Stuff I Really Need to Read…. Next Year

Posted on 31. Dec, 2008 by Kerry Banks in International

The end of the year is fast approaching, which, as we all know, means it’s time to look back and forward at the same time, and try not to get dizzy. In this case, I’m looking back at some of the excellent travel books published in 2008 that I neglected to read, but which I plan to track down and peruse in 2009. Of course, by necessity I am relying on what others claim are good travel books. This is precisely the sort of exercise I often indulge in at the year’s end, and not only with books, but also with music and movies. I review a bunch of reviews and then decide what looks most promising. It’s not that I don’t have a mind of my own, but simply that I don’t have time to keep up with everything that is going on during the year. So, without any more preamble, here are six travel books that really sound like the sort of thing I will enjoy reading next year.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places on Earth, Eric Weiner, Hachette Books. In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about happiness, including who is happy and who isn’t. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren’t, and Americans are somewhere in between. Eric Weiner–a peripatetic journalist and self-proclaimed grouch–wanted to know why. So with science as his compass, he spent a year visiting the world’s most and least happy places, eventually creating what reviewers describe as a “funny and illuminating travelogue.” Weiner does more than report on the lifestyles of the delighted and despondent. He participates–meditating in Bangalore, visiting strip clubs in Bangkok and drinking himself into a stupor in Reykjavik. Along the way he turns up some intriguing cultural nuggets. Did you know that the Thais so prize “fun” that their government has created a Gross Domestic Happiness Index to ensure they get enough of it? Or that Moldovans are miserable because they “derive more pleasure from their neighbour’s failure than their own success”? Or that the impoverished citizens of Bhutan are cheerfully obsessed with archery tournaments, penis statues and feeding marijuana to their fat (and presumably happy) pigs? I certainly didn’t, but now I definitely want to know more.

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar; Paul Theroux, Houghton Mifflin. I like just about every travel book that Theroux has written, so I fully expect to enjoy this one as well. The plot, if one could call it that, is to retrace his steps of 30 years before, when he wrote The Great Railway Bazaar, skipping on this trip Iran and Afghanistan for obvious reasons. In truth, Theroux is not a very likeable person, some have even dubbed him a misanthrope, but his work is consistently compelling: entertaining travelogue laced with acerbic wit, cultural context and social commentary. And, always with a high literary standard. As one reviewer on Amazon.com noted about this latest book. “There are wonderful, dark broodings on the nature of travel and specifically Theroux’s kind of travel, especially at the beginning where they serve like Dante’s warning at the gates of hell. As with other Theroux travel works, you are not encouraged to go, and you will not want to use this book as a travel guide. Instead, it prompts the moderately experienced traveler to think, “I’m glad I didn’t step in that…. but I’m glad I read about it.”

Cruise Confidential, A Hit Below the Waterline: Where the Crew Lives, Eats, Wars, and Parties. One Crazy Year Working on Cruise Ships, Brian David Bruns, Travelers’ Tales. This one of the longer titles that I have run across, but I suppose the publisher felt a strong urge to hammer home the concept. The author worked for a year in the restaurants of Carnival Cruise Lines, and his book takes readers down into the areas where the crew works and lives. Evidently, the events that transpire below the waterline range from the absurd to the utterly bizarre. There is also plenty of sex. Consider the subtitles from Part 2 of the book: My First, and Only, Clingy Lingerie Model; Pancake Darwinism; The Crew Bar; My Heart Will Go On; The Infamous Filipino Elvis Massacre; Great Whites; Dining on Ashes; The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Assumption; Stripping in the Dining Room. Although I don’t buy the book jacket’s claim that Cruise Confidential “is essential reading for those planning a cruise,” I will concede that it has the potential to be pretty damn funny.

The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted, Matthew Green, Portobello Books. Although it may not conform to the typical expectations of a travel book, The Wizard of the Nile does involve a journey through exotic terrain, leavened with suspense and historical documentation. Joseph Kony is the mad, murderous leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a militia of Christian fanatics and their mostly kidnapped legions of under-age fighters, who have been terrorising northern Uganda and surrounding countries for more than 20 years in an attempt to overthrow president Yoweri Museveni. They have perpetrated appalling violence that has seen Kony indicted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague on 33 counts including rape, mass murder, sexual enslavement, child abduction and mutilation. Matthew Green, a young British journalist working in East Africa for Reuters, set off to interview Kony, a hugely ambitious, not to mention courageous journalistic undertaking. It sounds like quite a thrill ride.

Apples Are From Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared, Christopher Robbins, Atlas & Co. There is no way that a book about Kazakhstan is ever going to be a best seller, no matter how well it is written, but that didn’t stop Robbins from producing this one. By all accounts he’s a master stylist and one blessed with a sharp sense of humour, which had to come in handy with that Poohish name his parents hung on him. Call me crazy, but I’m intrigued by the idea of a huge Central Asian country, four times larger than Texas, that was closed to foreigners under Tsarist and Soviet rule and has since remained largely hidden from the world. Robbins discovers that Kazakhstan—a blank in Westerners’ collective imagination—is a diverse, tolerant and surprisingly modern country that gave the world apples, trousers, and even, perhaps, King Arthur. Robbins enjoyed unprecedented access to the Kazakh president while crafting this travelogue, and he relates a story by turns hilarious and grim. He finds Eminem-worship by a shrinking Aral Sea, hears the Kazakh John Lennon play in a dusty desert town, joins nomads hunting eagles, eats boiled sheep’s head (a local delicacy), and explores some of the most beautiful, unspoiled places on earth.

The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History, Justin Marozzi, Da Capo Press. When your subject is a classical author and his account of a war that ended some 2,500 years ago, it takes a good deal of enthusiasm and a keen sense of storytelling to keep a reader interested as you follow in his footsteps. Apparently, Marozzi has pulled it off: the book has placed highly on several top 10 lists for 2008. According to Anthony Sattin of The Times, “the narrative sizzles with insight, intrigue and improbability–not for nothing was Herodotus called the Father of Lies.” Herodotus was the first anthropologist, investigative journalist, foreign correspondent and travel writer and Marozzi retraces the journeys of the ancient scribe to Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and finally Greece. Says Kirkus Reviews: “Travelling along the great historian’s route, Marozzi encountered evidence of a good deal of fellatio, sodomy, sacred prostitution, necrophilia, bestiality and phallic worship–most of it, thankfully, at a historical distance. The sex is rarely very sexy, however, and Marozzi’s deft handling of history’s strange congruities and incongruities is far more interesting.”

Photo Credits:

#1: cartophilia.com

#2, 3: barnesandnoble.com

Tags: Africa, Books, Rail Travel, Train Travel, Travel Books