Book Lust to Go Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  A IS FOR ADVENTURE

  AFGHANISTAN: GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES

  Nonfiction

  Fiction

  AFRICA: THE GREENEST CONTINENT

  ALBANIA

  ALL SET FOR ALASKA

  AMAZONIA

  AMERICAN GIRLS

  AN ANGLOPHILE’S LITERARY PILGRIMAGE

  APPROACHING APPALACHIA

  ARABIA DESERTA

  ARMENIA

  AUSTRALIA, THE LAND OF OZ

  Nonfiction

  Fiction

  AZ YOU LIKE IT

  THE BALTIC STATES

  BALTIMORE

  BERLIN

  BORNEO AND SARAWAK

  BOSTON: BEANS, BIRD, AND THE RED SOX

  BOTSWANA

  BRAZIL

  BURMESE DAYS

  CAMBODIA

  CANADA, O CANADA

  CAVORTING THROUGH THE CARIBBEAN

  Antigua

  Cuba

  Dominican Republic

  Haiti

  Jamaica

  Puerto Rico

  Trinidad and Tobago

  And the Others . . .

  CHESAPEAKE BAY

  CHINA: THE MIDDLE KINGDOM

  CLIMB EV’RY MOUNTAIN

  COMICS WITH A SENSE OF PLACE

  CONGO: FROM COLONIALISM TO CATASTROPHE

  CORFU

  CORNWALL’S CHARMS

  CORSICA

  DEFINITELY DETROIT

  EGYPT

  ENTERING ENGLAND

  ETHIOPIA, OR AS WE USED TO SAY, ABYSSINIA!

  EXPLAINING EUROPE: THE GRAND TOUR

  EXPLORERS

  FROLICKING IN FINLAND

  GALLOPING THROUGH THE GALAPAGOS

  GUERNICA

  GUERNSEY: HISTORY IN FICTION

  HAIL, COLOMBIA!

  HAWAII

  Fiction

  Memoirs

  HIKING THE (FILL IN THE BLANK) TRAIL

  HOLLANDAYS

  HONG KONG

  ICELAND

  IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF . . .

  INDICATIVE OF INDONESIA

  INSIDE THE INSIDE PASSAGE

  IRAN

  IRELAND: BEYOND JOYCE, BEHAN, BECKETT, AND SYNGE

  IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

  IT’S CHILE TODAY

  JAPANESE JOURNEYS

  JORDAN

  JUST SO MUCH GREEK TO ME

  KENYA

  KIWIS FOREVER!: NEW ZEALAND IN PRINT

  KOREA—NORTH AND SOUTH

  LAOS

  LAS VEGAS

  LEAVENED IN LEBANON

  LIBERIA

  LOS ANGELES: CITY OF ANGELS

  LYME REGIS

  THE MAINE CHANCE

  MAKING TRACKS BY TRAIN

  MALAYSIA

  MARTHA’S VINEYARD

  A MENTION OF THE MIDDLE EAST

  MESSING AROUND ON MALTA

  MIAMI AND ENVIRONS

  NAPLES

  NEBRASKA: THE BIG EMPTY

  NEW GUINEA

  NEW YORK CITY: A TASTE OF THE BIG APPLE

  NEWFOUNDLAND

  NEWS FROM N’ORLEANS

  NIAGARA FALLS

  NIGERIA

  NORTH AFRICAN NOTES

  Algeria

  Morocco

  NORWAY: THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN

  OCEANIA, OR MILES OF ISLES

  OHIOANA

  OXFORD

  Nonfiction

  Mysteries

  Literary Fiction

  PARMA

  PATAGONIA

  PEACE CORPS MEMORIES

  PERU(SING) PERU

  PHILADELPHIA

  POLISH UP YOUR POLISH

  POSTCARDS FROM MEXICO

  PROVENCE AND THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

  ROMAN HOLIDAY

  ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT

  THE SAHARA: SAND BETWEEN YOUR TOES

  SAINT PETERSBURG/ LENINGRAD/SAINT PETERSBURG

  SAN FRANCISCO

  SCENES FROM SRI LANKA

  SCOTLAND: MORE THAN HAGGIS, KILTS, AND IAN RANKIN

  SEE THE SEA

  SERIESOUSLY . . .

  SHELTERING IN THE SHETLANDS

  SIBERIAN CHILLS

  SICILY

  SO WE/I BOUGHT (OR BUILT) A HOUSE IN . . .

  SOJOURNS IN SOUTH ASIA

  India

  Pakistan

  SOUTH AFRICA

  Fiction

  Nonfiction

  SPAIN

  STAR TREKKERS

  SWEDE(N), ISN’T IT?

