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Favorite Quotes
"For my totem, the alley cat. We share the situation of small predators who easily become prey. I have my equivalent of claws and teeth, and indeed my arched back and loud hiss are my best defenses. When I need to hide my size and weakness, I can look fiercer than I am, but when I cannot talk or threaten or argue my way out of trouble, then I am in a lot of trouble. We are scavengers in the alleys and streets of a society we do not control and scarcely influence. We survive and perish both by taking lovers. Freedom is a daily necessity like water, and we love most loyally and longest those who allow us at least occasionally to vanish and wander the curious night. To them we always return from the eight deaths before the last."
from Braided Lives by Marge Piercy
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Browsing all posts tagged 'travel'
Title: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1.
By: Harriet Elinor Smith, Editor.
Dear Mr. Clemens, So nice to hear from you! As always, I enjoyed reading your recollections of work as a cub pilot on the Mississippi, and the amusing stories of life on the never ending lecture circuit. I’m so sorry about your daughter Suzy passing away; she sounds like such ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Sept. 14, 2011
Tags: fiction, non-fiction, history, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture.
By: John Leighton Chase
There's definitely a lot of "here" here in Santa Cruz. With its easy to read maps and charming photographs, "The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture" has been satisfying the curiosity of thousands of gawkers and walkers since first published in 1975. The 3rd edition (published in 2005) is edited ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on July 7, 2011
Tags: non-fiction, history, photography, travel
0 Comments
Title: The anthropology of turquoise: reflections on desert, sea, stone, and sky
By: Ellen Meloy
Warning: when you discover that Ellen Meloy died suddenly in 2004, you may feel bereft. "I was just getting to know her; how could she disappear?" The consolation is her books. Call them naturalist's memoirs or personalized landscapes or eco-history or (as she did) anthropology, they add up to a ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on April 28, 2011
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: Summit Fever
By: Andrew Greig
Most mountaineering writers are mountaineers first. Poet and novelist Andrew Greig did it the opposite way: he joined an attempt on the “unclimbable” Mustagh Tower as expedition scribe, and emerged a mountaineer. Summit Fever, his account of that expedition, is an idiosyncratic classic. Greig may have driven his companions crazy ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Nov. 18, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
1 Comment
The Making of Modern Paris, or, the demolition of prime real estate?
Title: Haussmann, His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris
By: Michel Carmona
This is a critical biography of the ultimate urban planner, Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann. A re-evaluation of the controversial urbanization of Paris, Dr. Carmona (professor of Urban Studies at the Sorbonne) does a fantastic job of laying out the truly hideous public hygiene problem, famously described as "a choleric swamp", and ... [Read more]
Posted by pollockl on Aug. 12, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, history, biography, art, travel
0 Comments
Big Bend mystery national park
Title: Borderline
By: Nevada Barr
Borderline is Nevada Barr’s fifteenth novel about a talented woman Park Ranger named Anna Pigeon. This mystery is fast-paced, engrossing and exciting to read. The author, through her character, Anna, interweaves many insights regarding the meaning of life, aging, death and the hereafter. Ms. Pigeon is trying to cope with ... [Read more]
Posted by downingp on May 6, 2010
Tags: fiction, mystery, travel
0 Comments
"Trust me, this is an interesting place"
Title: In a Sunburned Country
By: Bill Bryson
Australia has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. This fact has stuck with me ever since I read In a Sunburned Country several years ago. "Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures – the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed ... [Read more]
Posted by deejas on April 1, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, travel
1 Comment
Title: Into the heart of Borneo
By: Redmond O'Hanlon
Possibly the funniest travel memoir ever written, as well as an unexpected gold mine of accurate scientific information. When O'Hanlon invited his Borneo travel companion, the poet James Fenton, on a succeeding journey, the answer was an earbreaking NO! Would most readers want to accompany O'Hanlon? Probably not. But a ... [Read more]
Posted by curious on Jan. 30, 2010
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
2 Comments
Journeys of a Passionate Traveller
Title: A Year in the World
By: Frances Mayes
Mayes' most well-known work Under the Tuscan Sun and its offshoots never appealed to me so I was surprised and delighted when I discovered her more recent memoir, A Year in the World. In her day job Mayes was a writing instructor, and here she shows her craft in top ... [Read more]
Posted by Mayrose on Oct. 10, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
0 Comments
Title: Take Big Bites: adventures around the world and across the table
By: Linda Ellerbee
Longtime reporter, producer, TV host, and author, Linda Ellerbee calls herself "a recovering journalist who's traveled and eaten her way around the planet and lived to tell some tales." In Take Big Bites she has written a witty, sassy book about food that's also a blend of autobiography, travelogue and ... [Read more]
Posted by Mayrose on Sept. 15, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, biography, travel
2 Comments
Reflections from the Land of Fire and Ice
Title: The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland
By: Bill Holm
Perhaps because I have never been there, I have always had a strange fascination with Iceland: the medieval sagas, the stark yet beautiful landscape, those small horses.... So when I heard poet and essayist Bill Holm being interviewed on NPR about this book, I immediately added it to my list. ... [Read more]
Posted by fatorangecat on Aug. 17, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, poetry, travel
0 Comments
The Happiest Places in the World
Title: The Geography of Bliss: One grump's search for the happiest places in the world
By: Eric Weiner
Part travelogue, part memoir, part twisted self-help guide, this humorous ramble takes the reader around the world in search of the happiest places to live. NPR correspondent Eric Weiner discovers some surprises as he blends travel, psychology, science, and humor to ask not what happiness is, but where it is. ... [Read more]
Posted by Mayrose on June 20, 2009
Tags: non-fiction, travel
0 Comments
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