On Re-reading A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship by Julia Alzarez

For a book discussion I read A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship by Julia Alvarez a second time. I don't often re-read books, for there are so many that I have not yet read, but it is a pleasure I will get five more times in the next year. Our church book club voted for six books that I helped nominated last June.

Upon re-reading, I found my general view did not change from the review of A Wedding in Haiti which I wrote last year, but I noticed many wonderful character details and lovely quotations that I did not remember. It was like seeing a movie for a second time. I think I concentrated more on learning the story first time through and enjoyed the descriptions and the language more in the second pass.

I had thought that Alvarez wrote much about her aging parents in this book, but I see now that her account of their story and their current (2010) situation was brief but powerfully moving. Likewise, neither of the trips was long in duration, and her account was economical, but the last impression was of a trip of epic importance.

The underlying challenge that Alvarez offers readers can be summed up as "once you have seen, what is your obligation." In a world filled with people in need, not just in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, determining how we will meet our obligations is a task easily sidestepped with excuses. Alvarez frets that she does not do enough. Do many of us do even a portion of as much as the author and her husband have?

The general consensus of the book discussion group was that A Wedding in Haiti is a good introduction to Alvarez, and several expressed an interest in reading her novels and poetry. The most agreed criticism was that the black and white photos were too small to really show whatever it was that the author wanted to illustrate.

I have five more books to re-read. I hope that I benefit as much as I have with the beautifully written A Wedding in Haiti. Still, next year I may try to nominate from my list of books not yet read.

Alvarez, Julia. A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012. 287p. ISBN 9781616201302.

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier

The first thing that Ian Frazier tells us in Travels in Siberia is that Siberia is not and has never been a well-defined place. It was never an official state of any kind. It is an idea - a really big idea burdened with myths. It is believed by many to be a desolate, forbidding, unforgiving region, frozen in time forever - a place to which people are banished. All of this is true but that is not all that there is to say. Frazier in his numerous trip to and through the fabled region of Russia also found magic.

At the heart of his book is one long trip across Russia from St. Petersburg in the west to the Pacific port of Vladivostok in the east with two guides, Sergei and Volodya, in an unreliable van. Though Frazier had an advance for a magazine article, he was on a tight budget and the trio slept in tents much of the time. He had not allowed for expensive van repairs either. At one point when the tailpipe fell off, Sergei opportunely walked along the littered highway until he found a suitable replacement. After a few twists of wire, a serviceable repair was made and the trip continued. There were many other auto problems, which strained the mood of the companions.

Away from cities much of the time, the roads were rough broken pavement or gravel. To cross some rivers they loaded the van onto ferries. Through one marshy region without any passable road, they drove into a boxcar and rode in semi-darkness for over 24 hours. During six weeks, they met many people, visited historical sites, and fought many mosquitoes. A very well-traveled man, Frazier said he had never seen mosquitoes as plentiful as in Siberia.

In Travels in Siberia, Frazier also recounts several shorter visits, the last being three-week winter trip because all of the others had been hot summer trips. It was only on the last trip that he finally visited a prison camp and drove across frozen lakes and rivers.

Despite the hardships, Frazier, being a great fan of Russian history and literature, remains optimistic to the end of the book. Readers will find him good company, much in the way of Bill Bryson. They may also discover urges to read about the Decembrists, the many czars of Russia, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Siberian energy reserves. If the hardcover book looks daunting, try Frazier's audiobook. He is a great narrator and will keep you well entertained.

Frazier, Ian. Travels in Siberia. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. 529p. ISBN 9780374278724.

16 compact discs. Macmillan Audio, 2010. ISBN 9781427210531.

Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism by Elizabeth Becker

I recently reviewed Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism by Elizabeth Becker for Booklist. Here are several thoughts that I could not fit into the 175 word review. 

I don't think I will ever want to take a cruise. At least not on a gigantic cruise ship, which is more like a combination shopping mall and resort hotel than a ship of the sea. Most cruises are designed to keep you on board spending money most of the time. Being licensed by remote third world nations, they often do not adhere to any responsible environmental or labor laws. According to journalist Elizabeth Becker in Overbooked, her book on the travel and tourism industry, waiters and other service staff, mostly hired from poor nations, work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for about $50 per month. They are instructed by the cruise operators to lobby guests for generous tips. That is exploitation. Vacationers almost always spend more than they expect and see very little of whatever ports they pass. You might as well be at the Mall of America. What fun is that?

