Krakauer is a fine storyteller and doesn’t shrink from difficult questions in this book - including asking whether anyone who puts themselves in such danger to stand “on the roof of the world” is actually rational. Because, let’s face it, climbing Everest isn’t for your average thrill-seeker - you’ll need $65,000 minimum and, quite possibly, a death wish...
In 1997, I was poking around in second-hand bookstores, looking for good reads to take with me on a trip to East Africa. I stumbled upon a dog-eared copy of Michael Crighton's 'Travels' and purchased it for $1.25. Little did I know that it would become one of my favourite books and that I'd re-read it so many times that, finally, I'd have to go out and buy a new copy, 18 years later...
Chris and Lynette Dawson are living the dream in the Sydney suburbs…a happy marriage, a beautiful home close to the beach, and two young children, Chris (once a rugby star and local hero) is a high school teacher and Lyn a devoted mother. But in January 1982, Lyn disappeared without a trace, leaving behind her children, her personal belongings and no note…
On a literary level, I’m sorry but I really can’t see how the comparisons that have been made between Nora and Emma Bovary/Mrs Rochester. The other major problem I have with this book is that it has no plot - and call me old-fashioned, but I really do like a plot. About half way through, I had begun to ask myself where it was going…becoming tired of the endless monologues
Kampfner (himself the son of a Jewish refugee in the 30’s) makes a compelling case for why German is in the state it is - ‘responsible capitalism’. Unlike the rigid French labour market, or the deregulated British one, Germany has chosen a different path. With its keen sense of social responsibility and incredibly well-funded public services, the accumulation of wealth isn’t seen necessarily as a bad thing, but is firmly kept in check…
The gold standard of travel writing, for me, has got to be Paul Theroux, whose epic train journey in the 1970′s became a best-seller in the form of his book “The Great Railway Bazaar.” Setting out from Victoria Station, Theroux took one train after another as far as the Far East, traveling through Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, onto India, Burma and Vietnam...
The fact is - as he writes and as we all know - that society places enormous emphasis on social relationships and the general assumption is that the more social we are, the more well-adjusted we are. But is this truly the case? Why does a balanced life necessarily have to resolve around a significant other, children and deep friendships? Can other pursuits not meet our desires - religion, art, literature, philosophy, music,…?
I have come to the conclusion that letters touch the soul - both when written and when received. After all, reading a letter is a completely emotional experience. Every person’s handwriting is different, just as is their DNA. A letter cannot be replicated (unlike an email). The ink smudges, the crossed out words, the creased sheets of paper, the stamp on the envelope. Every letter I have in my boxes is a one-off, never to be replicated. ..
In November 1970, whilst in the valley, a young girl stumbled upon the charred remains of a woman’s body, surrounded by an array of objects (including a sweater, jewellry, burnt paper and a pair of rubber boots). The police, having initially ruled the death as suicide, soon realised there were many incongruous elements to the scene. An autopsy showed remains of sleeping pills (phenobarbital) in her stomach, as well as soot in her lungs, which led the authorities to conclude she had been alive whilst on fire…
Berlin argued passionately against extremism, since (as he saw it) extreme politics (whether in the form of Hitler’s fascism or Stalin’s terror) led to political instability, terrible violence and, ultimately, destruction on a wide scale. As Berlin himself said, "We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.
Arriving during the glittering Jazz Age (think flappers, Chanel couture, absinthe and many a coffee drunk at Les Deux Maggots) the couple are soon part of a dazzling literary circle…the novel conjures up a real sense of what Paris was like one hundred years ago…decadence, debauchery, glamour and a determination to live for the moment, after the horrors of the Great War.
As an editor and writer, and a woman who is constantly travelling, I have come to appreciate the joy of email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Wikipedia and how it keeps me close to those I love, in whatever far flung part of the globe they reside. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t have regular pangs of nostalgia, for landlines, libraries and - most of all - letter-writing…
The book is a true travel narrative. Gellhorn was a brave and sometimes reckless woman (well, you'd have to be, to marry Hemmingway) and the tales she recounts here are what she calls her “horror stories” - that is the hardship of travelling in less developed parts of the world (some of them actual war zones...)
Sasaki, I discovered, as I read on, owns almost nothing. It wasn’t always this way…a while back he was a typical typical Tokyo professional - stressed, anxious, and permanently exhausted. He needed answers and decided to begin with stripping down his possessions……until he was left with almost nothing...
Received wisdom, of course, points to getting lost as something negative - which Solnit disagrees with entirely...“The question, then, is how to get lost. Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction and somewhere in the terra incognito in between lies a life of discovery.”
“In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mount McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters…”
So begins the extraordinary and riveting “Into the Wild” which quickly became a bestseller.
Asne Seirstad definitely makes the cut in my list, for "The Bookseller of Kabul", a tale of post-Taliban Afghanistan but with a “personal” twist. After befriending Sultan Khan (who, for years, had defied the authorities and kept open a bookstore in the capital), the author was invited to move into his home, where she subsequently spent several months living with him and his extended family (his mother, his aunts, Khan’s two wives and five children).
