Book: Snakes Alive by Mike Gerrard (NEW 2011)

Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, Photo by Donna Dailey

Yesterday we talked with travel writer Mike Gerrard, author of the new book of travel essays, Snakes Alive,  about his writing and his favorite countries. Here’s some more of the conversation with travel writer Mike Gerrard.

ATL: Where do you want to go that you have never been to?

MG: Cuba is top of the list. I’d love to spend some time traveling in Australia too.

ATL: Where do you want to return to?

MG: China, without a doubt. I’ve only spent three weeks there but did do a fairly adventurous trip. It’s even more fascinating than the USA, because the USA is familiar but China is really unknown and different. In many ways it was not at all like I expected. I wandered round on my own in many places, perfectly freely, no-one batted an eye-lid. It was great to talk to people directly, and find out what their lives were really like, and find out what they thought of the West. I was amused in Yangshuo, which features in the book, as I got talking to a couple of young guys, teenagers, who wanted to practice their English. One of them asked me if it was true that every house in England had a swimming pool. You realise how little they knew about the West, but only in the same way as I really knew very little about life in China. I came away with a great respect for the country. It must have made a great impression on me as one of the pieces I wrote, about Yangshuo and centered on eating a snake in a restaurant there, was the first piece of mine that ever won a travel writing award. It’s at the front of the book, which is why the book is called Snakes Alive.

Curiously, given your previous question, I chose to make the last piece in the book one of my other favorite pieces and places – about Memphis.

ATL: Books or movies you recommend for A Traveler’s Library?

MG: When I was little I used to love a TV series in the UK called Zoo Quest. The great David Attenborough, then very young, went off round the world looking for various birds and animals. My auntie bought me a copy of one of his books, Zoo Quest for a Dragon, about a trip to Komodo to see the Komodo Dragon. I know that inspired me to travel later – that exciting feeling you get when you’re little, realising that ‘gosh, there really are dragons in the world!’

John Steinbeck and Charley

When I was a teenager I discovered John Steinbeck, read everything of his I could get my hands on, including of course Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Centennial Edition)
.

I love Paul Theroux‘s travel books, and think he just gets better with each one. His book about China is marvelous, and Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown
was even better. But I suppose if I had to choose one of his it would be the first, The Great Railway Bazaar
. No one who likes travel could fail to be inspired by the opening, when he realises that he could get on a  train at London’s Victoria Station and end up in Vladivostock. So he sets off to do it. Marvelous!

Book Cover

Mike Gerrard has been a full-time travel writer for about twenty years, producing articles for newspapers, magazines and websites, and over thirty guidebooks. He recently published a selection of his travel pieces, Snakes Alive, which is available on Amazon as a paperback and for the Kindle.

Thanks Mike, for telling us more about your writing and travels.  Readers, I’ve read Snakes Alive, and recommend it if you want to taste a variety of places and some excellent writing.

Disclaimers: Mike provided me with the book for review. Top photo is by Donna Dailey, and you can click on the photo to learn more about her. I took the Steinbeck photo from a large wall photo at the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, California. Amazon links will earn a few cents for Mike or for me.

Which place that Mike mentioned in this interview is YOUR favorite destination?

One person who comments on this post before 6:00 a.m. MST January 24, will win a copy of the book. And remember, we want to know which Cambria Suites hotel you would like to stay in, because EVERY comment through January 31 wins a chance on a two-night stay. Rules here. Good luck!

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

You can own this T-Shirt

But it could be OUR motto!

Giveaway Contest [NOTE: This contest is long Gone.]

The picture shows Just SOME of the books recently reviewed here with the John Steinbeck t-shirt I’m giving away to the person who gives me the best reason they should have it. Comment on any post, one comment per post counts but as many posts as you like–through Friday midnight (MST).
Now please read the Great American Road Trip stop in Arkansas for a Great American Book….

(And even if you’ve already read about Arkansas, I invite you to go back and HEAR the song, Farther Along.)

