John was born in Brisbane, Australia, and grew up roaming the beaches and playing backyard sports with his mates. His career spanned from mowing lawns and packing groceries, to being the Global Head of Acquisitions for a public listed travel company. In between bouts of work, he has travelled through over 80 countries, and been shot at, tear-gassed, robbed at gunpoint, and locked up in an African jail. He has stowed away in a Columbian cargo plane and been a passenger in two train derailments. John now lives with his family in the comparative safety of the Currumbin Valley on Australia’s Gold Coast. He considers it their base camp.
I wrote
On the Road . . . with Kids: One Family's Life-Changing Gap Year
Krakauer’s biography of university graduate Chris McCandless shunning his privileged upbringing and heading into the wilds of America immediately triggered memories of my own idealistic anti-authoritarian youth. Chris’s occasional want for self-destructive impulses also magnetically appealed to me, as I expect it would to anyone who has experienced the dangerous allure of edgy, high-risk adventures. Given it’s on the back cover, it’s no spoiler that Chris, wonderfully self-named Alex Supertramp, perishes in Alaska. The advance knowledge of the demise of this beautiful free spirit makes his wanderings across America all the more poignant and painful to read, particularly when it occurs at the point when Chris appears to have finally discovered purpose in his search for meaning. I have never forgotten his story.
Krakauer’s page-turning bestseller explores a famed missing person mystery while unraveling the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.
"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all…
While writing my own memoir, Durrell’s classic was recommended to me as a great example of how a writer can make every little occurrence meaningful, deploying sharp dialogue and near poetic prose. I confess I picked up this book more as an assignment than for pleasure. But the author’s first paragraph was so hilarious in an understated English way, I was hooked by line four. Durrell writes engagingly of six years of his childhood in Corfu from 1933 to 1939, whereas a boy, Gerald discovers zoology and a unique love of animals. I never thought I’d be glued to a page about rose-beetles, but as this and other creature’s habits start to mirror that of his own family, the story came to life in multiple ways. Corfu provides an idealistically remote and natural setting for his childhood adventure. This tale reminds me yet again that one of the great gifts of travel is the power of time out, in which one’s freewheeling mind, away from the noise of the world, can help capture personal discoveries.
The inspiration behind ITV's hit family drama, The Durrells.
My Family and Other Animals is Gerald Durrell's hilarious account of five years in his childhood spent living with his family on the island of Corfu. With snakes, scorpions, toads, owls and geckos competing for space with one bookworm brother and another who's gun-mad, as well as an obsessive sister, young Gerald has an awful lot of natural history to observe. This richly detailed, informative and riotously funny memoir of eccentric family life is a twentieth-century classic.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics…
To me, travel writer Bill Bryson represents the world’s yogi-master in literary observational humor. This book is snigger, snigger, chortle, laugh-out-loud funny. Notes from a Small Island is Bill’s first book (I call him Bill because he writes in such a familial way, I feel like I am travelling with him as a friend while reading). Written after the American teacher had spent 20 years living in England, it describes Bryson’s rambling journey around the farms, clifftops, and motorways of the great isle. His observations as an outsider hilariously expose the inanities and insanities of the Brits and their unique cultural habits. ‘Notes’ became a UK bestseller on release in 1992, because the Brits like to laugh at themselves, but any foreigner who has ever visited those wavy green shores, will surely nod along knowingly, sharing in Bill’s confusion about the popularity of warm beer and cold pies and milky tea served with the teabag still in the cup.
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 named…
As a serial traveler, I am attracted to the word ‘wild’ in a book’s title. Cheryl Strayed’s no-holds-barred rip-roaringly honest autobiography describes her eleven-hundred-mile walk along the Pacific Crest Trail on the border ranges of California. Before then, Cheryl wasn’t a writer, walker, or a traveler, and leapt into her journey with a degree of ignorance I find ridiculous and refreshing. As Strayed walks (or limps with blackened toes in the wrong sized shoes), the harsh, dirty, and beautiful environs of the mountain trail provide the perfect backdrop to her own out-of-control life. Recovering from a period littered with death and drugs and a crumbling marriage, Cheryl never once attempts to paper over her cracks, giving ultimate legitimacy to the book’s sub-title A journey from Lost to Found. Wild may not be a literary masterpiece in the realm of a Durrell, but it has the underbelly of a beast of truth, and the scorching honesty and real-life relatability of the author’s inner journey kept me on the trail with her till the end.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
How could I leave out the doyen of modern-day autobiographical travel writing? Paul Theroux’s list of books describing his overland adventures and the history and culture of places he rides through, is impressive. He is funny, cantankerous, offensive, likable, and informative. I chose his last book Zona because he travels the same path I myself once took. It also differs from his earlier tomes in one distinct way; Paul undertook the hard overland journey from Cape Town to Angola at age 71, when most of us expect to be tucked up in bed with a warm toddy and a cat purring at our feet. His perspective from an older man commentates on and compares the Africa he once knew to now. At times, it’s a depressing tale, exposing stories of hunger and starvation, genocide, nature clogging with plastic, and vast examples of greed, climate change, wilderness destruction, and species extinction. Somehow, Theroux takes the reader on this journey while still managing to find the lighter side of humanity and giving us hope for the future. Real travelers, as Paul would call them, will love it.
Following the success of the acclaimed Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and The Great Railway Bazaar, The Last Train to Zona Verde is an ode to the last African journey of the world's most celebrated travel writer, Paul Theroux.
'Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,' writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey though the continent he knows and loves best.
Having travelled down the right-hand side of Africa in Dark Star Safari, he sets out this time from Cape Town, heading northwards in a new direction, up the left-hand side, through South Africa…
John Ahern has a high-flying job, a big house, a loving wife, and two great kids. But if this success why does he sense is failing as a husband and father? Craving a great adventure to bring his family closer together, John blows his career apart and buys a busted-up old RV online to chase an improbable dream; a year on the road... with kids.
From the North Pole to Africa’s highest peaks, John and his family roll through thirty countries, getting mugged by monkeys, charmed by snake-handlers, and challenged by their quest to live a life less ordinary. It’s a life-changing trip. Take it!
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
