City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing

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.Extra Virgin: Amongst the Olive Groves of Liguria
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Annie Hawes

April 26, 2001
what a lovely read this is, nicely suprising & not at all like the usual "year in a foreign country" type stuff. The stories of the Ligurian way of thinking "no swimming in the sea except in the height of summer - this brings on Flu"......"germans who horror of horror drink wine WITHOUT FOOD!!! GASP GASP"...."bottled wine is akin to poison & not even made from grapes".......Its also interesting that this was set many many years ago...before we all ate olive oil/sundried tomatoes/olives/tomatoes on the vine etc etc as a matter of course....funny & laigh out loud...i have since bought her next book & will be enjoying that very soon
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.Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Paul Theroux

August 07, 2003
Too many reviewers here want a glowing travel brochure out of Theroux. Writing is his vocation, travelling is his muse. Travelling is a way to comment on the human condition as he experiences it, and on his own condition, as he experiences it. It doesn't matter how many people have a good time in Africa, or a bad time in Africa - Theroux has his own devil driving him in his own strange directions, and what he produces are travel books only in the most minimal sense. In the larger sense they are works of literature in which travel plays a part.

I love the complexity of his writing, his honesty in recording moods, enthusiasms, fears, vanities, moments of ill-temper, generosity, meanness. Reviewers point out moments of 'hypocrisy', ... Read More:
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.Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Bill Bryson

May 17, 2004
Every so often, flicking through the BBC radio stations, I've hit Kerry Shale or Bill Bryson reading from one of Bill's books. At that point I stop flicking and sit and listen. The furrow disappears from my brow and a smile appears on my face. The smile ratchets up into a grin and from time to time a laugh erupts. It happens every time Bill Bryson's thoughts and adventures come out of my radio. But I'm no longer prepared to toggle back and forth between BBC radio 4 and BBC radio 7 just hoping for a bit of Bill Bryson. I commenced a search for an audiobook and found this. Instead of the usual 10 to 20 minute snatch of radio broadcast, I've listened to a full 6 hours, on 5 discs and achieved a serene sense of having been entertained for long, blissful, ... Read More:
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.The Dark Heart of Italy
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Tobias Jones

March 15, 2007
This book is a collection of second-hand stereotypes about Italy and Italians. I watched the author on a TV program struggling to put a few words together in Italian and asked myself how he could have gathered any insighgts on the Italian political/sociological situation with such a poor knowledge of the local language. Overall: a surprisingly shallow book and a serious source of embarassement for British journalism.

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.The Illustrated Olive Farm
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Carol Drinkwater

September 15, 2005
If there is an American Dream then what Carol Drinkwater describes in this book is, for sure, the British Dream. How many of us have been seduced and spirited away to foreign parts with the promise of a new, simple but meaningful life?

This is pure escapism but escapism that so many of us can recognise. Life is slowed down but intensified with detail. The smallest incidents and anecdotes in a strange place can hold worlds of meaning and that's what this book achieves. You slip away into someone else's life and dreams that are so like your own.

There are moments when the prose becomes a little purple and Drinkwater a little too self-obsessed but she moves on fast. She succeeds though in documenting for us the delights of taking something old and ... Read More:
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.South: The Endurance Expedition: The "Endurance" Expedition
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Sir Ernest Shackleton

November 25, 1999
Just for clarity and historical account: South: The Endurance Expedition: The "Endurance" Expedition, was not written by Shack.
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.Dreaming of Jupiter
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Ted Simon

April 03, 2008
I had read an original copy from the 1970's of Jupiter Travels.. which was good but not as good as 'The Bone Man of Banares'. I thought when I was reading the original book... what's the point of this trip? especially as he broke the trip and flew home from India at one point.. sort of cheating.. This book was even more of a pointless cheat.. would have made a better book if he's just got a round-the-world air ticket and revisited all those places and people from the first trip.. hire a car to get to the remote places and camp out.. that's what I would have done. There's also a sad sort of jaded and lack-lustre feel to this whole story, as he really feels his age.. Also of note is the way christianity creeps into this book, as it wasn't a factor in the first book, as he was young'ish and ... Read More:
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.Inca Kola: A Traveller's Tale of Peru
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Matthew Parris

August 05, 1993
I bought this book, hoping to find out something about Peru without it sounding like a guidebook. Once I started reading this book, I couldn't stop. It went everywhere with me, to read in my lunch hour, on buses, even in queues in shops! It is a tale of 4 men's journey through peru - what happens to them and where they visit. The book tells you about the people of Peru and the lesser known places to go (and how to get there!), rather than the "guidebook" go here, do that... approach. I loved every page of it and I was really quite dissappointed when I realised that I had come to the end of the book. I will definitely be keeping it and reading it again.
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.The Olive Tree: A Personal Journey Through Mediterranean Olive Groves
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Carol Drinkwater

October 16, 2008
I bought this book, hoping to find out something about Peru without it sounding like a guidebook. Once I started reading this book, I couldn't stop. It went everywhere with me, to read in my lunch hour, on buses, even in queues in shops! It is a tale of 4 men's journey through peru - what happens to them and where they visit. The book tells you about the people of Peru and the lesser known places to go (and how to get there!), rather than the "guidebook" go here, do that... approach. I loved every page of it and I was really quite dissappointed when I realised that I had come to the end of the book. I will definitely be keeping it and reading it again.
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.Love and War in the Apennines (Picador Books)
City Travel Guides > Books > Travel Writing
by: Eric Newby

May 10, 1996
A tender and enormously inspiring little book about his experiences in Italy during World War 2, this is Eric Newby reflecting on his loss of innocence, twenty-eight years after the event. Newby would leave soldiering behind and go on to become a first-rate travel writer, a man capable of portraying passion, excitement and mystery in a calmly sophisticated prose style. In "Love and War in the Apennines" we get a mature account of his Italian exploits rather than a contemporary journal or diary.

Newby makes no apologies for transforming his memories into a seemingly seamless narrative. He delivers an enriching and thrilling account of his experiences: life is experienced as a continuum, not as edited highlights, and life in the face of danger, in prison, or on the run from recapture ... Read More:
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