hh's bookshelf: travel en-US Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:04:43 -0700 60 hh's bookshelf: travel 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Explorer's Guide Playa Del Carmen, Tulum & the Riviera Maya: A Great Destination (Second Edition) (Explorer's Great Destinations)]]> 5584874 320 Joshua Eden Hinsdale 1581570945 hh 2 2010, travel 3.40 Explorer's Guide Playa Del Carmen, Tulum & the Riviera Maya: A Great Destination (Second Edition) (Explorer's Great Destinations)
author: Joshua Eden Hinsdale
name: hh
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2010/01/05
date added: 2022/03/14
shelves: 2010, travel
review:
decent background. strangely organized - some things are organized by location and some by type of activity. hoping that this will be have proven useful once i go to mexico.
]]> <![CDATA[The Best American Travel Writing 2000]]> 99781 This first collection of THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING reads like a good novel. Best-selling author Bill Bryson and series editor Jason Wilson have put together a book that will surprise knowledgeable travelers and entrance newcomers with the glories of new worlds. Articles by such well-loved writers as Bill Buford and Ryszard Kapuscinski are included, as are those by exciting new voices. Ranging across myriad landscapes, from Central Park in New York City to the Ouadane oasis in Saharan Mauritania, THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2000 showcases the diversity and creative power of travel writing today.]]> 320 Bill Bryson 0618074678 hh 4 2010, anthology, travel 3.75 2000 The Best American Travel Writing 2000
author: Bill Bryson
name: hh
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/30
date added: 2016/03/06
shelves: 2010, anthology, travel
review:
great collection of stories with a wide range of styles and countries represented. very good plane reading.
]]> <![CDATA[The Best American Travel Writing 2001]]> 131095 ]]> 418 Paul Theroux 0618118780 hh 4 2007, anthology, travel 3.85 The Best American Travel Writing 2001
author: Paul Theroux
name: hh
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2007/08/01
date added: 2016/03/06
shelves: 2007, anthology, travel
review:
a big fat enjoyable collection. every story in here deserves to be. the locales are far-flung and the writing is all top-notch, even when it's a subject matter that doesn't particularly speak to me. philip caputo's tale of man-eating lions, janet malcolm's chekhov travels, salman rushdie's return to india, and brad wetzler's dispatches on czech hobo culture were particularly great. is it any wonder i constantly get the travel bug?
]]> <![CDATA[Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation]]> 526848
Imperial Eyes explores European travel and exploration writing, in conjunction with European economic and political expansion since 1700. It is both a study in the genre and a critique of an ideology. Pratt examines how travel books by Europeans create the domestic subject of European imperialism, and how they engage metropolitan reading publics with expansionist enterprises whose material benefits accrued mainly to the very few. These questions are addressed through readings of travel accounts connected with particular sentimental historical travel writing. It examines the links with abolitionist rhetoric; discursive reinventions of South America during the period of its independence (1800-1840); and 18th-century European writings on Southern Africa in the context of inland expansion.]]> 272 Mary Louise Pratt 0415060958 hh 4 4.17 1992 Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation
author: Mary Louise Pratt
name: hh
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2013/05/09
date added: 2013/05/13
shelves: 2013, library, maybe-thesis-read, travel
review:
pratt's classic is still one of the most useful scholarly investigations, with a wide array of applications across disciplines. her thoughts and principles are clear, her examples engaging and far-reaching.
]]> <![CDATA[Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City]]> 176837 176 Anna Quindlen 0792242076 hh 2 2012, travel 3.29 2004 Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City
author: Anna Quindlen
name: hh
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2012/12/09
date added: 2012/12/09
shelves: 2012, travel
review:
i wanted to love this but i just didn't. too insular, too self-absorbed. too many flat out lists of streets and squares. i love london and i love literary london but this book never came alive, never rose above the author to connect me to the things that i love.
]]> <![CDATA[Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World]]> 13077 --from TEAM RODENT

