Travel Blog: Literary Travel
Orwell Birthplace Museum in the Works
by Eva Holland | 01.20.10 | 4:28 PM ET
The New York Times looks at the development plans for a remote Indian location where the author was born, and rounds up a few other visit-worthy writers’ residences too. (Via The Book Bench)
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Yahoo! BuzzMore Great Travel Books From 2009
by Eva Holland | 12.23.09 | 2:02 PM ET
Writer Rory MacLean—whose latest book made our list of the best of 2009—has his own fine selection in the Guardian.
Travel Writing and the NYT’s ‘Notable Books of 2009’
by Eva Holland | 11.30.09 | 5:29 PM ET
The annual list is out, and some familiar travel writing names are on it: Geoff Dyer’s “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi” and Orhan Pamuk’s “The Museum of Innocence” appear in the fiction section, while a few travel-related titles made the nonfiction list—Bill Streever’s “Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places,” Greg Grandin’s “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City” and David Grann’s “The Lost City of Z” among them. (We interviewed Grann about his book earlier this year.)
In slightly less prestigious book-list news, Hudson Booksellers has also released its picks for the best books of 2009. Take a good look, frequent flyers—these are the titles that will be front and center in airport bookstores for the next while. (Via The Book Bench)
Paul Theroux’s New Novel: ‘A Dead Hand’
by Jim Benning | 11.18.09 | 1:50 PM ET
Paul Theroux’s new novel isn’t scheduled to be released in the U.S. until February 2010, but it’s already getting mixed reviews in the British press. It’s a mystery of sorts set in Calcutta and featuring a down-on-his-luck travel-writer-protagonist named Jerry Delfont.
Intriguingly, writes Doug Johnstone in The Independent:
Midway through the book, Delfont meets a fictional veteran US travel writer called Paul Theroux, a more successful and famous version of Delfont, whom he despises. The next 20 pages amount to a diatribe by Delfont about the act of travel writing, describing it as an emotionally stunted, puerile and selfish pastime, and brutally denouncing anyone who is stupid and arrogant enough to do it. This remarkable interlude is compelling, like rubbernecking a psychological car crash - but the rest of the novel is distinctly patchy, the bad points eventually outweighing the good.
Apparently the sex writing in the book leaves something to be desired. Once again, Theroux has been nominated for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award.
Finding T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’
by Eva Holland | 11.10.09 | 5:22 PM ET
The Guardian’s Stephen Moss visits the promenade shelter where Eliot is supposed to have written part of his most famous poem. The result is pretty grim:
There is no commemorative plaque, several panes of glass are broken or missing, and the windows on one side are emblazoned with the words FALSE TEETH in large green letters. It seems a careless way to treat the place in which the greatest poem of the 20th century was written.
Careless, true—but also strangely appropriate, don’t you think? (Via The Book Bench)
New Travel Book: ‘Save the Deli’
by Eva Holland | 10.21.09 | 3:40 PM ET
Here’s one for traveling pastrami-lovers everywhere.
“Save the Deli” follows author David Sax around Europe and North America in search of a shrinking number of Jewish delicatessens—and, though the project was driven by fears for a declining institution, the result seems to be a hopeful one.
In a letter to potential readers posted on Amazon, Sax addresses the “heresy” of his search for the deli in such unlikely spots as Salt Lake City or Brussels:
Three years ago, when I began working on this book, I too had fallen prey to the misguided notion that great deli was only confined to New York and Montreal. Anything outside those cities had to be a pale imitation. I, like many Jewish deli lovers, was narrow-minded, could see and imagine no further than the local delicatessen I frequented…a village simpleton who knows nothing beyond his little shtetl and the salamis therein.
But as I hit the road, in search of the story of delicatessen in American and around the world, I tasted revelation after revelation.
Publishers Weekly describes these revelations as “joyful moments in this otherwise elegiac travelogue,” and notes that the book’s “well-crafted portraits don’t string together perfectly, but individual chapters shine.”
