These are the best books I read in 2020
Do you have a book addiction? Well I’m here to make it worse.
I love a good reading list like a hobo loves Aqua Velva.
Writer, Explorer and Travel Philosopher
Cut Stones and Crossroads
August 4, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Cut Stones and Crossroads by Ronald Wright
Ronald Wright traveled Peru in the 1970’s and 80’s, fresh from university with a degree in archaeology, feeding an obsession with the Inca Empire sparked by a random adventure novel he’d read in his teens.
Travels With Myself And Another
February 25, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn
How did I live for 47 years without reading Martha Gellhorn?
She’s best known in some circles for her brief wartime marriage to the writer Ernest Hemingway, much to her chagrin. But she is better known as a brilliant war correspondent and travel writer, though she wanted to be remembered as a novelist.
Will Europe End With Marching Boots — or Malaise?
November 5, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989?
I was sitting in the back room of our old house watching music videos on TV.
We didn’t have the specialty channels back then, but the cable company was running a free promo all week, and we could watch the movie channel and the music channel for free.
So It Goes by Nicolas Bouvier
October 29, 2019 by 4 Comments
“So it goes” recurs like a refrain throughout this collection of essays, and I found myself wishing it would go on and on.
Nicolas Bouvier is one of those legendary writers whose name circulates among travelers, but few of my North American road friends had ever heard of him. It was European friends who told me about his classic road trip book, The Way of the World.
Not a Hazardous Sport
March 21, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Not a Hazardous Sport by Nigel Barley
Not a Hazardous Sport brings to a close Nigel Barley’s series of anthropological journeys that began with The Innocent Anthropologist and continued in A Plague of Caterpillars.
A Plague of Caterpillars
February 20, 2019 by Leave a Comment
A Plague of Caterpillars by Nigel Barley
Nigel Barley returns to Cameroon in this hilarious follow up to The Innocent Anthropologist.
“Returns” is a bit of a misnomer. In truth, he’d only just left.
Getting the Drift in London
February 8, 2019 by Leave a Comment
The Great Court of London’s British Museum…
I’d only been in London for a few hours, and I was already thinking I’d have to scrap a year’s work.
The Innocent Anthropologist
February 1, 2019 by Leave a Comment
The Innocent Anthropologist by Nigel Barley
Nigel Barley was a rather unhappy “desk anthropologist” at a British university.
His fieldwork-hardened older colleagues never stopped reminding him of this, because back in their day, it wasn’t enough to camp out in a library cordoned off by stacks of journals. You had to get out and live with the natives.
The Best Books I Read in 2018
January 1, 2019 by 4 Comments
Best Books 2018
It’s that time again.
I typically read about 100 books a year. Everything from travel literature to poetry, history, psychology, fiction and memoir.
I love reading lists and recommendations, and I bet a few of you do, too. So at year’s end, I like to take a moment to share my top reads of the past twelve months.
