Jeffrey Tayler on World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books

Travel Blog • Rolf Potts • 07.25.06 | 9:45 AM ET

Two months ago, World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books rundown put Jeffrey Tayler’s 2000 tome Facing the Congo in the number 28 slot. Tayler is a regular visitor to my summer writing classes at the Paris American Academy, so I recently had the chance to ask him what he thought of the World Hum Top 30, and which books he might have included.

This is what Jeff told me:

I think the choice of books is fine. Arabian Sands would be my favorite, too, as are Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books. I love A Time of Gifts, and he also wrote another book, Mani, about southern Greece, that I loved. If I had to add any to the list, I’d put Night Train to Turkistan and Malaria Dreams by Stuart Stevens. And also A Year in Marrakesh, and Winds of Crete, by David MacNeil Doren.

I remember seeing on another of your “best travel books” list Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. That prompted me to read Whitman. I’ve hardly ever read anything more moving than the segment To Think of Time.

It’s odd that The Odyssey never makes travel book lists. We certainly owe a lot to Homer, don’t we?

—Rolf Potts is a frequent contributor to World Hum.