Travel and the National Book Award
by Eva Holland | 10.16.09 | 3:25 PM ET
The finalists for this year’s National Book Award have been announced, and there are a couple of familiar names on the list. Marcel Theroux—son of Paul, and a sometime travel journalist himself—is nominated in the fiction category for his novel, “Far North,” while Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City landed on the nonfiction shortlist.
The Times’ 20 Best Travel Books of the Past Century
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 5:17 PM ET
The venerable London daily has an excellent roundup, with plenty of attention to some lesser-known (these days) names from several decades past. Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Paul Theroux and Jonathan Raban hold down the top five slots. As a bonus, each entry includes links to the original Times reviews, interviews, excerpts and other archived material.
The Swedish Novel has ‘a Passport in its Back Pocket’
by Eva Holland | 09.17.09 | 3:58 PM ET
A group of Swedish writers have published a manifesto for Swedish literature in the 2010s. “We want to write books which are read, thumbed, torn out of the hands of angry taxpayers, borrowed and distributed to the max, quoted, imitated and translated,” they wrote. “The Swedish novel has brown eyes and black hair, it’s bald, green-eyed, blind and hook-nosed. It carries a collection of poetry in its breast pocket, a passport in its back pocket, and wears high heels.” (Via The Book Bench)
What Would ‘Walden’ be Called if it Were Published Today?
by Eva Holland | 09.16.09 | 1:20 PM ET
According to this fun list of revised book titles: “Camping with Myself: Two Years in American Tuscany.” (Via The Daily Dish)
Roald Dahl’s Childhood Candy Store Found
by Eva Holland | 09.14.09 | 11:29 AM ET
Call it Charlie and the Chinese take-out joint. A literary landmark has been rediscovered at the Great Wall of China restaurant in Llandaff, Wales—where researchers believe Mrs. Pratchett’s Sweet Shop, the store thought to be the inspiration for Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Twits,” was originally located. A historic marker will go up this week, and I’m sure the Dahl pilgrims won’t be far behind. (Via The Book Bench)
Margaret Drabble’s Favorite Literary Landscapes
by Eva Holland | 09.10.09 | 10:48 AM ET
The author picks 10 British spots that have inspired her fellow writers, from Tennyson’s Tintagel to Godrevy Lighthouse, of “To the Lighthouse” fame.
Book Bannings in America, Mapped
by Eva Holland | 09.01.09 | 1:25 PM ET
Banned Books Week has a mashup of all the book bans (and resulting challenges) in the Lower 48 over the last two years. Anyone expecting a certain, er, geographical censorship concentration might be in for a surprise: Brooklyn and the Bay Area, for instance, are represented right alongside the more stereotypical suspects. (Via The Book Bench)
Lord of the Flies: ‘Absurd and Uninteresting’?
by Eva Holland | 09.01.09 | 11:25 AM ET
Apparently, William Golding’s castaway classic really made the rounds before finally being published, and one unimpressed reader’s note on the manuscript has just surfaced. After calling the book an “absurd and uninteresting fantasy,” she wrote: “A group of children who land in jungle country near New Guinea. Rubbish & dull. Pointless.”
Dull? I’d love to know what her idea of an eventful island getaway is. (Via The Book Bench)
What Makes a Great Airplane Read?
by Eva Holland | 08.31.09 | 4:52 PM ET
I have a confession: Last week, I enjoyed the greatest airplane reading of my life. I’ve never been much of an on-board reader—for a long time, I was one of those passengers who was asleep before take-off, and who needs a good book when you have the gift of in-flight unconsciousness? But lately I haven’t been able to drop off to sleep the way I used to, and I’ve become a restless, impatient flier.
Enter—don’t laugh—the Twilight saga. Over four days, the bestselling teen-vampire-romance novels got me through 17 hours of flying time, two hefty ground delays and one long scheduled layover. They also got me thinking about ideal airplane books. What factors have me reading straight through until landing, oblivious to the hours passing? And why do some titles leave me fidgeting in my seat after the first hour?
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