Pleasant narrative adventures for the armchair traveler.
A Lonely Planet editor’s compendium of 30 travel essays by an eclectic group of contemporary fiction writers.
Following up on the success of Better than Fiction (2012), George began collecting the pieces that comprise this volume with the intent to present another “moving microcosm of our modern world.” Though not all the essays are equally strong, George's efforts have produced a book that is nevertheless quite engaging. This latest volume offers work by luminaries like Jane Smiley and Dave Eggers, as well as work by newer talents like Porochista Khakpour. The pieces are set all over the world and include destinations as near as Mississippi and Idaho and as far away as Iceland, India, and Saudi Arabia. A few of the stories, such as Karen Joy Fowler’s “An Italian Education” and Khakpour’s “My Mississippi,” explore the ways travel can shape the development of youthful emotional, aesthetic, and/or sexual sensibilities and bring personal identity into sharper focus. Some, such as Eggers’ “The Road to Riyadh” and Mandi Sayer’s “Sleepless in Samoa,” depict the misunderstandings and sometimes-comic misadventures adult travelers often experience when venturing into lands far different from their own. As Lydia Millet observes in “Rocky Point,” “travel has a way of turning us into children” who have the choice to consciously grow beyond their vulnerabilities, prejudices, and misconceptions about others. Indeed, the trope of travel as the great teacher is played out in many other entries, such as Shirley Streshinsky’s “Travels with Suna.” The author reflects on her 30-year cross-continental interactions with an Indian woman who showed her the true meaning of friendship. As diverse as these essays are, one common thread—apart from the fact that they are all by fiction writers—unites them: beyond particulars of time and place, life is the greatest journey of all. Other contributors include Alexander McCall Smith, Francine Prose, Lily King, and DBC Pierre.
Pleasant narrative adventures for the armchair traveler.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-74360-749-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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