Category Archives: Travel/ Exploration

Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Teresa

My future was a matter of complete indifference to me. I felt neither anxiety or fear. In any case there was nothing I could do. In my mind I retraced my strange journey from Moscow, always south, always further south, … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 2 Comments

Grandma Gatewood’s Walk

Posted on January 22, 2019 by Teresa

Every once in a while, I like to introduce a little bookish chaos into my life, and one fun way to do so is by ordering a Bas Bleu surprise package. So many of the books in their catalog look … Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 5 Comments

The Innocents Abroad

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Jenny

Mark Twain’s story of a cruise on the USS Quaker City from the United States to Europe, down through the Mediterranean, to the Holy Land, and home again, is something I’ve read about all my life. Elnora has her mother … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 8 Comments

The Wild Places

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Jenny

The Wild Places, like the other two books I’ve read by Robert Macfarlane (Mountains of the Mind and The Old Ways), is a delicious combination of personal essay, nature writing, and cultural history. I feel I could read his writing … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 2 Comments

Travels in West Africa

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Jenny

The last time I read a travelogue by an intrepid Victorian lady explorer, I had mixed feelings about it. Amelia B. Edwards’s A Thousand Miles Up the Nile was a fascinating look at 19th-century Egypt and what it was like … Continue reading →

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 14 Comments

The Old Ways

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Jenny

I recently reviewed Robert Macfarlane’s book, Mountains of the Mind, which is part personal essay and part cultural history. It asks a number of questions about mountains: What is it about mountains that draws us? How do mountains shape us? … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 9 Comments

A Thousand Miles Up the Nile

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Jenny

Amelia Edwards went to Egypt in the winter of 1873-74. She was already known for her novels and for a much-anthologized story called “The Phantom Coach,” and she intended to write about this trip. But what she saw changed her … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 11 Comments

Mountains of the Mind

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Jenny

For years, I’ve been a lover of the literature of exploration. I’ve read many books in which men (and some women, but mostly men) hurl themselves at intemperate climates and impossible peaks. In Mountains of the Mind, Robert Macfarlane goes … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | Leave a comment

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Jenny

This book, perhaps Isabella Bird’s most famous, is actually her fourth. By the time she wrote it in 1879, she had already travelled from her native England to Australia, to Hawaii, 800 miles on horseback through the Colorado Rockies, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 14 Comments

The Darkest Jungle

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Jenny

In Todd Balf’s book The Darkest Jungle, he explains that by 1854, after the spectacular and expensive failure of the Franklin expedition, the search for the Northwest Passage was sliding off the front pages. The new great hope was Panama. … Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, History, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration | 4 Comments