Pretty tiresome tripe. Crap, really. Just opening to the first page will pain your sensibilities. Essentially, there exists a group of people with special powers to cross over to other dimensions. Then there are a group of people who are…
When you realize that Saint Bernadette most likely saw a fairy and not the Virgin you've made a key discovery about the very core of France. Bernadette indeed saw something in the cave that day along the roiling Gave de Pau…
The FULL Travel library is available here You already know we're book hounds here at Around the World in Eighty Years. Heck, the name itself is an ode to the literature of travel. I never go anywhere without a…
The FULL Travel library is available here Part I: Colorado, France, Haiti, New Mexico and Vietnam available here You already know we're book hounds here at Around the World in Eighty Years. Heck, the name itself is an ode…
The full library is available here Part II is here -- You already know we're book hounds here at Around the World in Eighty Years. Heck, the name itself is an ode to the literature of travel. I never…
In my parents basement there was a series of colorful plywood doors. Behind the doors were piles of yellowed books crammed into a dark recess in the foundation. They were all of the books in the house. I never understood…
First up, some apologies. This post was due way back in June but as my trips to Haiti and then to Finland came and went I got caught up in a million other things. So, sorry about that. But here…
Let's see if I can make this short and sweet. I don't like this book. If you'd like to read Ann Patchett's "State of Wonder" in it's origional, high- quality version, pick up "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. If…
What is great travel literature for me? I explained that here in 1-5, so lets jump right in. 6. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. Robert Louis Stevenson I agree with Junius Maltby (The Pastures of Heaven), Travels with…
For me, quality travel literature goes beyond a travel journal or a simple list of dates and events. The “travel-adventure” genre is WAY overdone and generally quite boring to me. Travel literature is writing of high literary value that sets…
My high school history teacher was a Classicist. His infatuation with the Greco-Roman societies had taken him on travels throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. He had learned Greek and Latin and had read Homer in the original. He was…
I guess I'm a little slow to these things sometimes but I just...literally just...found out that Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom was probably fabricated out of whole cloth. Damn. "The Long Walk"…
