This is more or less the same short, lame review I did of his book about Spain. He really knows what he is talking about, but I found he spent too mucThis is more or less the same short, lame review I did of his book about Spain. He really knows what he is talking about, but I found he spent too much time on the top-tier restaurants and hyper-expensive food products and not enough time on how Italian families eat.
I highly recommend this to anyone planning a trip to Italy....more
if you're looking for an over-written account of a long vacation, or an insufficiently short stay in a foreign land, thiItaly on 1,000 Metaphors a Day
if you're looking for an over-written account of a long vacation, or an insufficiently short stay in a foreign land, this is the book for you. I could tell from the very beginning that this wasn’t my cup of tea, a creative writing exercise gone off the rails and into the ditch. In my opinion, no amount of metaphors, similes, or flowery adjectives is going to turn a vacation into anything I’d want to read. Here is an example of the book's content I chose at random, just put my finger down on a page:
One after another we plunge in and swim out, sending long folds across the silken surface. We cry out; we bellow, and shoot sprays of water into the air like whales. The sea is cold; a wedge of wintry shadow stands across the beach. At the far end a rhombus of sun remains.
There is just no way to take jumping into the Mediterranean in what I imagine is early spring and somehow transform that mundane experience on the page into something anyone else would care to read. Replace those words with, “We jumped in the sea. It was cold AF.” I prefer the short version. A bit later she tries to turn a basic Italian language primer into something interesting and fails, at least for this reader. Sorry, not interesting unless you make it humorous. The literary-creative writing class version was just stupid.
Just because you can embellish every single person and object you meet and see, doesn't mean you should. There were so many occasions when I screamed at the book for her to stop. I don't care that His fine white waving hair is combed back from his well-modelled face. I really don't.
Then we move on to a tennis match which I can only assume has two not-very-talented couples fighting it out on the court in what she describes as something on a par with the Siege of Malta. I hate watching professional tennis on TV, so please don’t make me read about hacks going at it on paper.
Why not write a long-winded and flowery account of taking a huge dump, or clipping her toenails, or doing the laundry? She probably did but edited them out in the end. So many pointless things to write about, so few pages.
I have noticed something, but it has taken me a while to establish what it is: there are no tourists. There are a few foreigners, like ourselves, but a foreigner is not the same thing as a tourist. A foreigner is isolated, observant, displaced. A foreigner lies low, and takes stock. But a tourist feels at home when he is not.
I hate her condescending attitude towards so many people in this book, as if they are beneath her and incapable of her depth of experience. Because she can parrot a handful of Italian words? Get over yourself. I’ve lived outside of my own country for a major portion of my life and speak a couple of languages, yet don’t feel myself above anyone else visiting for short stays, nor have I written anything in this mocking tone. I’ve lived where I live now longer than I’ve lived in any one place in my life and don’t feel superior to the people plodding around for the day on their cruise of the Mediterranean.
Way, way back, when I lived in Greece, we used to make fun of the tourists who thought they were superior to the other tourists. We called them The Jet Set after the Joe Jackson song. I was sitting in the lobby of a small hotel on a Greek island almost as tiny as the hotel. Three guys came in, one wearing a “Harvard” t-shirt. The woman at the desk didn’t speak a word of English and after a minute of two of listening to the charade, I translated for the three intrepid travelers.
Joe Harvard turned to me and said, “I speak French.”
“So do I, but you won’t get far with her in French,” I answered.
I’m sure that his sense of superiority, temporarily shattered, would have been restored if he’d learned I was a lowly enlisted USAF crew member. The writer of this book would have got along famously with the Harvard dude. (in one of my humor essays I advise travelers to leave their "Nobody Gives a Shit" university shirts at home).
Her planned trip to Capri goes awry because the boatmen are on strike:
A man approaches. He tells us that there is a boat, a single boat that will take us around the headland to Positano, on the Amalfi coast. I do not particularly want to go to Positano. I want to go to Capri. I want to see the Carthusian monastery, and Tiberius’s villa. I want to go to an island, from where I can look back on the last three months and make the decisive stroke that will complete them. It will be no good, going to Positano. It will be artificial. It will not be satisfying. It will ruin everything with its artificiality, its lack of truth. Nevertheless, we get on the boat. There is, after all, nowhere else to go.
“I don’t want to go to Positano!” Why doesn’t she throw a temper tantrum? Maybe hold her breath. That would help, right? There is nowhere else to go? You’re in Italy, you fucking idiot, there are a million places to go. Just turn in any direction and start moving.
Her thoughts on expats:
...the majority of them, before they leave, assert at every opportunity the ways in which their prospective homeland is better, and once they are there insist with equal vehemence on the ways in which it is worse. As a child, my parents were constantly moving.
I haven’t found this to be true in the least, more like the opposite. I guarantee I've met more expats than this writer. I won't even listen to people if they are criticizing where I live, it just seems ungrateful to me.
