Originally posted by Nefertiti2
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All that lyrical British countryside stuff like the goshawk book, Robert McFarlane etc seems a bit parochial twee and politically suspect. Or maybe just boring to me.Last edited by Lang Spoon; 17-12-2018, 20:16.
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Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Postno gt3 there's a third book - The Peregrine by JA Baker. Macdonald sets up a dichotomy between the two authors and trashes The Goshawk which i would like to read. Always vividly remembered the falconry section in White's Once and Future King
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View PostTo the Holy Mountain by Dalrymple is a great book, maybe the only one of his I can reread with pleasure.
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Originally posted by gt3 View PostA great book Lang Spoon. What is it about his others that displeasure you?
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Recently read Meander by Jeremy Seal, following the course of the Meander river in Turkey which, as you might imagine, meanders. The book and the river. He does a good job however of basically using the river as a framework on which to hang the history of western Anatolia from pre-Alexander the Great through to Ataturk and beyond. I also read another of his on Turkey called A Fez of the Heart, which is better than its poorly punning title might suggest.
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For a white middle-ish class but left book, I recently read (after buying the book from the author in Salamanca Market, Hobart) The Long Hitch Home, by Jamie Maslin, which charts his journey hitch hiking from Tasmania to the UK. As he passes through country after country he basically talks about all the ills that the Western foreign policy has visited on each one as he does. It's better than I might have made it sound there (though he does have that blindspot that many on the western left have towards the failings and imperial obnoxiousness of the USSR/Russia). But I can assure you if you're looking for a travel book that is not soft right, this is the one for you.
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Paul Theroux: Yes, a very good travel writer (and author of some excellent novels and short stories as well). The Great Railway Bazaar took travel writing onto a different route back in the day, and subsequent works such as The Old Patagonian Express and The Happy Isles of Ociana have excellent passages and great anedotes.
But how much can you trust these vignetttes? Theroux himself has admitted that he conflated and edited certain events in his debut travel book and though this may be artistic licence I can't help feeling that this intrinsic dishonesty is simply not on. You're left doubting the truthfulness of the stories he tells in all his (mainly well written though the recent The Deep South is repetitive in the extreme...writers can deteriorate as they age, it seems)- As well as this, he doesn't really come across as a nice person, does he? Superior in so many ways, opinionated, dismissive of others, arrogant. Well, that's my impression. However, I do enjoy a lot of his writing despite the caveats, which is the usual contradictions of life summed up in a nutshell, I suppose-
Greatly surprised that nobody has yet mentioned The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron, one of the best travel books of all time.
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Originally posted by imp View PostI bought Eric Newby's 'Love and War in the Apennines' the other day, remembering how much I loved his account of the Trans-Siberian Express years ago - Blackwell's in Edinburgh (a fine bookshop) had several of his books on display, and I wanted to buy them all.
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Another non-right wing book I would definitely recommend is Mark Thomas's Extreme Rambling in which he follows the course of Israel's apartheid wall. Though he is a comedian and the book has comedy in it it doesn't fall into that category of books which are whimsical and light hearted, criticised earlier in this thread (to be fair it would be heart to write a whimsical and light hearted book about the occupation)
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On a couple of books mentioned recently. I remember reading A Fez Of The Heart and enjoying it, but I have almost no recollection of the actual content.
And although I enjoyed large parts of The Road To Oxiana I got increasingly bored in the stretches where Byron waxed lyrical about Persian architecture and so on. The travel parts were great, but the erudite polymath showing off his knowledge wasn't for me.
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Originally posted by Sporting View PostAs well as this, he doesn't really come across as a nice person, does he? Superior in so many ways, opinionated, dismissive of others, arrogant. Well, that's my impression. However, I do enjoy a lot of his writing despite the caveats, which is the usual contradictions of life summed up in a nutshell, I suppose-
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Theroux’s collection of early short journalistic pieces and book reviews Sunrise with Seamonsters (I’d imagine long out of print) is very very good. His essays on the virtues of cowardice and the patheticness of being a man and all that entails stayed with me a long time.
The killing of Hastings Banda is a fine piece of naive American author mixed up in things he doesn’t understand semi thriller memoir as well. Though I suspect very embellished.Last edited by Lang Spoon; 18-12-2018, 20:24.
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