Travel Books > Travel Writing Travel Books

Death of a Supertramp

Advantages: A fascinating read
Disadvantages: Writer gave too much of his own life in my opinion

INTO THE WILD 1996 JON KRAKAUER 'Into the Wild' tells the true story of Christopher McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do American East Coast family who, after he graduated from college, donated all of the money in his bank account ($24,000) to Oxfam renamed himself "Alexander Supertramp," and began a journey in the American West. Nearly two years later, McCandless was found dead in the Alaska wilderness. This is not ...
...his account of the 1996 Everest disaster in the book publication of 'Into Thin Air', and was strongly criticised for presenting a one-sided version of the event. In 'Into the Wild', Jon Krakauer rebuilds the final two years of McCandless's young life in his contentious book, that in many ways parallels the author's own dreams. Jon Krakauer became involved in this story after writing an article for Outside Magazine. The magazine's editor asked Krakauer ...

oldchem 14.10.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

Russia: a journey to the heart of the country and its people

Advantages: informative, well reported historical facts and interesting encounters with locals
Disadvantages: too much personal life of the journalist in the book (not inherent to the context)

Russia (A Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People) is a report about a journey through Russia, by a distinguished broadcaster and author Jonathan Dimbleby. The journey starts in Murmansk, in the Article Circle and ends in Vladivostock, in the Far East Asia, 10,000 miles and eight times zone away. Dimbleby travels by road, plane, boat and train covering the major cities of Russia such as Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Ekaterinburg, as well as less ...
...and it couldn’t be otherwise. Russia is basically a dictatorship with a puppet government, but what infuriates Dimbleby is that to many Russians (young people included) this is not a problem. They like a strong man and they certainly have one in Putin. The highlights of the long trip in my opinion are the visit to the Dagestan region, not far from Chechnya and Georgia, where war has always been on the menu, and the visit to Siberia. Majority of ...

Lelo 13.09.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Russia - Jonathan Dimbleby

Lost and found

Advantages: A great combination of humour, sightseeing, social commentary and invective
Disadvantages: Not enough on the western states

...work through his book about the UK itself, "Notes from a Small Island". That is certainly a fine book, and well worth a read. But I do wonder whether his earlier work "The Lost Continent" (now 20 years old, amazingly) might not in fact be even better. I was lucky enough to read this first some years ago, before the "Bryson boom", and so had no preconceptions of what the author's work was like. I'm actually quite grateful for that, too, since otherwise ...
...he drives vast distances around the country of his birth in his mother's less-than-reliable old car: at one point it breaks down on a lonely, snowy mountain pass and you wonder just for a moment whether Bryson will start to thrash it as did Basil Fawlty all those years ago. At the time this book was written, Bryson had lived in the UK with his British wife for a decade (although he did later return to the US for a few years) . This meant that he ...

davidbuttery 09.11.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson

Dreaming of Jupiter.....well it cured my insomnia!

Advantages: Heavily discounted
Disadvantages: Dull

...the same journey. When Dreaming of Jupiter turned up in a discount book shop priced at £2.99 I bought it with a sense of exitement. Unfortunately for me the book fell far short of delivering the exitement and drama of the previous one. In the early chapters Ted's jouney revolves around filming schedules and booking his next hotel and the pioneering spirit just isn't there. The rest of the book is a travelogue of disappointments for both the author ...
...(like the journey) was hard going. Maybe the world has moved a long way since 1972, and travel writing certainly has. Ted I feel was searching, with little success for a world long gone. In the photos Ted comments about a bar in Australia and says that Bill Bryson does the place more justice than he can...I agree totally! ...

MrMopp 09.09.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Dreaming of Jupiter - Ted Simon

The history, culture and spirit of the North of England

Advantages: Amusing, well researched
Disadvantages: Skant on the North East, heavy on musical history

I should open this review by admitting a bias. I love the North of England, and I ordered this book to learn a little more about the history of the settlements and the culture. The writer clearly also loves the North, although I did find myself chuckling along with his comments on sceptics from the 'Great North' who would disagree with his chosen starting points (Crewe, Manchester, these places are surely the midlands!). He approaches each settlement ...
...background within the music industry was clear, and I did find myself at times skipping through pages and pages about the bands that have come from a place or where they played. I would have liked to see a little more on the history of a settlement, which where present was delivered in a humourous and understandable manner. The author was clearly in more familiar territory around Liverpool and Manchester, as these cities had thick chapters and an ...

Dinah93 20.10.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North - Stuart Maconie