Difference between revisions of "Newest Travel Reviews"

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==Travel==
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Alastair Humphreys
{{newreview
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|title=Local
|author=Michael Williams
 
|title=On The Slow Train Again
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
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|genre=Travel  
|summary=A few years ago Michael Williams, the railway expert who's written for numerous newspapers and magazines on the subject, released a book called ''On The Slow Train'' about some of Britain's best railway trips. With far too many journeys to fit into one volume, he's given us a dozen more in this sequel.
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|summary= Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world.  And then written about it.  For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it.  As he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map.  Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…''   One of the joys of the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092857</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1785633678
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0957181167
|author=John Gimlette
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|title=Blue Skies and Boat Trips: The Norfolk of Brian Lewis
|title=Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge
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|author=Alan Marshall
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
|genre=Travel
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|genre=Art
|summary=Apart from knowing that it borders Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname, a fact hammered into me in Year 8 Geography, I know very little about Guiana. And while you may think that's understandable, I'm not sure that it is, seeing as I read this book while living just two countries over. The thing is, it's a sort of tiny, forgotten country, isn't it? Over the years it has been involved in border disputes, has come under various nations' rule, and has changed names more often the P Diddy, and even after you take all that into account, I bet you can't think of a single thing there to go and see.
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|summary=There are few positive things which can be said about a substandard apartment when you’re on holiday but this time, in trying to avoid looking at a problem I found myself looking more closely at a couple of pictures on the walls - and was completely taken by the work of Brian Lewis. I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the print I wanted was ‘not available’. Oh, dear - then a few doors down from the apartment, I found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books - and a framed print of the picture I wanted.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682525</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1785633457
|author=Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
|title=Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
|rating=4
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|rating=5
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Fleeing your home can never be easy but when you are six, your only shoes are roughly hand-sewn and stuffed with hay, and your route is over the world's highest mountain range then it must be particularly challenging.  This was the journey that Yangzom Brauen's mother took with her parents when they fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959.  They were leaving behind all that they knew and travelling to India in the hope that they could find sanctuary in the country where the Dalai Lama was in exile.  'Across Many Mountains' is their story.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655344X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Keith Hern
 
|title=Zimbabwe in Pictures
 
|rating=3
 
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=I'm a bit of an amateur photographer, and since the advent of digital cameras I always come back from holidays with thousands of photos, over-excited by the fact that I am no longer limited to 24 or 36 exposure films!  I enjoy, therefore, flicking through photography books, to see the images that have captured someone else's imagination and to see if I can pick up any interesting framing ideas, or subject settings.
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|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685707</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Merryn Glover
|author=Christopher Winn
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|title=The Hidden Fires
|title=I Never Knew That About the River Thames
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|rating=5
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Trivia
 
|summary=Here are the remains of the building that could be said to have sired two important British royal dynasties.  Here is the place of ill-repute, where 'Rule Britannia' was premiered,  and which also bizarrely saw a death by cricket ball that inspired the most famous gardens in the world.  Here too is the largest lion in the world.  To where am I referring?  Well the answer is either the Thames valley, or this very book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091933579</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Roland Huntford
 
|title=Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=In 1910 two European ships set out for the Antarctic.  'Terra Nova' was carrying British explorers under the leadership of Captain Robert Scott, while 'Fram' sailed with a rival Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen.  The basic facts can be briefly summarized.  Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on 14 December 1911 and returned home to a hero's welcome, while Scott reached the same destination 35 days later, only to perish with his men on the return journey.  Their bodies were found by a search party some eight months after they had died.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441169822</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Aatish Taseer
 
|title=Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=Aatish Taseer was born of out of a short week of passion between a Sikh Indian mother and a Pakistani Muslim father.  The mother was a journalist; the father a politician.  
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|summary= It is always about the book, not the writer, but there are times when the author's hinterland is also the background to the book and so it is necessary to understand that context, in order to appreciate the book. Merryn Glover is of Australian parentage, was born in Kathmandu, grew up in the Annapurna and Himalayan and now lives in Badenoch in Scotland.  I can think of no-one better a combination to give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than the first Writer in Residence in the Cairngorms National Park.   Merryn walks, not so much in the shadow of Shepherd, but in her spirit. I think the two would have gotten along famously.
 
