The London Lounge

Maybe members would be interested in sharing some of their favourite travel books - preferably those which have inspired us to travel - such as Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure (the tale of the search for Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared, in 1925, in Mato Grosso while looking for a lost city ('Z')which he claimed had existed there; he was probably - and we revert to the theme once raised elsewhere - pit roasted).
NJS

If you can forgive some of the outre references, Duncan Fallowell's, "To Noto, Or, London to Sicily in a Ford", is a rather wonderful travel book.

Whittaker - it's going on my list - it's the 'outre references' which intrigue!
NJS

Not so well written as anything of Peter Fleming's, and incorporating rather too much "gee, whiz" ignorance but diverting nonetheless, is Tannu Tuva or Bust!, published in the 1980s, if I remember correctly. What I don't remember at all is the author's name.

If you don't remember the author's name, RWS, this one goes on the 'B' list
NJS

Even if I did remember his name, I don't think that the book would deserve better!

As a young lad, the works of Richard Burton, Wilfred Thesiger, and Richard Halliburton, which I read for pleasure, all did the trick, as did the classics I had to read for class, especially Procopius, Polybius, and Tacitus. Although they were not written as 'travel books,' they certainly helped to inspire my imagination and planted the desire to travel and explore.

Ah, if we're to dig into the classics, I'll cheer for the incomparable Anabasis -- travel with a vengeance!

It has been a very long time since I have had the chance to read for pleasure.

When I was younger I read Jules Verne's novels Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

I wounder what a vacation like that would cost now-a-days?

Best Regards,

Cufflink79

During a recent expedition to Japan I took several travel books. To my surprise the one that I have found myself recommending most frequently to others travelling there is Will Ferguson's "Hokkaido Highway Blues". The writing, though not erudite, is tight and amusing. The premise, that of following the cherry blossom as it spreads from south is north, is enticing.

Another of my favourites is Hemingways' Death in The Afternoon. I suppose that it counts as a travel book - still, possibly the best book, in English, on bullfighting, with some very interesting observations on life and death; courage and cowardice and (although he approaches the subject from the ostensible position of a disinterested observer), some most enlightening (if unsettling) insights into what he describes as the gratification of killing. If we are going to include fiction (and why should we not) - Haggard's [/i]King Solomon's Mines and She must be up there somewhere, along with Jules Verne. Again, maybe I Iike Haggard for the way in which he treats the essential subjects of life and death and the question of immortality. Conrad's YTphoon and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Swift's Gulliver's Travels also figure in my list of fiction. Back to fact and Thor Hyerdahl's Kon-Tiki Expedition has a vote too.
NJS

Perhaps we should be cautionary. I read Death in the Afternoon when I was nine and suffered nightmares for weeks after: it's not good that children should know some men derive pleasure from the deaths of other creatures.

As we've passed the boundary of experience and entered the realm of imagination (or at least into the vague land that lies between them), I'd suggest Melville's Typee and Omoo. And how could we have forgotten Dana's lucid Two Years Before the Mast, adventure at its best?

Death in the Afternoon is certainly not a children's book and I can imagine that a nine year old would have diffficulty coping with it! At nine, I was still on Biggles; Charteris's The Saint and the Bond books as well as all the things that I was supposed to be reading!!
NJS

RWS, I agree that Richard Henry Dana is a must. Two Years Before the Mast is, I believe, available to read on-line through Project Gutenberg. Storeynicholas, Death in The Afternoon is a fine book, but have you read A. L. Kennedy's book On Bullfighting? It is a small, slim volume, but quite good. Whittaker, I agree that Hokkaido Highway Blues is quite amusing ("I am from the mystical land of Ka-Na-Da..."). Unfortunately, Ferguson, along with most travel guides to Japan, does not recommend looking around in my neck of the woods. How unfortunate. May I suggest Kawabata Yasunari's superb Snow Country? Niigata has changed quite a bit in the fifty years since the book was written, but it still has its rugged charms, and is still snow country.

I have yet to find a travel book as enjoyable as "A Time of Gifts" by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

In the 1930's, at age 18, young Fermor set out from London on foot for Constantinople. His descriptions of old Europe are even more poignant when one considers that in a few short years much of the old way of life would be lost to war.

How many of us wish we could have spent our youth in hobnailed boots, rucksack on our back, immersed in the culture of the continent. I read this book after returning from my own personal journey to the war-torn Balkans in the early 90's. While nowhere near the intellect or talents of Fermor, I certainly share his spirit of adventure. I'll wager many fellow LL members will find Fermor a kindred spirit.

Best,

Trout