Compulsively Aimless

Vintage Books created a series of affordable paper back travel books--some of which have become modern travel classics.  I unintentionally started buying them because the travel topics interested me.  The series contains over 170 books.  Here's my collection: 1.  Iron & Silk, Mark Salzman (1986).  Before China was fully opened and before Peter Hessler wrote his insightful books on China, a young American martial arts student, Mark Salzman, went to live and travel in China.  The result is a series of sketches about his experience.  Salzman's experience is richer for his fluency in Mandarin. Bought used but can't remember where.  Contains a book stamp of the previous owner, Nell P. K. from Ormand Beach, Florida.   2.  Dazinger's Travels: Beyond Forbidden Frontiers, Nick Danzinger (1987).  In a fine tradition of English intrepid eccentric travelers, Danzinger creates his own epic trip He travels from Turkey to Beijing on f...

Ship's logs began as a way for captains to record the distances and directions they traveled. It didn't take long for captains and ordinary sailors to keep their own journals describing their adventures. Christopher Columbus's log book is lost to history but would certainly be priceless today. Captain Cook's log of the Endeavor was must reading in England at the end of the Eighteenth Century. Ship journals were, for me, the perfect intersection between travel and fascination with the sea. Here's a very miscellaneous list. 1. The Nagle Journal: A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor from the year 1775 to 1841 (1988). Nagle joined the British Navy at the time of the American Revolution and served in American waters, later fought with Commodore Nelson's fleet during the Napoleonic Wars. His adventures took him to India, China and Australia. He died peacefully at the age of 80 in Canton, Ohio. Excellent color plates illustrating the era Nagle serv...

Islands set the stage for heaven or hell and anything in between.  A Hawaiian paradise or the desert island of Robinson Crusoe.  A Jimmy Buffet-hipster way of life or the prison fortress of Alcatraz.  Islands have been manageable microcosm for authors through the ages--Shakespeare created Prospero's Island for the Tempest, Homer stranded Odysseus on an island as a prisoner of Calypso. My experience with islands started as a kid traveling to the islands of the Great Lakes.  A thirty minute boat ride from my hometown was Kelly's Island Put-in-Bay the next stop.  On Michigan's Mackinac Island, as soon as you set foot on the island, it seemed to be in separate world with its own rules.  Mackinac had no cars--only horses, which reinforced the feeling.  My daughter began to walk on Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan.  More recently, I traveled with my father to the island paradise of Bikini in the western Pacific.  He was statione...

One of the joys of browsing in bookshops is that you discover interests you didn't know you had.  I didn't know I had an interest in Southeast Asia until I saw a clump of books in a used bookshop in Seattle.  It sparked an interest and I went on a brief book buying binge with the following results. 1.  Chasing the Dragon: Into the Heart of the Golden Triangle, Christopher Cox (1996).     Cox traveled to the shadowy zone where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet.  An area of drug smuggling, tribes and jungle, Cox reports on a region where few Americans have ventured.  Bought new. 2.  The Forgotten Kingdom, John Murray (1957).   A rare and revealing account of of a largely forgotten kingdom.  Murray's book draws on the life of  a Russian-born Depot Master in the Tibetan province of Nakhi--on the border of China and Tibet.  Great black and white photos showing village markets and the arduous trail on the way to Nakhi.  Bo...

Paul Theroux got me hooked on armchair travel.  The first book I read was The Great Railway Bazaar--a great circle route from London, through Europe, south Asia, Japan and back via the Trans-Siberian Railway.  Theroux was doing what I wanted to do and writing about it with a clear and original voice.   Theroux is best known for his train travel books but he is more of an intrepid traveler who stays as close to native means of travel as possible.  Some have described him as described as a curmudgeon but that adds to the draw.  He has definite views about people and places and that creates for a natural tension that keeps you reading.  You want to know his reactions to things even if they're not your reactions.  He is also exceptionally honest in his writing putting even his vainest ideas and insecurities in his narrative.  In my all time top three best travel writers.  Strongly recommend his work.  You won't be bored. 1.  T...