Travel Blog: Literary Travel
Now Available: The Best American Travel Writing 2006
by Jim Benning | 10.19.06 | 5:18 PM ET
The latest collection of the popular Houghton Mifflin travel writing anthology hit bookstores this month and is now available from online booksellers. The book, we’re delighted to note, features Tony Perrottet’s World Hum story The Joy of Steam and honors three other World Hum stories as notable travel writing. Tim Cahill served as this year’s editor.
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Yahoo! BuzzTravel Book Among National Book Awards Finalists
by Ben Keene | 10.11.06 | 1:45 PM ET
It’s true. The National Book Foundation announced its finalists for the 2006 National Book Awards this afternoon, listing as usual, five nominees for each of its four main categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature. Rarely are travel-related titles recognized by the foundation. Yet there it is, among the finalists for the nonfiction award: Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, published this spring by HarperCollins. Whether or not the book wins the big prize Nov. 15, we’re delighted. Hessler is one of the writers we celebrated back in May—his first China book, River Town, made our list of the top 30 travel books of all time. Earlier this year, Hessler shared his thoughts with us on our list, including his take on travel writing as a genre.
The Decemberists Channel “In Patagonia”
by Michael Yessis | 10.10.06 | 6:44 AM ET
Looks like another beloved indie band is cribbing from a classic travel book. Last time around it was The Hold Steady. This time its The Decemberists. According to Los Angeles Times music critic Ann Powers, the band’s new album features “a rambling, 11-minute suite of watery horror stories, climaxing with the chilling pronouncement, ‘Go to sleep ... you’ll not feel the drowning.’” Songwriter Colin Meloy tells Powers: “I got that from ‘In Patagonia’ by Bruce Chatwin. There’s a great section about a 19th century sailor who had journaled all this stuff when he was a kid. At one point his boat is stuck in a squall and it looks like it’s going to capsize, and he’s down in his bunk with some of the older boys, and one says that to him. And it really struck me—wow, so harrowing.”
Video: Neil Peart on “Roadshow”
by Michael Yessis | 10.03.06 | 6:29 AM ET
Neil Peart, drummer for the Canadian trio Rush and author of the current best-selling travel book on Amazon, Roadshow, consented to a rare television interview broadcast this week on that hard-hitting literary channel, VH1 Classic. The interview mostly covered his book and his travels, and has already been YouTubed. See it below.
Happy Birthday Jan Morris
by Jim Benning | 10.02.06 | 3:44 PM ET
The prolific author, who has written often about her travels, turns 80 today. The Guardian pays tribute: “[S]he is one of the great pioneers of modern travel writing, displaying quirkiness, cultural curiosity and evocation in her essays and books.” Morris’s Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere made World Hum’s list of the all-time Top 30 Travel Books.
The Poetry Bus: “The Most Ambitious Poetry Tour Ever Attempted”
by Michael Yessis | 10.01.06 | 6:26 PM ET
The Poetry Bus Tour, a 50-cities-in-50-days journey, hits the mid-Atlantic states this weekend. The AP and the tour’s Web site have the scoop.
Thomas Swick on the Book that Changed His Life
by Jim Benning | 09.29.06 | 2:24 PM ET
Thirty years ago in London, a copy of V.S. Pritchett’s “Foreign Faces” landed him one important date.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Beppe, Borat, Bungees and Bunnies
by Michael Yessis | 09.29.06 | 8:03 AM ET
Beppe Severgnini returns to the top, and so does the Playboy Club. Travelers and armchair travelers have an eye on both this week as the Zeitgeist ventures to Oaxaca, New Zealand, Italy, Colorado and the 52nd floor of the Palms in Las Vegas.
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind by Beppe Severgnini
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
Farecast
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Where the Moon Stood Still, and the Ancients Watched (Chimney Rock, Colorado)
* The current most e-mailed story overall at the New York Times, however, is our kind of travel story: Kazakhs Shrug at ‘Borat’ While the State Fumes
Lonely Planet’s ‘Tales from Nowhere’
by Jim Benning | 09.27.06 | 2:43 PM ET
Lonely Planet’s latest literary travel anthology, Tales from Nowhere, just hit bookstores. Edited by Don George, it features dozens of stories from contributors such as Pico Iyer, Simon Winchester, Jeffrey Tayler, Lisa Alpine and Rolf Potts. The stories, the back cover states, “all celebrate and illuminate one simple truth: if we embark on each adventure with an open heart and an open mind, travel will take us places we never planned to go, and enrich and englighten us in ways we never otherwise would have known.” So where is Nowhere? “Nowhere is a setting, a situation and a state of mind. It’s not on any map, but you know it when you’ve been there.” I’m delighted to have a story in the book, too. My Nowhere was a Sizzler restaurant, of all places, in southern Thailand.
