Gail Pool's Blog, page 8

Guest Blog: "Misguided" (A Traveler Grapples with Guidebooks)

Misguided: The Elusive Truth By Elizabeth Marcus, the author of Don't Say a Word, a memoir, and many wonderful essays on travel and other topics. For more of her writing, visit her blog, eLizwrites, and be sure to link to the Archive. Once it was Baedeker or nothing. Now a slew of guidebooks compete for the privilege of answering the traveler�s every question. Usually I take along only one book, but on one trip to Northern Italy many years ago, I packed four: Fodor�s for the basics, Michelin...

Guest Blog: "Misguided" (A Traveler Reflects on Guidebooks)

Misguided: The Elusive Truth By Elizabeth Marcus, the author of Don't Say a Word, a memoir, and many wonderful essays on travel and other topics. For more of her writing, visit her blog, eLizwrites, and be sure to link to the Archive. Once it was Baedeker or nothing. Now a slew of guidebooks compete for the privilege of answering the traveler�s every question. Usually I take along only one book, but on one trip to Northern Italy many years ago, I packed four: Fodor�s for the basics, Michelin...

Review: The Summer of My Greek Taverna

The Summer of My Greek Taverna By Tom Stone. Simon & Schuster, 2002, 250 pp. What is it about running a restaurant that has such great appeal? So many people I know have longed to do it. I myself once planned on opening a restaurant with a friend, and I don�t even like to eat! Tom Stone is�or was�one of the smitten. As The Summer of My Greek Taverna opens, he receives a call from a friend, Theologos, on the island of Patmos, where Stone lived before moving to Crete with his French wife, Danie...

Reader Recommendation :The Swamp

David, who has lived in Florida for many years, recommends The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, by Michael Grunwald (Simon & Schuster, 2006), a book widely praised when it appeared for its riveting storytelling and thorough research.

Review: Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country

Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile�s Pilgrimage to the Mother Country. By Joe Queenan. Henry Holt, 2004, 240 pp. In an August 2016 entry for this blog, I linked to CNN�s �15 Funniest Travel Books Ever Written (in English).� Queenan�s nicely punning title came in ninth on the list. As I love humor in travel writing, and Joe Queenan can be funny, my expectations for this book were high. As Queenan explains in his introduction, he is married to an Englishwoman, and he has been to Britain ma...

Natural Opium: Some Travelers' Tales

Over at the New York Times, Dwight Garner has high praise for Diane Johnson's Natural Opium: Some Travelers' Tales. The book is currently out-of-print--but probably not for long!

Review: Searching for Thoreau

Searching for Thoreau: On the Trails and Shores of Wild New England By Tom Slayton. Images of the Past, 2007, 208 pp. Henry David Thoreau is a major American figure today, an object of adoration to his many followers, the subject of numerous books. �Why?� asks Tom Slayton, in Searching for Thoreau. �Why is Henry David Thoreau, who was regarded as�at best�a minor disciple of Emerson while alive, now so vitally important to our contemporary experience? Why is he the only Transcendentalist we st...

Review: Searching fornThoreau

Searching for Thoreau: On the Trails and Shores of Wild New England By Tom Slayton. Images of the Past, 2007, 208 pp. Henry David Thoreau is a major American figure today, an object of adoration to his many followers, the subject of numerous books. �Why?� asks Tom Slayton, in Searching for Thoreau. �Why is Henry David Thoreau, who was regarded as�at best�a minor disciple of Emerson while alive, now so vitally important to our contemporary experience? Why is he the only Transcendentalist we st...

Reader Recommendation

Jeremy, a map collector, recommends Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps (British Library, London, 2014) by Chet van Duzer. An excellent book that examines the sources of those fantastic cartographic creatures that you'll never (you hope) meet on your travels.

Review: Alaska Days with John Muir

Alaska Days with John Muir By S. Hall Young. Fleming H. Revell, 1915, 190 pp. Available free on Kindle and on Project Gutenberg (with illustrations). S. Hall Young was a young missionary in southeastern Alaska when John Muir arrived there in 1879. The two men immediately formed a friendship that lasted throughout their lives, and in 1915, Young wrote this slender book, which is both an engaging description of their adventures and a homage to the great Scottish naturalist, explorer, and founde...