This book of travel essays is a very dated snapshot of a wide range of countries in the 1980s, and it definitely piqued my interest in visiting some places I didn't know much about, particularly Iceland. While the book is an easy, engaging read with curious descriptions of the people and places he encounters on his journeys, I found Pico Iyer's writing a bit distant, a lot Orientalist, and not as down-and-dirty as he sometimes portrays himself on these adventures. He reports his interaction with locals in each of these semi-isolated countries, but through his writing he almost seems to isolate himself from them, and it's sometimes off-putting, rather than amusing. I prefer narratives where writers describe how they try and sometimes fail to understand local customs, rather than those that report them with a hint of condescension. That said, I appreciated these captures of life in countries that have changed significantly since these essays were first published.