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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > General
The stories in The Vanishing Point are both exotic and domestic, their
settings ranging from Hawaii to Africa and New England. Each focuses on
life’s vanishing points—a moment when seemingly all lines running
through one’s life converge, and one can see no farther, yet must deal
with the implications. With the insight, subtlety, and empathy that has
long characterized his work, Theroux has written deeply moving stories
about memory, longing, and the passing of time, reclaiming his status,
once again, as a master of the form.
A LIFE APPRECIATED choregraphs a solo unsupported cycling journey
from the southernmost tip of Europe to the most northern point,
taking in some classic cycling climbs en-route. The author travels
through nine countries, providing an in-depth insight into cycle
touring. This book will both inspire and enthral the reader. The
author has combined his blog written at the time of the journey
with further details of his experiences and personal anecdotes.
With additional information about historic places, he visited. The
book also provides details about the pros and cons of wild camping.
With a sense of humour, the author refers to himself as an 'Old
Git'. He carries many of life's experiences with him, from
summiting Everest to several brushes with death, such as being
avalanched to being threatened with a rifle. He is, however, very
much alive and continues to seek adventure.
Adventures of a Mountain Man: The Narrative of Zenas Leonard is a
remarkable true-life adventure story, a narrative of exploration,
survival, conflict, capture, torture, and an insider's account of
the daily life of an 1830's American fur trader and trapper in the
early American West.
It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor.
She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying
for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a
turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered
and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of
three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance.
So, she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome,
brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram
in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in
the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a
toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path
to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins
to creep up on her.
Renowned poet Richard Tillinghast's wanderlust and restless spirit
are nearly as well known as his verses. This book of essays
captures that penchant to wander, yet Journeys into the Mind of the
World is not merely a compilation of travel stories - it is a book
of places. It explores these chosen locations - Ireland, England,
India, the Middle East, Tennessee, Hawaii - in a deeper way than
would be typical of travel literature, attempting to enter not just
the world, but "the mind of the world" - the roots and history of
places, their political and cultural history, spiritual, artistic,
architectural, and ethnic dimensions. Behind each essay is the
presence, curiosity, and intelligence of the author himself, who
uses his experience of the places he visits as a way of bringing
the reader into the equation. Tillinghast illuminates his travels
with a brilliant eye, a friendly soul, and eclectic knowledge of a
variety of disparate areas - Civil War history, Venetian
architecture, Asian cultures, Irish music, and the ways of
out-of-the-way people. This attention to history and cultural
embeddedness lends unique perspectives to each essay. At the heart
of his journeys are his deep roots in the South, tracing back to
his hometown in Tennessee. The book explores not only Tillinghast's
childhood home in Memphis, but even the time before his birth when
his mother lived in Paris. Readers will feel a sense of being
everywhere at once, in a strange simultaneity, a time and place
beyond any map or guidebook.
When Jet McDonald cycled four thousand miles to India and back, he
didn't want to write a straightforward account. He wanted to go on
an imaginative journey. The age of the travelogue is over: today we
need to travel inwardly to see the world with fresh eyes. Mind is
the Ride is that journey, a pedal-powered antidote to the
petrol-driven philosophies of the past. The book takes the reader
on a physical and intellectual adventure from West to East using
the components of the bike as a metaphor for philosophy, which is
woven into the cyclist's experience. Each chapter is based around a
single component, and as Jet travels he adds new parts and new
philosophies until the bike is 'built'; the ride to India is
completed; and the relationship between mind, body and bicycle made
apparent.
Met kaarte en geografiese grense sal mens wel kan bepaal waar le
die Tankwa-Karoo. maar vir Adriaan Oosthuizen kry jy die streek
wanneer jy die langste grondpad tussen twee dorpe in Suid-Afrika
aanpak: die pad tussen Ceres en Calvinia. Saam met Adriaan se
foto’s vertel Leti Kleyn van haar besoek aan hierdie geliefde stuk
land en dit word aangevul deur Dawid Slinger se vertellings en
skrywes. ’n Fees vir die oog, lekkerleesboek en ’n inligtinggids
ineen oor die geliefde streek wat die Tankwa-Karoo heet.
An absorbing, original, and ambitious work of reportage from the
acclaimed New Yorker correspondent
During the past decade, Peter Hessler has persistently
illuminated worlds both foreign and familiar--ranging from China,
where he served as The New Yorker's correspondent from 2000 to
2007, to southwestern Colorado, where he lived for four years.
Strange Stones is an engaging, thought-provoking collection of
Hessler's best pieces, showcasing his range as a storyteller and
his gift for writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider.