She do anything I found even remotely interesting. She has no great insights into Italian culture, and she never has an interesting conversation....more
I’ve always said that the more money you have when you travel, the less interesting the trip, which makes this book about as interesting as it gets. TI’ve always said that the more money you have when you travel, the less interesting the trip, which makes this book about as interesting as it gets. The guys is basically a hobo with a violin walking around Spain in 1934. I look back on my life and consider that I was roughing it when I would travel internationally without an ATM or credit card so when you ran out of money, you were out of freaking money. This account makes my early days look like a first-class seat....more
I read almost everything Steinbeck wrote before I was out of high school. I started this but can’t remember why I didn’t finish. I have some distant mI read almost everything Steinbeck wrote before I was out of high school. I started this but can’t remember why I didn’t finish. I have some distant memory of losing the book mid-reading, but now I realize that I may not have cared for it to stick it out to the end. I think I read much later that he had fictionalized portions and passage, not something that argues in the book’s favor.
This time around I started to lose interest when he has a conversation with a waitress who complains about bad tippers and he has some really dark things to say about her, expecting her to be singing “Up with People” as she performs her poorly-paid job in some forlorn diner in the middle of nowhere while being pestered by an old man. He moves on to say that hunters are all a bunch of fat, old drunks.
I hated everything he wrote about his dog.
I just didn’t find him to be a very interesting travel companion. He has no sense of humor, and I didn’t find him to be insightful at any point in the journey. If you are looking for a much better travel memoir along these lines, read Willaim Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways. ...more
File Under Lifestyle Porn - Subcategory: I live in Paris and you don’t. Three Stars is my new One Star rating
I disliked this enough to give it one staFile Under Lifestyle Porn - Subcategory: I live in Paris and you don’t. Three Stars is my new One Star rating
I disliked this enough to give it one star, but I didn’t want to stand out as someone with an ax to grind (I do) so I was going to give it two. Then I read a bunch of other people who rated it one star and hated it so I decided to be truthful.
Alternative Titles:
Mundane, Mundaner, Mundanest! or Bland & Blander
First of all, one year isn’t enough time to come to anything resembling an insightful observation about Paris, not really. The next thing is that she obviously can easily afford to live in Paris for a year which means that there is no risk involved in what she wants us to believe is such a brave decision on her part. How many of you wouldn’t move to Paris in a New York minute if you had the dough to cover it? I’m guessing a lot of you. This was one of my biggest criticisms of Eat, Pray, Love. She had an $80,000 advance on the book so she shouldn’t throw her arm out of the socket patting herself on the back for her “adventure.” A real adventure involves considerable risk.
So I’ve watched a video or two with the author, a very attractive woman who seems to have it all. I don’t hate her, and I’m certainly not jealous, I just don’t find what she writes to be entertaining in the least. She obviously doesn't speak French, or very, very little.
A torrent of boring and mostly annoying anecdotes about her perfect life. Did she mention that she was living in Paris? The thing is, that isn’t enough, not nearly enough, but she obviously had the contacts in the publishing world to get her version of the expat life into print. She also happens to be a very attractive woman which certainly helps, even though looks should have absolutely nothing to do with selling books.
I very soon realized that these would make up the entire book: pithy and clever (so she thinks) observations of every mundane aspect of expat life. I would have quickly unfollowed her on Facebook so as not to be deluged with her not-very-illuminating takes on life in the French capital.
Her overly-familiar tone got on my nerves from the very start, it’s like she’s is talking to us like we actually give a shit about her husband and children, like we’re part of it. I already have a mostly-annoying family, so no thanks on yours. Nothing personal.
I’m not cherry-picking her shittiest entries, I swear, but here a two examples of her writing chops:
After much sniffing, I have decided on my favorite French soap. It’s made by a company called Resonances, and sold at Galeries Lafayette Maison in big blocks that you cut in half. It’s scented with vervain, which I had to look up; it’s a wildflower also called “herb of grace.” The scent reminds me of lemons and wind-dried laundry.
This bores me to tears. The shit probably costs more than some expats spend on rent in Paris.
Today is rainy, cool, and windy. The sky is silvery gray, like silk skirts of a Victorian lady long widowed, and still regretful.
This makes me want to puke, and I don't have any idea what it means....more
I’ll start off with praise for the book. The story is simply amazing and the woman will go down in history as one of the most tenacious survivors at sI’ll start off with praise for the book. The story is simply amazing and the woman will go down in history as one of the most tenacious survivors at sea. Just her navigational skill is something to be admired by 21st century sailors who rely on the whims of the electronic world.
She was a little slow to get moving in the metaphorically correct direction, i.e. getting her act together and getting the boat in order. I can’t believe that she would have had a water shortage in such a luxury yacht like the Hazana (by the way, I think it's hazaña, not hazana – Spanish for fate, deed, or exploit, at least I read the boat spelled that way before ). The same would go for food. If she ran low on food that was from poor planning before setting out on a trans-Pacific voyage. Even considering that some food would have been lost, she still should have had plenty.
I’ve never been in a really bad storm at sea, at least not in such a small sailing vessel, and nothing like the storm she faced even in a big passenger ship. I can’t even imagine how terrifying that must have been for them. At the end, she said the boat was totaled by the insurance company, but I’d wager someone got it back in ship-shape in no time at all. What a fine bit of advertising for that ship maker.
