Compulsively Aimless

Travel by train.  Paul Theroux's book, the Great Railway Bazaar was the first travel book that got me hooked on what is still my favorite genre of book.  Mr. Theroux will get his own list of books in the near future.  Meanwhile, sharing a few other train books on my shelf.   1.  Wall to Wall: From Beijing to Berlin by Rail, Mary Morris (1991).  In 1986, Morris traveled east to west through China, Russia, and Eastern Europe.  Bought used at the State Department Bookstore. 2.  Making Tracks: An American Odyssey, Terry Pindell (1990).   Pindell traveled all 30,000 miles of the remaining passenger lines.  A perspective on rail travel at a time when passenger trains were at their lowest.  Bought used at DJ's books in Warrenton. 3.  World's Great Train Journeys: Adventure, Romance, and a Kangaroo or Two, National Geographic (no date).    As you'd expect, stunning photos.  Documents train trips fr...

One of my literary heroes is Fitzroy Maclean.  By the age of 34, he had lived an exceptional life, experiencing enough for several lifetimes.  As a young man, he joined the British foreign service in the mid 1930s where he was posted to the British embassy in Paris.  He became bored with his duties there and requested a transfer to the British embassy in Moscow.  Maclean witnessed Stalin's show trials during the Soviet purges.  At the same time he traveled extensively outside Moscow to remote and forbidden areas of the Soviet Union.  He was always tailed by the Soviet secret police and made a game of trying to lose them.   In 1939, he resigned from diplomatic service to volunteer in the military.  He became one of the founding members of the British SAS (an elite commando team, roughly equivalent to our Special Forces) and raided behind the German and Italian lines in North Africa.  Other wartime exploits including kidnapping a German...

Maybe the most intriguing of the world's great desert is the Gobi.  In the heart of Asia--it's been the setting for great adventures, strange oases, nomads and dromedary camels.  Climate ranges from searing heat to arctic cold.  From a collection on Central Asia books, Gobi Desert books are a niche within a niche.  I still hope to travel the Gobi one day but for now, will travel it in these books.  1.   Gobi: Tracking the Desert, John Man (1997).   Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Mann explores the Gobi, its boundaries, oases, its nomads and retraces the tracks of some earlier explorers.   Color and black and white pictures.  Bought new.  2.  Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions, Charles Gallenkamp, Charles Gallenkamp (2001).   In the 1920's, Roy Chapman staged an audacious series of expeditions into the Gobi using automobiles and camel caravans.  Chapman disc...

As Samuel Johnson said, "a man who is tired of London is tired of life."   I share his view.  London continues to thrive attracting nearly every nationality in globe.  I didn't set out to collect books on London but here's what I've got. 1.  London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd (2000).   Everything from the great city's pre-Norman history to the Middle Ages, historic neighborhoods, theaters, rich and poor.  Ackroyd  effectively uses history and anecdotes to tell the great city's story.  A Christmas gift from my mother, 2002 with the inscription, "In preparation for your next trip to London." 2.  Boswell's London Journal: 1762-1763, Edited by Frederick Pottle (1950).     Twenty-two year old Boswell gives a candid account of his adventures in London during the time of George III.  Bought used as a first edition but can't remember where.  A book seal showing it was from the Library of of William J. Muniak with a...

It must seem as if all my books are in the travel-adventure category.  Here's another group of books that retrace great adventures in history. 1.  Searching for Crusoe: A Journey Among the Last Real Island, Thurston Clarke (2001).  Clarke visits an island off the coast of Chile, Mas a Tierra that inspired Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe .  Appropriately read this book while visiting the island of Bikini in the Marshall Islands with Walter Kropf, October 2005.  Bought used but can't remember where.   2.  The Voyage of the Nina II, Robert Max (1963).   In December 1962, Marx retraced Columbus's voyage in Nina II.   Bought used and can't remember where.  In 1964, inscription says it was owned by JWC Spencer. 3.  From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among Christians of the Middle East, Willman Dalrymple (1997).     In 587 AD, two monks set off on an extraordinary journey that would take them in a journe...

If you buy enough books on one area, you develop sub, sub genres.  Here's a new one--travel, retracing past travel, unique to North America.  Book buying was fueled in part to research my own idea for a book to retrace a grandfather's 1919 car trip across the U.S. 1.  American Journey, Richard Reeves (1982).  150 years after Tocqueville's book, Democracy in America, Richard Reeves retraces Tocqueville journey through America.  Bought used State Department bookstore.      2.  Way Out West: On the Trail of an Errant Ancestor, Michael Shaw Bond (2001).   In 1862, an English aristocrat left home and traveled the prairies and mountain of western Canada.  140 years later, his great-great grandson retraced is steps.  Bought used at Russell Books in Victoria, BC Canada.    3.  The Old Man and the Harley: A Last Ride Through our Fathers' America, John Newkirk (2008).   A 1939 motorcycle t...