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|isbn=1846975751
That week of passion was to be all it was, despite subsequent attempts at hushing up the pregnancy, then pretending a marriage until finally a clean break was made when the boy was about 18 months old. Ah, but such breaks never are clean are they? There's always a certain amount of meddling from the side-lines, and then there's a child's longing to know who he is, where he is really from.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847671314</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B0B7289HKQ
|author=Jim Perrin
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|title=Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America
|title=West: A Journey Through the Landscapes of Loss
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|author=Kari Loya
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=Where would you go if the love of your life, and your son, both died within a short few months of each other?  Jim Perrin headed West - to the scraggly patches of land off Ireland, closer to the setting sun, nearer to the further horizon, beyond the noise, information and opinion of humanity.  Of course, that question could also be answered in a more metaphoric way.  Jim went inward, before coming outward.  He suffered - "involuntarily, the tears have come.  Who would have thought that death would release so many.."  He also, although he would probably hate me for saying it, went on a "psycho-geographical ramble" - both in life, and in making this book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843546116</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sam Miller
 
|title=Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=Miller is probably one of the best people to take you on a tour of Delhi.  He's not a native so has no in-bred partisanship, but he does love the place so will make sure you do too, but mainly because to begin with he HATED it… so he will understand if you don't share his ironic good humour about the shit squirter or the fact that sometimes the only way to cross the road is to take a rickshaw taxi.
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|summary=Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it.  The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it onMerv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526743</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Brian W Pugh, Paul R Spiring and Sadru Bhanji
 
|title=Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Devon: A Complete Tour Guide and Companion
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' is one of the most famous mystery novels of all, and also one of the most famous English novels set in DevonThis alone would probably give more or less enough material for an entire book on connections between the story and the location which inspired it.  Yet the authors have found several more links between the county, and Conan Doyle alongside those associated with him.  The result has revealed much information of which even I, who have lived in the county nearly all my life, was previously unaware.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312861</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Erling Kagge
 +
|title=Walking: One Step At A Time
 +
|rating=5
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|genre= Lifestyle
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|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved a book is evidenced by the number of pages with corners turned, so let me start this one with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not mine. In my defence, I will say that as a reader of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why).
  
{{newreview
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Erligg Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who has walked to the South Pole, the North Pole and the summit of Everest. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, this isn't a travelogue about any of those epic journeys, it is instead a thoughtful exploration of what it means to walk. It is a plenitude of unnumbered essays about walking. There is no 'contents' page and I haven't counted. In small format paperback, each essay is only a few pages long. Perhaps then, better thought of as a meditation rather than an essay.
|author=David Lane
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|isbn=0241357705
|title=England 'Til I Die - A celebration of England's amazing supporters
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Sport
 
|summary=To start with, an admission.  I am an English fan of football, but I am not a fan of England’s football squad.  Hardly ever would I prefer to see the Three Lions triumphant. I never got into the habit, partly because I never saw the singularly English habit of supporting the underdog as making any sense. Plus you'll never get me standing up and singing that awful tune before the match. But here are testimonies from twenty or so people who see things completely differently to me.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906796505</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Monica Connell
|author=Justine Hardy
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|title=Against a Peacock Sky
|title=In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir's Long War - One Family's Extraordinary Story
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=Kashmir.  Is that not the most romantic of names?  To those of us entranced by tales from the East, it echoes with the same essence of myth as ''Shang-ri-la'' – and for good reason.  Geographically situated in the Himalaya but with the abundant fertility of the valley, lakes and meadows, it should be a kind of paradise.  To the people who live there, it once was.
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|summary= Monica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it is important to know that. She went on a grant-supported trip, with a relatively specific objective. She wasn't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-la. She wasn't a mere tourist passing throughShe went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people and how they lived. She also went, presumably, with the academic discipline of how to find these things out, how to organise them in her mind, how to "understand" them in the context of her own paradigms, and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the event. Fortunately, she also went with a sense of open-ness and curiosity and a willingness to muck-in, to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled up.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846041511</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1780600429
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Michael Booth
 
|title=Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Cookery
 
|summary=Japanese food has a tendency to sound a bit freakish or even controversial.  Raw fish?  Octopus ice cream?  Whale meat?  Yet it is slowly infiltrating the UK with sushi conveyor belt restaurants popping up everywhere and noodle bars offering Westernised bowls of steaming noodles.  In this book Michael Booth takes his wife and two young children to experience the real thing, travelling across the whole of Japan tasting an enormous range of foods and learning about their history, how the foods have been produced and are cooked and eaten.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516446</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Sara Wheeler
 