  TEXAS TWO-STEP (AFTER A BOB WILLS SONG)

  THAI TALES

  TIMBUKTU AND BEYOND

  TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH: NORTH AND SOUTH

  Arctic

  Antarctic

  TRAVEL TO IMAGINARY PLACES

  TRAVELERS’ TALES IN VERSE

  TURKISH DELIGHTS

  Nonfiction

  Fiction

  VENI, VIDI, VENICE

  VERONA

  VIENNA

  VIETNAM

  WALES WELCOMES YOU

  WALK RIGHT IN

  WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

  WHERE IN THE WORLD DO THESE BOOKS BELONG?

  WY EVER NOT?

  ZAMBIA

  ZIPPING THROUGH ZIMBABWE/ ROAMING RHODESIA

  INDEX

  Copyright Page

  GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

  INTRODUCTION

  I am not an enthusiastic traveler. Let me lay my cards on the table, clear the air, call a spade a spade, and make something perfectly clear. I am barely a traveler at all. I would like to attribute this to “The Unexplorer,” a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay that I read when I was about thirteen and deeply into poetry. It’s from her collection called A Few Figs from Thistles and is a whole novel in six short lines, all about a young girl enraptured by the road outside her house.When she asks her mother about it, she’s told that the road “led to the milkman’s door.” Millay concludes with the line: “(That’s why I have not traveled more.)”

  And then I’ve always feared that what Ralph Waldo Emerson said in Self-Reliance is true:Traveling is a fool’s paradise . . . I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

  But to blame that sort of literary disillusionment for my lack of travel would be romantic in the extreme, and also highly disingenuous. Here’s why I don’t travel: I am stymied by the very activities of planning a trip and figuring out an itinerary, choosing dates and what to pack. I am frustrated by my inability to speak any language except English. My high school French just won’t cut it. You try finding a Laundromat in Tallinn without knowing Estonian and you’ll soon discover that although everyone has assured you that all Estonians speak at least a rudimentary form of English, that doesn’t really seem to apply to most people over thirty. I don’t blame them for not speaking English; I blame myself for not speaking Estonian so I could explain that I just wanted to wash my dirty clothes.

  I am also made anxious by the seemingly simple act of leaving my house. I can manage meeting friends for coffee, going for walks in my familiar neighborhood, and geocaching. But even that last activity, as much as I enjoy being with my geocaching buddies, is more often than not nerve-wracking in the extreme as we drive to and disembark in unfamiliar locales all around the city.That’s about it, travelwise, for me.

  In his book Between Terror and Tourism, Michael Mewshaw writes of arriving in a totally inhospitable desert locale: “The pleasure of being where I had never been before, doing what I had never done, bound for who knew what—I foun
d it all thrilling. I always have.”

  And I have not, alas.

  So in one way of looking at it, I am totally the wrong person to write a book about travel; on the other hand, I am absolutely the perfect person. I am, in fact, a virtual traveler, via books. I have always loved reading armchair travel books and accounts of dashing and daring explorers. I adore books—whether fiction or nonfiction—that give me a sense of being in another place and time. There are so many wonderful books that do exactly that; it was the impetus for Book Lust To Go. The first thing I did when I started working on this book was to purchase a large and up-to-date world map and put it up on the wall of the room where I write, so it was easy for me to get up from my desk, look at where a country or city was located, and understand its political and geographical context. It’s probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

  Now for some information about what’s in this book (and what’s not).

  First, as with the other three books in the Book Lust series, I’ve included titles that are both in print and out of print. Honestly, I wish they were all in print and easily available at libraries and bookstores. We’re lucky in this age of the Internet that many out-of-print books are easy to locate and purchase online. And you can take advantage of the inter-library loan service most libraries offer their patrons.

  Second, I’ve included my favorite armchair travel narratives, as well as biographies of explorers, memoirs, novels set in various countries around the world, and a smattering of history. I hope they’ll become your favorites as well, whether you’re a virtual or actual traveler.

  Third, Book Lust, published in 2003, and More Book Lust, which came out in 2005, featured lots of titles that would have fit wonderfully into Book Lust To Go. If I had ever imagined that I would write a Book Lust series, I might have saved them to include here, but I never saw that coming (nor, I think, did anyone else). I have generally chosen not to repeat titles here, except when one seemed especially well suited for Book Lust To Go. So before you email me about a title or an author that you’re concerned I’ve omitted from Book Lust To Go, be sure to check my other books first!

