The Tao of Travel

By Paul Theroux,

Book cover of The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

Book description

Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe by collecting the best writing on travel from the books that shaped him, as a reader and a traveler. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, The Tao of Travel enumerates “The Contents of Some Travelers’ Bags” and exposes “Writers Who…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Tao of Travel as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

For years, I’ve been rereading my favorite travel writers—not the guidebook purveyors but traveloguers such as Robert Macfarlane, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, and Paul Theroux.

In 2023, I reread Theroux’s The Tao of Travel, a compendium of pithy quotes that spans the globe. Some consider Theroux curmudgeonly. I find him refreshingly honest. In The Tao of Travel, he shines a light on writers-on-the-road as diverse as Kerouac, Twain, Flaubert, Orwell, Marco Polo, and Garcia Marquez.

The Tao of Travel isn’t constrained by a linear narrative. You can open it at any page and instantly enjoy the banquet you encounter. No…

The Last Bird of Paradise

By Clifford Garstang,

Book cover of The Last Bird of Paradise

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Clifford Garstang Author Of Oliver's Travels

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author Fiction writer Globalist Lawyer Philosopher Seeker

Clifford's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.

Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career and joins her husband in Southeast Asia when he takes a job there. She acquires several paintings by a colonial-era British artist that she believes are a warning.

The artist, Elizabeth Pennington, tells her own tumultuous story through diary entries that end when World War I reaches the colony with…

The Last Bird of Paradise

By Clifford Garstang,

What is this book about?

"Aislinn Givens leaves a settled life in Manhattan for an unsettled life in Singapore. That painting radiates mystery and longing. So does Clifford Garstang's vivid and simmering novel, The Last Bird of Paradise." –John Dalton, author of Heaven Lake and The Inverted Forest

Two women, nearly a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives when they reluctantly leave their homelands. Arriving in Singapore, they find romance in a tropical paradise, but also find they haven't left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.

In the aftermath of 9/11 and haunted by the specter of terrorism, Aislinn Givens leaves her…


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