Travel journalism does not adhere to the ethics of responsible news reporting. Hotels, resorts, ships, airlines, etc. often give travel writers free tickets and special attention. As a result, most travel literature is uncritical.

According to Becker, the tourist industry in Florida has so much power that it has fought off legislation to increase the days required in Florida public schools. Hotel owners, resort operators, and other business want the cheap labor of students for as much of the year as they can get.

Becker's book does have reports of tourism done right, too. Still, I remember the horror stories and want to be careful how I spend my tourist dollars.

Becker, Elizabeth. Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism. Simon and Schuster, 2013. 432p. ISBN 9781439160992.

The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels by the late Richard Paul Roe

William Shakespeare is one the people about whom I keep reading. Ironically, not much is known about the playwright, who is often called the Bard. His whereabouts for some years are unknown. Perhaps that is exactly why he is so fascinating. He's a mystery. The latest title that I read is The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels by the late Richard Paul Roe.

In the past, many literary scholars have ridiculed the Shakespeare plays set in Italy for their many geographical inaccuracies. The standard line was that Shakespeare never went to Italy and that he just looked at some books and talked to some travelers to learn some place names and brief descriptions and then he creatively elaborated. Roe suspected that the scholars themselves did not know much, so he set out to stand where the playwright stood, supposing that he did go to Italy.

What Roe discovered was the descriptions were very exact in detail far beyond any of the sources the playwright could have used. He also located many of the "lost" sites simply by looking around and talking to local historians. His conclusion was that the playwright had to have traveled in Italy.

What Roe would not say is whether the playwright was William Shakespeare. The author said he was unqualified to speculate whether Shakespeare fronted for some well-traveled writer. Through most of the book, Roe just refers to "the playwright."

Regardless of who wrote the plays, Roe provided not only evidence of real places matching those in the plays, but he also commented on 16th century Italian commercial, social, religious, legal, and military affairs. I enjoyed reading about discrimination against the Jewish community in Venice, safe travel on the canal system across the peninsula, and the troubled politics of the Holy Roman Empire.

Roe's book does become slow going when there is a lot of visual detail to verify, but that detail will become important to you when you take his book to Italy to see for yourself. I also found chapters about plays I know well were easier to read than others. I was particularly interested in the Much Ado About Nothing chapter which revealed a lot of political backstory. A great book for Bard fanatics.

Roe, Richard Paul. The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels. Harper Perennial, 2011. 309p. ISBN 9780062074263.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer

Should you be traveling and wish to encourage conversation with your fellow travelers, carry and read from Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer. I was reading it as I flew from West Texas back to Chicago a few weeks ago. Several people just nodded toward the book and said "Great book." The longest encounter I had was with a man who appeared to be one of the Southwest Airlines pilots. Seeing me reading near a gate in Midland International Airport, he asked me how I was liking the book and recommended that I also read Under the Banner of Heaven. As he walked away, I observed his being blond, tan, and athletic, just the kind of guy who could be a climber.

By this time, fifteen years after publication, I imagine a lot of people have already read Into Thin Air. I know librarians have been recommending it for years. I know that I have handed it to scores of readers. Yet I had not read it. The whole idea of enduring hardship and altitude sickness to put one's life at risk just to test one's determination seemed rather self-indulgent and irresponsible. It still does. But the book is exciting. Krakauer is a good storyteller.

Though you know the outcome at the beginning, he is able to introduce characters and reveal critical moments at a pace that never lets the reader lose interest. With his vivid descriptions, I feel I know what it is like at the top of Everest, and I am certain that I am not going there. I think I'll stay under 8000 feet,  thank you, except for a few airplane flights.

I was reading Into Thin Air to see if it fit in an article that I am writing about memoirs to keep for decades in library collections. I decided it is not enough about Krakauer to be a memoir, but it is definitely a book to keep.

Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster. Villard, 1997. 297p. ISBN 0679457526.

The Booklover's Guide to the Midwest: A Literary Tour by Greg Holden

While in Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City over Labor Day Weekend, Bonnie and I found The Booklover's Guide to the Midwest: A Literary Tour by Greg Holden, just our kind of book. While we do not take as many long weekend trips as we would like, we still enjoy dreaming of them. Holden's 2010 book was already on the sale table, so we bought it.

