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Books > Travel > Travel writing > General
Run for the Love of Life is a must-read for anyone who desires to escape the day-to-day sameness of our new pandemic-informed lives, or who seeks to feel alive, inspired, and filled with a renewed enthusiasm for the year ahead.
It recounts the extraordinary journey of South African Erica Terblanche, an ordinary woman who manages to not only achieve – but excel – on the world stage of extreme distance-running in some of the most inhospitable and majestic landscapes across the planet. Raw, honest and infinitely human, this part-memoir, part-travel novel thunders through one exotic race location after the other, as the runners battle the elements and each other across the vastness of the Sahara, Atacama and Namib Deserts, the great Grand Canyon, Turkish Cappadocia and the Kalahari Desert, to name only a few.
But more than just a book on racing, what makes this novel infinitely compelling and rewarding is that in the echoes of Erica’s story, one begins to sense the pulse of one’s own potential and long-forgotten dreams. While you may laugh, cry, and forget to take a breath at times, it is inevitable that Run will spur you on to find your own bliss, that which is buried deep within your soul and body.
At its heart, Run for the love of life is a story about love, forgiveness, perseverance and growth, and about the important things in life that ultimately makes us happy. Told with wit, humour and vulnerability, it is a book that will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.
Alexander von Humboldt, sometimes called 'the last man who knew
everything', was an extraordinary polymath of the late 18th and
early 19th centuries. In 1798 he received unprecedented permission
from the Spanish Crown to explore its American and Caribbean
colonies, which he did from 1799-1804. This is the journal of those
explorations, in which he extensively covers the region's
topography, geology, fauna and flora, anthropology and comparative
linguistics. Volume I covers his preparations, stop at Tenerife,
landfall at Cuman and journeys inland in what is now Venezuela.
After twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine,
chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain decided to tell all - and he meant
all.
From his first oyster in the Gironde as a child, to his lowly position
as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from
the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug
dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York
again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are
unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny.
Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water and your belly ache
with laughter and leave you wanting more.
The “Old Legs” mantra is Have Fun, Do Good and Do Epic on roads less
travelled and this beautiful photographic memoir of their epic cycle in
Zimbabwe not only shares the beauty of Zimbabwe, but amuses and
entertains at the same time.
“Old Legs” a group of retired cyclists decided to raise awareness and
funds for Zimbabwe’s beleaguered pensioners. So they cycled from Harare
to Cape Town, from Harare to Kilimanjaro – and climbed it – and then in
2021 to the gorillas in Uganda. Sadly in 2020 due to the Corona virus
regional travelled was impossible, so they cycled around the border of
Zimbabwe.
This book records the fun, comradeship, hardships, the people along the
way and the incredible diversity and beauty of Zimbabwe. Written and
published by Eric de Jong, with wonderful photographs taken by Gary de
Jong, this is a stunning coffee-table book that will bring back
memories of places you knew, or places you dreamt of visiting. A book
to treasure!
"As I sat on the side of Hamnafield on Foula in the Shetland
Islands, looking down at my 'enormous' 38-foot ferry stowed in its
cradle on the quay in Ham Voe, over 1,000 feet below me, I
reflected on a moderately successful career to date, and wondered
how on Earth I had ended up driving what was, in effect, a floating
dust cart" After 42 years at or connected with the sea, Jeremy
Walker ended up on the Shetland Island of Foula commanding and
running a small ferry to the mainland of Shetland. Throughout the
course of his career, firstly as a seagoing deck officer with a
large, but now defunct, British shipping company, then as a
Hovercraft Commander for four years, returning to sea for a brief
period as Master of two small coastal tankers and then for the
majority of his career as a Pilot on the River Humber, he
encountered many amusing situations. In this book he attempts to
relate these stories and to illustrate the lighter side of what was
a very difficult, responsible and, at times, incredibly stressful
job. And little did he know that his career was far from over and
new opportunities and challenges would take him on for a further 13
years to eventual retirement.
"As I sat on the side of Hamnafield on Foula in the Shetland
Islands, looking down at my 'enormous' 38-foot ferry stowed in its
cradle on the quay in Ham Voe, over 1,000 feet below me, I
reflected on a moderately successful career to date, and wondered
how on Earth I had ended up driving what was, in effect, a floating
dust cart" After 42 years at or connected with the sea, Jeremy
Walker ended up on the Shetland Island of Foula commanding and
running a small ferry to the mainland of Shetland. Throughout the
course of his career, firstly as a seagoing deck officer with a
large, but now defunct, British shipping company, then as a
Hovercraft Commander for four years, returning to sea for a brief
period as Master of two small coastal tankers and then for the
majority of his career as a Pilot on the River Humber, he
encountered many amusing situations. In this book he attempts to
relate these stories and to illustrate the lighter side of what was
a very difficult, responsible and, at times, incredibly stressful
job. And little did he know that his career was far from over and
new opportunities and challenges would take him on for a further 13
years to eventual retirement.
A road trip to Namibia unfolds across these pages, but when? Yesterday,
years ago, or never at all? Barbara Adair refuses to say, creating
something between memoir and fever dream.
This is no ordinary travel narrative. Language shifts without warning:
playful one moment, brutal the next. The text overflows with names of
rivers, flowers, trees, places, and people, then suddenly confronts the
cruel realities of history and contemporary life. Nothing stays still
long enough for comfort.
Here is freedom captured in words: wind, mythology, politics, life and
death all tumbling together. Questions emerge about technology,
mechanics, the vacuous nature of our existence. The reader can never
settle into complacency.
Mark Kannemeyer's eerie illustrations enhance or deliberately undermine
the text, offering visual refuge from the relentless verbal energy.
Non-linear, indulgent, challenging: this book demonstrates how language
can be bent into new shapes, how stories can become something more than
mere storytelling. Fun, sad, and occasionally repellent. Often all at
once.
Was Britain's postwar rebuilding the height of mid-century chic or
the concrete embodiment of crap towns? John Grindrod decided to
find out how blitzed, slum-ridden and crumbling austerity Britain
became, in a few short years, a space-age world of concrete, steel
and glass. What he finds is a story of dazzling space-age optimism,
ingenuity and helipads - so many helipads - tempered by protests,
deadly collapses and scandals that shook the government.
Amusing and informative, Hey Ranger! teaches as it entertains with
tales of boat ramp misadventures, lost Afghani campers, encounters
with wild animals, dumb crooks, and more. One chapter, "Tales from
the Wild Side," brings together unusual incidents from National
Park Service reports, and the concluding essay, "Don't Be a Victim
of Your Vacation," advises visitors on how to avoid being a story
on the evening news.
’n Stuk of 50 stories waarin Dana Snyman besin oor enigiets van fopnuus tot ’n 40ste skoolreünie. Hy vertel van sy kennismaking met Eugène Terre’Blanche en van die Bogosi-gesin wat by hom op Jacobsbaai gewoon het. Hy vertel hoe mense na mekaar probeer uitreik in die land. Hoe ons mekaar soek en nie altyd vind nie. Ten slotte vertel hy van sy verloofde se selfdood en hoe hy daarná byna al sy besittings weggee en die pad vat.
Alan Winnington traveled to Yunnan province and spent several
months with the headhunting Wa and the slave-owning Norsu and
Jingpaw. The first European to enter and leave this area alive,
Winnington reported on the struggle of recently released slaves as
they came to terms with their newfound freedom.
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