Travel Blog: Literary Travel
A New Look at Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’
by Jim Benning | 05.30.07 | 2:12 PM ET
Disney may have given up on Mark Twain, but not everyone has. Random House has just published a new edition of Life on the Mississippi, Twain’s reflection on the four years he spent as a Mississippi riverboat captain. The book is Twain’s “most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work,” according to Random House. “It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain’s life before he began to write.”
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Yahoo! BuzzPaul Theroux Goes to Turkmenistan
by Jim Benning | 05.25.07 | 10:56 AM ET
Our favorite curmudgeonly travel writer ventured inside the country last year, before the death of the tyrant known as Turkmenbashi, to have a look around. His account of the trip, and even the “diplomatic incident” he caused, is in this week’s New Yorker, and it’s typically compelling. “I was lucky to get a visa to travel to Turkmenistan in the middle of last year,” he writes, “at a time when Turkmenbashi was still alive, and many of his people cringed at his name, he was jailing dissenters, and his roads were mostly closed to people like me.” An abstract is online.
In Defense of Travel Writing About Islam
by Jim Benning | 05.24.07 | 2:01 PM ET
In Orientalism, Edward Said took to task many Western writers for their accounts of Islam, and particularly many travel writers. But Said didn’t get it right, writes Algis Valiunas in a lengthy essay in the Claremont Review of Books.
Disney’s Tom Sawyer Island: Too Old Media
by Jim Benning | 05.23.07 | 3:20 PM ET
Out: Tom Sawyer and books. In: Jack Sparrow, movies, video games and, yes, vertical integration. Last October, Disneyland fans were wondering whether park officials would ditch Tom Sawyer for Jack Sparrow, turning Tom Sawyer Island, which was designed by Walt himself and opened in 1956, into a “Pirates of the Caribbean”-themed attraction. Or, as one observer put it, “Will Disney abandon book-lovers for Pirates 2.0?” Absolutely, Disney officials announced today, though they’ve slyly kept the island’s original name. On Friday, Pirate’s Lair on Tom Sawyer Island will debut, timed, not coincidentally, with the opening of the latest “Pirates” film, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
‘The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2007’
by Jim Benning | 05.09.07 | 3:31 PM ET
We’ve already noted Travelers’ Tales The Best Travel Writing 2007, which featured stories by men and women. But Travelers’ Tales has also issued a separate volume of women’s-only travel stories, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2007.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Hawaii, Highways and One Hot Book
by Michael Yessis | 05.04.07 | 5:14 PM ET
Excerpt: Kapuscinski’s ‘Travels with Herodotus’
by Michael Yessis | 04.18.07 | 7:25 AM ET
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: More Posts About Buildings and Food
by Michael Yessis | 04.13.07 | 8:00 AM ET
And airplanes and, uh, guns, too. This week the Zeitgeist takes travelers to Oklahoma, Oregon, Hong Kong, Italy, Spain and Pakistan.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
New National Historic Landmarks in 10 States
* Shown here: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Most E-mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
36 Hours in Portland, Ore.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Passenger on Northwest Pilot: ‘He Was Having a Fit, Swearing Up a Storm’
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph (current)
The Costas Turn Chic and Cheerful
Most Read Weblog Category
World Hum (this week)
Italy
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Wikitravel
* Bad publicity, good publicity and now more good publicity for the user-driven site.
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
* This book became a movie with Diane Lane.
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
* This book will become a movie with Julia Roberts.
Top Rated “Your Pick” Video
LonelyPlanet.tv (current)
Hong Kong Guerilla Guide
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Viva Video and Las Vegas
by Michael Yessis | 04.06.07 | 9:35 AM ET
Lots to see in the Zeitgeist this week. Travelers are taking a long look at racing in Las Vegas, sinking ships in Greece, dancing in China and Lonely Planet’s new video channel.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Bright Lights & Formula One Engines Rule in Las Vegas
* Two reasons for a look: Pulitzer winner Dan Neil wrote it, and there’s video.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Greek Cruise Ship Sinks After Rescue
* The AP has the video.
Most Watched Video
LonelyPlanet.tv (current)
miniclips
* Lonely Planet debuted its travel video channel this week.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
India’s ‘Spiritual Backbone’: Two End-to-End Explorations Down the Ganges River
* The last of Morning Edition’s five-part series runs today.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph (current)
A Little Italy on Board
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
Travel With Rick Steves
* This week Steves covers the pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago in Spain and tourism in Iran.
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (this week)
If Apple Designed A Private Jet
* It would, of course, be called the iJet.
‘A Journey Through Literary Lagos’
by Michael Yessis | 04.04.07 | 8:17 AM ET
The cityscape of Lagos, as George Packer describes it in a recent New Yorker epic, is either a “a life force or an impending apocalypse.” In a piece in the Virginia Quarterly Review, World Hum books editor Frank Bures taps into the former, exploring Nigeria’s 23 million strong megacity as fertile literary ground.
Travel Books Crack List of the Top 1,000 Books Owned By Libraries Around the World
by Michael Yessis | 03.22.07 | 7:59 AM ET
The Online Computer Library Center has compiled a list of the 1,000 books most widely owned by libraries around the world. The entire list has been tagged and categorized on del.icio.us, and it looks like 12 books tagged travel made the cut. They are:
Stephen King vs. Dante: Why Traveling With the Right Book Matters
by Michael Yessis | 03.21.07 | 11:51 AM ET
It could be a guidebook, or Dante’s Divine Comedy, or even an atlas. In Jay Parini’s case, the books he takes along when he travels depend “a great deal on my mood and the context of the journey,” he writes in a terrific little essay in The Chronicle Review. “Weeks before any journey, I begin to worry about what books I’ll bring,” he writes. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a short hop for the night or something more adventurous, I wonder what I’ll read en route (if I’m going by plane or train) and what I’ll read while I’m there, perhaps sleepless in a hotel room. There’s nothing worse than being without the right book in those situations. Yet—given the restrictions and demands of travel—one has to be selective.”
Just Out: Travelers’ Tales’ ‘The Best Travel Writing 2007’
by Jim Benning | 02.22.07 | 3:13 PM ET
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Travel Writing 2007: True Stories from Around the World hits bookstores this week. It’s the fourth volume in the series, which was launched in 2004. This year editors included 29 stories, including pieces by Rory Stewart, Paul Theroux and Karin Muller. Smackdown in Tijuana, my story about enjoying some body-slamming lucha libre Mexican wrestling last summer, is also included, I’m pleased to note.
Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust: Travel Picks
by Michael Yessis | 02.13.07 | 7:24 AM ET
Nancy Pearl, author of Book Lust and superstar librarian—she has an action figure— appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday and recommended eight travel books to stoke winter wanderlust. Among her picks: Redmond O’Hanlon’s In Trouble Again: A Journey Between Orinoco and the Amazon, Will Ferguson’s Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw: Travels In Search of Canada and Freya Stark’s A Winter in Arabia.
Related on World Hum:
* World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books
Kapuscinski: ‘I Sometimes Call it Literature by Foot’
by Jim Benning | 02.05.07 | 2:05 PM ET
One other note on journalist and travel writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died last month at the age of 74. Granta has posted an interview Bill Buford conducted with the writer, which was originally published in 1987.