Definitions of the Midwest differ. When Joyce Saricks asked me, "What's it say about Kansas?", I had to tell her that the state was not included. Holden holds the Midwest to be Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, all of which he has toured extensively. In his book, he suggests tours that run along major roads or rivers, but the town entries are not always in a logical order. Readers have to plot their own routes on maps that they will have to buy separately.

I found while reading that I needed to make two lists - places to go and books to read. While I have already stood outside houses of Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are many places I still want to visit, including the Carl Sandburg birthplace in Galesburg, Illinois, and the Robert Ridgewood Memorial Arboretum and Bird Sanctuary in Olney, Illinois. In Iowa, I'd like to visit the Mark Twain Center in the Keokuk Public Library in Keokuk and the Japanese Garden on the grounds of the Muscatine Art Center in, of course, Muscatine.

Many of the authors and books highlighted by Holden are unfamiliar to me, especially many from the 19th and early 20th centuries. I think I might especially like to read Iowa Interiors by Ruth Suckow from this group. I was also reminded that I have never gotten around to You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner. Holden also recommends the novels of Jane Hamilton from Rochester, Minnesota.

Time to get out the road atlas.

Holden, Greg. The Booklover's Guide to the Midwest: A Literary Tour. Clerisy Press, 2010. 308p. ISBN 9781578603145.

Rereading of The Girl from Foreign

When traveling to new places, I enjoy hours of looking out car or bus windows, noticing the traffic, trees, flowers, fields, mountains, wildlife, livestock, bridges, side roads, houses, and people. Perhaps it is then natural for me to enjoy travel books describing drives to remote destinations. I am please by accounts such as those in The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home by Sadia Shepard, which I am rereading for a book club discussion. 

Rereading is not something I often do, as there are so many books left to read, but it is enlightening to see how a book can be so different a second time. My memory from the first reading is an emphasis on Shepard's own spiritual/emotional journey. That is still present but I see how much she tells us about the people and places that she encountered in my second reading. The mostly forgotten story of the Jew in India suggests that much of what happened in the 20th century did not have to happen as it did.

I puzzled over some of the photos, wishing Shepard had written captions. I also would have enjoyed some maps in the book. Still, rereading was journey worth taking again, as there is a rich mixture of past and present and places I could not gone had not Shepard taken me there.


Shepard, Sadia. The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home. Penguin Press, 2008. ISBN 9781594201516.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams

Mark Adams had not slept in a tent since childhood - and rarely then - when he decided to hike through the Andes Mountains of Peru to follow the path of the archeologist Hiram Bingham III, whose National Geographic articles one hundred years ago sparked international interest in Machu Picchu. With Australian guide John Leivers and a small Peruvian support team, he visited a network of holy Inca ruins connected by the surprisingly intact Inca Trail over high mountains and into deep valleys. He reports on his discoveries about the Incas, Bingham, and modern Peru in his highly descriptive travel memoir Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time.

"Discover" is an often misused word, according to Adams, especially when used with explorers. Machu Picchu had never actually been lost. Local villagers had always known it was there in an emerald valley sometimes described as a jewel box. To his credit, Bingham and National Geographic made the world aware and in awe of the Inca city, probably saving it from destruction.

I am surprised to see relatively few libraries have added Turn Right at Machu Picchu (according to Worldcat which can sometimes be a slow indicator). I enjoyed Adams report which recounts Peruvian history from the times of the Conquistadors to the present. I had not known about the lawsuit over antiquities between the nation of Peru and Yale University Museums or about the landowners who claim Peru never paid them for the nationalization of their property. Even more I enjoyed his account of hiking to great Andean vistas. I hope Adams plans more adventures and books.

Adams, Mark. Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time. Dutton, 2011. 333p. ISBN 9780525952244.

The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank Mosher

I think I like the idea of The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank Mosher better than I like the actual book. The problem may be my own expectations more than the author's writing. I am sure some other readers will like the book well enough, and I liked parts of it very much. I enjoyed how Mosher starts the book with a memory of listening to Yankee-Red Sox baseball games with his father and his father's best friend on a car radio in a spot on  mountain where they could get a signal. I appreciate how he told me of his cancer and then said that the disease would not be the focus of the story. I enjoyed all of the parts about his marriage, teaching school, and life in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The story about moving a piano is particularly funny.

