Tag: Travel Books
Video: Eric Weiner on his new Book, ‘Man Seeks God’
by Jim Benning | 01.30.12 | 1:03 PM ET
We recently published The Inner Nightclub of Everlasting Joy, an excerpt from Eric Weiner’s new book, Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine. Here’s Weiner discussing the book and his travels with Lisa Napoli earlier this month at a Live Talks Los Angeles event. It’s an engaging, humor-filled conversation.
Eric Weiner in conversation with Lisa Napoli from Ted Habte-Gabr on Vimeo.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Inner Nightclub of Everlasting Joy
by Eric Weiner | 01.09.12 | 5:52 PM ET
In an excerpt from his book "Man Seeks God," Eric Weiner explores Buddhism in Kathmandu
Pico Iyer Can’t Get Graham Greene Out of his Head
by Eva Holland | 01.09.12 | 8:47 AM ET
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, World Hum contributor Pico Iyer writes about a string of odd coincidences, eerie overlaps and echoes between Graham Greene’s writing and traveling life and his own. Iyer writes:
Not long thereafter, I began working on a book on the 14th Dalai Lama, and as I was sitting in Hiroshima one fall afternoon, listening to one of his general addresses, I realized that the perfect way of summarizing his teachings—for non-Buddhists at least—was by quoting Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” A little later, I was staying in a convent on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem and, needing something to read, picked up a book from the library shelves. It was Greene’s late novel Monsignor Quixote, and when I turned to the title page, there was an epigraph, from Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
On and on this went… Perhaps—a skeptic might have said—these were no more than surface coincidences; but when there are so many correspondences, across such a wide canvas, you start to imagine that they might speak for connections of a deeper kind.
So often these days we read of travelers taking off “in the footsteps” of Marco Polo or Genghis Khan or many another distinguished forebear, even Graham Greene. But in this case, I didn’t feel I had to pursue Greene, because he was so busy pursuing me.
Iyer’s latest book, The Man Within My Head, was released last week. It explores his strange relationship with Graham Greene in depth, and The Globe and Mail’s Ronald Wright describes it, in a thoughtful review, as “biography, memoir, travelogue, literary criticism and personal meditation.” I can’t wait to check it out.
(Via @iainmanley)
Reading Travel: New and Old Books We Loved This Year
by World Hum | 12.20.11 | 11:24 AM ET
More than two dozen contributors and friends of World Hum recall their favorite travel reads of 2011
Interview with Henry Rollins: Punk Rock World Traveler
by Jim Benning | 11.02.11 | 12:40 PM ET
Jim Benning asks the musician about his new book of photographs and how travel has humbled him
Help Make ‘The Quest for the Holy Foreskin’
by Jim Benning | 09.28.11 | 2:52 PM ET
Fourteen days remain in a fundraising campaign to make a documentary about World Hum contributor David Farley and his search for Jesus’ foreskin, which he chronicled in the book An Irreverent Curiosity.
Filmmakers want to raise $8,000 to create a professional trailer to pitch the BBC, PBS and others. They’ve raised $1,725 so far. You can pitch in here.
Video: ‘The Sinner’s Grand Tour’
by Jim Benning | 08.31.11 | 3:39 PM ET
Traveler and historian Tony Perrottet discusses his latest book, The Sinner’s Grand Tour, and one of his most exciting discoveries:
Elisabeth Eaves Talks Wanderlust on ‘Q’
by Jim Benning | 08.23.11 | 7:36 PM ET
Nice interview with World Hum contributor Elisabeth Eaves on Canada’s public radio interview program, “Q.” She discusses her new book, Wanderlust, and reflects on the women travel writers of yore.
I’ve been listening to podcasts of “Q” pretty regularly since I downloaded the CBC’s iPhone app. It’s a great show. In my book, it rivals NPR’s “Fresh Air.”