I watched the movie first, and it wasn’t bad at all. In the movie as well as the book she didn’t seem too concerned with bailing the boat out. Just to have something to occupy my time I think that I would have been pumping my brains out as well as cleaning up that cabin to have a more comfortable time of it. The whole bit about rationing water is also lousy information in a survival situation. I was taught at the USAF survival school in Spokane, Washington, to ration your sweat, not your water, meaning to take it easy during the daylight hours but drink as much water as you need. Drinking a cap-full of water every two days like they do in the movies will just dehydrate you faster.
So in the end she had enough water, and should have had even more—a boat that size must have a few hundred gallons of fresh water. Rich people probably expect to have two fresh water showers a day in such a luxury craft.
Just compare this true story to the fictional account in the Robert Redford film, All is Lost. He was a total idiot who brought on all of his problems. He was in the modern era of communications, yet he didn't have a simple two-way radio. I don’t know why she wasn’t able to communicate with her radio, but she did well under extremely bad circumstances.
The down side of this book, and it was a big side to the story, was her dumb romance to the dead guy. It just went on and on and was boring or worse, stupid at every turn. And what if she just made it all up? Like when he proposed to her? She is the only one who can back up that story. What if they had a huge fight on the first day of the voyage and she hated his Limey guts? It would have been a better book for me.
Of course, there is no way of ever knowing, but you have to wonder about the fate of Richard. How did he lose his tether? Did he drown immediately or did he bob around for a few hours dog-paddling in those terrible seas? I never feel sorry for people who die doing things they love. Sailing across the Pacific in a sailboat, even one as big and majestic as Hazaña, is inherently very dangerous. It’s the same for mountain climbers. People die doing that all the time and you can’t be expected to feel sorry for them. If they wanted to live longer, they would have avoided such dangerous hobbies. I’d rather go out like Richard, or fall off a 1,000 feet shear mountain face than die in a car accident—the most meaningless way to die imaginable.
Some of the technical aspects of sailing weren't written very clearly, at least not in my opinion, and I know my way around a sailboat.
*It was difficult for me to even find this book for review on Goodreads. My version was re-titled “Adrift” as part of the movie tie-in. She wasn’t adrift as she rigged a sail. Another book recounting this story is called “Lost at Sea” and she certainly was never lost....more
I read this in the wake of my lament on hearing of the author’s death. His posthumously aired episode on Berlin on CNN was something of a minor masterI read this in the wake of my lament on hearing of the author’s death. His posthumously aired episode on Berlin on CNN was something of a minor masterpiece and makes me want to pack up and mover there.
His short chapter on Gordon Ramsey totally turned my opinion around about that guy, at least until I see him again on TV.
Part of Bourdain’s shtick is to bust on all things vegetarian, but his screed in this book is sort of childish and lacks something that is infused in almost everything he writes: humor. I just think that going through life without ever eating meat is dumb. I always mention goiters in my argument, a horrible condition brought on because of the lack of just a trace amount of iodine in the diet. What could people who avoid animal products be missing? All of their former arguments in favor of never eating meat have mostly been invalidated. It just seems stupid and random to say that you don't eat this of that. I could probably survive if I ate less pork, but to swear off this delicious animal for a lifetime is simply a profound error. It smacks of religious fanaticism, and everyone hates religion, right? Most vegetarians are suffering from an eating disorder. It's a way to control what you eat, which is pretty much the definition of an eating disorder....more
Relentlessly and mind-numbingly commonsensical, almost as bad as reminding you not to leave without your passport. I don't think anyone needs to be toRelentlessly and mind-numbingly commonsensical, almost as bad as reminding you not to leave without your passport. I don't think anyone needs to be told "If you're taking a long journey, never take a dump on a bus…especially if it doesn’t have a restroom!" OK, I just made that up, but it's better advice than most of what you'll find in this book. The whole pamphlet is like one of those corny leadership posters with a photo of a guy climbing a mountain, or a kitten hanging from a tree branch and a slogan about how shitty Mondays are.
It’s curious that the author quotes Dale Carnegie early on in the book, because I think his book is a stinking pile of offal just like Carnegie's huckster's bible. Vagabonding is over-packed with fortune cookie wisdom, both by the author, and also the people making guest appearances with equally puerile thoughts on travel.
This book is touted as if it is a manual for how to ditch your life and hit the road, although it’s pretty thin on specifics and big on Tony Robbins-type bluster and wind. I doubt that anyone has used this book to break free from whatever it was that had them chained down, but perhaps for a lot of people this book is the straw that broke the back of their land-locked existence. I think that just about all self-help books are bullshit. If people claim to have done something because of a self-help book, I think that they are undervaluing their own initiative.
I had been doing shit like this before I was even a legal adult, and I continue in the same sort of lifestyle as I approach my 60th birthday. A good question to ask yourself before you set out on a long period of travel is whether or not this is for you. A lot of people tell me that they are jealous of the way I live, but I doubt that would like it if they were to change places. I certainly wouldn’t change lives with them.