What disappointed me about The Great Northern Express were some of the chapters about his three-season driving trip around the U.S. to promote a novel at 100 bookstores. He does warn readers that he uses literary license and folds into the account incidents from previous book tours. So I knew that not everything he was going to say was literally true, but I was not expecting obviously fictional conversations with literary and personal ghosts. Perhaps fans of his fiction will like these fantasies, but I wanted to know more about his actually experiences. I would have liked to have read more about the bookstores and the real people he met.

As The Great Northern Express winds down, it gets really good again. At least, Mosher pleased me by writing about what I wanted him to write at the end.

The best part for me may be the quotes from his friend, the poet James Hayford. That's who I want to read now.

Mosher, Howard Frank. The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home. Crown Publisahers, 2012. 246p. ISBN 9780307450692.

Himalaya with Michael Palin

I envy and admire Michael Palin. I so wish I could wander the planet as he does in his great travel adventures. At least he kindly takes us with him to the world's most amazing places, especially in his 2003-2004 journey Himalaya. In six months, he visited the heights of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, ending where snow-melted waters of the Ganges pour into the Bay of Bengal. I cannot imagine getting to all of the remote places any other way than going with Michael.

While Palin made the trip so easy for us, we see how difficult and dangerous the going was for him. The BBC, of course, worked to keep him safe, but the narrow mountain roads and rocky footpaths left little room for mistakes. He suffered from altitude sickness and bitter cold, but the grandeur of the mountains drove him on. In Nepal, one of his guides was kidnapped by Maoist insurgents for a couple of days, but he was released unharmed after a couple of days.

Throughout Himalaya, affable Palin was the perfect guest, able to accept the hospitality of rich and poor alike, eating anything put before him. I loved the scenes of him in a yurt making yak butter. He took tea with local celebrities, holy people, academics, porters, and fellow travelers. He could strike up a conversation with almost anyone.

With our new flat screen television, we were wonderstruck by the towering mountains, crystal blue lakes, ancient temples, and colorful prayer flags. All six 50-minute episodes are a feast for the eyes. I would not mind seeing it again. A daily diary with many photos is on the web at palinstravels.co.uk. There is also a companion book.

Himalaya. Warner Home Video, [2005]. 3 DVDs. ISBN 141981303X.

Burma Chronicles by Guy DeLisle

If you are an artist and you are attached to a mission of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in a Third World nation for over a year, how would you choose to tell your story? Cartoonist/animator Guy DeLisle chose to write and illustrate a graphic novel titled Burma Chronicles. In six panels to a page, he recounts his time in Myanmar taking care of his infant son while his physician wife Nadege went on medical missions out of the capital Yangon (formerly called Rangoon) into regions where rebels were trying to overthrow the dictatorship. Left in Yangon with his son and a housekeeper, Guy wandered the streets, made new friends, and tried to make sense of the Burmese culture. It was easy to be accepted as long as he had his child. Without him, he was little noticed.

Yangon proved to be a city in transition with big department stores and beggars on the streets, fast computers from Japan but unreliable electricity, many friendly people and ever-present uniformed military carrying weapons. Dogs nipped at Guy's heals as he rode his bike through the streets at night, coming home from another party at an embassy or headquarters of an NGO. He always hoped to find the air condition working in the little house that his family rented. The hot, humid night were almost unbearable for a Canadian.

Readers follow Guy everywhere he goes - famous temples, the Australian Club (where Guy goes swimming in the rain), and mansions where expatriates meet for play groups. They even gets to tag along on a couple of MSF missions to villages where regular medical care is nonexistent. Burma Chronicles is quirky, surprising, fascinating journey that you can find or order through your public library.

DeLisle, Guy. Burma Chronicles. Drawn and Quarterly, 2008. ISBN 9781897299500.

Insiders' Guide to Twin Cities by Jay Gabler

Planing trips is almost as much fun as taking trips. In the dream phase, many things are still possible, and making the hard decisions, such as "Do I have the time?" and "Should I spend so much?" can be put off for another day. In such a state, I spent several hours looking through Insiders' Guide to Twin Cities, 7th edition, by Jay Gabler, preparing for a long weekend in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area visiting my daughter Laura.

I have been to Minneapolis-St. Paul several times before. In each case, I had only a limited amount of time to see the sites and saw just enough to know I wanted to see more. So I enjoyed the well-organized and frequently updated Insiders' Guide. I read with interest the overview, history, and architecture chapters. Then, because I am going to sleep on a futon in my daughter's apartment, I totally skipped the accommodations chapter. We will want to eat out some of the time, so I skimmed the restaurant listings to get just a general idea of the variety of cuisines; I will let Laura suggest where we eat, as she always has good nose for delicious food. Skipping nightlife and shopping, I sharpened my pencil and settled in to study the attractions, events, arts, and parks and recreation chapters. From these I made a list of places I'd especially like to visit.

Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis - I love the name and always enjoy seeing water falls. This one inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write "Song of Hiawatha." Visiting will feed both my love of history and of literature. The park should be bright with fall colors when I get there.

Open Book in Minneapolis - A "literary arts complex" according to Gabler. I'd like to see the book printing and binding, attend a literary reading, and peruse the book shop. Maybe we will eat lunch or have dessert in the cafe.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts - I have been once before alone, and it will be fun to go back with Laura. MIA is a large general art museum with every major movement and continent represented. I really liked the Asian collection and the period rooms. There are also fine European and American paintings. It is free to visit! Because it is close to Laura's apartment, we could go many times.

Walker Art Center and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden - Laura likes modern and contemporary art and will appreciate me buying the tickets. I like the pieces that are big, colorful, or humorous.

Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul - I have been to state capitol buildings in Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Wisconsin. I always enjoy statues, gigantic paintings, and historical plaques, as well as domes and colorful stone columns. Maybe we'll spot some famous politicians.

Mounds Park in St. Paul - Prehistoric woodland people lived in Minnesota and left six mounds that can still be seen.

Como Zoo in St. Paul - I have been to the wonderful Minnesota Zoo already, so this time I'd like to see the Como Zoo, which is one of the few municipal zoo in the country that is free. Gabler likes it. I especially want to see the snow leopards and black-footed penguins.

Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska - The state's largest public garden has lots of trees indigenous to the northern woods, as well as a maze. It sounds like my kind of place.

There is enough in the Twin Cities for several trips. Perhaps I should read Gabler's chapter on relocating to the great Midwestern metropolitan area. I'd love to go to Twins games regularly no matter where they are in the standings and have my picture taken on Kirby Puckett Lane. I hope the weather is fair.

Gabler, Jay. Insiders' Guide to Twin Cities, 7th edition. Insiders Guide, 2010. ISBN 9780762757039.

Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America by Bill Barich

Bill Barich had spent eight years living in Ireland when he came across a used copy of Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. He remembered how impressed he had been with the book as a youth and how it contributed to his hippy days in California. Being a writer, he soon felt the call for a road trip to rekindle the spirit of his youth and reconnect with his homeland. And, of course, there would be a book, which has turned out to be Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America.

Barich chose, however, not to recreate Steinbeck's trip in detail. He would start from the East Coast and end on the West Coast, but the actual cities and highways would differ. Like Steinbeck, he would try to stick to the backroads and small towns as much as possible, but he did not have the unlimited time that the highly successful Steinbeck had. He could not afford a camper, either. And most importantly, he would not take a dog, despite the protests from friends that it was essential.

In the six weeks that Barich was on the road he did notice many dogs and sometimes in his loneliness wished that he had one. Not everything went well. Food and accommodations were bad. Some rural communities were depressed. He even began to sour a bit on Steinbeck at times, as he realized that Steinbeck did not always really try very hard to talk with the locals. But then he would find a place that he loved, such as Jefferson City, Missouri, where the people were friendly and he could walk in to the state capitol without a security check.

The 2008 presidential election and the bad economy serve as subplots during Barich travels. He talks to many people about their voting plans and even attends a Sarah Palin rally, where he talks to the political button salespeople. He is disturbed by the great number of people who pay more attention to the rumors than the actual facts. Unlike Steinbeck, he does not, however, despair over the political process and future of the country.

Long Way Home may appeal to readers who enjoyed Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself, another story of an expatriate's tour.

Barich, Bill. Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America. Walker & Company, 2010. ISBN 9780802717542.

Traveling Literary America: A Complete Guide to Literary Landmarks by B. J. Welborn

What is a normal response to a knee injury? Read a travel book, of course. After I hurt my knee, I spent several days on the couch with an ice pack, ibuprofen, and a stack of books, including Traveling Literary America: A Complete Guide to Literary Landmarks by B. J. Welborn. I have enjoyed reading one-to-two page descriptions of houses and other sites where our great American authors wrote their poems, novels, and other works. Some I remember, having been to Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House in Concord, the Longfellow House in Cambridge, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Mark Twain's childhood home in Hannibal, the O. Henry House in Austin, and most of the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites. Still, there are so many more to see.