TEAM RODENT
How Disney Devours America

"Revulsion is good. Revulsion is healthy. Each of us has limits, unarticulated boundaries of taste and tolerance, and sometimes we forget where they are. Peep Land is here to remind us; a fixed compass point by which we can govern our private behavior. Because being grossed out is essential to the human experience; without a perceived depravity, we'd have nothing against which to gauge the advance or decline of culture; our art, our music, our cinema, our books. Without sleaze, the yardstick shrinks at both ends. Team Rodent doesn't believe in sleaze, however, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around."]]> 96 Carl Hiaasen 0345422805 hh 4 2012, borrowed, travel
carl hiaasen is a gem - and he writes about florida with all the wit, brilliance, sarcasm, and love that only a native can muster. trust me, no one else laments when wetlands full of water moccasins get bulldozed. we do.

the book itself is a record of a particular moment in time, which is exactly what the series intends. folks who aren't in close proximity to the maw of the mouse (and probably lots who are) will never have heard of the many truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories that hiaasen recounts, some hilarious, some creepy, some truly disturbing (see: Country Walk).

hiaasen isn't just out to take cheap jabs at disney. his critique of our culture is incisive and devastatingly on-point. and he doesn't spare himself in the slightest. what he criticizes about the world's most powerful entertainment machine is reflected in each and every person whose life has been touched by it (is that even a countable number? doubtful.), which makes this slim book all the more powerful.

and now i am fully armed and ready to descend into the belly of the beast for a wedding.]]> 3.62 1998 Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World
author: Carl Hiaasen
name: hh
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2012/10/30
date added: 2012/10/30
shelves: 2012, borrowed, travel
review:
the only reason i didn't give this 5 stars is that i suspect my florida prejudice is involved. but maybe not. this book is sharply written and riotous.

carl hiaasen is a gem - and he writes about florida with all the wit, brilliance, sarcasm, and love that only a native can muster. trust me, no one else laments when wetlands full of water moccasins get bulldozed. we do.

the book itself is a record of a particular moment in time, which is exactly what the series intends. folks who aren't in close proximity to the maw of the mouse (and probably lots who are) will never have heard of the many truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories that hiaasen recounts, some hilarious, some creepy, some truly disturbing (see: Country Walk).

hiaasen isn't just out to take cheap jabs at disney. his critique of our culture is incisive and devastatingly on-point. and he doesn't spare himself in the slightest. what he criticizes about the world's most powerful entertainment machine is reflected in each and every person whose life has been touched by it (is that even a countable number? doubtful.), which makes this slim book all the more powerful.

and now i am fully armed and ready to descend into the belly of the beast for a wedding.
]]> <![CDATA[Cartographies: Meditations on Travel]]> 601726
AgosĂ­n's journey begins in Chile, where she spent her childhood before her family left in the early days of the Pinochet dictatorship. Of Santiago AgosĂ­n writes, "Day and night I think about my city. I dream the dream of all exiles." AgosĂ­n also travels to Prague and Vienna, ancestral homes of her grandparents, and to ValparaĂ­so in Chile, which received them as immigrants. Kneeling among the yellow mounds at the Terezin concentration camp, where twenty-two of her relatives died, AgosĂ­n places "small stones, shrubs, the stuff of life on graves I did not recognize."

And then on through the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Americas . . . Everywhere, she is drawn to women in whose devotion and creativity she sees a deep vein of hope―from Julia, keeper of the synagogue at Rhodes, to the women potters in the Chilean town of Pomaire.

AgosĂ­n writes of diaspora, exile, and oppression, yet only to highlight the dignity and valor of those who find refuge in their humanity and their art, in community and tradition. Cartographies shows us what can be found when we journey with openness, as approachable to strangers as we are to ourselves.]]> 160 Marjorie AgosĂ­n 0820329525 hh 3 3.67 2004 Cartographies: Meditations on Travel
author: Marjorie AgosĂ­n
name: hh
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2012/08/14
date added: 2012/08/14
shelves: 2012, library, poetry, translated, travel
review:
i would really give this 3.5 stars. i like a lot of the imagery and language, but sometimes it seems to get lost in itself and forget to have an audience. i would really like to read this in the original spanish because it's unclear whether the flatness of some of these poems is inherent in the original or introduced in translation. overall, solid with some truly beautiful moments. (this is not facing-page translation, so i can't really compare the two based on this edition.)
]]> Vesuvius 11336120 256 Gillian Darley 0674052854 hh 3 2012, hup, travel 3.38 2011 Vesuvius
author: Gillian Darley
name: hh
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/08/08
date added: 2012/08/08
shelves: 2012, hup, travel
review:
darley has an excellently readable style and covers all the major ground from literary to historical to trivial information on vesuvius. she most brilliantly captures the crazes and souvenirs that grow up around european fascination with the site and vulcanology in general. a quick and lovely read, something i would probably go back to if i had a chance to visit naples.
]]> <![CDATA[Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time]]> 10111087 What happens when an adventure travel expert-who's never actually done anything adventurous-tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu?

