Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Tales from Nowhere (Travel Literature)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book gives nice short descriptions of lots of exciting places. It either inspires you to go, or, if you're lucky, awakens memories of exciting places you've been to yourself already!

This collection of "off the wall" episodes in the lives of travel writers turned out to be my favorite of those edited by Don George. Tim Cahill, who is always informative and fun, provides a forward focused on the art of achieving the state of "flowbe"--which could be described as the internal nowhere we can all go to without the discomfort of flying. All thirty authors have impressive credentials many with books of their own. A common epiphany seems to be that the accidental nowhere that the writer lands in by mistake became the heart of the "travel" matter for the author. I especially enjoyed "Thailand Dreaming" by Jim Benning who discovers that world cultures are becoming like reversible jackets. "I was seeing the familiar as deliciously exotic, and the exotic as
oddly familiar." Often these stories are lessons in what to avoid, but always the writing is a cut above average.
Linda Ballou
Lost Angel Walkabout-One Traveler's Tales

A low flying four stars here for a book I picked up 2nd hand in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, when looking for something to read on those long travel days we all know and love....

Compiled by Don George who also put together the Lonely Planet short story collections Kindness of Strangers and By the Seat of My Pants this selection of tales takes as its inspiration the idea of finding yourself nowhere. And as noted in the introduction there were a mountain of entrants and the competition to get your piece in this book was pretty fierce and I can well imagine that as so many travellers have some quirky tale of getting somewhere and realising that it is, in many ways, nowhere.

The pieces range from humorous to touching and at least one is downright unreadable due to the painful format chosen by the author. As noted in my title some of these stories won't resonate with you but when you have a range of tales from such a range of authors set in a variety of locations you are always going to get that. One point in favour of this release is that only a few of the stories overtly scream of the holier than thou `I'm a traveller not a tourist' mantra, you know, the sneering sometimes indulged in by people who are cruising about the world freely while others have to take package tours to cram in as many sights as possible (yeah, cos their parents are rich and they have fabulous degrees meaning they can wander the planet for a few years AND still have a better house than you by the age of 35).

To me I find the whole Lonely Planet story pretty inspiring so find pretty much anything released under its name to have some value and certainly this serviceable collection of disparate travellers reminisces was a good companion for me on one of my own travels. Snapping this up cheap has probably sealed the deal for me to now go and buy other LP short story collections and I'd recommend this one for real and armchair travellers as part of the own travel library but note that almost all the writers who had pieces selected for inclusion were already published authors, so the likelihood of you finding a personal `diamond in the rough' is somewhat slim due to the slick nature of most of the stories.

Like I said, a low flying four stars.

This Lonely Planet published book gathers a plethora of stories from travel writers and news correspondents about times they spent in what seemed like absolutely nowhere. The stories are fairly short and for the most part interesting. As expected, being nowhere with seemingly nothing being remarkable will of course end up being a place that is special and will hold fond memories for you. There are stories of growth, finding oneself, kick starting your life, and a misadventure or two.

This book doesn't need read cover to cover straight through. Instead you should just read a story or two now and then. For me, I got rather bored about 2/3 of the way through the book. Spread out your reading for this one and it will be a much more enjoyable book. Mostly decent stories but a couple duds too.