WIN A BOOK!

Although there were several comments, no one entered the drawing to win the travel memoir, The Minaret of Djam, so this is your second chance. Subscribe to A Traveler’s Library,( by RSS feed or e-mail), and tell me in a comment that you have subscribed and want to enter the drawing, OR if you are currently a subscriber, tell me that–and I will draw a winner  on April 17. (U.S. resident over 18 only).

Afghanistan

Meanwhile, continuing our look at troubled mid-eastern country, Afghanistan continues its confusing struggle between anti-Western and more modern thinking people, between pro and anti Taliban.

I want to thank Pack a Book, a terrific web site for readers who travel, for bringing to my attention, this video by Al Jazeera – English about the attempts to rebuild the Buddhas of Bamiyam.
Because of your interest in the Freya Stark travel book,The Minaret of Djam, I thought you might want to see this. In this video, you will see what the Bamiyam valley that she visited looks like today. A 2nd part, available on You Tube, also shows the thriving tourism businesses and the green valley in the 1970′s before the wars with Russia and before the Taliban and present war.
This 1st video is twelve minutes long, and I found it most interesting. If you have trouble loading this, follow the link above to Pack a Book and watch it there.

Do you have an opinion about whether the Buddhas should be rebuilt? If you had several million dollars to spend in Afghanistan, where would you spend it?

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

Book: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens by Jerome Loving (April 2010)

The first half of Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens
follows the rootless Mark Twain as he becomes a travel writer. Although we think of Twain as a humorist, he clearly wrote the outstanding travel literature of the day.  And in the mid nineteenth century, it seemed that everyone was writing travel literature.

This video gives you a peek into the thinking of Jerome Loving, whose new book is being praised as the ultimate critical biography of Twain and his work.

“More books have been published about Mark Twain than any other American writer and, with this centennial year (also the 175th anniversary of his birth and the 125th anniversary of “Huck Finn,”), the world’s fascination with Twain will be remembered and reignited,” says Harper Barnes in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. If you want to learn about some of the flood of books celebrating this year of the 175th anniversary of Twain’s birth, read this informative article.

Jerome Loving’s book, which focuses on the minutiae of Twain’s wanderings–both physical and philosophical, provides all the information you could ever want about Mark Twain. Reading Loving is like listening to a friend with a subject he is passionate about. He grabs your collar and talks your ear off. Loving’s passion comes through, even though I sometimes got a bit lost in sidetracks into Walt Whitman (Loving also wrote Walt Whitman, the Song of Himself) and other digressions.

Still, I appreciate this view of Twain as a developing travel writer, and the short chapters which allow you to focus on the segments of Twain’s life as he zig-zagged through many “apprenticeships” as he called his false starts. This book belongs in the Traveler’s Library as a reference for all those places that Twain, the inveterate traveler, first brought to the American reader–Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, the Holy Lands, Hawaii, Europe. It sometimes seems that wherever you go, it seems that Twain was there before you.

If you want to read more about Twain from A Traveler’s Library, don’t miss the guest post by Mark Heers about his favorite book, A Tramp Abroad. I thought about Roughing It when I was visiting Lake Tahoe.

Disclaimers: The video is shown courtesy of YouTube. The publishers, University of Berkeley Press sent me a review copy of this book.  I include a link to Amazon for your convenience, and because by purchasing anything at Amazon when you link there from this site, you are supporting A Traveler’s Library. Thank You.

I would like to hear your opinion. Do you like having videos embedded in posts, or do they slow down loading for you? And of course, I’d love to have a rip roaring conversation about Mark Twain and what he means to you. Leave a comment and join the fun. (When you become a subscriber you discover new travel books every week. We’re close to one hundred regulars now, and would like to break through those 00′s.)

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.

Book: Weird World: The Strangest Stories and Oddest Images from around the World from Bradt Books and Wanderlust Magazine. Publication October, 2009

FLASH! See my guest post about hiking the trails of Siphnos Greece at My Itchy Travel Feet.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Do you have a ten-year-old boy on your Christmas list? You might consider the travel book, [amazonify]1841623180::text::::Weird World[/amazonify], as a holiday gift. I know he would appreciate the displays of icky foods and disgusting photos of amazing things that people do to their bodies.

Of course, the book is not a children’s book, and if you WERE giving it to a ten-year-old, you might want to monitor some of the more adult pictures–not that there is much that is adult about this book.

I was once the mother of three boys–now men–and you would think I would be inured to yucky stuff mistaken for entertainment. Despite my experience, I spent most of the time when I was leafing through this book, saying “eeeeew!” and screwing my face into the kind of expression that would make my grandmother say “Your face is going to freeze that way!”

According to a cover blurb by Tony Hawks, the author of Round Ireland with a Fridge, “Weird World is sure to inspire the most stubborn of couch potatoes to get out there and discover the world’s wackiest travel adventures.”

I find this statement, and the book in general at puzzling odds with a quote from travel writer Bill Bryson about Wanderlust magazine, “There simply isn’t a better magazine for the serious traveler.”

What were those people at Wanderlust thinking when they co-published  this book with Bradt ( a publisher of esteemed travel guides)?

Serious travelers want to see people lacerate their faces with swords?–or even a chair? Serious travelers like to seek out butcher’s shops that display camel heads or iguana bodies? Sorry, but I thought serious travel was about learning about cultures, not ridiculing them. Circus sideshows have gone out of favor because we no longer think that sideshow freaks are an object of fun. So why is this book supposed to be entertaining? Oh, yes, I forgot to mention, it is made up of photos submitted by readers. So THIS is what happens when you leave professional writers behind, and rely on contributor-content.

Frankly, I think these people have been watching too much You Tube. (And I don’t mean the cute cat videos.)

Book supplied to me by the publicist for Globe Pequot, the U.S. distributor. And he may be wishing he didn’t send it.

Readers: Am I just being too prissy? Do you get a huge laugh out of freaky stuff like this?

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