Dear Match Book: What Should I Read on My Summer Vacation?
This content was originally published by NICOLE LAMY on 23 May 2017 | 9:00 am.
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Finally, you have left the academy behind, so now you can look back and laugh. DEAR COMMITTEE MEMBERS, by Julie Schumacher, satirizes university life from the point of view of a has-been writer and current creative writing professor, Jason Fitger. The lovable curmudgeon pours his literary talents into vituperative letters of recommendation, which may not be appreciated by their fictional recipients, but provide wicked fun for readers.
Yours truly,
Match Book
♦
Fireside Travels
Dear Match Book,
I live right on Lake Michigan. Summers are short, and winters are long, so I do a lot of reading by the fire. When looking for a travel book, I want to be entertained by a unique narrative voice. I also like a mix of travel and science and enjoy books set in Africa. I love “The River of Doubt,” by Candice Millard, about Theodore Roosevelt’s expedition along a tributary of the Amazon, and everything by Redmond O’Hanlon and J. Maarten Troost.
LINDA VON PFAHL
LUDINGTON, MICH.
Dear Linda,
Your taste in travel books covers a lot of terrain — from contemporary travelogues to historical quests. David Grann’s THE LOST CITY OF Z (2009) weaves together both genres into a cinematic epic. (The movie adaptation was released in April.) Grann, an indoorsy journalist, follows the trail of a 20th-century British explorer, Percival Fawcett, who disappeared while looking for a lost civilization in the Amazon jungle. The stakes rise when Grann gets turned around in a mangrove forest and catches a glimpse of the challenges his subject faced.
In LOOKING FOR TRANSWONDERLAND, Noo Saro-Wiwa embarks on a quest with more personal roots. Raised in England, Saro-Wiwa had always resented her visits to her birth country. Summer trips to Nigeria with her family meant being deprived of the middle-class comforts of her childhood (no television!). But after her father’s murder in 1995, Nigeria became “a place where nightmares did come true.” Saro-Wiwa travels from Lagos to the archaeologically rich town of Ikom and many points on the map in between to try to understand the country her family left behind.
Detailed accounts of roadside trash, notes on unappetizing meals and the history of Mongol conquerors — in TRAVELS IN SIBERIA, Ian Frazier gives readers a sense of the landscape and its people by sketching a portrait of a vast geography with quirky, often comic details. His affection for the place is endearing, although it may not be persuasive. He explores the tundra and taiga so you don’t have to.
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Yours truly,
Match Book
♦
Titles for Globetrotters
Dear Match Book,
I am on a somewhat leisurely around-the-world journey and would like some suggestions for books with travel and self- discovery as a theme, like “The Razor’s Edge,” by W. Somerset Maugham.
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BILL HANCOCK
CURRENTLY IN PRAGUE
Dear Bill,
If you’ve read “The Razor’s Edge,” you’re likely to be familiar with the cross-country starts and stops that make up ON THE ROAD, by Jack Kerouac, and SIDDHARTHA, Hermann Hesse’s spiritual fable. If you haven’t yet read it — and you have a cool drink nearby — consider too, THE SHELTERING SKY, Paul Bowles’s 1949 debut novel about existential dread in the desert.
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For more contemporary soul searching, turn to Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s travel memoir A SENSE OF DIRECTION, in which the author dallies along three pilgrimage routes on the way to Santiago de Compostela, Spain; the temples of Shikoku, Japan; and Uman, Ukraine, which he visits with his brother and his father, a gay rabbi. Throughout the book the witty, sometimes flip, narration carries the reader along, though it’s his pain, resentment and, finally, acceptance of his family history that give the story its bearings.
In THE SINGULAR PILGRIM, Rosemary Mahoney embarks upon six religious journeys in good faith — or, at least, “faded, worn, resentful, and stubbornly evasive” faith, which allows her to remain both skeptical and exquisitely open to the beliefs and rituals of others. But it’s the earthly details in her travel memoir — the intimacy of a Hindu cremation ceremony in Varanasi, India, for example — that feel like revelations.
For more than 30 years, Pico Iyer — who edited and wrote the introduction to “The Skeptical Romancer,” a selection of Maugham’s travel writing — has been writing travel books. Iyer’s SUN AFTER DARK includes essays about trips he took to Bolivia, Cambodia and Easter Island, among other places. In this collection, as in all of his work, Iyer’s curiosity and compassion give readers a sense of place, and his internal observations on exile and belonging convey a deep understanding about travelers’ states of mind.
Yours truly,
Match Book
Do you need book recommendations? Write to matchbook@nytimes.com.
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