Lonely Planet Tales from Nowhere (Travel Literature) [Paperback]

Don George (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2006 | Series: Travel Literature

We've all been to Nowhere. It might have been in the middle of Borneo or Beijing. It might have been in a Mayan mountain village, along a time-worn trail in Tuscany, on an isolated South Pacific island, or under a desert moon in Mali. Nowhere is a setting, a situation and a state of mind. It's not on any map, but you know ti when you're there.

Full of passion, surprise, wonder, curiosity and revelation, the 30 real-life tales in this extraordinary collection compose a kaleidoscopic portrait of the many Nowheres we visit in our lives, and the many roads we take to get there.

These richly varied tales all celebrate and illuminate one simple truth: if we embark on each adventure with an open heart and an open mind, travel will take us places we never planned to go, and enrich and enlighten us in ways we never otherwise would have known.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Lonely Planet's annual anthology contains 30 thrilling and bizarre stories. In some of them, the authors intentionally traveled to "Nowhere" but experience unintended consequences. In others, the writers stumbled on "Nowhere" by accident and recounted the adventures that ensued. George writes in his introduction that regardless of specific setting, situation, or state of mind, what all these pieces share is "the quality of disorientedness." The locations range from Tuscany to Timbuktu, Antarctica to Yap, and from Equatorial Guinea to Pol Pot's toilet in Cambodia. Others include the Ottawa County Museum in Kansas (it looked like a glorified machine shed), South Georgia (so isolated that baby fur seals would follow humans like puppies), and Borneo, where there are only two destinations, upriver and down. The book offers readers a chance to travel to "Nowhere" without ever leaving home. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

…these smart and exhaustively researched guides have become the gold standard for serious, independent travelers.' --San Francisco Chronicle

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Lonely Planet (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1741045193
• ISBN-13: 978-1741045192
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very well selected stories - beautiful book, February 23, 2007

By 

travelling alex b20 (Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lonely Planet Tales from Nowhere (Travel Literature) (Paperback)

I bought this book in an overprized Amsterdam bookstore and was actually quite skeptical if it was worth the investment. After all, who wants to pay for blog-like stories printed on paperback?

It was worth every cent. The stories are very well selected. One can only imagine the amount of travel tales the editors must have gone through before finding these outstanding pieces of travel writing.

The stories - as you would expect from a Lonely Planet publication - come from the most bizarre corners of the globe, but it is not the exotic places but the interactions with the people that make this book special.

Some of the stories resonate for days after putting down the book. The story of the guy who tries to write a book on SARS in China, travelling the country without finding much, and in the end loses everything almost has a Franz Kafka feeling about it.

This book is a screaming buy. Go and get it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun Armchair Travel... With a Few Speedbumps, January 13, 2009

By 

Xoe Li Lu "xoelilu" (Sea Girt, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lonely Planet Tales from Nowhere (Travel Literature) (Paperback)

The introduction and forward (by Don George and Tim Cahill respectively) to this collection of off-the-beaten-path travel stories were unbearable, but once I decided to allow myself to skip ahead to the first story things really started to move. Of the thirty essays, most are fun and interesting, while a few are real clunkers (Art Busse's 'Primavera," and the whiney "Animals, the Lot of Us" by Alana Semuels are particularly poor entries, and it doesn't help that they are back-to-back). Joshua Clark's entry, "His Picture Nowhere," was intriguing, however the author's attempt to be "artsy" in his delivery backfires. Standouts include Pico Iyer's account of visiting Easter Island with his elderly mother, and Simon Winchester's attempt to uncover the "worst country in the world." A few of the essays take on the pretentious tone of self-styled "adventurers," but most are fun and interesting. Overall, a decent read with a few rough patches.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pack This Along, May 3, 2007

By 

Polkadotty (Mountains of Western North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lonely Planet Tales from Nowhere (Travel Literature) (Paperback)

You will visit far-flung places and some not-so with really interesting folk as your guide. The writing is consistantly high caliber and the tales descriptive, adventurous, engaging, enlightening, exciting, funny, warm-hearted and thought-provoking. The best verge on poetry and rival the best literature. What's great about this book is its accessiblity. Each story is short enough to finish within a few minutes which makes it a perfect take-along read. Perhaps on a journey of your own.