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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Men Join in the Fun on Another Round of Leo's Lightly Entertaining Travel Anecdotes, September 10, 2006
This review is from: What Color Is Your Jockstrap?: Funny Men and Women Write from the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)
As with her three previous volumes, including "Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures", editor and travel junkie Jennifer Leo has assembled a series of thirty-five wanderlust-related anecdotes from a number of writers. This time, she decided to add the male perspective with twenty of the short stories presented, and the result inevitably makes for a more diverse collection of experiences. It helps that Leo has recruited several first-rank writers such as Tim Cahill, who contributes a fitfully funny story about his fear of freshwater lakes related to a boyhood memory of snapping turtles. Others seem included merely for shock value like Jennifer Carlisle's account of a worm parasite festering in her leg after an Amazon Basin trip.
Like Leo's other books, personal humiliation seems to be a pervasive theme, such as Elliot Hester's aborted romance with an Argentinean woman due to a common bout of empanada breath, and Jim Benning's phone call with a Chinese prostitute while his wife is in the shower. The ugly American archetype shows up as well, for instance, in Rachel Thurston's portrayal of her feisty mother decking a mob of taxi drivers in Nepal in "Kill Bill" style. In fact, the well-earned guffaws seem to be more frequent when the anecdotes take place in third world locales where U.S.-bred personal sensibilities take a backseat to survival tactics no matter how humiliating.
Some stories are relatively innocuous like Susan Orlean's rather dry dissection of the omnipresent Skymall catalog and Laurie Notaro's familiar-feeling account of time spent with her parents on their expansive photo collection. There are a few that seem to play up the reader's preconceptions about certain places, such as Seth Stevenson's list of phobias about India and Eben Strousse's post-layoff spending spree in Cambodia shooting up machine guns. All in all, it's a light, enjoyable read, especially on a discount-priced plane where you are easily distracted by rambunctious kids and toilet-obsessed passengers in window seats.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Yes people really do this, September 14, 2006
This review is from: What Color Is Your Jockstrap?: Funny Men and Women Write from the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)
I was amazed upon reading this book how many people really do quit their jobs-or respond to a layoff-by chucking it all and backpacking the world. And even better, they write about it so the rest of us can continue to dream about it fruitlessly whenever we are stuck in rush hour traffic or an endless project meeting.
This is a collection of travel essays with the emphasis on adventure travel although misadventure is really the uniting theme. A few of the stories are so slapsticky I question how much they've been embellished (particularly Rachel Thurston's.) But many are first rate. My favorites include Sean Presant's story of his visit to a unique Turkish spa, Eben Strousse's high calibre holiday in Cambodia, Scott Turner's tale of Kenyan plumbing (if you've spent any time outside of the US or Europe, you'll have a whole new appreciation for the amazing flush capabilities of our sewage systems), Jennifer Colvin's lesson in Parisian office politics, Conor Grennan's sweet memoir of a birthday spent far from home, Peter Mandel's stint at Six Flags as a television icon, Jennifer Carlisle's trip to Peru which resulted in an unexpected souvenir in the form of a really disgusting parasite, and the always reliable Susan Orlean's take on the appeal of retail therapy in the sky. There were several others I enjoyed too and I regret not being able to list them all.
My favorite story, however, was Seth Stevenson's take on travel in India. Partly because, having spent time in the Middle East-which can bring its own dietary distresses on the foreigner-I am sadly all too familiar with the game "Can I Throw Up in This?" But also because the humor is mixed with a certain world weary reality about the conditions much of the world lives in and the helplessness and guilt you feel when seeing it in person.
All in all, an entertaining and occasionally insightful collection with only a few missteps. And who knows? I'm sure some readers will be inspired to get out there. I look forward to reading the results in a future volume.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
what a fun read!, July 1, 2006
This review is from: What Color Is Your Jockstrap?: Funny Men and Women Write from the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)
just picked this book up and couldn't put it down! it's sooooo well written and so diverse.
the 'mama chihuahua' piece had me laughing out loud!
fun, fun, fun.
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