Published by Allen Lane / Ferrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2020, 348 pages “This dishevelled mass of wood-chip brown regarded us warily with electric-yellow eyes. ... It was clearly an owl, but bigger than any I’d seen, about the size of an eagle but fluffier and more portly, with enormous ear tufts. Backlit by the hazy …
Category: Travel
Women’s Travel Book Reviews
Have you been wondering why almost all the travel books on this site are by men? That is because, since 2013, I have been writing reviews of travel books by women for the website Women on the Road. Now that Women on the Road has been discontinued, I am moving the reviews, a few at …
Driving Over Lemons—An Optimist in Andalucía: Chris Stewart
Published by Sort Of Books, 1999, 247 pages. In 1988, Chris Stewart and his wife Ana bought an old, remote farm in Las Alpujarras in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Andalucía. This is the first book in his trilogy about living on their farm, El Valero. Chris, a former Genesis drummer, doesn’t pretend that living …
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From Calabria, Italy, to North Cape, Norway: A Walk through Europe’s Wild Places
The Earth Beneath My Feet and On Sacred Ground: Andrew TerrillPublished by Enchanted Rock Press, 2021, 357 pages / 2022, 397 pages. “Finding places that called as though I belonged was one of the reasons I’d started The Walk. ... In truth, I was walking to be somewhere, not get somewhere. My goal was to …
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Wild Coast—Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge: John Gimlette
Published by Profile Books, 2011, 384 pages.Review by Rishad Patell A difficult book to review. On one hand, John Gimlette’s book on the northern coast of South America provides a great deal of insight into the countries of Guyana and Suriname and the French department of French Guiana. Often ignored in travel writing and rarely …
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Swiss Watching—Inside the Land of Milk and Money: Diccon Bewes
Published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2018, 352 pages. What does Switzerland mean to most people? Cows, chocolate, banking, cheese and mountains—these were some of the responses Diccon Bewes got when he put the question to 100 non-Swiss people. Yes, Switzerland is all these things but there is so much more to this country. In his …
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Travelling the World: A Woman’s Perspective
Photo: GaudiLab via Shutterstock For the past nine years, I have been reviewing travel books by women for the website Women on the Road. When I first started, I realized that almost all the travel books I had read until then were by men. For me, this opened up an entire new world of incredible …
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Without Ever Reaching the Summit: Paolo Cognetti
Translated from Italian by Stash LuczkiwPublished by Harvill Secker and HarperOne, 2020, 137 pages. Original version published in 2018. The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen’s book about his trip to the Dolpo region in the Himalayas, was published in 1978. It is a blend of travelogue, philosophy and nature writing. Almost four decades later, in 2017, …
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Outlandish—Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes: Nick Hunt
Published by John Murray Press, 2021, 288 pages. “...the idea that wonder, mystery, awe, new worlds and undiscovered realms might lie a train ride away, rather than on a carbon-intensive flight to the far side of the globe, opened up possibilities for a different type of travel. What other unlikely landscapes might be lurking out …
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The Amur River—Between Russia and China: Colin Thubron
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2021, 304 pages. “Across the heart of Asia, at the ancient convergence of steppe and forest, the grasslands of Mongolia move towards Siberia in a grey-green sea. ... “Somewhere deep in this hinterland rises one of the most formidable rivers on earth. It drains a basin twice the size of …
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