July 24, 1911, was a day for the history books. For on that rainy morning, the young Yale professor Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and encountered an ancient city in the clouds: the now famous citadel of Machu Picchu. Nearly a century later, news reports have recast the hero explorer as a villain who smuggled out priceless artifacts and stole credit for finding one of the world's greatest archaeological sites.

Mark Adams has spent his career editing adventure and travel magazines, so his plan to investigate the allegations against Bingham by retracing the explorer's perilous path to Machu Picchu isn't completely far- fetched, even if it does require him to sleep in a tent for the first time. With a crusty, antisocial Australian survivalist and several Quechua-speaking, coca-chewing mule tenders as his guides, Adams takes readers through some of the most gorgeous and historic landscapes in Peru, from the ancient Inca capital of Cusco to the enigmatic ruins of Vitcos and Vilcabamba.

Along the way he finds a still-undiscovered country populated with brilliant and eccentric characters, as well as an answer to the question that has nagged scientists since Hiram Bingham's time: Just what was Machu Picchu?

]]> 333 Mark Adams 0525952241 hh 3 2012, ebook, travel 3.83 2011 Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
author: Mark Adams
name: hh
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/06/21
date added: 2012/06/21
shelves: 2012, ebook, travel
review:
sometimes i felt like adams was trying too hard to be clever and the prose suffered for it. i enjoyed the book overall. nice blend of history and memoir.
]]> <![CDATA[Machu Picchu: Exploring an Ancient Sacred Center (World Heritage and Monuments)]]> 1829445 200 Johan Reinhard 1931745447 hh 3 4.06 2007 Machu Picchu: Exploring an Ancient Sacred Center (World Heritage and Monuments)
author: Johan Reinhard
name: hh
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2011/12/01
date added: 2011/12/01
shelves: 2011, library, maybe-thesis-read, native-peoples, school, travel
review:
kind of an erudite travel book. great photos and solid references, highly readable. bibliography will be very useful for me.
]]> Eat, Pray, Love 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]> 368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 hh 3 3.64 2006 Eat, Pray, Love
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: hh
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2008/06/16
date added: 2011/09/30
shelves: borrowed, 2008, travel, biography
review:
although i liked the book and the author/narrator, i did have a couple of problems. first, i felt absolutely bombarded by metaphors and similies, particularly relating to car accidents. i didn't have enough time to digest one comparison before i was being asked to swallow another. it was too much. i also had a bit of a disconnect with the dichotomy between tone and reality in this book. there's something about gilbert's style of writing that's very chummy - this is a common and useful memoir style. however, she's not writing about experiences that are available to most people. i wanted her to write a little less like these types of experiences are accessible to all and a little more like these experiences were special privileges. that said, i liked taking this voyage with gilbert and i would love to read her new book when it comes out.
]]> <![CDATA[Journey to Portugal: In Pursuit of Portugal's History and Culture]]> 306770


Infused with the tenderness and intelligence that have become familiar to his readers, Saramago's Journey to Portugal is an ode of love for a country and its rich traditions.


About the Author
José Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922. His work includes plays, poetry, short stories, nonfiction, and fifteen novels, including Baltasar and Blimunda and The History of the Seige of Lisbon. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.


Amanda Hopkinson translates contemporary literature, mainly from Latin America, and reviews for leading British newspapers.


Nick Caistor, journalist and producer of BBC programs, has translated the work of several authors including Eduardo Mendoza and Juan Carlos Onetti.

