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Six Books About ... Sydney

The CC Food Travel blog had a great post yesterday, 10 Things to do in Sydney. The post included some wonderful suggestions for things to see in Australia's most populous city, from visiting the Sydney Fish Market to having a "night out," beginning with drinks at the Sydney Opera House bar.  As the post's author notes, "With a city of almost 5 million inhabitants, a multi-ethnic hub of business and culture, and its sandstone coves and sun-blazed beaches, Sydney really took my breath away."

Sydney has also been the subject of some fascinating travel narratives and some excellent novels. Readers interested in Australia's "Harbour City" can start here:

• Booker Prize winner Peter Carey's 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account recounts the author's return to his home town after nearly 20 years abroad. His evocation of the city rambles widely and includes interviews with his eccentric friends, surfing, and perhaps a bit too much partying. His book is a very personal set of impressions of Sydney, complete with its history (it was founded as a convict colony), its struggles with poor soil and poor weather, its Aborigines, its Harbour Bridge, and its Opera House.

• The University of New South Wales Press has put together an outstanding series of books on Australian cities by leading Australian authors, and novelist Della Falconer's Sydney is a marvelous entry in that series. The book is both the author's memoir and a biography of the city, mixing the author's stories about her childhood there in the 1960s and 1970s with the city’s history and attempts to become a world-class city.
• Although Sydney is only one part of Bill Bryson’s excellent book about Australia, In a Sunburned Country, his evocation of that city is first rate; as nonfiction readers' advisory guru Sarah Statz Cords notes, “no one walks around and describes cities like Bryson does.” Bryson’s travels through “the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country” is both funny enough to make readers laugh until they cry and extremely informative: “If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback.”
• Sydney is one of the cities that Talking Heads leader David Byrne visits in his book about bicycles and cities, Bicycle Diaries.  The book includes his reflections on what he saw as he pedaled through several of the world's major cities; he covers such disparate topics as music, fashion, architecture, the visual arts, globalization, and politics. The book also contains a strong ecological message, that the sustainability of our cities depends on the adoption of alternative means of transportation, like the bicycle.
• In By Any Means: The Brand New Adventure from Wicklow to Wollongong, actor and motorcyclist Charley Boorman describes his trip from England to Sydney, which he took “by any means” except airplane; his modes of transportation included train, horse, boat, kayak, elephant, and of course, motorcycle. Boorman uses the same “by any means” approach in another book, Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means, in which he describes his trip from Australia to Japan by motorcycle, quad bike, hovercraft, canoe, and paraglider.

• A number of novels about Sydney stand out. Peter Carey won the Booker Prize twice, once with Oscar and Lucinda, in which two obsessive gamblers try to transport a glass church from Sydney to a remote coastal town. Clare Naylor’s humorous novel, Dog Handling, is also set in Sydney and involves a woman who travels there after her fiancé calls off their wedding. Another novel set in Sydney is James Bradley’s The Deep Field, about a photographer who is sent there to document fossils and who falls in love with a blind paleontologist.

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New Releases :: Philip Caputo, The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America

Philip Caputo's new book, The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean, will be released on July 16. It recounts his 16,000-mile road trip with his wife and two English setters from Key West to Deadhorse, Alaska, to find out what makes this multifaceted, spread out country work.

Caputo's trip was motivated first by a 1996 visit to a small town at the northern edge of Alaska, where he passed by a local school and heard a group of Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the American flag. He recalled that six months earlier, he had heard a group of Cuban-born children pledge allegiance to the same flag at Key West, Florida. He began thinking about the miraculous diversity of this huge nation and what might hold such a country together. His thoughts were re-awakened years later when his 94-year-old father died and Caputo (nearly 70 himself) realized that the time for him to take that journey was running out. He also began to wonder whether the divisive political environment of 2010 had made it harder for the country to hold together.

Caputo decided to talk with as many people as he could meet along the way to find out what the lives of Americans were like in these times of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and economic turbulence at home. It was, as the author says in the trailer for the book at YouTube, "a marvelous adventure."

More Like That ...