Here are my priority sites:

• The Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut
• The John Adams Birthplace in Quincy, Massachusetts
• Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts
• The Mount (Edith Wharton's home) in Lenox, Massachusetts
• Stone House Museum (Robert Frost home) in South Shaftbury, Vermont
• Walt Whitman House in Camden, New Jersey
• Green Hills Farm (Pearl Buck home) in Perkasie, Pennsylvania
• Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta, Georgia
• Eudora Welty House in Jackson, Mississippi
• Rowan Oak (William Faulkner home) in Oxford, Mississippi
• Monroeville Courthouse (Harper Lee site) in Monroeville, Alabama
• Will Rogers Birthplace in Oologah, Oklahoma
• Jack London Ranch in Glen Ellen, California
• John Muir House in Martinez, California
• Steinbeck House in Salinas, California

I notice that this list tilts heavily to the eastern regions, as does the book, but I guess it makes sense. The East has been more populated through much of the country's history and thus has had more famous authors. Not every place I'd like to go was in the book, however. I'd like also to see the Flannery O'Connor house in Milledgeville, Georgia. Still, there are hundreds of sites. My knee needs to keep getting better so I can hit the road.

Welborn, B. J. Traveling Literary America: A Complete Guide to Literary Landmarks. Jefferson Press, 2005. ISBN 0971897425.

My Favorite Rides at the Theme Parks in Orlando

We spent a week in the Orlando area celebrating our daughter Laura's finishing her classwork at the University of Iowa. In that time, we rode many rides at Universal and Disney World and took a side trip to the Kennedy Space Center. Here are my favorite rides.

1. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (Universal Islands of Adventure) - Hermoine casts the spell that allows you to fly on an enchanted bench. Harry and Ron (who ride broomsticks) lead you around Hogwarts' towers and surrounding forests, quidditch stadium, and mountains. Watch out for dragons, a whomping willow, and dementors. You feel like you are really part of the story. We rode five times in three days.

2. Star Tours (Disney Hollywood Studios) - We were at Hollywood Studios late Sunday evening after the crowds had left. It was Star Wars Weekend to relaunch the updated ride. It is now 3-D and has a different destination each time you ride. The ride through the frozen planet of Hoth was especially thrilling. Again, you really feel part of the story. We rode five times in one evening.

3. Kilimanjaro Safaris (Disney Animal Kingdom) - Though the script is essentially the same for this trek through the African landscape, every ride is different. Much depends on the quality of the driver. Will he stop at the great scenes or keep the vehicle bumping away? Will she actually tell you where to look? Frommer says to avoid the middle of the day when the animals are inactive and the lines are long. We found the lines moved well and plenty of animals were about at that very time. Frommer says the best views for photographers are on the left, but the animals were mostly on the right the three days that we rode.

4. Splash Mountain (Disney Magic Kingdom) - You ride a hollow log through a mountain and past many scenes from the life of Brer Rabbit. You might get very wet or you might not depending on your seat placement and the timing of water effects. You'll leave singing. We rode twice.

5. The Cat in the Hat (Universal Islands of Adventure) - If you love the story, you'll love the ride. There is so detail, we rode three times to see it all.

6. Expedition Everest (Disney Animal Kingdom) - This is a fast roller coaster ride through the mountains worth repeating. Beware of the Yeti! We rode twice.

7. Astronaut Training Experience (Kennedy Space Center) - While we all want to be astronauts, this is as close as most of us will get. As you prepare for your simulated launch into space, you hear stories from real astronauts at every turn of the ramps and in the waiting area. I could feel my skin flapping.

8. Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (Disney Magic Kingdom) - This is a game as well as a ride. You have to learn to spin your car as well as shoot. I'd like to go back right now.

9. The Amazing Adventures of Spider Man (Universal Islands of Adventure) - You wear 3-D glasses in this action-packed ride through a city being torn apart by powerful super-criminals. I rode twice.

10. It's a Small World (Disney Magic Kingdom) - Have you seen an 18-month old girl react with pure joy? It's the best part of the ride, which actually is a much better ride than it used to be. While the refurbished ride is still high on cuteness, it looks much brighter and is not so sweet as it was fifteen years ago.

Having and using Express Passes at Universal and Fast Passes at Disney is essential to enjoying the parks. We got these for staying at the official resorts, which also let us into the parks early and late. It was a great week. More on other aspects of the theme parks in posts next week.