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Famous Roads. From Palmdale our route ducked around Santa Clarita, then headed to the coast on California 128. We drove up the coast a bit on the 101/1 and when the two roads split, we stayed on 101.While we had followed old Route 66 on part of our way over here, we were now following the route of Spanish/Basque explorer Juan Batista de Anza. He led a band of soldiers and families from the Presidio in Tubac south of Tucson to the coast and north to San Francisco bay, and here we were taking some of the same route.

Juan Batista DeAnza did not have such a nice rest area when he camped near here.

Solveng CA

Solvang, where we stopped for lunch. I had always wanted to take a look at this lovely Danish village. I was glad we got to make a brief stop, and hope that some day we can stay a day or two and follow the scents of Danish baked goods into the half-timbered buildings that also house craft shops and hotels.

Art in the Fields As we zipped north on 101 (after a short stretch on U.S. 5) we passed miles and miles of vineyards, fields of leafy vegetables and trucks loaded with garlic.  Approaching Salinas, we saw farm workers gathering around their dented red pick-up truck–but wait–those people are too big to be real.  And sure enough, they were lifelike, but two-dimensional.  As we drove north we saw at least ten more of these depictions of farmers doing various chores. Never found out from whence came this delightful art project.

Ken and Doris Day

Carmel Besides the wind-sculpted cypress trees, the cool morning mist,dramatic cliffs above a sandy beach, we found many reasons to love Carmel. We saw the house that poet Robinson Jeffers built and Ken looked forward to “meeting” Doris Day. Although she still lives there, the closest he got was a movie poster in the lounge of the Cypress Inn, a dog-friendly hotel that Ms. Day owns.

View from Tickled Pink room

We also visited the Tickle Pink Inn, named for a Senator Tickle. Of the many luxurious digs in Carmel, this must have the most amazing views–from every room’s balcony.

After trying Katy’s Place where the tough choices include 16 kinds of Eggs Benedict, we went the next day to The Little Swiss Cafe, with simpler food, but amazing art by André Balyon. André paints gorgeous sky-filled landscapes and realist art, but here he lets his sense of humor out to play.

Spring, by Andre Balyon

Detail of "Spring"

Now, at first glance that is a pretty picture, but play “what is wrong with this picture?” Isn’t that the couple from American Gothic? And its small in this image, but that’s Puss in Boots fishing in the canal. Here’s a closeup to show the grandest joke.

Our Carmel stay was over, but we had one more stop–The Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California.

John Steinbeck and Charlie

Carmel Beach Sunset

Photos of Balyon paintings by Andre Balyon. Please go to his gallery to see his “serious” works, although the humorous ones at Little Swiss Cafe are seriously good. Vera Marie Badertscher took all other photos and I reserve all rights. Ask before you use.

Now, you know how the kids always want to know what you brought them when you come home from a trip? Well we brought you something. Persuade me that you should have a t-shirt from the John Steinbeck Center that says, “There are never enough books.” Runner up gets a bookmark listing all Steinbeck’s books. Hurry! You have only until this coming Friday midnight. Good luck. (Check general contest rules here.)

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

5/25 FIRST GRAND PRIZE WINNER: See the contest page

Two prizes left plus THREE grand prizes. See the contest page and enter before May 31 midnight. Now back to our program in progress…

Steinbeck's California book cover

Destination: Steinbeck’s California

Book: A Journey into Steinbeck’s California by Susan Shillinglaw

A Guest post by Dr. Jessie Voigts

One of the very best books I’ve ever read is featured here in our Book Review this week. Published by Roaring Forties Press and authored by Susan Shillinglaw,[amazonify]0976670623::text:::: A Journey into Steinbeck’s California [/amazonify] is a treasure. Full of gorgeous photos by Nancy Burnett, artwork of the times, photos of Steinbeck’s contemporaries, and in-depth sidebars of places, people, and events, this book delves deeply into Steinbeck and California.