• Caputo is a well known writer and is best known for A Rumor of War, a memoir about his experiences in the United States Marine Corps in the early years of the Vietnam War. In the book's epilogue, Caputo returns to Vietnam in 1975 — almost 10 years after the end of his tour of duty — as a war journalist for a newspaper. Caputo also wrote Ghosts of Tsavo: Stalking the Mystery Lions of East Africa, which mixes travel narrative and scientific speculation as he examines the lives of these predator cats.

• John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America may be the most famous road trip across America. The title recounts his 1960 journey with his poodle Charley, which the author took to get back in touch with the country: “I’ve lost the flavor and taste and sound of it. I’m going to learn about my own country.” Steinbeck speculates on a variety of topics, including the sheer size of the country, the loss of regional speech, and the love of people for their dogs. His skill as a writer is evident throughout the book, which provides an absorbing portrait of the country and its people just before the Vietnam War.
• Bill Barich was inspired by Travels with Charley to drive across the United States and report on the America revealed in its small towns in Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck’s America.
• William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways: A Journey into America shares a sense of ... with Caputo's new book, but Heat-Moon began his road trip in 1978, after he lost both his wife and his job. This double tragedy led him to embark on a 13,000-mile journey through the back roads of 38 American states. The book is marked by the author's respect for the individuals he meets along the way, his willingness to listen to their stories, his reflections on small-town and rural America, and his own personal issues. All of these threads are woven together to create a wonderfully profound appreciation of the nation’s small-town charm, which Heat-Moon sees as being rapidly lost.
• Caputo's route in the book begins in Miami Beach and ends in Alaska. Much of the route follows the path of Lewis and Clark, and their journals may be of interest to readers interested in an earlier exploration of these lands. The Journals of Lewis and Clark are available in book format but are also available online at http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/.

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Happy Birthday, Louise Erdrich

Writer Louise Erdrich turned 59 yesterday. Erdrich is best known for her novels, which include:

• The Round House, which received the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012 and tells the story of a young boy who is prematurely thrust into adulthood following a brutal assault on his mother.
• The Plague of Doves, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009 and explores racial discord and changing fortunes in a corner of North Dakota where the lives of Native Americans and whites have long been intertwined.
• Love Medicine, which tells the stories of several families living on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota.
• The Beet Queen, which focuses on the German American community living near that reservation.

Erdrich has also written a very fine travel narrative, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Traveling Through the Land of my Ancestors (2003). The book is an excellent example of a type of travel narrative in which the author explores the country of her ancestors. In Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, Erdrich journeys with her 18-month-old daughter and the girl’s father, who is a traditional healer and guide, to the islands of her ancestors in southern Ontario to visit the sacred rock paintings that her people have worshipped for centuries. The book is an intimate and powerful account of the pilgrimage and includes many reflections on Erdrich's love of books (she owns a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis), her life as a writer, the tradition of storytelling that has been passed down by the Ojibwe, and other aspects of Ojibwe language, culture, and traditions.

More Like That ...

• Readers who enjoy Erdrich's ability to compare the traditions and values of her Ojibwe ancestors with her own life may find Ariel Dorfman's Desert Memories: JourneysThrough the Chilean North of interest. Dorfman explores the Atacama Desert of his native Chile and uses the trip to explore both the origins of modern Chile and his wife’s European ancestors.
• Steve Fallon and David Monagan both return to the land of their ancestors — Ireland — and reflect on their experiences in two books. Fallon was brought up in an Irish home in Boston and became fascinated with the Gaelic language, which led him to travel to Ireland and write Home with Alice: A Journey in Gaelic Ireland; the book is his meditation on Irish identity and includes travels with the ghost of his deceased aunt. Monagan returned to the land of his ancestors in Cork, Ireland, and wrote about the experience (particularly the contrast between the Ireland of the present and that of his memory) in Jaywalking with the Irish.
• Readers interested in the Ojibwe tribe should consider Ignatia Broker’s Night Flying Woman: An Ojibway Narrative, which tells the story of her great-great-grandmother, who witnessed enormous changes and losses for her people.