From a taste test between two rat restaurants in South China to a
profile of Yao Ming to the moving story of a small-town pharmacist,
these pieces are bound by subtle but meaningful ideas: the strength
of local traditions, the surprising overlap between cultures, and
the powerful lessons drawn from individuals who straddle different
worlds.
Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of
adventure, Strange Stones is a dazzling display of the powerful
storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that
are the trademarks of Peter Hessler's work.
'An absolute gem of a book' Alastair Humphreys First published in
1926, The Gentle Art of Tramping is as relevant now as then.
Tramping is an approach: to nature, to humankind, to nations, to
beauty, to life itself. This lost classic is a breath of fresh air
for world-weary souls. It is a gentle art; know how to tramp and
you know how to live. Know how to meet your fellow wanderer, how to
be passive to the beauty of nature and how to be active to its
wildness and its rigour. The adventure is not the getting there,
it's the 'on-the-way'. It is not the expected, it is the surprise.
"For a generation of women who grew up watching "Sex and the City,"
Manhattan is the Promised Land--or as Rebecca Dana puts it in her
hilarious, self-deprecating new memoir, it's 'my Jerusalem--the
shining city off in the distance, the only place to go'... An]
insightful tale of two fish out of water."--O Magazine
Rebecca Dana worshipped at the altar of Truman Capote and Nora
Ephron, dreaming of moving to New York. After college, life in the
city turned out just as she'd planned: glamorous parties; beautiful
people; the perfect job, apartment and man. But when it all comes
crashing down, she is catapulted into another world.
She moves into Brooklyn's Lubavitch community, and lives with
Cosmo, a young Russian rabbi and jujitsu enthusiast. While Cosmo
faces his disenchantment with Orthodoxy, Rebecca finds that her
religion--the books and films that made New York seem like
salvation--has also failed her. Shuttling between the worlds of
religious extremism and secular excess, faith and fashion, Rebecca
goes on a search for meaning.
A mix of Shalom Auslander and "The Odd Couple," "Jujitsu Rabbi and
the Godless Blonde" is a thought-provoking tale for the
twenty-first century.
Includes a Readers Guide
Metro Cowboys, Tiny Elevators, Trusting The New
Patisserie..."Paris, I've Grown Accustomed To Your Ways" continues
the saga begun in Me, Myself and Paris, humorist and writer Ruth
Yunker's account of her forays into life in Paris, part time
tourist, part time resident. In Paris, I've Grown Accustomed To
Your Ways the training wheels have come off. Ms. Yunker negotiates
the exquisitely charming, but impossibly exacting, City of Light
with a new sense of ease, and an increasing sense of feeling right
at home. She revels in the amber warmth of Angelina's chocolate
Eden on a cold November day. She zeroes in on, after six visits,
her favorite arrondissement in which to rent her apartment...the
fifteenth, just so you know She shops in Montmartre with aplomb,
and still does not climb up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. She
sees passionate love in unexpected places out on the streets of
Paris. She watches cowboys riding the metros, and considers the
sweet life of a lemon as it rolls out of her apartment door. A
little boy in St. Suplice wins her heart. The concierge at the
apartment on rue Vaneau does not. She discovers there are rules for
finishing one's plate in restaurants. But there are no rules for
which pain rustique will make the very best toast every morning. In
Paris, I've Grown Accustomed To Your Ways, Ruth Yunker delves
deeply to discover what makes the heart of Paris sing, and emerges
more in love than ever.
What if you quit your job . . .
Sold everything . . .
and bought a small hotel on the beach . . .
South of Cancun, Mexico and down a long narrow road ending in
turquoise blue water, you will find Soliman Bay. Here is where most
people's dreams are found, a small bay, white sand and palm trees,
and a reef just offshore full of colorful fish. If you are
visiting, the dream looks real, but if you intend on staying the
locals have one bit of advice - guard your sanity.
Though it may not seem possible, this comedy you are about to
read is 99% true. Names have been changed to protect the
innocent.
May you laugh at our expense.
Set in the urban pastoral of an East London postcode, Feral Borough
asks what it means to call a place home, and how best to share that
home with its non-human inhabitants. Meryl Pugh reimagines the wild
as 'feral', recording the fauna and flora of Leytonstone in prose
as incisive as it is lyrical. Here, on the edge of the city, red
kite and parakeets thrive alongside bluebell and yarrow, a muntjac
deer is glimpsed in the undergrowth, and an escaped boa constrictor
appears on the High Road. In this subtle, captivating book - part
herbarium, part bestiary and part memoir - Pugh explores the
effects of loss, and lockdown, on human well-being, conjuring the
local urban environment as a site for healing and connection. 'A
subtle, heartfelt and affecting book about home, the city and the
self -- Pugh reminds us that nowhere, however urban, is without
nature; that wherever we go, the intricate web of life continues to
shape and change us.' Rebecca Tamas
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