|title=The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=The title of this book suggests another travel book about adventure in the frozen north, but Sara Wheeler mixes her tales of her own travels with some history of polar exploration and a serious examination of the impact of visitors and of those who wish to exploit the Arctic’s natural resources on the region and its people. Rather than setting off on another expedition to reach the North Pole, she travels around bits of the Arctic divided between different countries and governments, including Chukotka (Russia), Alaska (USA), Canada, Greenland, Svalbard (Norway) and Lapland (Russia and Scandinavia). There is a huge amount of material in the book but Wheeler organises and presents it in a very readable, accessible style.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516888</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mark Griffiths
 
|title=The Lotus Quest
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Mark Griffiths is one of Britain's leading plant experts.  I know this because his brief biog in the front of The Lotus Quest tells me so; just as it tells me that he is the editor of The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening 'the largest work on horticulture ever published'.  His prior works list includes five other plant book credits, three of them for the RHS. I shall take all of this on trust, since attempts to find out more about the author and his background through the usual internet search mechanisms has failed miserably.  He remains as elusive as the sacred flower that is the subject of this latest work: the lotus.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184595100X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jason Webster
 
|title=Sacred Sierra: A Year on a Spanish Mountain
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Jason Webster and his partner, Salud searched and bought forty acres of valley and mountainside halfway up the Penyagolosa Ridge in Southern Spain, complete with two derelict sets of farm buildings. These ''mas'', or smallholdings, formed the backbone of Spanish agriculture until young people abandoned rural life for towns in the mid-twentieth centuryThe agro-economics of the EEC enforced obsolescence of the ''mas'' system. As old timers retired or died, their farms were abandoned, leaving most of the land returning to wild.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099512947</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lawrence Osborne
 
|title=Bangkok Days
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Laurence Osborne has hit upon a bizarre way to save money on dentistry – pay for a month's rent in Bangkok and get his fillings done there, which works out cheaper than dental insurance in America. During the course of many visits to Thailand, he meanders around Bangkok, along with various other motley foreigners, passing through hospitals, brothels and mobile restaurants selling waterbugs.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535971</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nicholas Jubber
 
|title=Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=closed doors and how people really think, challenging the idea that both countries are defined only by a religious fervour and fundamentalism that is the accepted way of life. At the heart of Jubber's quest is the epic poem of Persian culture, the ''Shahnameh'' which he soon learns all Iranians know and love and in doing so he unearths a vibrant culture that preceded the conversion of Persia to Islam and with it the transformation of Persia into Iran.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818841</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ian Mathie
 
|title=The Man of Passage
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=Ian Mathie's association with Africa began when his father was posted to what was then Northern Rhodesia when Mathie was just four years old.  School was in a convent and was run by German and Italian nuns and for a while he was the only white child amongst a couple of hundred Africans.  Even when he was joined by others he was still part of an ethnic minority although he didn't realise it!  He was taught in the local language and grew up with the local children.  It was his home and was to be the centre of his life for decades to come.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955312418</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Nicolas Bouvier
|author=Gary Blackwood
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|title=The Japanese Chronicles
|title=The Great Race: The Amazing Round-The-World Auto Race Of 1908
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=In 1908, Henry Ford's Model T hadn't yet brought cars to the masses. The pioneers of the world of automobiles were experimenting and discovering just what the car could do, by driving right round the world. Except they didn't want to be pioneers. One of the competitors, Antonio Scarfoglio, put it so perfectly when he said 'We had set out to perpetuate an act of splendid folly, not to open up a new way for men. We wished to be madmen, not pioneers.' Isn't that about the best quote you've ever read?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0810994895</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Dervla Murphy
 
