MINI-REVIEWS: Shades of Simon Gray, The Wander Year, Flawless

Posted by Anastasia on February 14, 2012 No Responses »

Feb 142012

026. Shades of Simon Gray by Joyce McDonald
Publication: Laurel Leaf (May 13, 2003), Paperback, 272pp / ISBN 0440228042
Genre: YA Fiction (magical realism?)

Read: February 4-5, 2012
Source: Bought (UBS)

Mini-Review

I tend to buy books based on whether I like the cover or not, which sometimes bites me in the butt. I bought Shades of Simon Gray because I liked the cover, and my butt was only a little bit bitten. Shades of Simon Gray reminds me of a Lois Duncan novel, only with a little less thriller and a little more “growing up and finding out what sort of person you are.” With some magical realism/time travel/ghost things thrown in. I liked that the characters all had different reactions to the events in the book– some of them decided to do the right thing, to take responsibility for the bad thing(s) they’ve done (without actually telling anyone they were the ones who did the bad thing(s)) and to try to make up for it, while others thought they hadn’t done anything wrong at all. It was a nice spectrum of realistic reactions and personalities and whatever, and I liked it. The added touch of spooky atmosphere, weird biblical plagues, and ghosts just made reading it even more fun.

A book with similar themes (minus the magical realism) would be Nothing But the Truth by Avi, if that helps any. Continue reading »

MINI-REVIEWS: The Warded Man, iDrakula, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains

Posted by Anastasia on September 26, 2011 4 Responses »

Sep 262011

Click on the book cover to go to its Amazon page.

92. The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett
Publication: Del Rey (March 10, 2009), ebook, 432pp / ISBN 0345503805
Genre: Dystopian Fantasy

Read: August 1-2, 2011
Source: Bought

Mini-Review

I don’t think I’ve read a proper dystopian fantasy before, though I’ve read a few magical realism-type ones. This one was interesting because there were demons, there was magic, and while it was still obviously a dystopian society it was one that was on the verge of getting back on its feet, so to speak. The majority of the book was a really good read, with lots of action and some great characters, including female ones that weren’t, y’know, useless. The last third of the book, however, took a dive downward. Continue reading »

REVIEW & Giveaway: Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves

Posted by Anastasia on June 30, 2011 14 Responses »

Jun 302011

57. Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents by Elisabeth Eaves
Publication: Seal Press (May 24, 2011), ebook, 304pp / ISBN 1580053114
Genre: Travel Memoir

Read: June 6-20, 2011
Source: TLC Book Tours

Summary from Amazon:

Spanning fifteen years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’s insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance. In the jungles of Papua New Guinea, she loses herself—literally—to an Australian tour guide; in Cairo, she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, only to discover the beginning of a pattern that will characterize her life over the long-term: while long-distance relationships work well for her, traditional relationships do not.

Wanderlust, however, is more than a chronological conquest of men and countries: at its core, it’s a journey of self-discovery. In the course of her travels, Eaves finds herself and the sense of home she’s been lacking since childhood—and she sheds light on a growing culture of young women who have the freedom and inclination to define their own, increasingly global, lifestyles, unfettered by traditional roles and conventions of past generations of women.

Review

Seal Press is one of my favorite publishers, though I haven’t read nearly enough of their catalog. Nevertheless, the books I have read have been interesting in that a) they’re all written by women about women, and b) those women aren’t afraid to talk about things that are considered more…I don’t know. Hidden? Un-womanly? Unusual?

With male travel writers, a lot of the times their memoirs are about who they slept with and what extreme thing they did in a foreign country. With female travel writers, their memoirs tend to be more about the spiritual/internal changes travel brings to them and the friends they made. Romance is secondary to everything else, basically. Elisabeth Eaves’ book is unusual in that she doesn’t shy away from writing about any of it: the sex, the men, her extreme adventures, AND the emotional stuff.

To be honest, it did throw me off at first. EE is very blunt about her sex life with the various men she meets, and I’m kind of prudish about real people’s sex lives. It also threw me off because, like I said in the previous paragraph, I lumped “(near-)graphic sex” with male travel writers– and my thoughts about EE, a woman, writing about her travel-sex life, were almost “omg should she be writing that?” Almost like she was breaking some rule or something stupid like that. Luckily I had an epiphany, of a sorts (why shouldn’t she write about that?), and the rest of the book was smooth sailing.

By about 20% in I really grew to love Wanderlust. In the beginning of the book, which is EE’s teen-early twenties, there isn’t much introspection. It was constantly “and then I ran away from [whatever]” and I was wondering if she even knew she was doing it. She knew. She just took a while to tell me that she knew; once the introspection and analysis of WHY EE kept running away from “real life” started, the book because a lot more interesting to me.