Instead of this book, I had Hemingway, and Kerouac, and Steinbeck, and Paul Bowles, among many others. These writers only had a bit less practical information than you will find in this book, but they were infinitely more entertaining.
The bottom line is simple: if you want to do something, then just fucking do it (expletive added so as not to violate Nike copyright)....more
She begins by saying that that she changed the names of the people in the book except for that of her spouse who is cursed with the name Gwendal. ChriShe begins by saying that that she changed the names of the people in the book except for that of her spouse who is cursed with the name Gwendal. Christ, if ever anyone ever needed a name change who wasn’t in The Hobbit it’s a guy called Gwendal.
I may be the only male to have reviewed this book, and in my defense I wasn’t able to read all of it, but are men and women so different in our tastes that a book that many women seem to have enjoyed can be utterly unreadable for men (and by men I mean me)? What I did read was like a not particularly interesting acquaintance telling you about their trip to France while you contemplate feigning an epileptic seizure to make her stop.
After the first line “I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date (I heard this in the voice of Austin Powers),” I thought maybe they both passed out from boredom and slept face-down in their coq au vin.
I put it down after a few pages. I was immediately repelled by her solipsistic world view. Englishmen have a unique way of making a woman feel invisible. They either look right through you, or lunge at you in a drunken stupor. Imagine a man writing a similar two lines dismissing the women of an entire country.
I’ll get back to this book at another time but it just seems like another addition of Lifestyle Porn in which someone tells us how wonderful their life is and why can’t we be more like them.
I had some time this afternoon and I thought that I could grind this book out but there is just no way for me to keep the eyes on the road for the 310 pages of this self-indulgent load. There is a love affair in this book but it’s between the author and herself. There isn’t a single thing that happens that isn’t about her and its effect on her glamorous existence in Paris. We get it, you live in Paris and Paris is pretty cool. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make you cool by default because about 5 million people live there and a lot of them are probably boring. There’s no crime in being boring but I don’t want to read your book....more
To call the things that happen in this book an "adventure" seems to do a disservice to that word. I have a better subtitle for this book: MisanthropicTo call the things that happen in this book an "adventure" seems to do a disservice to that word. I have a better subtitle for this book: Misanthropic, Dyspeptic Grammar Nazi Trolls England, or A long List of Things about England that Bug the Living Shit out of Bill Bryson. It's like the entire book is a sour review of England on Yelp (or tripadvisor, as he mentions in the book).
I have to begin by saying that I love a lot of what Bill Bryson writes but I hate almost all of his travel books with the exception of his book on Australia, a place he seems to like. While I won’t go so far as to say I detest this most recent contribution to that genre I did find him to be his usual whiny self. Bitching about things isn't the same as humor, far from it.
How can a guy who on the one hand can be so clever, be such a whiny ninny almost at the same time? He can turn a phrase that can make me laugh (he says that he's to old for early-onset dementia, now it will just be regular dementia)—or at least smile—and then in the next moment he’s bitching about not being able to have lunch in a pub because the kitchen is overwhelmed. If I overheard someone browbeating a waiter or a fast food worker (I never, ever eat fast food) I would tell him to shut his fat pie hole and act like a human being—something Bryson desperately needs along with a good slap in the face.
It’s almost like he wants shit to go wrong when he travels so that he can complain about it. He gets almost apoplectic upon hearing that a pub is closing. He gets so worked up over so many not-shit occurrences that shouldn’t bother any normal person. His list of 15 things that he dislikes is completely stupid and he places the bar extremely low for annoyances...and the list isn't funny in the least.
I get his point completely about people in shops being completely lacking in civility and work ethic as I have observed the same thing in Spain. I very often want to say to shop keepers, “I’m sorry for wanting to spend money here. What was I thinking?” I recognize the same attitude here in Spain but I rarely let it bother me for more than a second. On most occasions of confronting this sort or retail indifference I simply walk out and save myself some money. Most purchases in these sorts of places are superfluous and are better avoided. I love all the people who work at my supermarket and if I catch a bad attitude in other places I simply never return.
He laments constantly about how England isn’t how it once was without ever offering an opinion as to why this is the case. How about this, Bill, how about you take an economics class? In the UK, the 45% top rate of tax kicks in at an income level of around $250,000 (£151,000) compared to Italy where the top rate of 43% comes in at $125,000 while in Denmark workers are taxed at 60% on all earnings over $60,000.
These tax rates apply to single people with no children, on an average salary for their country. Belgium- 42.80% Germany - 39.90% Denmark - 38.90% Hungary- 35% Austria -34% Greece - 25.4% OECD Average - 25.10% UK - 24.90% USA - 22.70% New Zealand - 16.40% Israel - 15.50% Korea - 13% Mexico -9.50% Chile - 7%
The following tax rates apply to married couples with two children. Denmark - 34.8% Austria - 31.9% Belgium- 31.8% Finland -29.4% Netherlands - 28.7% Greece 26.7% UK - 24.9% Germany - 21.3% OECD average - 19.6% USA - 10.4% Korea - 10.2% Slovak Republic - 10% Mexico - 9.5% Chile - 7% Czech Republic - 5.6%
Spain has pretty high tax rates and I have noticed that almost everything here in the public realm is better now than it was only ten years ago. Trains, bike paths, parks, beaches, and public areas are noticeably improved while, according to Bryson, England is sinking in these areas. British Rail was privatized under Margaret Thatcher and that entity has been foundering ever since while RENFE, the Spanish rail system has been flourishing. England seems to be just about the worst example of a social democracy in Europe at this time. I think most people in most other European countries would say that their countries have also been improving steadily these past years in spite of the financial meltdown of 2008.
