(If I get them soon, I can hopefully get them all from the library before I go, since my book buying budget is pretty much used up for the next few months. I have been profligate.)
Book recommendations…
Book recommendations needed. Specifically, next week I go off to Ragdale for two weeks to do writing residency. I'll be intensely revising my travel memoir. I would like to bring with me a host of excellent travel memoirs, so that in the times I can't write, I can be reading instead of just watching Dr. Who on Netflix. Much as I love Dr. Who. If they have political aspects, that's a bonus. Relationship aspects ditto. Recommendations???
I really enjoyed “River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze” by Peter Hessler. If I remember correctly, it doesn’t have the relationship aspects you’re looking for, but it’s a really interesting read! Hessler was a Peace Corps volunteer in a rural part of China, so it’s the perspective of a white westerner completely out of his element. There are a lot of stories of his interactions with his young students.
Not a travel memoir per se, but have you read West with the Night by Beryl Markham?
Kate Simon – Italy: The places in between
Mary Morris – Nothing to declare
My spouse really liked the travel memoirs of Patrick Leigh Fermor.
I liked “Jobnik!” and Sarah Glidden’s “How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less” which are both graphic novels about visiting Israel. I also liked “The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders” which is a graphic novel by Emmanuel Guibert. All of these are memoirs of travel, and have political aspects.
I remember my sister liking the Salon.com collection “Wanderlust”.
I confess to a weakness for the old-school ones with a strong voice and a strong point of view. The current ones are very soft and mostly bore me. I’m talking about VS Naipaul (An Area of Darkness), Ernest Hemingway (Green Hills of Africa), Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad), and so on.