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A lot of time has gone by since my last regularly posted review. You can see a little of what I was reading during my September/October Road Trip, and my weak explanation of why I wasn't reading much even before I started driving madly about the country.
I may be back in Seattle, but wanderlust still courses through my veins. I was going to be departing for the Southwest (Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Hovenweep, Canyonlands, Arches) on November 6th or 7th, but an inbound storm changed my plans. I wasn't inclined to drive a day and a half just to arrive in time for wet and cold to land on me for two or three days. I'll wait and see if the wet and cold mostly moves on and then try, even if it means a bit more snow on the ground en route.
Another chunk of my time has been spent trying to figure out a way to travel to Europe (again) without dying, and hopefully to actually see something other than Warsaw this time (not that I didn't have a good time, but the Poles burn coal, like most of Eastern Europe and the air just sucks).
In the course of contemplating assorted guidebooks, phrasebooks, websites and attending one of the Rick Steves travel classes, it occurred to me that I must surely have something on my shelves about traveling through Europe. Sure enough, my sister once enthused about Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe. Mr. Bryson is an opinionated ex-pat (in Britain, from Iowa) who after years of not traveling, took it up again to remind himself of his youthful foolishness and presumably make a buck or two selling the results. Note: the book did make me laugh out loud several times. If you're looking for that, this is a pretty good place to find it. But I should also tell you I beat the book against handy pieces of furniture several times, and if I ever meet Mr. Bryson in person, I will be hard pressed to keep a civil tongue in my head.
Mr. Bryson as self-portrayed in this book is a boring traveler. He likes to go to foreign countries because it's more interesting to him to make up stories about what's happening around him than to actually understand. He presents himself as purposefully not interacting with the natives any more than necessary to get a room, food and drink -- especially drink, in the form of coffee with newspaper throughout his daily walks, and beer with a book in a smoky room in the evening. He comes across as a creature of his addictions, meandering through a series of towns in search of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, an opportunity to wash his face, read his books and not listen to anything anyone ever tells him.
He has so many opportunities to save himself trouble along the way, and to better make sense of his surroundings. His expat friend in Italy says it's impossible to get the plumbing fixed is ignored, then Bryson realizes in Switzerland he saw nothing practical for sale in all of Italy but he just hadn't noticed. The museum guide that tells the user to tackle one museum at a time is scoffed at, then Bryson for the first time ever, abandons a museum midway to return another day, and is disappointed by all museums visited the rest of the day. Well, duh, Bill! Can't even fucking read and understand English, no surprise that furrin travel is such a gape mouthed adventure for you.
Did Bill the expat write this for an American audience, gently poking fun at his behaviors so typical of so many American travelers? Its hard to know from this distance. I do know I don't much like him, whether he is what he mocks or whether he just mocks. I don't think much of the way he travels (did he never go into a grocery store? Cook his own food? See something that would be beautiful and useful to a friend at home, buy it and ship it back? Participate in a local activity other than walking?). I don't think much of his drinking, and I harbor a strong suspicion (supported directly by the text in which he compares his mode of travel to a return to childhood) that his form of travel is essentially an abdication of most adult responsible behavior. Ew.
But he did make me laugh out loud. Several times.
Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, by Michael P. Ghiglieri, Thomas M. Myers
Hard to oversell this one. Buy it. Read it. I read Whittlesey's Death in Yellowstone a few years ago, and loved it, but this one is so much better in every way.
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett
One of two recent Pratchett novels (I am so far behind on my reading), in this one a bunch of rats that ate off the dump behind the magical college in Ankh-Morpork become intelligent, and a cat which eats one of them picks it up as well.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created November 6, 2002 Updated December 9, 2002