|title=The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=In her latest literary outing, the now elderly and increasingly opinionated travel writer and veteran cyclist Dervla Murphy describes a series of trips to Cuba. The opening section deals with a family trip in late 2005. Readers who have followed Dervla's books from the beginning will have grown up with Rachel, the author's daughter, who accompanied her on a number of trips between the ages of five and eighteen. Now Dervla travels with Rachel and Rachel's three young daughters, Clodagh, Rose and Zea, known for ease throughout the book as ''the Trio''. The middle section sees Dervla return alone to spend several months trekking in places such as the Sierra del Escambray mountains, and in the final third of the book, Dervla returns to the city of Santa Clara for the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara.
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|summary= It never does to start a review of a book with a quote from the blurb, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Le Monde reviewed this book, at some point, with the words ''what the old master craftsmen would call a masterpiece.'' It is precisely that. A masterpiece in the sense of the craft as well as the art of writing. I'm going to hesitate to call it 'travel writing' because this is as much a history of Japan, a mythology-primer for the Japanese culture as it is a personal response to living and travelling in the country.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190601146X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1906011044
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Stephen Fabes
|author=Jonathan Buckley, Mark Ellingham and Tim Jepson
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|title=Signs of Life
|title=The Rough Guide to Tuscany and Umbria
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=There's a general Rough Guide to Italy, but revisiting again this regional guide in the process of writing up our trip to Tuscany two years ago, I was reminded of how good indeed this particular Rough Guide is. I bought it because I wanted to supplement the general Rough Guide to Italy I had with more detailed coverage of the region in which we were going to spend the whole trip - and I was extremely happy with the result.
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|summary= I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity.  Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to simply go out and do it.  I also didn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six yearsFabes did precisely that.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843530554</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1788161211
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Guy Delisle
 
|title=Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=Meet GuyHe's a French-Canadian animator, leaving home for a short stay in the capital of one of the world's most intriguing, unknown and alien cultures - Pyongyang, North Korea - so he can work on a TV cartoon co-productionForced to stay in one of the three official hotels designed for foreigners, so that the locals and people such as he do not have to mix, he see glimpses of the unique socialist dictatorship, stunning views of the buildings forced through the poverty, and thousands of unreadable faces.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079905</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Rob Baker
|author=Charley Boorman
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|title=Toubab Tales: The Joys and Trials of Expat Life in Africa
|title=Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo by Any Means
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=Forgive me if I'm wrong, but there seems a ever-diminishing sense of surprise with Charley Boorman's continuing adventures. One hopes at least they started with very daring, courageous, envelope-pushing exploits, where we might have doubted his success. Now he's on his fifth trip in as many years, BBC TV crew in hand as always, and we can hardly hope for much in the way of an ordeal, or doubt concerning a failure. And, as he admits, this does feel much like an add-on for his Ireland-to-Sydney trek.
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|summary=''"Go to Mali," they said. "The music is amazing," they said. "And you get ten hours of sunshine every day." So I did.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443516</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Rob Baker is an ethnomusicologist. ''A what?'' I hear you cry. Well, an ethnomusicologist studies music in relation to culture, so rather like a folklorist studies the oral and written story traditions relating to a culture.
|author=Rolf Potts
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|isbn=B089CSNFT7
|title=Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Rolf Potts is a travel writer as well as a bit of a backpacker guru and his book distils his experiences in, exactly as the title suggests, ''an uncommon guide to long-term travel''. The operative word here is ''uncommon'', as ''Vagabonding'' is not really a guide as we know them, more of a pep-talk combined with a resource list.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0812992180</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Christine Brown
|author=Marika McAdam
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|title=Bucket Showers and Baby Goats: Volunteering in West Africa
|title=Western Balkans (Lonely Planet Multi Country Guide)
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|rating=4.5
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Lonely Planet does well from its multi-country guides as members of its peripatetic, Inter-railing, backpacker audience often 'do' more than one country (and sometimes a whole continent or region at least) within one trip.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1741047293</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Thomas Cook Publishing
 