I really liked that EE tied in the idea that wanderlust is not just a love of travel. It’s also a compulsion, an addiction, and it doesn’t just apply to flying to a new country. EE’s wanderlust is sunk deep within her veins, so that she can’t help wandering even in her love life, and the conflict between what EE really wants and what she thinks she should want is really sad.

There are some other good things in Wanderlust besides EE’s internal conflict about staying and going, but I think I should let you find them out for yourself. If you like travel memoirs but don’t want the same old thing, you’ll probably like Wanderlust.

Rating

Recommended for all travel memoir fans.

Buy

Get your own copy @ Amazon or BookDepository.com and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog through the power of affiliate earnings!

Giveaway!

If you want to try your hand at winning a copy of Wanderlust, the publisher/TLC Book Tours has graciously allowed me to give away a copy to a resident of the US/Canada! So:

Rules
1. One (1) winner will win one (1) copy of Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves.
2. US/Canada only.
3. The giveaway will run from now, June 30th, ending at midnight EST on July 14th.
4. The winner will be chosen using Random.org; you have 48 hours to get back to me after I email you or someone else will be chosen. The winner will be announced here at the blog on July 16th, assuming everything goes well.
5. You can get an extra entry by sharing the contest link somewhere. Yay!

Fill out the form below to enter the contest!
THE CONTEST HAS ENDED. The winner will be announced soon!

REVIEW: Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski

Posted by Anastasia on February 21, 2011 No Responses »

Feb 212011

17. Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski
Publication: Harper Perennial (June 26, 2001), Paperback, 256pp / ISBN 0060957964
Genre: Memoir, Travel

Rating: Buy it
Read: February 4, 2011

Source: PaperbackSwap

Summary from Amazon:

In search of an escape from her suicidal sexually abusive parents, Diski spends her teenage years in the oblivion of heavy drug use and psychiatric wards. As an adult she finds a new haven: the boundless, blank iciness of Antarctica where everything “is colored white and filled with a singing silence.”

This blistering account interweaves the story of the author’s journey to the end of the earth, her daughter’s search for Diski’s missing mother, and Diski’s own search of her memory-hardened heart.

Review

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading Skating to Antarctica, since all I remembered about it was that it had something about travel and it was also kind of depressing. If I could remember HOW I found out about Jenny Diski’s books, I could figure out how that was all I knew about them, but since I can’t we’re in the dark together.

Anyway, it’s not as depressing as I thought it would be, although some parts are very sad. And the first chapter is a bit…intense. You know in Virginia Woolf’s books, when she starts going on about suicide? The first chapter is like that sort of intense, where you know you’re in someone else’s mind and it works pretty differently from yours. Like going into a cave with only a penlight, and there are stalactites waiting for you to knock your head into them.

Skating to Antarctica isn’t just a travel memoir; about half is travel, half is memories of other stuff. Both parts work really well together, though, since the reason that Jenny Diski is travelling to Antarctica is because of the other events in her life she writes about! So that’s good. It also helps that Jenny Diski’s writing is amazing and beautiful and scary and wonderful.

Somehow I think I’ve connected Jenny Diski and Virginia Woolf together in my mind, and, to me, Jenny Diski is a sort of Virginia Woolf 2.0. I haven’t read any of JD’s fiction books yet, but I’m wondering if I’ll like them as much as I like VW’s? (And I’m also wondering if I’ll like VW’s nonfiction stuff, since I haven’t read any of that, either.)

I really like this book. I’m not going to rave over it like a lunatic– it’s not that sort of book– but I will say that I’m glad I read it and it won’t be the last Jenny Diski book I read.

And

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Other reviews: Of Books and Bicycles

Review: Across Asia on a Bicycle by Thomas Gaskell Allen & William Lewis Sachtleben

Posted by Anastasia on November 16, 2010 2 Responses »

Nov 162010

201. Across Asia on a Bicycle by Thomas Gaskell Allen & William Lewis Sachtleben
Publication: originally published 1894, ebook released January 2010
Genre: Travel
Rating: Buy it
Read: October 2010
Source: Project Gutenberg

THE JOURNEY OF TWO AMERICAN STUDENTS
FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO PEKING

The authors

Review

The day after we were graduated at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., we left for New York. Thence we sailed for Liverpool on June 23, 1890. Just three years afterward, lacking twenty days, we rolled into New York on our wheels, having “put a girdle round the earth.” (xi on the .html version)

You know, I don’t even really want to review this book. I just want to point it out to you and say “read it yourself.” It’s a fun little book, and I did (for the most part) enjoy reading it. And I especially liked reading about the early days of world travel via an unusual mean.

