Long Way Round

Advantages: Features some places we rarely hear about
Disadvantages: Moaning, over-privileged pseudo-heroes

...travel books. But I have long moaned about the fact that there are few travel programmes these days devoted to independent or adventure travellers. Why would some one suddenly commission one now? The answer must, surely, be that this expedition was carried pout by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor and his friend and fellow-thespian Charley Boorman. I wonder if two nobodies proposing this trip would have been quite so lucky in landing a book and TV show ...
...a short while, it's not long before they are grumbling again, often at the slightest setback and all this with the best support team they could possibly have. In it's favour the book is well written and anyone who has not seen the television show will probably find some of it fairly gripping. There is adventure a-plenty in terms of the cycling - falls, injuries, roads that vanish altogether, being carried on lorries across fast-flowing icy rivers ... Read review

Advantages: Details a great journey, honestly written
Disadvantages: Slow to start, occasionally dull, hard to empathise with the journey

...and Friend take a rather long trip ~ Last year, setting off in April from London, best friends Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set off on a wildly ambitious journey - by motorcycle to New York, via Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Siberia amongst other places (i.e. "the long way round"). To fund the expedition, the pair sold the rights to a TV show, to which this book is the sister. Those responsible for the funding and management followed behind in support ...
...lengthy chapter takes an awful long time in establishing: a)We like bikes, b)We have done for a while, c)Bikes are dangerous, but fun. This collection of reflections on youth and biking anecdotes is fine, but when all grouped into the first chapter, becomes monotonous and provides a tedious introduction to the book. Better, I feel, would have been to scrap, or at least substantially reduce this section, and re-distribute the little stories more evenly ... Read review

Advantages: It teaches us that we are all just people regardless of our race, ocupation, and location
Disadvantages: A Bit Long

...an essay about what makes Long Way Round such an interesting read, so i did, but it turned out to be more like a book review so i redid it and this is what i cam out with!! What makes 'Long Way Round' such an interesting read? 'Long Way Round' by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman is an interesting read because we learn that we are all just people, regardless of our race, location or occupation. In this essay I am going to explain why this book ...
...London to New York the long way round. Along the way they encounter many difficulties and meet a lot of people form different cultures. Going through, places like, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Alaska. To start of with, we are all just people, regardless of our race. Well in the book, Charlie and Ewan meet lots of people of different race to them. People from all over the world. Like meeting trafitional women in Mongolia. Ewan managed to have convocation ... Read review

Advantages: Funny and sometimes moving
Disadvantages: bit complicated if you have no knowledge of bikes

In 2003, in between films one Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor noticed that it was possible to ride a motorbike all the way across the world. Not able to face this mammoth journey alone, he called his best friend Charley Boorman, While Charley thought it a brilliant idea, he believed it to be a pipedream. Until in April 2003, Ewan phoned Charley to tell him that he was taking eight months of work next year. Across 20,000 miles on what sometimes ...
...through Europe, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, across the pacific into Alaska and then onto to Canada and America. I am not a biker person, so at the beginning of the book when both Ewan and Charley were talking about where their love of bikes came from and what bikes they owned, I had no idea of what they were talking about. But it didn't matter. The story is not all about bikes, and you don't need to understand the machines to understand ... Read review

Advantages: Good read, but not trash
Disadvantages: Some technical motorbikey bits

You'd be forgiven for thinking that a book that tells the tale of two bikers with the need to discover the open road would become nothing more than a blokey account of life on the move. Further more, with each of these blokes being famous actors, this so easily could have become a tale of two ego's - a sort of masculine account of their bravery and honour in a modern setting etc. However, this is certainly not what we get. For me, the thing that ...
...- although they are of course only too endevoured with their masculine need for speed - they, and indeed this book, should appeal to all. Both Ewan and Charley have fantastic narrative voices; each of whom are only concerned with telling the complete truth of the trip and their experiences. And thus, what results, is not only a moving account of a journey in which two guys become clearly enlightened by the differing ways of the world - later joining ... Read review