]]> 452 José Saramago 0156007134 hh 2 2008, translated, travel 3.35 1981 Journey to Portugal: In Pursuit of Portugal's History and Culture
author: José Saramago
name: hh
average rating: 3.35
book published: 1981
rating: 2
read at: 2008/12/27
date added: 2010/12/30
shelves: 2008, translated, travel
review:
oh man is this book ever translated. badly. and badly edited. perhaps the worst edited book i've ever read, typo-wise. there's something slightly charming about the author's voice, nevertheless, and a few gems squealch their way through. a church-and-museum tour of portugal led by your grandpa is basically how i'd describe this book.
]]> <![CDATA[Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman]]> 524878
Beautifully illustrated with postcards from Steinbach’s journeys, this revealing and witty book transports you into a fascinating inner and outer journey, an unforgettable voyage of discovery.]]> 295 Alice Steinbach 0375758453 hh 2 2009, biography, travel Eat, Pray, Love. there were some nice moments and a few good insights. but... i dunno. maybe the generation gap was a problem - i don't feel like i can identify as much with this career-oriented, well-off, divorcee mother of two. some of the travel descriptions were also sort of flat. not a book i am likely to come back to ever, but not a waste of my time either.]]> 3.81 2000 Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman
author: Alice Steinbach
name: hh
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2009/04/03
date added: 2010/09/07
shelves: 2009, biography, travel
review:
i wanted to like this more than i did. and i might have liked it more if i had read it before Eat, Pray, Love. there were some nice moments and a few good insights. but... i dunno. maybe the generation gap was a problem - i don't feel like i can identify as much with this career-oriented, well-off, divorcee mother of two. some of the travel descriptions were also sort of flat. not a book i am likely to come back to ever, but not a waste of my time either.
]]> <![CDATA[The View from the Top of the Temple: Ancient Maya Civilization and Modern Maya Culture]]> 5934889 273 kenneth-pearce 0826306829 hh 2 3.00 1984 The View from the Top of the Temple: Ancient Maya Civilization and Modern Maya Culture
author: kenneth-pearce
name: hh
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1984
rating: 2
read at: 2010/02/28
date added: 2010/03/01
shelves: 2010, native-peoples, library, travel
review:
a strange and out-dated book. some interesting snippets of information, but overall it is of its time and not terribly compelling now. the author gives a sort of tour of major Mayan sites throughout Central America - dwelling on information about road conditions and the qualities of local inns, sometimes focusing more on the travel than on the archaeological site! where the book gets interesting is in its descriptions of Mayan life and rituals, particularly in contact with Spanish and indigenous Mexican invasive forces. there's quite a bit of paternalistic crap, though, so the good stuff has to be dug for and reinterpreted. only really worth it if you want something fairly short to read and are willing to do some imaginative work.
]]> <![CDATA[Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story]]> 1776437
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man. As an American graduate student studying literature in Australia, Thompson traveled on vacation to New Zealand, where she met a Maori known as "Seven." Their relationship was one of opposites: he was a tradesman, she an intellectual; he came from a background of rural poverty, she from one of middle-class privilege; he was a "native," she descended directly from "colonizers." Nevertheless, they shared a similar sense of adventure and a willingness to depart from the customs of their families and forge a life together on their own.

