems fashion-centric. Besides the Richard III sweater (whatever that is), he is wearing a Peruvian llama-wool cap. But, I digress. Back to inconsistencies. At one point he dons a Viking helmet but a few sentences later he was forced to cover his head to protect his scalp from dive-bombing skuas. Wait. I thought he was already wearing something to protect himself? What happens when the writing skills do not match the caliber of the adventure begging to be told? You sigh and move on because, overall, it’s such a great story.

Author fact: Berserk is Mercy’s only work in LibraryThing. He calls himself a director and producer of film.

Book trivia: Berserk contains no photography even though they all took turns with a camera. Bummer. I would have liked to see the whales or at least a penguin.

Playlist: AC/DC’s “High Voltage”, Iron Maiden’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Metallica’s “Sanitarium” and “Unforgiven”, James Hatfield, Grateful Dead, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Nancy said: Pearl said “Here are some books about sailors whose grasp of the fundamentals is much better than mine…and many of whose outcomes were far worse” (Book Lust To Go p 201).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “See the Sea” (p 201).