‘Travels With Harley’ and Other Travel Books With Missing Letters
by @worldhum | 08.03.11 | 11:32 AM ET
Last night on Twitter, a fun, silly hashtag made the rounds: #bookswithalettermissing. Naturally a few travel-focused titles popped up, and we’ve collected nine of our favorites:
@Mi_Schu
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pans. Love, friendship, cookery…. #bookswithalettermissing
@evaholland
Travels with Harley: Steinbeck criss-crosses America by hog. #bookswithalettermissing
@inkasrain
Eat, Pay, Love: What really happened. #bookswithalettermissing
@evaholland
Our Ma in Havana: Memoir of Cuban childhood. #bookswithalettermissing
@BrantSmith
The Canterbury Ales…a guide to the finest brews in the land. #bookswithalettermissing
@douglasmack
Notes From a Mall Island. (Somewhat less charming than Bryson’s original book.) #bookswithalettermissing
@douglasmack
Fear and Lathing in Las Vegas. Gonzo tales from the machine shop. #bookswithalettermissing
@BrianOnWine
A Moveable East: Hemingway recalls his years in Paris with a broken compass. #bookswithalettermissing
@Mi_Schu
On the Rod. Kerouac’s other adventure. #bookswithalettermissing
The last time we had this much travel-themed fun on Twitter, we were talking #faketravelquotes.
The Nuclear Age, as Seen on Postcards
by Michael Yessis | 07.13.11 | 4:37 PM ET
Slate built its eerie Postcards of Mushroom Clouds slideshow with images from the recent book, Atomic Postcards. Tom Vanderbilt writes:
There is something by turns comforting and disturbing in the fact that places like the Eniwetok Proving Ground—the Pacific atoll where tests like “Bravo” promised a thousand Hiroshimas—should have its own two-color lithograph postcard; and that the back of cards sent from places like the top-secret “City of the Atomic Bomb,” Oak Ridge, Tenn., should have little more to announce than: “Plenty hot.”
‘Europe’s First Travel Guide’ Missing From Santiago de Compostela Cathedral
by Michael Yessis | 07.07.11 | 6:33 PM ET
The Codex Calixtinus was reported missing Wednesday by distraught staff at the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. The 12th century illustrated manuscript was “compiled as a guidebook for medieval pilgrims following the Way of Saint James,” according to the BBC.
This is the oldest copy of the manuscript and is unsaleable on the open market.
Only a handful of people had access to the room in which it was kept.
This edition of the Codex Calixtinus is thought to date from around 1150.
Its purpose was largely practical—to collect advice of use to pilgrims heading to the shrine there. It also included sermons and homilies to St James.
The Guardian adds:
The local Correo Gallego newspaper reported that distraught cathedral staff spent hours searching for the manuscript before contacting police late that night.
“Although security systems have been improved considerably it is true to say that they are not of the kind one might find in a bank or a well-protected jewellers,” the newspaper reported.
Only five security cameras were used to watch the archive area, according to the newspaper, and none were pointing directly at the safe where the priceless manuscript was stored.
NYT on Luca Spaghetti’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Spin-off Memoir: ‘Pasta, Pasta, Pasta!’
by Eva Holland | 07.07.11 | 5:27 PM ET
Who is Luca Spaghetti? In case you’ve forgotten, he’s one of the dreamy Italian men who shows Elizabeth Gilbert around town during the Roman section of her bestselling memoir. He’s also, now, an author—his own memoir, Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Rome, was released this spring, and the New York Times had a really funny gem of a review.
Here’s Sam Anderson:
It has a strange integrity: the purity of an actual, unremarkable guy telling his actual, (mostly) unremarkable story. Aside from a few Gilbertesque cutesy touches (“That Marlboro tasted a lot like life”), there’s no pretense of educating humanity or saving a soul or discovering a self. It’s just: Hey world, this crazy thing happened where someone put me in a book—so here’s my story! Pasta, pasta, pasta! Spaghetti’s only ulterior motive is right on the surface: he hopes the memoir will make James Taylor, the American folk musician he reveres above all other humans, notice him.