Nowadays, of course, there are hundreds if not thousands of people travelling around the world on a bicycle (some of them here), but back in 189- it was pretty danged unusual. Think of what a bicycle even LOOKED like back then! And these two men were riding around on them? It seems nearly deadly, especially when compared to today’s modern bicycles. Continue reading »

Review: The World Awaits by Paul Otteson

Posted by Anastasia on September 17, 2010 No Responses »

Sep 172010

184. The World Awaits by Paul Otteson
Publication: Avalon Travel Publishing; 2nd edition (January 30, 2001), Paperback, 250pp / ISBN 1566912431
Genre: Non-Fiction, Travel
Rating:
Read: September 2010
Source: Library
Summary from Amazon:

The World Awaits is your guide for planning an extended, independent, international journey. You’ll get practical information on visa requirements, web addresses, phone numbers, and more. Organized in three parts sequentially matched to the entire travel experience, The World Awaits also examines issues of goals, passports, shots, packing, budgeting, tickets, route planning, and life on the road. With The World Awaits, you’ll learn just how much travel can inspire, reveal, educate, and transform.

Review

This book threw me for a loop for the first 100 pages or so. It read a bit like a self-help/motivational book, and since I don’t like those kinds of books I was prepared to give up on it early on. (Not that self-help books don’t ever have anything good to say, it’s just the tone of them that I take exception to.) The first half of the book is all about establishing what sort of traveler you are: are you an all-inclusive resort sort of person? Someone who likes to hit the major cities and move quickly? Or do you like to go off the beaten path and travel slowly? While Mr Otteson says that all sort of travelers and ways of travel are fine, he makes sure to point out that slow, “threading” (what he calls the “take things as they come” way of travelling) is the best way. And I’m sure it is, but the way he said it irritated me.

I hate travelers who are holier-than-thou with the way they travel, and while I’m not saying Mr Otteson is trying to be holier than me I am saying that he’s pushing his philosophy of travel really hard in this book. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing (or his philosophy), and I know he has to have a theme for his book to tie it together and everything, but it was, well…annoying. Just a little. It reminded me of my dad when he pushes doing lemon juice-keyan pepper fasts and Tony Robbins seminars, and that’s not a good thing to remind me of.

Anyway, for the second half of the book it went into a more how-to mode, talking about what to bring and how to bring it, etc, stuff I probably don’t still need to be reading but which I find interesting. I mean, I MAY need to know what sort of sleeping bag or tiny portable stove to bring with me one day, right? Well, maybe not. But it’s fun to read about.

The real problem with The World Awaits is that it’s already almost 10 years old, and in a field where stuff is changing rapidly from year to year anything that hasn’t been updated in at least the past three years seems outdated. The World Awaits, for instance, doesn’t talk about electronics at all, when today there’s a whole subset of travelers who make money from the electronics they take with them on their travels.

But basically, if you ignore the stuff that’s outdated, the lesson in The World Awaits is to take time to get to know the place you’re traveling to and the people that live there, and to not freak out about everything. Those are good lessons, I think. I just wish they had been taught in a way that didn’t piss me off.

And

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Other reviews: GoNomad.com (with WAY more detail than in my review)

Review: The World's Cheapest Destinations by Tim Leffel

Posted by Anastasia on September 16, 2010 No Responses »

Sep 162010

183. The World’s Cheapest Destinations by Tim Leffel
Publication: Booklocker.com, Inc.; 3 edition (January 1, 2009), Paperback, 224pp / ISBN 1601457014
Genre: Non-Fiction, Travel
Rating:
Read: September 2010
Source: Library
Summary from Amazon:

This popular budget travel guide, now in its updated third edition, offers the lowdown on the best bargain-priced international destinations, with sample prices and key attractions.

Review

Technically I suppose I could have just Googled all this information instead of getting a whole book about, especially since price fluctuations are happening even as you read this. (omg!) But I thought maybe there’d be something more useful than numbers in here and so I requested it through ILL. I was right (of course). It’s a useful books in terms of figuring out where my Western money goes the farthest, but it’s also useful in learning more about what there actually is to DO in those cheap countries. And reading about those countries? Made me want to go there– and not just because they’re cheap.

Bolivia, for instance, was never really a country I thought about travelling to much beyond the “tour of South America” thing I was considering a while ago. But after reading The World’s Cheapest Destinations it’s definitely moved up my list of “must-see places.” Why? You’ll just have to read the book for yourself and find out! Ha. Ha.

Anyway, it’s a decent primer for finding out where the least expensive countries are, what you can do when you get there, and what the climate/society is like. Think of it like a more basic version of a country’s guidebook– it won’t tell you how to get from one place to another, or what exactly to do once you get there, but it’ll tell you what you can buy for under $1 (really interesting things, actually).

Note: I think the author keeps specific money things updated on his website, so price fluctuations aren’t that big a deal, not like changes in a country’s government/infrastructure/etc are a big deal.