In this extraordinary book, which grows out of decades of research, Thompson explores the meaning of cross-cultural contact and the fascinating history of Europeans in the South Pacific, beginning with Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and James Cook's famous circumnavigations of 1769-79. Transporting us back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii to tribal New Zealand and finally to a house in New England that has ghosts of its own, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All brings to life a lush variety of characters and settings. Yet at its core, it is the story of two
people who, in making a life and a family together, bridge the gap between two worlds.]]> 288 Christina Thompson 1596911263 hh 5 3.50 2008 Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story
author: Christina Thompson
name: hh
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/23
date added: 2010/01/31
shelves: 2010, biography, early-review, native-peoples, travel
review:
i started this book in the boston airport and finished it in the cancun airport. well-paced, engaging, thoughtful. thompson tells the story of her love for new zealand and the maori man who became her husband, but this is not a love memoir. it's the story of cultures interacting, of the history and future of new zealand, and of the consequences of colonialism. highly recommended reading.
]]> <![CDATA[The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey]]> 632 The Motorcycle Diaries marks the starting point of Ernesto Che Guevara's transformation into one of the 20th century's most enduring icons.]]> 175 Ernesto Che Guevara 1920888101 hh 4 3.67 1992 The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
author: Ernesto Che Guevara
name: hh
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/05
date added: 2010/01/05
shelves: 2010, travel, translated, biography
review:
an inspiring and poetic account of guevara's travels through south america during his student days. his descriptions are lovely and his insights sharp. worth reading and rereading.
]]> <![CDATA[I Should Have Stayed Home: The Worst Trips of Great Writers]]> 1182546 256 Roger Rapoport 1571430148 hh 2 3.39 1994 I Should Have Stayed Home: The Worst Trips of Great Writers
author: Roger Rapoport
name: hh
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1994
rating: 2
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: 2007, borrowed, anthology, travel
review:
borrowed from bob. some of the stories were pretty good, but overall sort of eh. nothing really memorable.
]]> <![CDATA[The Global Citizen: A Guide to Creating an International Life and Career]]> 834616 384 Elizabeth Kruempelmann 1580083528 hh 2 2009, travel 3.65 2002 The Global Citizen: A Guide to Creating an International Life and Career
author: Elizabeth Kruempelmann
name: hh
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2002
rating: 2
read at: 2009/09/02
date added: 2009/09/02
shelves: 2009, travel
review:
advice for americans who want to live overseas. too generalized for my tastes, too focused on business/management options, too repetitive. i also didn't find myself liking the author's tone very much. some useful info, but overall not the book i was hoping it would be.
]]> <![CDATA[Spoken Here: Travels among Threatened Languagues]]> 1226364
Within the next couple of generations, most of the world’s 6000 languages will vanish, due mainly to the unstoppable tide of English. With an open mind and a well-worn passport, award-winning journalist and poet Mark Abley tells entertaining and vital stories about why languages matter. From Oklahoma to Provence, aboriginal Australia to Baffin Island, the cultures are radically different, but the problems of shrinking linguistic and cultural richness are painfully similar. Abley’s investigation provides a stunning glimpse of the beauty and intricacies of languages like Yiddish and Yuchi, Mohawk and Manx, Inuktitut and Provençal. More importantly, it offers a sympathetic and memorable portrait of the people who still speak languages under threat.

When a language dies out, gone too are stories that have been told for centuries, unique ways of seeing the world, and perhaps even ways of solving problems both large and small. Abley believes we must see languages as abundant sources of richness, wonder and usefulness. And he shows that hope still that the determination of even one person can revive a whole language and its culture, in the process creating something new, changing and alive -- exactly what languages do best.]]> 256 Mark Abley 0679311017 hh 3
that said, the material itself is fascinating. and the book got me to think more clearly about some general questions that have been prominent in my life lately. (taking a class on bilingualism and learning 2 languages will get a person to think about languages, after all.) there's not a lot of new ground in this book, but for someone who is interested in global language use, there is something to be said for a readable (ie not linguistic textbook) work on the topic, which this is.

i would recommend this book only with this caveat: know what you're getting - basically an expanded version of a sunday travel section piece - and what you're not - an eye-opening trip around the world through minority langauges.]]> 3.61 2003 Spoken Here: Travels among Threatened Languagues
author: Mark Abley
name: hh
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2009/01/28
date added: 2009/01/29
shelves: 2009, language-study, library, native-peoples, travel
review:
this book would get a 5 for content and a 2 for writing. the style is journalistic in a bad sense of the word and includes a few factual errors that i'm aware of -- nevermind that ones i'm not. the writer has an agenda and does exactly what kept me out of journalism, he cherry-picks his examples to bolster the opinion he already had before he did any research. ugh. plus there's quite a lot of subconscious/tongue-in-cheek looking down at the minority language speakers and language advocates. even the big reveal - he saves welsh for last because his parents are welsh-born - didn't save the narrator/author for me. i still don't like him, although i like the welsh and their language quite a lot.

that said, the material itself is fascinating. and the book got me to think more clearly about some general questions that have been prominent in my life lately. (taking a class on bilingualism and learning 2 languages will get a person to think about languages, after all.) there's not a lot of new ground in this book, but for someone who is interested in global language use, there is something to be said for a readable (ie not linguistic textbook) work on the topic, which this is.

i would recommend this book only with this caveat: know what you're getting - basically an expanded version of a sunday travel section piece - and what you're not - an eye-opening trip around the world through minority langauges.
]]> <![CDATA[Permanent Londoners: An Illustrated Biographical Guide to the Cemeteries of London]]> 1288739 336 Judi Culbertson 186105338X hh 3
the author is a little quirky, which is nice, but some people whom he chose to mention in passing are ones i would have liked to have known about.

