I'm an English professor/long-distance hiker who loves both the experience of walking in cool places and then writing about the adventure. I've hiked across several European countries and odd sections of the Appalachian Trailāsuch as New Jersey. As for the "quirky narrator" part, apparently I'm brave, brazen, or bizarre to explore the world unescorted. I find I meet more people when traveling alone and pursue my thoughts to a greater extent. I love it when a writer finds a way to put their vulnerabilities on the page in a way that doesn't alienate others (or themselves). I love books with strong, individualistic narrative voices that draw you into their stories.
For a devotee of mountaineering books, this one holds a special place in the canon. Whereas other narratives might accentuate the numbers or other data of the climb, this one emphasizes the author's internal, subjective experience of sublimity in nature. This pilgrim lovesābut I mean deeply and faithfully respects, reveres, and revisitsāthe mountain range that is just outside her home village. Nan Shepherd was a native of Aberdeen, Scotland (1893-1981) who made a living teaching English but whose true vocation was to be on top of the Cairngorms. Just to be, not to prove anything. I've not found an explorer more respectful of Nature. She notes, "However often I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me. There is no getting accustomed to them."
'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian
Introduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette Winterson
In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.
Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, andā¦
Mahoney's courage, intelligence, and eloquence make her an intimate companion on my armchair journeys. I knew I could follow this woman anywhere when she wrote of camping in Israel to the sound of bombs in Palestine (A Singular Pilgrimage). The dangers are even greater when she decides to paddle down the Nile in a rowboat. She presents such a persistent challenge to Egyptiansāa woman traveling alone, buying a boat, talking to strangersāthat she ultimately concedes and dons a masculine disguise. She often leavens the dread that readers may feel with irony and humor. When an Egyptian man complains of the "whorish" British women who hire gigolos, Rosemary levelly replies that it must be the gigolos who are prostitutes since they are the ones selling their bodies.
When Rosemary Mahoney, in 1998, took a solo trip down the Nile in a seven-foot rowboat, she discovered modern Egypt for herself. As a rower, she faced crocodiles and testy river currents; as a female, she confronted deeply-held beliefs about foreign women while cautiously remaining open to genuine friendship; and, as a traveller, she experienced events that ranged from the humorous to the hair-raising - including an encounter that began as one of the most frightening of her life and ended as an edifying and chastening lesson in human nature and cultural misunderstanding. Whether she's meeting Nubians and Egyptians, orā¦
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year searchā¦
This travel memoir is profoundly engaging. Before reading it, I had never thought of the archetypal Trailāthat magnetic beacon of healthy recreationāas an actual home for those who couldn't afford a house or apartment. It is precisely Raynor and (husband) Moth's precarious economic situation that gives a cliff-hanging appeal to this tale of hiking the South West Coast trail through Somerset, Cornwall, and Devon. At quaint village stores, this couple doesn't just resupply with noodles, tea, and Marmite. They actually pick up their weekly dole check, which isn't always enough to keep them in Cadburys. On the Salt Path, British class snobbery is alive and well: many people snub them instantly upon learning their circumstances. I felt both humbled and uplifted by this inspiring story.
"Polished, poignant... an inspiring story of true love."-Entertainment Weekly
A BEST BOOK OF 2019, NPR's Book Concierge SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD OVER 400,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England
Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept Southā¦
Christmas's tale was one of the two narratives (out of dozens I read) that inspired me to make pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, the other being Emilio Estevez's film, The Way. What I admire about Christmas is that she is unafraid of criticisms that will inevitably be directed towards a female writer who tells it all, just like it is: Her distaste for the women who accompanied her on a pilgrimage. Her decision to move on alone. Her unstinting descriptions of dismay about the physical challenges of long-distance hiking. Her distrust of men who have intentions on her person! Yet Christmas's experience is not all negative. Like other "true pilgrims," Christmas steps out of her western, worried, ego-centered self and finds a refreshing new perspective.
To celebrate her 50th birthday and face the challenges of mid-life, Jane Christmas joins 14 women to hike the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Despite a psychic's warning of catfights, death, and a sexy, fair-haired man, Christmas soldiers on. After a week of squabbles, the group splinters and the real adventure begins. In vivid, witty style, she recounts her battles with loneliness, hallucinations of being joined by Steve Martin, as well as picturesque villages and even the fair-haired man. What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim is one trip neither the author nor the reader will forget.
What happens when a person is placed into a medically-induced coma?
The brain might be flatlining, but the mind is far from inactive: experiencing alternate lives rich in every detail that spans decades, visiting realms of stunning and majestic beauty, or plummeting to the very depths of Hell while defyingā¦
In choosing my favorite Bryson travelogue for my list, I alternated between A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Small Island. The latter's setting gives more materialāno less than Britain's entire history, geography, and cultureāin contrast to the Appalachian Trail's "Long Green Tunnel" of rocks, trees, and shoddy shelters. Bryson's good nature redeems his shortcomings. Even when he's taking the mickey out of individuals and nationalities, it's clear that he's playing the English national sport rather than condescending. Bryson is all voice; he is not particularly interesting when expatiating on science or history or industry (yawn!), but he is always funny when he reflects on human folly. His deft use of hyperbole, understatement, and paradox recalls English masters such as Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, and Geoffrey Chaucer.
In 1995, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the States for a few years with his family, Bill Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite; a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow namedā¦
The Coast-to-Coast trail is rated among the top five hiking trails in the world. The narrator sets out to learn why. Besides its sublime beauty, it's the opportunity to meet people as compelling as characters in a novel: Brits as eccentric as Monty Python, and Americans loud and final as baseball. The narrator's seriocomic voice makes this traversal of northern England a rollicking read. From tech nerds to old-fashioned explorers, from romantic couples to fighting families, from trail angels to curmudgeonsāthe smorgasbord of humanity is served on the trail. At night, the feast is amplified by strange hosts. Why do people open their homes to strangers when they appear to lack interest in their fellow humans? The narrator-cum-culture-sleuth solves this mystery in the satisfying denouement.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The first in a charming, joyful crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu.
When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. Butā¦
When two brothers discover a 300-year-old sausage-curing cabin on the side of a Slovenian mountain, it's love at first sight. But 300-year-old cabins come with 300 problems.
Dormice & Moonshine is the true story of an Englishman seduced by Slovenia. In the wake of a breakup, he seeks temporary refugeā¦