Travel Blog: Literary Travel
No. 6: ‘North of South’ by Shiva Naipaul
by Frank Bures | 05.26.06 | 9:18 PM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1978
Territory covered: Kenya and Tanzania
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Lust for Travel: Literature as Inspiration
by Michael Yessis | 05.15.06 | 8:33 AM ET
The Critics: “Oracle Bones” by Peter Hessler
by Jim Benning | 05.06.06 | 2:35 PM ET
Peter Hessler’s new book, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, earned a glowing review in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. Writes Seth Faison: “[H]e goes beyond the usual ways of evaluating so complex a culture. Instead, his focus wanders intelligently and settles into corners of China that we don’t ordinarily read about. With quiet power, his writing glues stories into a coherent whole.” That said, Faison wishes there were more of Hessler in the book: “Hessler reveals little about himself. He seems to thrive on what he calls the ‘floating life’ of a writer, observing contemporary China with detachment. The power of his storytelling would be even stronger if his own personality emerged in it.” Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze is a modern classic.
Talking Travel Writing at the L.A. Times Festival of Books
by Jim Benning | 04.19.06 | 12:31 PM ET
For Southern California book lovers, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is, hands down, the must-attend event each spring, mainly because of the terrific panel discussions. This year, the festival takes place at UCLA on April 29 and 30. Two panels are of particular interest to travel-lit fans, and both are conveniently scheduled for Sunday.
Rick Bass Ponders the Fate of the West
by Michael Yessis | 04.17.06 | 1:50 PM ET
The Western part of the U.S., that is. “It’s a long way from San Diego to Denver, from Seattle to Albuquerque, and yet there remain some undeniable if intangible threads unifying Westerners,” the O. Henry Award-winning author writes in a terrific cover essay for this week’s issue of West magazine. “A hundred and forty years ago, Major John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran who explored the Grand Canyon and much of the rest of the West, said the unifying thread was water, or the absence of it, and for sure that was, and largely is, one of the major physical threads. But there is something else too, some unseen thread of spirit.” Bass’s story is available through the Los Angeles Times Web site, but registration is required.
Captain Cook Tops Wanderlust’s List of Greatest Travelers of All Time
by Michael Yessis | 04.11.06 | 2:02 PM ET
Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang finished second in the poll. Sir Richard Burton, Ibn Battuta and Christopher Columbus round out the top five. Wanderlust’s editors surveyed a bunch of famous and semi-famous modern travelers—Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, John Gimlette and Susan Spano among them—who nominated their favorites. The magazine hasn’t posted the story online, but The Independent did, complete with quotes from the nominators.
Las Letras: Madrid’s Literary Quarter Copes With a “Trendy Onslaught”
by Michael Yessis | 03.29.06 | 4:44 AM ET
Travelers’ Tales “The Best Travel Writing 2006”
by Jim Benning | 03.23.06 | 11:58 PM ET
If you read Bill Belleville’s story A Million Years of Memory about the Galapagos on World Hum, you read some of the very best travel writing of late, according to the editors at Travelers’ Tales. We’re delighted they included the story in their new release, The Best Travel Writing 2006. Launched in 2004, the annual collection aims to “celebrate the world’s best travel writing—from Nobel Prize winners to emerging writers.” This edition features 33 stories, including pieces by Thomas Swick, Phil Cousineau and Pamela Logan.
James Joyce’s Trieste
by Jim Benning | 03.14.06 | 12:12 PM ET
There’s more out there in the travel world than a trip to Dublin for serious James Joyce fans. The peripatetic writer spent 11 years drinking and writing in Trieste, the port city in northeast Italy. The Boston Globe featured a travel story Sunday about Joyce sites there. It turns out, from a writing standpoint, that Trieste was good to Joyce. He wrote “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” there, most of “Dubliners,” and he even began “Ulysses” in the city.
Los Angeles: Three Great Books
by Jim Benning | 03.11.06 | 5:24 PM ET
Goodbye ‘Calcutta,’ Hello ‘Kolkata.’ What’s in a Name?
by Jim Benning | 03.07.06 | 3:35 PM ET
To reflect pre-colonial times in India, Calcutta has become Kolkata, Madras is now Chennai and Bombay has become Mumbai. More and more Western newspapers are using the new official names in datelines—the Los Angeles Times made the change Monday. In an eloquent piece in today’s Times, David Lamb wonders what’s lost when such iconic names are tossed into the “historical scrap pile.”
Iowa Embraces Bookstore Tourism
by Michael Yessis | 02.27.06 | 5:05 AM ET
We’re believers in bookstore tourism, so our hats are off to Iowa for becoming the first state to officially promote it. The Travel Iowa Web site now lists more than two dozen local independent bookstores and encourages visitors to the Hawkeye State to drop in to get a taste of local communities. And, of course, to buy books. Bookstore tourism founder Larry Portzline, who I interviewed for World Hum last year, applauded Iowa’s efforts. “I hope other state and regional tourism offices follow suit and start promoting their indie bookstores as travel destinations,” he writes on his bookstore tourism blog. “It’s a great way to spread the word.”
Remembering Rudyard Kipling
by Jim Benning | 02.23.06 | 11:02 PM ET
Seventy years after Rudyard Kipling’s death, novelist and poet Jay Parini donned a dark suit and tie and journeyed to Burwash, England to attend a church service to remember and celebrate the author of “The Jungle Book” and other works. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Parini recounts the experience and reflects on Kipling’s life and legacy.
Talking Travel Writing and Poetic License with Michael Shapiro
by Jim Benning | 02.16.06 | 2:00 AM ET
Wandering “Lonely as a Cloud” in the Lakes District? Watch Your Step.
by Jim Benning | 01.29.06 | 12:51 PM ET