Author Susan Shillinglaw is a Professor of English at San Jose State University and Scholar-in-Residence at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. For eighteen years, she was Director of the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University, where she edited the award-winning journal Steinbeck Studies (previously The Steinbeck Newsletter), published twice yearly. She was a consultant to Harpo Productions for Oprah’s website on East of Eden and frequently consults for popular media as well as scholarly projects—most recently for a State Department-sponsored film made by a Georgian (formerly a part of the USSR) television station.

We were lucky enough to sit down and talk with Susan about her book.
Wandering Educators: Please tell us about your book, A Journey into Steinbeck’s California.

Susan Shillinghlaw: The book is a hybrid text, part biography, part analysis and discussion of Steinbeck’s work, part social history, part travelogue.

It was great fun to write and compile (selecting sites to photograph, deciding what information to “box”).

The approach is holistic. I look at Steinbeck’s sense of place and how various locations in California both shaped his writing and how he, in turn, was shaped by the places he inhabited. For Steinbeck, place always concerned the intersection of human history and natural history. It was stimulating to think about how human histories and nature, cultural artifacts and social issues intersected in Steinbeck’s fiction.

A novel like Cannery Row, for example, draws from Steinbeck’s interest in intertidal ecology, his love of local history, his friendship with Ed Ricketts,[Note: Ed Ricketts home and laboratory are open for a tour on his birthday each year. Check the Steinbeck Center in Salinas.] his stint as a war correspondent in World War II, and the local itself—where Pacific meets shore. I hope this book gives that rich sense of Steinbeck living in place. He makes readers feel and “participate” in the California landscape, and I hope that resonance is clear in this book.

WE: The photos and illustrations are intriguing – can you tell us more about that?

SS: To write the book, I revisited Stanford archives and Salinas archives, as well as several local archives: mine was a treasure hunt for local resources and libraries are a great source of information. Many of the period photographs came from these tiny archives that I dug through in Pacific Grove, Monterey, and Salinas.

The contemporary photographs were quite another kind of research. The superb photographer, Nancy Burnett, accompanied me on trips around Steinbeck locales. We spent a day tramping around Salinas, looking for interesting ways to photograph buildings. We strolled through the hills trying to capture the colors of the grasses and the hue of poppies and lupins. Jolly fun to take photos of all the places one knows well.

When we were walking in Pacific Grove one day, a man invited Nancy and me to look at his attic, where festoons of canvas still could be seen, remnants of the original tent that stood in Pacific Grove. Houses were simply built around the tents. We were able to photograph Steinbeck’s house on 11th Street in Pacific Grove, a magical day. A family member gave us a key and told us to photograph anything we wanted—that day we discovered the desk that Steinbeck and Ricketts took to Sea of Cortez, hidden in a shed.

To read the rest of the interview with author Susan Shillinglaw, please see Wandering Educators.

Dr. Jessie Voigts

Dr. Jessie Voigts is the Publisher of  WanderingEducators.com and contributes each month to A Traveler’s Library. She has a doctorate in International Education, and is passionate about intercultural learning. She and her husband are Worldschooling their daughter, and enjoying every minute of it. She is also a nature photographer and lives on a lake.

I’m glad that Jessie decided to talk with the author of A Journey Into Steinbeck’s California, because I’m planning to return to Steinbeck when the Great American Road Trip visits California toward the end of the year — or early next year.And if you’re going to California between now and then, I encourage you to pick up this terrific book.

More Steinbeck at A Traveler’s Library: 11 Literary Road Trips; Top 5 American Road Trip Books ; Steinbeck and McMurtry.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Bronte Country

Destination: The World

Books:

• Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
• Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

A GUEST POST by Shannon McKenna Schmidt, co-author of Novel Destinations.

I blame it on Jules Verne. My wanderlust began with a children’s version of his novel Around the World in 80 Days. Reading the thrilling story, with its depictions of distant ports of call, was like a siren’s song. I went along as Phileas Fogg circled the globe to win his wager, from London to India and China, and across the American frontier.