Once again, Bryson never has a conversation with a stranger. Strangers for him are just annoyances to be avoided at all cost. He rattles off a list of people who hate you and most of them are "fucking stupid." I only wish that I were confident enough of my own superior intelligence to call such a vast swath of humanity stupid.
Where had I been so far? She was particularly eager to know what I liked and disliked about their little island. I answered diplomatically that I liked it all.
‘There must be something you don’t like,’ she insisted.
I have lived in Spain for ten years and no one has asked me what I don’t like but if they did I wouldn’t bite on this question, especially with total strangers (they had picked Bryson up at a crossroads just to be nice yet Bryson mocks their appearance for the benefit of his readers). I would just think that there is nothing to be gained by complaining but of course Bryson probably relishes the chance to whine.
We parted ways in the central car park in Tintagel, and the last words I heard were the tall, lean one saying, ‘Most peculiar. And rather ill-mannered, don’t you think?’
A few things conspired to make this book appeal directly to me. First of all, who can resist taking a long road trip? The idea is almost a sacrament fA few things conspired to make this book appeal directly to me. First of all, who can resist taking a long road trip? The idea is almost a sacrament for Americans and I guess that goes for Canadians, too. Even if this road trip is in book form it’s too much of a temptation for me. The author is a military veteran, as am I, and infuses many parts of the narrative with stories about his former vocation and the friends that stay with you for the rest of your life. I’ve also spent a lot of time on the open road in the USA and Canada (at least the British Columbia part). In fact, I’ve made so many coast-to-coast hauls that I swore the last one would be my last. It’s a big continent with a lot to see but a lot of tedium in between.
I especially liked hearing about the Pacific Northwest as this was my home for eight years before I moved here to Spain. If you haven’t traveled to this part of the USA and Canada then I suggest you get in a car, a plane, a bike, a donkey, or whatever and get your butt up there and look around.
As I said, I just can’t resist books about hitting the road and it is such a pervasive part of American culture yet it is mostly absent among Europeans. Our car culture is more deeply embedded in our DNA although I have completely expurgated it since plopping down here to live. These days I would much rather take the train. This doesn’t mean that lots of Europeans don't dream about this sort of travel and I’ve actually heard more Spanish people wax prophetic about Route 66 than my fellow compatriots.
Read this book and I guarantee that the next time you're looking at a week or two of free time you will have the unquenchable urge to pack a bag, fill your tank, and take off to parts unknown. You can call it a road trip or freedom....more
I’m a sucker for travel books. The thing to remember when reading this memoir is that he goes around the world on a motorcycle. I know that sounds obvI’m a sucker for travel books. The thing to remember when reading this memoir is that he goes around the world on a motorcycle. I know that sounds obvious but the motorcycle takes center stage and almost everything else is background. It’s been a long, long time since I cared at all for anything with a motor and even longer since I’ve ridden a motorcycle so this book wasn’t written with me as the target market.
He makes a few wonderful insights but he spends far too many words fussing over his bike and his predicament at different stages in his journey.
He was supposedly a journalist but his writing comes up short on many occasions. Some of his passages are so clumsily written that I didn’t have the faintest idea of what was happening.
After a road mishap: “the Renault was converted from a rectangle into a lozenge”
About a girl he sees: “Her provocatively buck-toothed cocktailsipper’s mouth” On meeting a stranger: “People talk too much at first, just making publicity.”
His mention of currencies has no meaning whatsoever, especially 40 years later. You should always describe something in the form of value. I learned this from Issac Asimov who wrote that a robot cost two weeks of pay. That will always have meaning.
Simon spends quite a few pages describing his rather tedious confinement by Brazilian authorities while the gorgeous country of Costa Rica sails by carried on a single page, Nicaragua rates a paragraph.
He does hit a few home runs on insights.
“I rode forever on an astounding web of freeways, four or eight lanes wide, laid out like a never-ending concrete waffle over thousands of square miles, looking for somewhere to go, but found nothing.
I wandered through supermarkets and along 'Shopping Malls' disgusted and obsessed by the naked drive to sell and consume frivolities. When I eventually came to visit Disneyland, I realized that the ultimate aim, the logical conclusion for Los Angeles, was that it should all become another Disney creation, a completely simulated and totally controlled 'fun environment' in which life was just one long, uninterrupted ride.
From the point of view of a Bolivian Indian chewing Coca on the altiplano, I could see that it would already be pretty difficult to distinguish between the two.”
