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Anyone Else Enjoy Travel Memoirs and Culture Studies?

Bullyboy

Bullyboy

Member
Wondered how many other armchair travelers are out there. First names that come to mind Bill Bryson and Jon Krakauer. I also have collected at least twenty titles in the series Culture Shock...for those unfamiliar they are country by country moving-in guide. I find it fascinating to compare the day to day of different areas.

I also enjoy stories either drama like Into Thin Air or silly like Delirious Delhi about countries I don't feel I would visit...too old for K2 and we have a big Indian community nearby so it's okay. Extreme travel books are awesome too, Chuck Thompson for example.

Interesting to take a book like Don't Go There by Peter Greenberg and then read more into the places he highlights...some of them ARE that bad of course...others are in the perspective.
 
Couldn't really reel a list of books / authors off the top of my head but yes kind of. I can't say I read travel guides as such but books about places I'm interested in written by people who have been there - yes.

I also quite like reading travel diaries / travelogues from the past. If that is the correct way to label them.
 
Came across a jewel about 10 years ago! Delightful descriptions and etchings of the vast highland plains and peaks, & before many outsiders had ever seen, or for most even knew the details of these high mountain regions of South America, it's Native Indians, flora, fauna and cultural arts, and customs. I have read it at least 3 times through, and learned more with each read.

"Travels Amongst the Great Andes of the Equator" by Edward Whymper with maps and illustrations.
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY
1892
All rights are reserved
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard ISBN 1-59308-275-4 first published in 1885, also a great classic travlish read.

Then lastly to travels...yet of another sort...

The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawking

  • SBN-13: 9780553802023
  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 11/28/2001
The expanded, full glossy color edition is a marvel, and arguably can be thought of as a different type of travel adventure. Albeit like no others listed above. Okay maybe I'm stretching it? I do have to say that the places it reveals are as foreign, as new, and yet as exotic as any travel destination I can think of.

Ah the beauty of great books are the adventures they allow us each to experience. :)
 
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Meadow337 said:
Couldn't really reel a list of books / authors off the top of my head but yes kind of. I can't say I read travel guides as such but books about places I'm interested in written by people who have been there - yes.

I also quite like reading travel diaries / travelogues from the past. If that is the correct way to label them.
Click to expand...

If by "past" you mean ancient times, you could try a Greek writer called Pausanias. He wrote 10 books entitled Description of Greece and each one of them is about a different place, like Attica, Laconia, etc. Many of the ancinet Greek writers wrote in a travelogue-type of fashion. For example, Herodotus's Histories are about his travels around the then known world.
 
I do and I don't.

I don't really enjoy modern travel literature, because it either a) puts preconceived notions into my head before I visit a place, or b) risks overriding whatever opinion I had of places I'd already travelled to. Either way I end up with someone else's opinions and impressions rather than my own. So in that sense I'm not a big fan.

What I do like, though, are "old-timey" travelogues, for lack of a better word. Travel accounts of a time well past. I find them really exciting, sometimes romantic, and they leave plenty of room for comparison with your very modern impression. Just to name a few, Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, Amelia Edwards's often overlooked A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1870s bestseller!), and anything by Freya Stark or Ella Maillart are a good place to start.

Another thing I do like are travelogues that records impressions in unusual or different formats. Joann Sfar's Japan sketchbooks, graphic novels by Guy Delisle, and Gildas Flahaut's Mongolian Notebook are some of my personal favourite (mind you, I'm not sure if that last one has been translated into English).
 
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