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More Like ... Kon-Tiki

In April, "Kon-Tiki," a dramatization of Thor Heyerdahl's famous 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean, was released in the United States. NPR's reviewer, Ian Buckwalter, calls the film "a rousing and thoroughly enjoyable Old Hollywood-style adventure" while questioning some of its changes to the actual story line and characters.

The expedition dramatized by the film was, of course, the focus of Heyerdahl’s classic book, Kon-Tiki, published in 1950. Heyerdahl and five companions made the 4,300-mile trip on a raft made of 40-foot long logs, and the book follows the project from the building of the raft itself through their 100-plus days at sea, to their crash landing on an island in the South Pacific. The book is written in a simple and direct style, without being overly dramatic, and the reader will want to remember that what the author called a “suicidal expedition” was taken in the days before GPS, helicopter rescues, and other technological back-ups.

For more like Heyerdahl's classic, Kon-Tiki, readers might try any of the following:

• Other books by Thor Heyerdahl, who led several expeditions to test his theories. Aku-Aku (1958) recounts an expedition from the mid-1950s to Easter Island and other Polynesian islands to research Heyerdahl's idea that the great stone statues at Easter Island were carved by people who originally came from Peru. The Ra Expeditions (1971) chronicles his two attempts to cross the Atlantic Ocean on papyrus boats to show that people from Africa could have sailed to the New World.

• T. R. Pearson's Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting (2006). Pearson tells the story of William Willis, who became a sailor at 15 and who, at 60, sailed alone across the Pacific to American Samoa in a primitive raft that he built, going 2,200 miles farther than Thor Heyerdahl had done. At 70, Willis took a second raft across 11,000 miles of ocean from South America to Australia, and at 75, on his third attempt at a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a small rowboat, he died and was lost at sea. Pearson’s summary of Willis’s life is fascinating and told with just enough humor.
• P. J. Capelotti's Sea Drift: Rafting Adventures in the Wake of Kon-Tiki (2001). Willis was not the only individual inspired by Thor Heyerdahl to raft across the Pacific and the Atlantic, and Capelotti recounts the stories of Willis and more than 40 others who sought between 1947 and 2000 to sail the world's oceans in rafts made from everything from straw to bamboo. While this is a university press book, Capelotti writes in a breezy, pleasant style that should be accessible to most readers.
• Alec Wilkinson's The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino (2007). David Pearlman (aka Poppa Neutrino) was another adventurer who was inspired by Heyerdahl, and Alec Wilkinson tells how he became the only person to sail across the Atlantic on a raft made from garbage.
• "Kon-Tiki," an earlier documentary of Heyerdahl's journey, released in 1950 and winner of the Best Documentary Feature at the 1951 Academy Awards (still the only feature film from Norway to win an Academy Award).

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New Releases :: Peter Hessler, Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West

Travel writer Peter Hessler's collection of pieces from The New Yorker is being released in May as Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West. The 18 essays, originally published between 2002 and 2012, focus primarily on China, where Hessler lived for some 15 years, but they also cover topics as varied as life in a Colorado uranium town and the experience of moving from China back the United States.

The opening essay, "Wild Flavor" tells of Hessler's visit to a rat restaurant in southern China, where the waitress casually asks whether he wants a big rat or a small rat. That question captures the often jarring cultural differences that are the focus of these often hilarious and always thoughtful essays.

Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker and served as that magazine's Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007. He is a contributing writer for National Geographic and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011.

Hessler is also the author of three other travel narratives, all of which are essential for a better understanding of China.

• River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (2001) recounts Hessler's two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in a Sichuan province town on China’s Yangtze River, where he taught English literature at a local college only three years after China allowed the Peace Corps into the country. The book draws from the journals that Hessler kept during his stay and describes his experience as one of only two foreigners in the city in the past 50 years. The book covers Hessler's struggles learning the language and culture, the characters he met (the dutiful students, the local noodle shop owner with big dreams, the optimistic and patriotic party member), and the congested, polluted city itself. A poignant sense of transience also pervades the book, as we are reminded that the very existence of the town is threatened by the Three Gorges Dam, which was being built while Hessler lived there. River Town was a 2001 New York Times Notable Book and a 2002 American Library Association Notable Book.