this book was fun. recommended if you're someone who's interested in epitaphs and memorials in a historical context. ]]> 3.96 1991 Permanent Londoners: An Illustrated Biographical Guide to the Cemeteries of London
author: Judi Culbertson
name: hh
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2008/12/18
date added: 2008/12/19
shelves: 2008, library, the-dead, travel, biography
review:
this book is essentially a travel guide involving things i like a lot: london, dead people, old churches, and historical and cultural biographies.

the author is a little quirky, which is nice, but some people whom he chose to mention in passing are ones i would have liked to have known about.

this book was fun. recommended if you're someone who's interested in epitaphs and memorials in a historical context.
]]> <![CDATA[Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain]]> 128534 Off the Road is an unforgettable exploration of the sites that people believe God once touched: the strange fortress said to contain the real secret Adam learned when he bit into the apple; the sites associated with the murderous monks known as the Knights Templar; and the places housing relics ranging from a vial of the Virgin Mary's milk to a sheet of Saint Bartholomew's skin.
Along the way, Jack Hitt finds himself persevering by day and bunking down by night with an unlikely and colorful cast of fellow pilgrims -- a Flemish film crew, a drunken gypsy, a draconian Belgian air force officer, a man who speaks no languages, a one-legged pilgrim, and a Welsh family with a mule.
In the day-to-day grind of walking under a hot Spanish sun, Jack Hitt and his cohorts not only find occasional good meals and dry shelter but they also stumble upon some fresh ideas about old-time zealotry and modern belief. Off the Road is an engaging and witty travel memoir of an offbeat journey through history that turns into a provocative rethinking of the past.]]> 272 Jack Hitt 0743261119 hh 4 2008, travel 3.63 1994 Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain
author: Jack Hitt
name: hh
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2008/03/16
date added: 2008/03/16
shelves: 2008, travel
review:
this was definitely a right-book-at-the-right-moment read for me. i'm having a mini-obsession with the idea of pilgrimage, and i've long been obsessed with spain, which is why i bought this book at random from amazon. hitt's storytelling style is comfortable, like hanging out at a bar with someone. he's at his best describing people, places, events. although the book would seem odd without his admissions and internal monologue, they're the lease interesting parts. his historical anecdotes are wonderful -- probably because they're the sort of weird, erudite bits that i spew at people without warning. strangely, i never felt close to the author/narrator, but i do feel close to the journey. i could very well look back on my reading in december and decide this is my favorite book of the year.
]]> <![CDATA[The Mindful Traveler: A Guide to Journaling and transformative travel]]> 1262032 205 Jim Currie 081269421X hh 2 2008, travel 3.29 2000 The Mindful Traveler: A Guide to Journaling and transformative travel
author: Jim Currie
name: hh
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2008/01/22
date added: 2008/01/23
shelves: 2008, travel
review:
for the first time in my life, i feel like i've encountered a buddhist evangelist. the description i read of this book just didn't prepare me for how overbearingly religious it would be. i might have enjoyed it more if i'd realized in advance. there were some good enough tips in here, but it wasn't particularly helpful for me. oh well.
]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred]]> 144951 258 Phil Cousineau 1573245097 hh 3 2007, travel, spirit 4.11 1998 The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred
author: Phil Cousineau
name: hh
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2007/12/01
date added: 2007/12/17
shelves: 2007, travel, spirit
review:
this book was somewhere between useful and hokey. i'm glad to have the good bits to reference now, though. the integration of quotes and ideas from across disparate cultures and sources was especially nice.
]]> Assassination Vacation 3110 Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other—a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.

From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue—it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and—the author's favorite� historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult.]]> 258 Sarah Vowell 074326004X hh 4 2007, travel 3.93 2005 Assassination Vacation
author: Sarah Vowell
name: hh
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2007/11/01
date added: 2007/11/07
shelves: 2007, travel
review:
a brilliant romp through time, space, and society. i laughed more pages than not... probably not a good commuter read, you'll get some weird stares. oh and i love everything about sarah vowell. everything. she's one of the few authors who clearly prizes a good editor - i can imagine a verbose and unfocused version of this in draft form. the book is lean, quirky, conversational, and informative. i think i learned as much about american history from this book as i ever did in high school, and i bet i'll even retain some of it. and the robert todd lincoln hates the north pole business is probably my new favorite party story.
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