|title=European Rail Timetable Summer 2009
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=This volume is an absolutely essential resource for anybody travelling in Europe by train. A compilation of all major train routes, it allows not only for checking train times but also planning pretty much every conceivable major journey. Theoretically, the train timetables change twice yearly, so it's worth getting an up to date book.
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|summary=In the summer of 2008, this book's author was spending her days working in an office job in the USA while spending her nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else. Long story short, she ended up volunteering in Ghana, West Africa. Now coincidentally, in the summer of 2010, this review's author was spending ''her'' days working in an office job (albeit in the UK) while spending ''her'' nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else, and ''she'' ended up just 3 countries away, volunteering in Sierra Leone, West Africa. So you can see why, when this book came up, said reviewer was delighted to have the opportunity to read and critique it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848481322</amazonuk>
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|isbn=171024299X
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Mourby_Rooms
|author=Sarah Johnstone
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|title=Rooms with a View: The Secret Life of Great Hotels
|title=Europe on a Shoestring: Big Trips on Small Budgets (Lonely Planet Shoestring Guides)
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|author=Adrian Mourby
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
|summary=''Europe on a Shoestring'' comes from the vast stable of Lonely Planet's travel guides and is very much aimed at the budget end of the market. Comparable to its nearest competitor, Let's Go Europe, it's a one-volume backpacker bible which attempts to provide the overview of a whole continent, every single country and the main destinations in each of the countries.
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|summary=Adrian Mourby has given us a flying visit to each of fifty grand hotels, from fourteen regions of the world, with the hotels in each section being arranged chronologically rather than by region, which helps to give something of an overall picture. So what makes a hotel 'grand'? The first hotel to call itself 'grand' was in Covent Garden in 1774 and it ushered in the beginning of a period when a hotel would be a lifestyle choice rather than a refuge for those without friends and family conveniently nearby. The hotels we visit all began life in different circumstances and each faced a different set of challenges. We begin in the Americas, move to the United Kingdom, circumnavigate Europe, briefly visit Russia and Turkey then northern Africa, India and Asia. Australia, it seems, does not go for the grand.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1741045916</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1908745819
|author=Pete Brown
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|title=Surfacing
|title=Hops and Glory: One Man's Search for the Beer That Built the British Empire
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|author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Being a beer writer can't be the easiest route to respect in journalism. But with this book Pete Brown has done much to counter the sceptical, even dismissive, attitudes which must surround his trade and its subject matter. He has attempted to combine a history of British imperialism and the brewing industry with the comic 'quest' genre of travel writing.
 
Against all the odds, he has largely succeeded.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706355</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rough Guides
 
|title=The Rough Guide to Amsterdam
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=This Rough Guide is as comprehensive, up to date and well researched as most if not all Rough Guides seem to be. I have used numerous examples of their guides and I found them to be among the best if not the best ones there are. They do seem to have moved upmarket a bit since I first started to use them in the early 90s - but they still provide the best balance in descriptions covering practicalities, context, history, sightseeing, entertainment, drinking, clubbing and even (in Amsterdam at least) dope smoking.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843538091</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Alistair Duncan
 
|title=Close to Holmes: A Look at the Connections Between Historical London, Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Even today, London is a remarkable compromise of the old and the new.  As Alistair Duncan shows in this volume, the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changed.  There have been a handful of books in the past on 'Holmes's London', but this is the first of its kind to place equal emphasis on places associated with the detective and his creator.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312500</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lucy Wadham
 
|title=The Secret Life of France
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=I'm rather at a loss to describe this book for you, and I'm still uncertain how to categorise it.  It's part personal memoir and part analytical.  Whether you regard this particular mix as brilliant or irritating is down, I suppose, to personal taste and intellectual curiosity.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571236111</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tim Fitzhigham 
 
|title=All at Sea: One Man. One Bathtub. One Very Bad Idea: Conquering the Channel in a Piece of Plumbing
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Once more my life is made easy by saying this book does just what it claims on the cover - takes a narrator of zesty, wacky humour, throws him into an unlikely situation (a bath) and gets him to do something unusual (row it across the Channel - and then beyond).  This despite the fact he was the world's worst sculler at University.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090269</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Keith Miller
 
