Literature & Travel

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Comment by Ed Wetschler on May 15, 2013 at 11:10am

Aha. That's key.

Comment by Terence Baker on May 15, 2013 at 10:51am

...and do not forget travelling, too, Ed. The secret is, perhaps, that I often forget to take my keys with me, but never a book.

Comment by Ed Wetschler on May 15, 2013 at 10:23am

Good question, Terry, and London Orbital sounds like another Baker recommendation that I'm putting on my to-read list. How you manage to find time to read so much (and run, and have a pint, etc.) continues to astonish and humiliate me. 

 

Comment by Terence Baker on May 15, 2013 at 10:01am

Picked up again Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, and it is a wonderful read into the corners of London and the tight corners of almost forgotten history -- and how that glorious history is so often squashed beneath developers' brochure copywriting crimes. It reminds me a great deal of another fantastic read -- W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, about a walk in Suffolk, England. Sebald was touted for the Nobel Prize for Literature before a car crash ended his life. Why is it that so many writers get hit by vehicles -- Albert Camus, Nathaneal West, Italo Svevo (the ones coming immediately to mind). Walking around with their heads in the air?

Comment by Vicky Picks on April 23, 2013 at 9:51am

Reply to Terence Baker: No, Slad is in the southern part of Gloucestershire.  It is in an area of valleys to the north of Bath.  There is plenty of cider in the UK outside Somerset :)

Comment by Terence Baker on April 23, 2013 at 9:38am

I put down -- to recommence very soon -- Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, concerning his 2000 walk around London's M25 motorway, or at least as near as he could get without being splattered by speeding cars. Another great recommendation, written in an unique style to the usual travel book. I only put it down because I was travelling to Ethiopia last week and took with me Nicholas Jubber's far-fetched but entertaining The Prester Quest, in which he took a letter 800 years old that never made it and was originally addressed to the supposedly mythical Ethiopian Christian king Prester John.

Comment by Terence Baker on April 23, 2013 at 9:33am

Thanks Vicky. I thought Laurie Lee was from Somerset. It borders the Cotswolds, or maybe I am getting confused because of the title of his book Cider with Rosie, cider generally being associated with Somerset.

I am just doing a session of Dervla Murphy travel books ... her one on Laos, followed by her one on Siberia, then Ethiopia with a Mule, and I just found two more -- as yet unread, on Coburg and Madagascar. I recommend her.

Comment by Vicky Picks on April 23, 2013 at 9:09am

Read about the idyllic corner of the Cotswolds, Britain, where the writer Laurie Lee grew uphttp://britainonpageandscreen.blogspot.co.uk/

Comment by John Lamkin on March 2, 2013 at 2:17pm

IFWTWA invites non-members to attend its 2013 Hawaii conference - see http://www.examiner.com/article/ifwtwa-invites-non-members-to-atten...

Comment by inka piegsa-quischotte on August 5, 2012 at 12:22am

I'd like to introduce City of the Green-Eyed Beauty, a literary guide to Istanbul, following the footsteps of Orhan Pamuk, Barbara Nadel and Pierre Loti. Three very different writers with one thing in common: fascination with Istanbul.

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