***I give this book five stars because I either give a book 1 or 5 stars. I hate the rating system and what matters here is our opinions. Your star rating isn’t really an opinion, is it?...more
What I Was doing While You Were Breeding, an attractive title for any unmarried person but it would seem to me a bit combative and accusatory for thosWhat I Was doing While You Were Breeding, an attractive title for any unmarried person but it would seem to me a bit combative and accusatory for those who are hitched up while fumbling with a car seat and a puking toddler. Basically the author tells about her adventures in travel as a single woman. I’m sure the author doesn’t mind that men read her book but it’s meant for women, kind of like Sex and the City which women love but I hated, but I didn’t hate this book. What I can say is that I wish that I had met a few more women like her in my travels.
I’ve been out of the USA for quite a while so forgive me if I don’t know what “slut shaming” is. Slut seems like a completely arcane term that needs to be forgotten as no similar term is used in the masculine.
Unless you’re a much more successful heterosexual male than I have managed to be in this life, it isn’t easy for a single guy to have sex while on vacation, at least going to places other than spring break ghettos. I couldn’t imagine that I could hook up in Tierra del Fuego if I lived there the rest of my life, let alone during a week’s stay. Women who understand this power can have a hell of a lot more fun than most of us. With that said, it sounded like most of the sex she had wasn’t too memorable. Side note: I’m no expert, but with regards to the affair she had with the Brazilian surfer, if someone draws blood during what is supposed to be oral sex. I’m pretty sure they’re doing it wrong. Wait, I think I am an expert on this subject. Nope, I've never drawn blood.
I can understand the tortured relationship she must have had with her parents who on the one hand gave her priceless advice on life, and on the other fought like two hillbilly clans after their breakup. Her father’s words that she simply wait and see could possibly be the wisest bit of counsel ever offered to a child. Her mother telling her to either suffer a bit of terror or regret her lack of courage forever is another diamond.
Not to discount her skill as a writer, but I think what a lot of women like about this book falls into the category of lifestyle porn. This means looking at someone else’s life and drooling about it. A Hollywood writer making lots of cash with lots of free time to travel is certainly appealing but if you’re waiting for this eventuality to fall into your lap before you decide to do anything interesting you could be in for a long siege of watching videos and happy hours spent at theme restaurants.
I think it’s disturbing how so few people of means have anything remotely resembling an interesting existence. On the other end almost everyone I know has managed to do a lot of cool shit on very modest incomes. I have said that the more money you have to travel the less interesting it becomes. I’d choose three weeks of backpacking in Mexico hitchhiking, taking crappy trains, and (mostly decent) buses over a resort vacation any time. In fact, I’d never go to a resort, and I did the Mexico hitching thing.
I admire the author for how personal she is in her writing. I could never do that, even if it were fiction. I think this is another talent of women.
P.S. I discovered this book because it was mentioned in an article in Time magazine. I know, hardly suitable reading material for a pseudo-intellectual dipshit like me, but I haven’t read Time since I was 12. I was trying to find something easy to read for a Spanish friend learning English. The woman who wrote the Time article talked about women traveling solo. She made herself out to be Magellan for going to a yoga retreat in Mexico. Oh well, it’s a start for her....more
I have said before that if you book your travel online and use credit cards then the words “adventure” and “journey” hardly belong in our vocabulary. I have said before that if you book your travel online and use credit cards then the words “adventure” and “journey” hardly belong in our vocabulary. Two of my favorite books, Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor’s Life at Sea (1840) by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and Around the World on a Bicycle (1887) by Thomas Stevens chronicle a kind of travel that seem to be at the very end of an era in which travel truly could be defined as adventure. I think that rounding Cape Horn on a square-sailed brig and riding around the world on a bike would still qualify today as thrilling but can’t compare with what these men pulled off well over a century ago. These books will give you something to think about the next time you are complaining about not having enough clean towels in your hotel room.
I remember reading Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents back at university and since then I have felt that because the world is completely known to us our inability to discover goes against our primal instincts just as Freud postulated that civilization is in conflict with man’s instinctual quest for freedom. People make attempts to push the limits of travel and adventure but these seem desperate and phony to me. Who cares who was the first person to climb Mount Everest on a Segway Scooter or whatever? Swimming from Cuba to the United States without the aid of a shark cage was the latest yawn to hit the newspapers.
The protagonists of these two memoirs don’t suffer the fate of inconsequential stunts, at least not in my book. Tom Stevens starts out in April of 1884 from San Francisco and pedals his penny farthing bike with a 50 inch front wheel eastward across the Sierra Nevada mountains. A man who had little to learn about travelling light, he carried in his small handlebar bag some socks, a spare shirt, a raincoat that doubled as a tent and bedroll, and a revolver. Just how he financed the journey isn’t well explained in the book.
As I have stated somewhere else, to judge people from the past on things like our modern thoughts on political correctness makes about as much sense as making fun of the clothes they wore. If you are free of prejudices and racism then you are just reflecting the norms of our societies so don’t be so quick to pat yourself on the back while condemning folks who lived in other times. At least Stevens had a bit of humor to spice up his stereotypes. He refers to a Hungarian gypsy as “unregenerate chicken-lifter.”
Even many generations after the puzzle of determining longitude had been solved ships were still at the mercy of lousy time pieces. The captain on this voyage quickly abandoned the use of the ship’s unreliable chronometer and set longitude by means of dead reckoning and line-of-sight.