|title=St Peter's (Wonders of the World)
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=It is huge: not only in space but in time and structure; and in the non-material sphere of the complex interplay of meanings, symbols and significances. Miller's book, intentionally combining cultural and political history, art criticism and travel writing, manages to reflect that hugeness without weighting the reader down with too much austere detail.
+
|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why.  The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.''  Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am.  Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it.  It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually.  I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861979088</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1912242052
|author=Guy Delisle
+
|title=O Joy for me!
|title=Burma Chronicles
+
|author=Keir Davidson
|rating=4
+
|rating=3
|genre=Graphic Novels
+
|genre=Art
|summary=What we have here are a male househusband and artist, and his MSF doctor wife, and their life in Burma or Myanmar for roughly a year.  We get to see the life in the country, from the racks of bootleg software, to the animation class he leads, to their efforts to get into the lush country clubs, to their baby being adored by every passing girl.  We see the state of the country, with its horrid drugs, HIV/AIDS and malaria problems, hidden beyond the gentle Buddhist retreatsWe see the Delisles' interaction with this singular country - the censored press, and the fact that their road is only made more busy because of the roadblock diverting everyone away from Aung San Suu Kyi's house a block away.
+
|summary=''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventureHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087711</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Woolf_Great
|author=Iain McCalman
+
|title=The Great Horizon: 50 Tales of Exploration
|title=Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution
+
|author=Jo Woolf
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
+
|genre=History
|summary=A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it.
+
|summary=Jo Woolf has compiled a brilliant set of fifty short insights into the lives and achievements of some amazingly brave people. Their fearless journeys have helped us unlock many of the mysteries of the wildest parts of our world, and also given us an understanding of what it is like to be faced with the most terrible conditions and still have the determination and grit to carry on. This book could be viewed as a taster which encourages us to seek out and read more about some of the most iconic explorers. Their stories are pretty incredible and Woolf does them justice.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Hailstone_Berlin
|author=Patrick Wright
+
|title=Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966
|title=A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London
+
|author=Allan Hailstone
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=History
|summary=My good mood evaporated when Sue, my Bookbag partner, asked me if I'd read and review A Journey Through Ruins. She was right to ask because Thatcher's Britain is certainly an area of interest to me. The thing is, times are depressing enough. Margaret Hilda's neo-liberal legacy is crashing around us. Jobless queues are lengthening. Roofs are disappearing from over people's heads. The rampant cronyism and venal nature of our economic and political elites are slowly exposing themselves in ways likely to send my blood pressure soaring.  
+
|summary=''Berlin in the Cold War: 1959-1966'' contains almost 200 photographs taken by author/photographer Allan Hailstone in his visits to the city during this period. The images provide an insight into the changing nature of the divide between East and West Berlin and a glimpse into life in the city during the Cold War.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0199541949</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Stewart_Marches
|author=David Grann
+
|title=The Marches
|title=The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon
+
|author=Rory Stewart
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
+
|genre=History
|summary=For Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett there was more to the Amazonian jungle than El Dorado. His target was a treasure of a different nature – a lost city to be discovered because it was a city, not for any spurious material wealth it might hold. Could an entire civilisation have been founded in the inhospitable tracks of rain forest, and left remains he might find fame in locating?  As this brilliant biography shows, Fawcett was the best man around to find it.
+
|summary=The Observer quote on the front of the paperback edition of Stewart's latest book observes ''This is travel writing at its finest.'' Perhaps, but to call it 'travel writing' is to totally under-sell it. This is erudition at its finest. Stewart has the background to do this: he had an international upbringing and followed his father in both the Army and the Foreign Office, and then (to his father's, bemusement, shall we say) became an MP. Oh, and he walked 6,000 miles across Afghanistan in 2002. A walk along the Scottish borders should be a doddle by comparison.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847374360</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Bristow China
|author=Rachel Cusk
+
|title=China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser
|title=The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy
+
|author=Michael Bristow
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
+
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=So, there's this family, right, and the parents have itchy feet, so they pack everything up and say goodbye to the dog, and leave Clifton, Bristol, and drive down to Italy and live a fine and different life, and the plumbing might not be the best but the neighbours and the scrumping and the wine are all to die for and it all comes right in the end with life-affirming brilliance.
+
|summary=Having worked for nine years in Bejing as a journalist for the BBC, author Michael Bristow decided to write about Chinese history. Having been learning the local language for several years, Bristow asked his language teacher for guidance - the language teacher, born in the early fifties, offered Bristow a compelling picture of life in Communist China - but added to that, Bristow was greatly surprised to find that his language teacher also enjoyed spending his spare time in ladies clothing. It soon becomes clear that the tale told here is immensely personal - yet also paints a fascinating portrait of one of the world's most intriguing nations.
 