I count myself among the legions of EPL fans, but even as a cheerleader I can’t help thinking this is all getting a bit surreal.
Interview with Elisabeth Eaves: ‘Wanderlust’
by Eva Holland | 07.01.11 | 9:25 AM ET
Photo by Trevor Butterworth Eva Holland talks to the author about the intersection of lust and wanderlust in her new book
The New York Times: ‘It’s a List, Silly!’
by Eva Holland | 06.20.11 | 5:21 PM ET
The Times responds to the Guardian’s top non-fiction picks with 33 lists of favorites chosen by newspaper staffers, and a refreshingly unambitious introduction—no best-of claims here:
Dispensing with all pretense to rigor—it’s a list, silly!—we simply asked each member of the staff to pick their five favorites… Two members of the staff saw fit to pick six titles (they’ve been reprimanded), one identified the author of “On Photography” as Susan Sarandon (she has been ridiculed), and one expressed dislike of the term “nonfiction” (that poor soul will be reading the Lives slush pile for a week).
The Times lists, like the Guardian’s, include a handful of travel favorites, from Krakauer to Kapuscinski. Mother Jones has joined the conversation, too. And while we’re at it, Budget Travel recently offered a fiction-heavy take on the 25 Greatest Travel Books of All Time.
Interview with Rachel Friedman: ‘The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost’
by Eva Holland | 06.20.11 | 11:22 AM ET
Photo courtesy of Rachel Friedman Eva Holland talks to the author of a recently released travel memoir about the power of friendship on the road
The Guardian Picks 100 Top Non-Fiction Books
by Eva Holland | 06.16.11 | 11:58 AM ET
The list is organized thematically, and the travel section—way down at the bottom—includes World Hum favorites by Mark Twain, Jan Morris, Jonathan Raban and the late Patrick Leigh Fermor. A number of travel-themed titles have also found their way into the other sections, and the whole list is worth a read. (Via @legalnomads)
The Special Chaos of Mexico City
by Daniel Hernandez | 06.06.11 | 3:53 PM ET
In an excerpt from "Down & Delirious in Mexico City," Daniel Hernandez endures smog season in Mexico's famously polluted capital
‘Back to the Wild’: More on Christopher McCandless
by Eva Holland | 04.01.11 | 12:44 PM ET
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports that members of the McCandless family recently traveled to Alaska to visit the old school bus where one of their own, Christopher McCandless, died. The visit was part of a promotional effort for a new book (and accompanying DVD), Back to the Wild, which will showcase McCandless’ photos and writing. Profits from the book will go to a non-profit aimed at helping “new mothers in need.”
As always, McCandless and his bus are a contentious subject in Alaska. After describing the parents’ visit, News-Miner writer Dermot Cole adds:
I have long believed that the junked bus ought to be moved, largely because it’s an attractive nuisance. With people ripping off additional parts of the bus as time goes by, it makes more sense to move it closer to Healy or somewhere else.
Year after year, a steady stream of unprepared people risk their lives trying to get to what would otherwise be seen as an example of environmental blight instead of a shrine.
Wired’s Kevin Kelly: Travel as ‘Higher Education’
by Eva Holland | 02.23.11 | 11:41 AM ET
Chris Mitchell interviewed Kelly, who’s taken a break from writing bestsellers about technology to release a travel photography book. The book, Asia Grace, compiles photos from Kelly’s travels through Asia as a young backpacker in the 1970s. Here’s the Wired co-founder on those early travels:
I had hoped to work for National Geographic. I even called up one photo editor there and told him where I was going, looking for an assignment, but of course, they did not work that way… My travels never “paid” for themselves in any economic way, but I never really tried very hard to do so. I think of them more like my higher education. And for the amount of time I spent there, and what I learned, it was the cheapest education ever.
The Best Travel Books of 2010
by Frank Bures | 12.09.10 | 12:10 PM ET
Frank Bures surveys the year's most intriguing titles and offers a few gift ideas
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