Writer's Reads: Eight adventures, and some misadventures too
By Stephen Fabes
Writer's Reads: Eight adventures, and some misadventures too
By Stephen Fabes
For the December 2020 issue of Geographical Magazine, I was asked to recommend eight books, old and new. With their venturesome audience in mind, these are my picks
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
Peter Hessler
£12.99 £12.34Hessler’s sensitive account of his time as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching on the banks of the Yangtze River, is all the more unveiling when he shares his students’ hopes, fears and pointed silences, and even their homework. An exploration of the everyday politics and culture of a place, delicately done, yet riveting too
Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta
Richard Grant
£9.99 £9.49With his yoga-practicing, liberal girlfriend in tow, Grant moves to a decrepit plantation house in deepest Mississippi, a state that tops league tables for all the wrong reasons. And yet despite signs of social dysfunction all around, he develops an unexpected and requited love for his new home and the endearing quirkiness of his neighbours
Coasting
Jonathan Raban
£12.99 £12.34Digressing often into memoir, Coasting is an elegant travelogue of a man and his 32-foot ketch, sailing 4000 miles around the coast of Britain (Thatcher’s Britain, that is). Raban’s interests: the swirling sea and the national psyche, combine beautifully with entertaining cameos from Paul Theroux and Phillip Larkin.
Into the Heart of Borneo
Redmond O'Hanlon
£10.99 £10.44('In Trouble Again', described here and by the same author, is not currently available through Bookshop.org. 'Into the heart of Borneo' is in a similar vein). Some may consign this to the ‘doofus does’ school of travel writing, but when a bumbling naturalist heads into remote Venezuelan Amazonia, with ill-equipped companions, and an awe for all that flies, crawls and blooms, the resulting misadventure is far too funny, fascinating and heart thumping to write off
Indonesia Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation
Elizabeth Pisani
£10.99 £10.44Like all the most adept wandering writers, Elizabeth will nose around, undaunted, chatting with anyone willing. This attitude, along with an eye for the absurd, makes this a particularly enjoyable survey of some of the sundry, little-known lands that comprise Indonesia
Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road
Kate Harris
£12.99 £12.34A mix of memoir and adventure – Kate bikes the Silk Road with childhood friend, Mel. There is an intellectual voyage here too, an open-minded meditation on borders, and you can’t help but feel buoyed by her lust for landscape, waywardness and trespass
Interstate: Hitch Hiking Through the State of a Nation
Julian Sayarer
£9.99 £9.49On an impromptu hitch hike across the USA, heading west, like many before, Julian looks to people to understand a nation, and it’s the outsiders, from anarchists to immigrants, who inform the most. While never doubting America has gotten lost, unfair, even spiteful (the commentary is savagely critical at times) the encounters are beautifully told, and always, a faint sense of hope journeys too
Alan Partridge: Nomad: ‘Sensationally funny’ (Richard Osman) and the perfect gift this Christmas
Alan Partridge
£9.99 £9.49A send up of all the worst adventurer-tropes, Alan follows in his father’s footsteps, an ‘odyssey’ from his family home in Norwich to the Dungeness ‘A’ Nuclear Reactor in Kent. A brilliant mockery of both travel literature and celebrity tv-travellers, and exceptionally Alan