India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking by Anand Giridharadas

Who in the West knows and understands India? American-born Anand Giridharadas thought that he knew it pretty well before he moved to the land of his parents in 2003. He had heard family stories, attended Indian expatriate parties in the U.S., and visited his grandparents in the ancestral homes many times. India was a hot and humid country where family obligations limited personal freedom, he thought. It was a place where things never changed and people accepted their roles. He knew there was a trend toward modernization in the larger cities, but he expected to find bedrock conservative Hindi values in charge almost everywhere. In India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking, Giridharadas tells how right and wrong he found his preconceptions.

Giridharadas went to India for a job with a multinational corporation but after a couple of years became a reporter for the New York Times/International Herald Tribune. Both jobs allowed him to travel through rural India where he met many people struggling with old values and new opportunities. India is a rapidly changing place where former lower classes can move into prosperous positions but still might not be able to marry well. Giridharadas also found that many young people have replaced Gandhi and Nehru with entrepreneurs as their heroes. In many ways, he though Indians had become just like American consumers, but they also retaining many local customs while claiming to reject Western ways.

The strength of Giridharadas's book is his ability to tell stories and draw conclusions from them. With the rise of India as a major economic and political power and with so many Indians immigrating to Western countries, this might be a good time for book groups to read about the Indian people. India Calling would be a good choice for book discussions.

Giridharadas, Anand. India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking. Times Books, 2011. ISBN 9780805091779.

Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens by Andrew Beahrs

Mark Twain and his family took an extended tour of Europe in 1879, lodging at hotels across the continent. To his chagrin, he found most of the food edible but without much flavor. As the months went by, he began to yearn for prairie hens from Illinois, oysters from San Francisco, Philadelphia terrapin, lake trout from Tahoe, and more. These were foods that he had eaten as a young man piloting a riverboat on the Mississippi, trying to make his fortune in California, or touring the East Coast as a new author. Being a man of many words, he wrote a list with eighty items, which he published in his travel memoir A Tramp Abroad. Coming across this list, anthropologist and novelist Andrew Beahrs had this idea: take Twain's list on the road across America and see if he could find dishes in their original regional recipes. The result is his book Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens.

Not all of the foods that Twain longed for really merited Beahrs attention, so he skipped over radishes, mashed potatoes, catsup, and some other fairly common foods and instead concentrated on regional specialities, including those I mention in the first paragraph. To the amusement of his wife, he made few dishes at home, but then hit the road. Each chapter features a trip. For example, to eat possum and raccoon, he went to the annual Coon Supper in Gillett, Arkansas (and his wife most pointedly stayed home). Being an anthropologist, he discusses not only Twain's memories of hunting and the current Arkansas feast, which draws hundreds of people including politicians, but also the history of African slaves brought to America who ate raccoon as a supplement to their meager meat allowance. The chapter has recipes and he assures us that raccoon does not taste like chicken.

My favorite chapter may have been the one on maple syrup. At the time Twain was writing, the manufacturers of maple sugar were trying to compete with beet and cane sugar producers for a share of the all purpose sugar market. The ideal maple syrup was thought to be a clear and tasteless liquid - a product that when reduced to sugar would not interfere with the taste of the food being sweetened. Beahrs visited maple syrup farmers in Connecticut who showed him the old and new ways to harvest and manufacture the sap.

Readers wanting to focus on Twain will be a little disappointed in Twain's Feast. Twain's love of food is really just the inspiration for the book. Most of the book could be called either a travel memoir or a work of natural history. Beahrs handles these subjects with skill and a bit of humor. I enjoyed it.

Beahrs, Andrew. Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens. Penguin Press, 2010. ISBN 9781594202599.

Carless in Chicago: Live and Thrive in Chicago without Owning a Car

One of my dreams is to some day not own a car. I can name many benefits, such as healthy walks, less polluting, no car insurance, and not having to buy the car in the first place. So I was eager to see Carless in Chicago: Live and Thrive in Chicago without Owning a Car by Jason Rothstein. Could the author offer a practical plan?

Rothstein, who has been living without owning a car for over five years, starts by making a case similar to my thoughts above. In the first chapter, he adds up all the direct and indirect expenses of owning a car and also suggests wonderful things you could do with the money otherwise. In chapter 2, he discusses health benefits of walking and the dangers of driving. In the remaining seven chapters, he puts forth his well-tested plan. He explains the Chicago transit systems, taxis, bike riding in the city, and how to rent a car when you need one. Importantly, he belongs to car sharing coop, so he has a great variety of vehicles should he need one, which he rarely does.