• Oracle Bones: A Journey between China’s Past and Present (2006) focuses on everyday people and reveals a modern China that is still linked to its past. Hessler tells about the struggles of his students as they leave school and enter the work place, discusses his friend (from one of China’s ethnic minorities) who migrated to the United States with fake documents, and shares the story of the oracle bones scholar who committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution. Hessler also tells his own story in this book, including a visit to the underground city in Anyang, going undercover at the Falun Gong demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, and observing anti-American protests in Nanjing. Much as ancient diviners used the oracle bones of the book’s title to predict the future, Hessler uses these stories to speculate on the future of China. Oracle Bones was a 2006 New York Times Notable Book, a 2007 American Library Association Notable Book, and a finalist for the National Book Award.



• Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory (2010) is actually the story of several journeys over a seven-year period that began when Hessler acquired his Chinese driver’s license in 2001 and began exploring the country. Much of the focus of the book is on driving and particularly on how the Chinese people “take such joy in driving badly,” rarely using turn signals or headlights, tailgating and honking, and passing constantly. Beneath the entertaining surface, however, is a book about the effect of the rapid pace of change in China on the lives of ordinary citizens, particularly those Hessler met in the small town north of Beijing where he rented a house and where, as Hessler points out, “It was all but impossible for people to keep their bearings ..." Country Driving was a 2010 New York Times Notable Book.

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Six Books by ... Paul Theroux

Travel writer Paul Theroux's The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari will be released in early May. The book recounts his trip by train from Cape Town through South Africa and parts of western Africa. The journey represents a return trip for Theroux, who first traveled to Africa some 50 years ago as a Peace Corps volunteer, and promises to be as descriptive and erudite as his earlier travel narratives.

• Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (2003) is Theroux's best known African travel narrative. In the book, he travels by train and various other conveyances from Egypt to the southern tip of Africa. Much of the book is cynical (particularly about aid workers), but Theroux's insights into the impact of decades of Western intervention in Africa are valuable, as are his observations on the changes he saw in Africa since his earlier visits: “Africa is materially more decrepit than it was when I first knew it, hungrier, poorer, less educated, more pessimistic, more corrupt, and you can’t tell the politicians from the witch doctors.”
• The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) is Theroux’s first (and, for some critics, his finest) travel narrative and describes a four-month train trip across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, which the author took in 1975. The book features some of the world’s best-known railway lines, including the Orient Express, the Tehran Express, India’s Grand Trunk Express, and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Theroux’s main subjects are the trains themselves and the passengers he encountered, and he shares his usual strong opinions of people and places.
• Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar (2008) retraces the journey described in The Great Railway Bazaar 30 years later. Theroux describes the changes that have taken place in Europe and Asia since that first trip and provides colorful descriptions of the trains, cities, and countries that are part of his itinerary. He also encounters some very interesting people, including writers such as Pico Iyer and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. As always with Theroux, some readers will be bothered by his sometimes bellicose and egotistical attitude, while others will find his strong personality and insightful observations to be quite compelling.
  
• The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas (1979) describes Theroux's journey by rail from his childhood home in Massachusetts to the small town of Esquel, Argentina, and provides detailed descriptions of the trains he rode, the places he passed through, and especially the people he met (a woman in Veracruz looking for a long-lost love, a bogus priest in Colombia, the author Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina). Theroux, as usual, is perceptive, but he is also curmudgeonly, and many readers may be turned off by his sarcasm and critical remarks about his fellow travelers.
• Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China (1988) follows Theroux through China and Tibet by train in the late 1980s, a decade after the death of Mao. He visits both major cities like Beijing and Guangzhou as well as remote villages along little-used rail lines. He includes fascinating portraits of the people he met and spoke with, particularly about the changes they had experienced.
• Not all of Theroux's writings are about rail travel, and The Pillars of Hercules (1995) is a good example. In this book, he sets off to explore the Mediterranean coast by foot, train, and boat, zigzagging around areas of political conflict and spending much of his time visiting the islands of that sea. Theroux is characteristically testy, but his observations are keen and thoughtful, particularly when he interviews the writers he sought out, including Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz in Egypt, Emile Habbiby in Israel, and Paul Bowles in Morocco.

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