This Guy Really Loves Highway 42
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.06 | 6:35 AM ET
You don’t have to be a fan of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to find this man’s quest interesting, but it might help.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Pool Crashing, Soda Pop and “Pizza Jason”
by Michael Yessis | 09.15.06 | 8:04 AM ET
After last week’s end-of-summer blues and 9/11 remembrances, seems like travelers and armchair travelers are in a happier mood, ready to eat and drink and crash some pools. Where? Looks like the world’s classic destinations are still in style. Here comes your zeitgeist.
Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
* Jason Wilson: One Traveler, Three Dishes Named “Jason”
Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
* Los Angeles: Galco’s Soda Pop Store
Destination of the Year
PlanetOut Travel Awards (2006)
* Spain
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
* Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
* The Art of Pool Crashing in Las Vegas
Cover Story From a Glossy Travel Magazine
Conde Nast Traveler (September issue)
* Insider’s Guide to New York City
Favorite Country for Holidays
Conde Nast Traveller UK Reader’s Poll
* Italy
Most Viewed “Travel & Places” Video
YouTube (this week)
* “Welcome to Aggieland”
Most Popular Site Tagged “Travel”
del.icio.us (current)
* TravelPost’s Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide
The Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Travel Zeitgeist Search
* A happier place than the happiest place on earth
Got something that deserves to be included in next week’s World Hum Zeitgeist? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Wanderlust-Inspiring Travel Books for Kids
by Jim Benning | 08.07.06 | 1:27 PM ET
World Hum contributor Jerry V. Haines, whose travel book reviews are usually found in the Washington Post, offers a terrific overview of a number children’s travel books in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. Some of the titles provide advice and information and others offer vicarious travel thrills. “The goal,” he writes, “is to encourage a sense of wanderlust and a desire to learn how other people live.” A fine goal, indeed.
The Hold Steady Pays Tribute to Kerouac’s “On the Road”
by Michael Yessis | 07.31.06 | 12:45 PM ET
The upcoming album from The Hold Steady will be called “Boys and Girls in America,” part of a line from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Lead singer Craig Finn told Billboard magazine, “The line goes, ‘Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.’ Basically, the songs are about guys and girls, and love. It’s not a concept-type record like the last one—it’s more of a theme record.” The Hold Steady will likely be performing some of the new songs this weekend in Chicago at Lollapalooza. I’ll be there, and I’m looking forward to seeing the band for the first time. Via Syntax of Things.
GQ: Literary Travel, Elizabeth Gilbert in France and How Not to Look Like an American Abroad
by Michael Yessis | 07.26.06 | 10:26 AM ET
In its August issue GQ devotes 14 glossy pages to interesting travel stories, including three pages to “The Traveling Library,” which features a black-and-white photo of a sexy woman reading a book and a round-up of eight novels and memoirs that capture “what you’ve come looking for” in a destination. Among the recommended books and places are: Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi (Greece), George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (Barcelona), A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals (Paris) and Jan Morris’s The World of Venice. Walter Kirn also picks three books to read when you hit the highway—Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim Thompson’s The Getaway and Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South. The story itself isn’t available online, though, of course, the photo of the sexy woman is. So are some online-only additions to the piece, including Geoff Dyer’s pick for India: V. S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness.
Writers on Ruins: An ‘Anthology of Archaeological Travel Writing’
by Jim Benning | 07.25.06 | 5:31 PM ET
Most contemporary travel writing focuses on the here and now, with only brief glimpses back. But recently, Oxford University Press published a collection of travel stories about visits to ruins entitled From Stonehenge to Samarkand: An Anthropology of Archaeological Travel Writing. The book features old and relatively new stories by such writers as Tom Bissell (a World Hum contributor), Paul Theroux, Robert Byron and Mark Twain. The New York Times called it a “smart” collection, and the Washington Times declared it “an admirably well-produced survey of the personalities and accomplishments of those pioneering people eager to recapture past relics of human history.”
