Not following Personal Landscapes on Substack? You’re missing out on a pile of exciting book-related content, like my recent long form piece What I Learned From Paul Theroux. I’ve also published a growing archive of book reviews, including: The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy, The Riverbones by Andrew Westoll, Mongolia: Travels in an Untamed Land by Jasper Becker, and The Saddest Pleasure by...
Writing in the Aeolian Islands I wrote my 500th blog on this site a couple weeks ago. In case you’re wondering, it was the one about the Stalin Museum in Georgia. You can search my archives by clicking the little hamburger icon in the menu up top. It’ll open an entire world of options. Anyway, I thought I should take a look back at what I’ve learned from doing this — if anything...
Personal Landscapes seems to be growing a following. The word is spreading slowly but surely… An unbending onslaught of babble about books. A cacophony of cultured conversation. Voice from another room: This tiresome trireme of tomfoolery isn’t helping. Fine. Be like that. I just wanted to let you know the podcast has been added to this carefully curated list over at Nomad Flag ==> The Best...
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. As the year comes to a close, and as dark Berlin huddles beneath a pandemic sky, I’d like to take a moment to share my top reads from the past twelve months. Each book made my list because it was memorable, important, or just thoroughly enjoyable. And each is worth your time. I...
The novelist and island writer Lawrence Durrell believed we are each aligned with certain places. This is where we do our best work because we resonate with the Spirit of Place. He believed landscape is not a projection of the psyche — an interpretation of your surroundings based on your interior — but a tutelary spirit which guides the growth of personality and art. This isn’t an original...
The future looks bleak for travel writing — at least, for the highly commercialized side — but I don’t think this is true for travel literature. They aren’t the same thing. What’s on the ropes? Most commercial travel writing exists symbiotically with the tourism industry, living off press junkets, review writing and advertising. It’s designed to sell a product or a destination. This side of...
“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. The twenty-four year old Swiss...
I’d only been in London for a few hours, and I was already thinking I’d have to scrap a year’s work. We were at the British Museum, sitting one row away from Michael Palin and Sara Wheeler. The topic of their sold out talk was, “What Makes Great Travel Writing.” I’m finishing up a new book about Malta, and I expected to nod knowingly along with the speakers, patting myself on the back for a draft...
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. They made my list because they were either memorable, important, or just thoroughly...
Lawrence Millman is the author of eleven books, including Northern Latitudes, Last Places, An Evening Among Headhunters, and Lost in the Arctic. His travel articles have appeared in such magazines as Smithsonian, National Geographic Adventure, The Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, and Islands. He has made 30 trips and expeditions to the Arctic and Subarctic, discovered a previously unknown...