  One of my favorite discoveries while I was doing all of the preliminary reading for BLTG (as I affectionately refer to it) was reading Josie Dew’s memoir A Ride in the Neon Sun. Here’s what she says about traveling:Some people travel with firm ideas for a journey, following in the footsteps of an intrepid ancestor whose exotic exploits were happened upon in a dusty, cobweb-laced attic containing immovable trunks full of sepia-curled daguerreotypes and age-discoloured letters redolent of bygone days. Others travel for anthropological, botanical, archaeological, geological, and other logical reasons. Some are smitten by a specific country brewed from childhood dreams. For others, travel is a challenge, a release, an escape, a shaking off of the shackles, and even if they don’t know where they will end up they usually know where they will begin.

  The very hardest part of writing this book was that I was unable to stop working on it. I kept reading even after the initial manuscript was turned in, discovering new titles and authors whose works I just couldn’t bear to leave out. I even envisioned myself watching the book being printed and shouting periodically, “Stop the presses!” so that I could add yet another section or title. But of course the day actually came when I knew I had to stop or there would never be an end to the project.And here is the result, in your hands right now.

  So, before your next trip—either virtual or actual—grab a pen and begin making notes about the titles that sound good to you. And enjoy the journeys.

  I’d love to hear from you. My email address is nancy@nancypearl .com.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people gave me great suggestions for books to include in Book Lust To Go. I want to give an especial shout-out to Martha Bayley, who actually kick-started the whole process of me really sitting down and writing up all my notes; in addition, she contributed both the “Inside the Inside Passage” section and “We’ll Always Have Paris.” She is herself both a virtual and actual traveler, and over the years has recommended many terrific books.And Anna Minard, who initially organized my reams of random bits of paper—something I never could have done on my own—into a coherent arrangement.

  And to all these folks for their help of many different sorts:

  Nassim Assefi; Jen Baker; Abby Bass; Colleen Brady; Brad Craft; Marilyn Dahl; Beth de la Fuente; Janneke Dijkstra; Jason Felton; Margaret Ford; Gitana Garofalo; Gail Goodrick; Andrea Gough; Alex Harris; Phyllis Hatfield; Jim Horton; Christine Jeffords; Linda Johns; Mark Kaiser; Kathleen Kinder; Bharti Kirschner; David Laskin; Mike Leber; Susan Linn; Lisa Lundström; Nancy McGill; Cindy Mitchell; Gina Nahai; Hannah Parker; Eily Raman; Gayle Richardson; Matt Rowe; Cadi Russell-Sauve; Robin Pforr Ryan; Murray Sampson; Anne Schwendiman; Jake Silverstein; Kale Sniderman; Stephen and Marilyn Sniderman; Shoshana Sniderman-Wise; Dana Stabenow; Manya and Pär Sundstrom; Martha Tofferi; Jason Vanhee; Agnes Wiacek; David Wright; Neal Wyatt (for the “Anglophile’s Literary Pilgrimage,” “Comics with a Sense of Place,” and “Lyme Regis” sections, and who is always as excited about my books as I am); and Michelle Young.

  I apologize in advance if I’ve inadvertently omitted your name....

  And all my thanks to the wonderful folks at Sasquatch Books—it takes a concerted togetherness to get a book from an idea to the printed page, and everyone at Sasquatch has been nothing less than supportive, especially Gary Luke, Sarah Hanson, Rachelle Longé, Tess Tabor, and Shari Miranda.

  As always, love to my husband, Joe, to whom I owe more than I can say—he makes everything I do possible and makes possible everything that I do.

  This book is dedicated to my granddaughter Jessica Pearl Raman, because it’s her turn and I love her.

  A IS FOR ADVENTURE

  Any sort of adventurous travel comes with an almost guaranteed risk: anything can—and often does—go wrong, whether it’s bad weather, bad decisions, bad karma, or simply bad luck. In addition to the best-selling armchair adventure titles by authors like Jon Krakauer, Sebastian Junger, or Linda Greenlaw, try these riveting accounts.

  In Adrift by Steven Callahan, the author must use his inflatable life raft after his small sloop capsized after less than a week out on the open waters of the North Atlantic. The seventy-six days at sea that he spent fighting for his life and his sanity make for a spellbinding tale.

  A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols is about the first Golden Globe Race in 1968, in which—as the book’s tagline has it—“Nine men set out to race each other around the world. Only one made it back.” I read with a growing sense of shock—and no little admiration—how these men, for various and sundry reasons, decided to risk their bodies (and their minds) to take part in a race sans GPS, sans mobile phones, and in boats that seemed all but guaranteed not to survive the trip. Chay Blyth, who had very little experience in open water sailing, describes the end of his race when his boat became unmanageable during an unseasonable gale:So I lowered the sails . . . and once I had lowered them there was nothing more I could do except pray. So I prayed. And between times I turned to one of my sailing manuals to see what advice it contained for me. It was like being in hell with instructions.