 
There will be many people shuddering at that completely false description of this book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571242561</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Hurst_Norfolk
|author=Pip Cheshire and Patrick Reynolds
+
|title=On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks
|title=Architecture Uncooked: An Architect Looks Around New Zealand Holiday Houses
+
|author=John Hurst
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Travel
+
|genre=Art
|summary=This book immediately impresses by its clearly written, yet intelligent writing, and its photography that captures both the structure and the spirit of the holiday homes scattered around the New Zealand countryside.
+
|summary=It was pure serendipity: after a five-hour drive, we were, annoyingly, left with an hour to fill in Blakeney before we could have the keys to our holiday cottage. There was an art exhibition in the church hall, so we went in - and found a display of the most gorgeous pictures.  I'd cheerfully have bought every one and hung them on our walls, but thought that I would have to make do with a couple of greetings cards when I saw ''On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks'' and I couldn't resist buying it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869621549</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Trivia Reviews]]
|author=Dean Starnes
 
|title=Roam
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|summary=Languages, customs, rituals, fascinating things to do, places to see, people to visit – all in the one book, covering almost every nook and cranny throughout the world. This is a travel book covering, well, pretty well everything.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869507118</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 11:59, 26 December 2023

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Review of

Local by Alastair Humphreys

5star.jpg Travel

Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world. And then written about it. For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it. As he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map. Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding… One of the joys of the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead. Full Review

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Review of

Blue Skies and Boat Trips: The Norfolk of Brian Lewis by Alan Marshall

5star.jpg Art

There are few positive things which can be said about a substandard apartment when you’re on holiday but this time, in trying to avoid looking at a problem I found myself looking more closely at a couple of pictures on the walls - and was completely taken by the work of Brian Lewis. I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the print I wanted was ‘not available’. Oh, dear - then a few doors down from the apartment, I found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books - and a framed print of the picture I wanted. Full Review

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Review of

Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car by Clive Wilkinson

5star.jpg Travel

Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it? Full Review

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Review of

The Hidden Fires by Merryn Glover

5star.jpg Travel

It is always about the book, not the writer, but there are times when the author's hinterland is also the background to the book and so it is necessary to understand that context, in order to appreciate the book. Merryn Glover is of Australian parentage, was born in Kathmandu, grew up in the Annapurna and Himalayan and now lives in Badenoch in Scotland. I can think of no-one better a combination to give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than the first Writer in Residence in the Cairngorms National Park. Merryn walks, not so much in the shadow of Shepherd, but in her spirit. I think the two would have gotten along famously. Full Review

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Review of

Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America by Kari Loya

4star.jpg Travel

Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it. The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it on. Merv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's. Full Review

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Review of

Walking: One Step At A Time by Erling Kagge

5star.jpg Lifestyle

Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved a book is evidenced by the number of pages with corners turned, so let me start this one with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not mine. In my defence, I will say that as a reader of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why).

Erligg Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who has walked to the South Pole, the North Pole and the summit of Everest. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, this isn't a travelogue about any of those epic journeys, it is instead a thoughtful exploration of what it means to walk. It is a plenitude of unnumbered essays about walking. There is no 'contents' page and I haven't counted. In small format paperback, each essay is only a few pages long. Perhaps then, better thought of as a meditation rather than an essay. Full Review

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Review of

Against a Peacock Sky by Monica Connell

5star.jpg Travel

Monica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it is important to know that. She went on a grant-supported trip, with a relatively specific objective. She wasn't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-la. She wasn't a mere tourist passing through. She went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people and how they lived. She also went, presumably, with the academic discipline of how to find these things out, how to organise them in her mind, how to "understand" them in the context of her own paradigms, and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the event. Fortunately, she also went with a sense of open-ness and curiosity and a willingness to muck-in, to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled up. Full Review

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Review of

The Japanese Chronicles by Nicolas Bouvier

5star.jpg Travel

It never does to start a review of a book with a quote from the blurb, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Le Monde reviewed this book, at some point, with the words what the old master craftsmen would call a masterpiece. It is precisely that. A masterpiece in the sense of the craft as well as the art of writing. I'm going to hesitate to call it 'travel writing' because this is as much a history of Japan, a mythology-primer for the Japanese culture as it is a personal response to living and travelling in the country. Full Review

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Review of

Signs of Life by Stephen Fabes

5star.jpg Travel

I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to simply go out and do it. I also didn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'. In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years. Fabes did precisely that. Full Review

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Review of

Toubab Tales: The Joys and Trials of Expat Life in Africa by Rob Baker

4star.jpg Travel

"Go to Mali," they said. "The music is amazing," they said. "And you get ten hours of sunshine every day." So I did.