He describes in great detail the difficult and sometimes perilous work of a sailor. In this passage below the ship is rounding Cape Horn which is infamous for its high seas and terrible storms:
The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while John and I got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot-ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off the boom. For some time we could do nothing but hold on, and the vessel, diving into two huge seas, one after the other, plunged us twice into the water up to our chins. We hardly knew whether we were on or off; when, the boom lifting us up dripping from the water, we were raised high into the air and then plunged below again. John thought the boom would go every moment, and called out to the mate to keep the vessel off, and haul down the staysail; but the fury of the wind and the breaking of the seas against the bows defied every attempt to make ourselves heard, and we were obliged to do the best we could in our situation.
Fortunately no other seas so heavy struck her, and we succeeded in furling the jib ``after a fashion''; and, coming in over the staysail nettings, were not a little pleased to find that all was snug, and the watch gone below; for we were soaked through, and it was very cold. John admitted that it had been a post of danger, which good sailors seldom do when the thing is over.
Step aside fast-food workers, the definition of “shit job” just took on a new meaning. Or as a friend of mine once said about a climbing trip we took into the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, “Fun is over-rated.” ...more
I have said before that if you book your travel online and use credit cards then the words “adventure” and “journey” hardly belong in our vocabulary. I have said before that if you book your travel online and use credit cards then the words “adventure” and “journey” hardly belong in our vocabulary. Two of my favorite books, Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor’s Life at Sea (1840) by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and Around the World on a Bicycle (1887) by Thomas Stevens chronicle a kind of travel was at the very end of an era in which travel truly could be defined as adventure. I think that rounding Cape Horn on a square-sailed brig and riding around the world on a bike would still qualify today as thrilling, but can’t compare with what these men pulled off well over a century ago. These books will give you something to think about the next time you are complaining about not having enough clean towels in your hotel room.
I remember reading Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents back at university and since then I have felt that because the world is completely known to us, our inability to discover goes against our primal instincts, just as Freud postulated that civilization is in conflict with man’s instinctual quest for freedom. People make attempts to push the limits of travel and adventure but these seem desperate and phony to me. Who cares who was the first person to climb Mount Everest on a Segway Scooter, or whatever? Swimming from Cuba to the United States without the aid of a shark cage was the latest yawn to hit the newspapers.
The protagonists of these two memoirs don’t suffer the fate of inconsequential stunts, at least not in my book. Tom Stevens starts out in April of 1884 from San Francisco and pedals his penny farthing bike with a 50 inch front wheel eastward across the Sierra Nevada mountains. A man who had little to learn about traveling light. In his small handlebar bag he carried some socks, a spare shirt, a raincoat that doubled as a tent and bedroll, and a revolver. Just how he financed the journey isn’t well explained in the book.
As I have stated somewhere else, to judge people from the past on things like our modern thoughts on political correctness makes about as much sense as making fun of the clothes they wore. If you are free of prejudices and racism then you are just reflecting the norms of our societies, so don’t be so quick to pat yourself on the back while condemning folks who lived in other times. At least Stevens had a bit of humor to spice up his stereotypes. He refers to a Hungarian gypsy as an “unregenerate chicken-lifter.”
Even many generations after the puzzle of determining longitude had been solved, ships were still at the mercy of lousy time pieces. The captain on this voyage quickly abandoned the use of the ship’s unreliable chronometer and set longitude by means of dead reckoning and line-of-sight.
He describes in great detail the difficult and sometimes perilous work of a sailor. In this passage, the ship is rounding Cape Horn which is infamous for its high seas and terrible storms:
The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while John and I got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot-ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off the boom. For some time we could do nothing but hold on, and the vessel, diving into two huge seas, one after the other, plunged us twice into the water up to our chins. We hardly knew whether we were on or off; when, the boom lifting us up dripping from the water, we were raised high into the air and then plunged below again. John thought the boom would go every moment, and called out to the mate to keep the vessel off, and haul down the staysail; but the fury of the wind and the breaking of the seas against the bows defied every attempt to make ourselves heard, and we were obliged to do the best we could in our situation.
Fortunately, no other seas so heavy struck her, and we succeeded in furling the jib ``after a fashion''; and, coming in over the staysail nettings, were not a little pleased to find that all was snug, and the watch gone below; for we were soaked through, and it was very cold. John admitted that it had been a post of danger, which good sailors seldom do when the thing is over.
Step aside fast-food workers, the definition of “shit job” just took on a new meaning....more
I had heard nothing but praise for this book since I arrived in Spain not long after it was published. Since I have so much to learn in Spanish and FrI had heard nothing but praise for this book since I arrived in Spain not long after it was published. Since I have so much to learn in Spanish and French I don't read many books in English. I have made exceptions over the years so I didn’t hesitate to pull this off the shelf while I am staying at a friend’s flat in Barcelona. I knew little about the book except that it dealt with the Spanish Civil War to some degree, a subject about which I probably know more about than most Spaniards who have chosen to all but forget about this sad chapter of their history.
