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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing
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.
"Goodbye Buenos Aires" is a vivid and earthy celebration of
Argentina, which chronicles the rise and fall of the British colony
in the 20's and 30's through the imaginative biography of one of
its charismatic representatives - a hard-drinking, womanising,
emigre Scotsman, who cut his way through the bars and brothels of
the city whilst trading with farmers upcountry. It is also the
biographical portrait of an errant father by a son and a moving
description of Argentina by one of its leading writers and
journalists. Andrew Graham-Yooll chronicles his now lost tribe, the
Anglos - the British of Argentina - through this, at times,
harrowing memoir of separation, unpredictable politics, personal
loss and love rediscovered.
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.
"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.
***SILVER AWARD WINNER, 2019 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS!*** The
Children's Fire forges a trail into Britain's wild and ancient
Celtic past. It locates the fragments of a story that still has
resonance today; the pulse and surge of an older wisdom that cracks
the mendacity of the shopping mall's vacuous promise. It is a
passionate evocation of a generous, inclusive, diverse and
spiritually significant world - the world of our longing. In the
winter of 2009 Mac Macartney walked from his birthplace in England
across Wales to the island of Anglesey, once the spiritual
epicentre of Late Iron Age Britain, navigating by the sun and the
stars, with no map, compass, stove or tent, and in the coldest
winter for many years. The Children's Fire records that journey,
and seeks to lay bare the aching loss of knowing and understanding
sacredness as it applies to everything ordinary that brings joy to
the human heart. It asserts the emergence of a new story; the story
of a people coming home to a truth made all the more poignant
having so painfully broken faith with nature, our deeper humanity,
and the paradise we fouled with such casual disrespect. It is a
love story and part of a larger narrative that is surfacing all
around the world. It seeks to reclaim our future and name it,
beautiful.
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.
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.
WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD Once we thought monsters
lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with
the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the
name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work,
Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience
their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to
explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the
world's highest places.
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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