Rob Baker is an ethnomusicologist. A what? I hear you cry. Well, an ethnomusicologist studies music in relation to culture, so rather like a folklorist studies the oral and written story traditions relating to a culture. Full Review

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Review of

Bucket Showers and Baby Goats: Volunteering in West Africa by Christine Brown

4.5star.jpg Travel

In the summer of 2008, this book's author was spending her days working in an office job in the USA while spending her nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else. Long story short, she ended up volunteering in Ghana, West Africa. Now coincidentally, in the summer of 2010, this review's author was spending her days working in an office job (albeit in the UK) while spending her nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else, and she ended up just 3 countries away, volunteering in Sierra Leone, West Africa. So you can see why, when this book came up, said reviewer was delighted to have the opportunity to read and critique it. Full Review

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Review of

Rooms with a View: The Secret Life of Great Hotels by Adrian Mourby

4star.jpg Travel

Adrian Mourby has given us a flying visit to each of fifty grand hotels, from fourteen regions of the world, with the hotels in each section being arranged chronologically rather than by region, which helps to give something of an overall picture. So what makes a hotel 'grand'? The first hotel to call itself 'grand' was in Covent Garden in 1774 and it ushered in the beginning of a period when a hotel would be a lifestyle choice rather than a refuge for those without friends and family conveniently nearby. The hotels we visit all began life in different circumstances and each faced a different set of challenges. We begin in the Americas, move to the United Kingdom, circumnavigate Europe, briefly visit Russia and Turkey then northern Africa, India and Asia. Australia, it seems, does not go for the grand. Full Review

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Review of

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

5star.jpg History

Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you this one has your name on it. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering an older, less tethered sense of herself. Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly. Full Review

1912242052.jpg

Review of

O Joy for me! by Keir Davidson

3star.jpg Art

Oh Joy for me! gives Coleridge credit for being the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world. Full Review

Woolf Great.jpg

Review of

The Great Horizon: 50 Tales of Exploration by Jo Woolf

3.5star.jpg History

Jo Woolf has compiled a brilliant set of fifty short insights into the lives and achievements of some amazingly brave people. Their fearless journeys have helped us unlock many of the mysteries of the wildest parts of our world, and also given us an understanding of what it is like to be faced with the most terrible conditions and still have the determination and grit to carry on. This book could be viewed as a taster which encourages us to seek out and read more about some of the most iconic explorers. Their stories are pretty incredible and Woolf does them justice. Full Review

Hailstone Berlin.jpg

Review of

Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966 by Allan Hailstone

4star.jpg History

Berlin in the Cold War: 1959-1966 contains almost 200 photographs taken by author/photographer Allan Hailstone in his visits to the city during this period. The images provide an insight into the changing nature of the divide between East and West Berlin and a glimpse into life in the city during the Cold War. Full Review

Stewart Marches.jpg

Review of

The Marches by Rory Stewart

5star.jpg History

The Observer quote on the front of the paperback edition of Stewart's latest book observes This is travel writing at its finest. Perhaps, but to call it 'travel writing' is to totally under-sell it. This is erudition at its finest. Stewart has the background to do this: he had an international upbringing and followed his father in both the Army and the Foreign Office, and then (to his father's, bemusement, shall we say) became an MP. Oh, and he walked 6,000 miles across Afghanistan in 2002. A walk along the Scottish borders should be a doddle by comparison. Full Review

link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/Bristow China/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21

Review of

China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser by Michael Bristow

4star.jpg Autobiography

Having worked for nine years in Bejing as a journalist for the BBC, author Michael Bristow decided to write about Chinese history. Having been learning the local language for several years, Bristow asked his language teacher for guidance - the language teacher, born in the early fifties, offered Bristow a compelling picture of life in Communist China - but added to that, Bristow was greatly surprised to find that his language teacher also enjoyed spending his spare time in ladies clothing. It soon becomes clear that the tale told here is immensely personal - yet also paints a fascinating portrait of one of the world's most intriguing nations. Full Review

Hurst Norfolk.jpg

Review of

On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks by John Hurst

4star.jpg Art

It was pure serendipity: after a five-hour drive, we were, annoyingly, left with an hour to fill in Blakeney before we could have the keys to our holiday cottage. There was an art exhibition in the church hall, so we went in - and found a display of the most gorgeous pictures. I'd cheerfully have bought every one and hung them on our walls, but thought that I would have to make do with a couple of greetings cards when I saw On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks and I couldn't resist buying it. Full Review

Move on to Newest Trivia Reviews