Now that I have lived here myself for over six years I recognize his valuable insights into the country and its people. As it turns out the book is much more than another history of the war. He goes on to reveal a lot of inside gossip on the tourist industry, Spanish football, sex, prostitution in Spain, Basque and Catalan separatism,and flamenco among many other subjects.
I found his chapter on flamenco to be especially informative and entertaining. A Spanish friend from Andalucía had initiated me into flamenco years ago. I had been listening to Camarón de la Isla since then but I knew nothing about him. Tremlett’s biography and eulogy of the singer gave me an insider’s view of this great star of Spanish music.
The author’s passion for his adopted country is seemingly limitless and it’s a real privilege to be able to tap into his profound understanding of so many aspects of life in Spain. It’s difficult for an outsider to gain this sort of knowledge, even if you are something of an ardent student yourself. I don’t know what I would have made of this book had I read it in my first few years here. I doubt that I would have been able to appreciate his insights and trenchant observations about Spanish life and her people. I certainly get it now....more
This book came highly recommended from a couple of friends and I have been meaning to read it for quite a while now, probably ever since I moved to SpThis book came highly recommended from a couple of friends and I have been meaning to read it for quite a while now, probably ever since I moved to Spain four and a half years ago. I found a copy in Spanish at a used book sale (1Euro!) so the matter was settled. I have to say that it was slow reading and not because I had any problem with the Spanish, it is just slow reading. He doesn't have to much to say about Spanish life as he is in the middle of nowhere and interacting with few people. The author does have a good sense of humor, however. Not really ha-ha funny but humorous. He also has an unsentimental eye towards his subjects which seems more realistic than most travel writing which paints everyone like something out of a big book of cultural stereotypes.
I think that most people read this book because it is billed as being authored by the ex drummer for Genesis, as if that is any reason to read a book. He wasn't really their drummer, not for any meaningful period of time and I don't think he ever recorded with the group, at least not any LPs. He seems like a cool guy as you learn in the story. Good enough for me. He makes me want to go to Alpujarras. I'd like to have a glass of wine with him and swap stories. I have a few myself about life in Spain....more
The audio version of this book is read by the author and I had the pleasure of listening to it during almost a week’s worth of very long bike rides. HThe audio version of this book is read by the author and I had the pleasure of listening to it during almost a week’s worth of very long bike rides. He sounds remarkably like John Malkovich. I’ve had my complaints about Bryson in the past but I found this book to be a lot of fun and I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions or admiring Bryson’s deft wordplay.
I’ll admit that I knew next-to-nothing about Australia before this book. I did read Robert Hughes’ classic, The Fatal Shore but it was so long ago and my memory is so bad that I remember almost nothing of it. I feel like I know the country a lot better than I did just a few short days ago. Looking at a map of Australia (I now use it as my laptop wallpaper) I realized that I knew nothing of its geography. I’ll just stare at my computer screen a bit every day until I commit the most important features to memory (or what passes for memory in my feeble brain). Bryson was especially poignant with his observations of the pathetic state of the Aborigines.
This is typical Bryson travel writing in that he hardly ever has a conversation with anyone even remotely normal. He never seems to enjoy himself on his trips and I seriously doubt he would bother with travel at all except that he sells lots of books. He seemed to have fun on this trip and he is obviously very fond of Australia and her people. I found this to be his best book that I have read thus far. He is certainly a fine and gifted writer. He wrote most of this in the library but I did find the facts he throws out about Australia to be fascinating, for the most part. I suppose just putting most of his effort into research saves him the trouble of actually speaking with real Australian people. As far as other human beings, he seems to take particular relish in engagements with people who are exasperating for one reason or another: a snotty waitress, an annoying American couple, a rude hotel clerk....more
Why bother to actually travel when you can just regurgitate stereotypes that have been passed around since man invented borders? Honest to God, he reaWhy bother to actually travel when you can just regurgitate stereotypes that have been passed around since man invented borders? Honest to God, he really complains about haughty Parisian waiters. I didn’t find anything in this book of essays to be even remotely insightful and I don’t ever find Bryson's travel stuff to be funny. Most of what I have read by him is just a collection of his gripes against the rest of humanity.
I've never read any of his travel stuff where he actually meets an interesting person who has something worth saying. When I first read this several years ago I just figured that it was the first thing Bryson wrote, perhaps when he was a college student back-packing around Europe. It was published when he was 4o years old. It is completely lacking in the sort of wisdom you would expect from a writer of that age.
I like most of his non-travel books, just so you won't think that I have it in for this guy. He just seems to hate to travel and he despises everyone he meets along the way. Stay the fuck home....more
Read this book and you'll never bitch about stuff like not having enough towels in your hotel room or an over-cooked steak you were served at a restauRead this book and you'll never bitch about stuff like not having enough towels in your hotel room or an over-cooked steak you were served at a restaurant in Paris. Yet another story that makes the modern man relize that there are no more worlds to discover. Polar exploration was just about the last of the travels into the unknown. I don't count space exploration because for that you need an entire country's economy behind you. Now any knob can circle the world with only a credit card. Sic transit gloria mundi. ...more
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