Over the years I’ve visited many places on the page, some of which I’ve since had the chance to the see in person. One of the most atmospheric is the Yorkshire moors in northern England, vividly depicted by Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights. And Paris, brought to life in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. When it was published in 1831, Hunchback drew so many readers (including the Duchess of Orléans) to see “Victor Hugo’s cathedral” that it compelled the city to restore the rundown Notre-Dame.

Chateau de Monte Cristo

Sometimes visiting a place motivates me to seek out a book, like Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Near Paris is one of his most imaginative creations: the Château de Monte-Cristo. On the grounds are a castle that resembles a confection made of stone, man-made grottos, a waterfall, and a stone tower he used as his office. Dumas’ “paradise on earth” is so intriguing that it made me want to read its namesake novel.

Stateside, a visit to Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, is like stepping into the pages of Little Women. Louisa May Alcott used the house as the book’s primary setting, and fans of the novel are sure to recognize things like the trunk of costumes the March sisters used to stage their plays and the parlor where Meg got married.

A well-worn book on my shelves is Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck’s memoir about his road trip exploring the U.S. with his French poodle in a pick-up truck camper (which he named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse). This spring I’m setting out on a Travels with Charley-style road trip, traveling the U.S. and Canada in an RV for several years with my husband and two cats.

For me, the allure of travel is too great to resist, inspired early on with a globetrotting adventure tale.

Shannon Schmidt

Shannon McKenna Schmidt is the co-author of Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West (National Geographic Books) and also blogs about literary travel. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Continental, The Miami Herald, and other publications. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Thanks, Shannon. I appreciated this peek at your bookshelf.

Any readers who are interested in ordering any of the books mentioned,  can click on any Amazon link on my site and everything you order will help keep A Traveler’s Library in business. I suggest you start by clicking on Around the World in 80 Days (in the 1st paragraph). Also, we have talked about several of these books before, and if you click on any of those titles, you will be taken to a previous post. Don’t miss Shannon’s great web site Novel Destinations.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

While you could fill a library shelf with American Road Trip books, the 5 most outstanding American road trip books would fit on the nightstand.

(Note: For many more great books for the road trip, follow The Great American Road Trip every Wednesday here at A Traveler’s Library. It started with Blue Highways.)

Everyone lists:

Travels With Charley, by John Steinbeck

Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon

On the Road (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)  by Jack Kerouac

I would agree with those who also list:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

To follow Travels with Charley, San Jose State University Center for Steinbeck Studies suggests

Sideways by Rex Pickett (2004) (and the movie of the same name)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Loop Group, by Larry McMurtry (2004)

I Dream of Microwaves by Imad Rahman (2004)

On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) (also named 7th in 10 best travel books of 20th century by International Society of Travel Writing)

American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders by Richard Grant (2004)

Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon (1982) (also named 2nd in 10 best travel books of 20th century by International Society of Travel Writing

South of Haunted Dreams: A Memoir by Eddy L. Harris (1993)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (1974)

And here are some miscellaneous others:
The Drifters by James Michener 1960’s young people traveling.

Through Painted Deserts:Light, God and Beauty on the Open Road by Donald Miller

Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson (mother-daughter road trip)

Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own by Doreen Orion. (with a title like that, you gotta read it.)

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson

Roads by Larry McMurtry (reviewed along with [amazonify]B000U3FHQO::text::::Steinbeck’s Travel’s With Charley[/amazonify] –linked above)

Autumn Across America by Edwin Way Teale  (A Naturalist’s 20,000 mile trip)Teale also wrote North with the Spring, and Journey Into Summer and Wandering Through Winter.

Roads to Quoz by William Least Heat Moon (2008—seems to be sinking without much fuss)

Many other road trip books have been written about horseback journeys, bicycle journeys, walking journeys, and journeys in other countries. But for now, let’s stick with the U.S.  and motorized transportation.  Got more to suggest? Want to argue with my top five? Let’s talk.

I have provided Amazon links to many of the titles list above. I hope the links are helpful to you. Although it costs you nothing extra to use them, you will be supporting A Traveler’s Library each time you buy anything through these and other links on this site. Thanks!

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.