While Rothstein's aim is winning converts, his book can actually help drivers, too, as he explains the street system of Chicago and reviews print and online maps. Tourists and committed drivers might also use his guide to help them plan their occasional use of trains into and around the city. You can find Carless in Chicago at our library with the travel books.

Rothstein, Jason. Carless in Chicago: Live and Thrive in Chicago without Owning a Car. Lake Claremont Press, 2010. ISBN 9781893121485.

The Edge of Maine by Geoffrey Wolff

When I met Bonnie in 1981, she had recently visited the coast of Maine with her family. The rocky shores, woods, and water sounded beautiful to me. For thirty years now it has been one of the places that I have wanted to go but have not. Luckily, I have books. Looking for novelist Geoffrey Wolff's new biography of Captain Joshua Slocum, I discovered his 2005 book of personal travel essays The Edge of Maine.

Wolff has been summering with his family in Maine for decades, usually approaching the state from the water. If they do not arrive in their boat Blackwing, they rent a boat and sails among the many small islands and up the navigable rivers. From this viewpoint Wolff has seen many changes since the 1960s, most of them for the better. Polluting factories have closed, threatened developments have been stopped, and dams have been removed. The result is that many of the dead zones are again teeming with life. Some endangered birds and fish have reappeared where they once thrived. There are still environmental problems (especially overfishing), but the shores and waters are much cleaner now than when the Corps of Army Engineers and manufacturers were making most of the shoreline decisions.

Local interests now support a clean environment, but it has not always been so. Factories were once courted by the many waterside towns to provide jobs and tax revenue, but most of the manufacturers have taken their business abroad to countries with lower wages and fewer regulations. Tourism and retirement living are now more important to the Maine economy, and both require natural beauty restored.

Boating is the interest that draws Wolff to Maine. As he tells it, the waters of Maine are quite challenging for amateur sailors. His hair-raising story about losing his way in unexpected fog while trying cross a treacherous bit of open water makes me certain that if I ever go, I'll stay on shore. Until then, I'll enjoy my armchair and continue read adventurous travel memoirs.

Wolff, Geoffrey. The Edge of Maine. National Geographic, 2005. ISBN 0792238710

End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica by Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen has been around the world many times seeking rare birds and checking on environmental conditions. In 1998 and in 2001, he boarded ships bound for Antarctica with the staff of Victor Emmanuel Tours and a flock of serious birders, hoping to see penguins, other sea birds, marine mammals, and the icy world in which they live. The first trip began in Punta Arenas, Argentina and headed for the Antarctic Peninsula, while the second trip left from Hobart, Tasmania and headed for the western edge of Ross Ice Shelf. Matthiessen describes both expeditions in his 2003 book End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica.

At the time of Matthiessen's travels, tourist excursions to Antarctica were still very new. Even today not many people can set aside the time or afford to join these grand expeditions. So reading Matthiessen's account is as close as many of us will ever get to Antarctica. While not his primary focus, the author does describe the boats, the meals, and company, but mostly to contrast with the travels of historic Antarctic explorers, including Amundsen, Shackleton, and Scott, who were ever in his mind as he gazed at the icy shores of the continent at the bottom of the globe. Readers learn that should they now go on such a trip, they would have good food and warm showers, but they would still suffer from the high rolling in the frequent storms of the Southern Ocean and within the Arctic Circle. A few of the passengers were rarely seen until the ships reached calmer sheltered waters.

Matthiessen needed both trips to see all the birds on his list. On the first voyage, ice blocked them from getting to the emperor penguin colonies of the Antarctic Peninsula. The second trip was on an icebreaker that owned the record for getting further south than any other ship ever. His voyage set no records but did reach the emperor penguin colony below Mount Melbourne. With special guides to protect the penguins from too much human curiosity, Matthiesen and his fellow travelers got to visit remote colonies and witness penguin lives up close.

Matthiessen's strength is in reporting what he sees with added reflections on environmental issues. When he starts to get preachy, he apologizes and moves on. In End of the Earth and other books, the author's commitment to wildlife and wild places is evident. Sympathetic readers will also enjoy Birds of Heaven, his book about trekking to see endangered cranes in their remote habitats.

Matthiessen, Peter. End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica. National Geographic, 2003. 242p. ISBN 0792250591.