The Armchair Traveler

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail bookSome of my favorite books are travel books. Last month I borrowed a guide to Iceland, and looked especially at the remote northern region known as the Westfjords. Now, I’ve never been to Iceland, have no immediate plans to do so, and frankly my partner in all things indicates that I am a lunatic for even thinking about it. But now I now where to find the best place to eat locally caught fish – and, oh look! A pizza joint!

Travel books generally consist of guide books – where to go, where to stay, what and where to eat – and what are sometimes called ‘travel memoirs’, which at minimum consist of “Where I went, stayed and ate”. The best of these are far more interesting than that, of course.

The Daily Telegraph of London did a list of twenty best travel books, from Kerouac’s On the Road through George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia to Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia. Pick any of these and you won’t go wrong. My own choice of these –  the strangely Victorian explorer-out-of-his-time Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands details five years wandering among the Bedouin of the desert known as The Empty Quarter.

Lastly I’ll mention my favorite travel book, the hard to find  The Happy Traveller (1923) by the Reverend Frank Tatchell, an eccentric English clergyman who – paying for a curate to cover his duties – spent much time travelling alone, often in disguise as a tramp. If you want advice as to what to do if attacked by wild dogs or middle eastern mobs, this is the place to start!

A Selection of Great Adventures!

Kim bookThis week we looked at classic adventure books for young readers, as recommended by now-grown people who look fondly on them.

The nineteenth century ‘Great Game’ of espionage is recalled in Kim, which is still popular after more than a hundred years.

Several female readers suggested   Nancy Drew: she’s been a role model since 1930, and the pigtailed Swedish strong-girl Pippi Longstocking was also highly recommended by several people

The Other Side Of The Mountain  is a stirring tale of a boy who runs away from city life to live in an old cabin in the Catskills. And finally, for a recent ‘old school’ adventure – a very funny adventure, we suggested Howard Whitehouse’s The Strictest School in the World from Kids Can Press.

There were many other suggestions for classic children’s adventures. Arthur Ransome’s  Swallows and Amazons was mentioned more than once. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Kidnapped had fans. Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction was suggested. Chances are, if you ask any adult reader what they liked as a kid, they’ll have some titles for you!

“The Strictest School in the World”

Nominated by sixteen year old Susan Z, Howard Whitehouse’s The Strictest School in the World  is a Victorian science-fantasy  novel. It’s not old – 2006 – but it’s written in a tradition of brave youngsters (Emmaline, the fourteen year old pioneer of aviation and Rubberbones, her ‘indesruckible’ test pilot). When Emmaline is sent to St. Grimelda’s, a savagely cruel school for girls, she works to escape as her outside friends attempt to help. A prison break novel about an 1890s boarding school, this hilarious romp is the first in a series known as the ‘Madcap Misadventures’.

The Kids Can Press.website offers a chance to read a sample chapter and to look at the other two books in the series.

My Side of the Mountain

Jean Craighead George’s 1960 Newberry Medal winner was recommended by several people, including Nancy N and librarian Veronica R.  It’s the story of Sam, aNew York Cityboy who, hating life in a cramped apartment, takes off for theCatskill Mountainsand a survivalist existence in a cabin in the woods.

Those who like this book like it a lot; one Goodreads contributor writes, “I absolutely fell in love with this book. Head over heels. I bought my own copy because I couldn’t stand that the rest of the class was reading it SO SLOWLY, and for years afterward I re-read that book until the spine broke and pages went missing.”

Barnes and Noble offers a copy.

Pippi Longstocking

Written by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, the first Pippi Longstocking book was initially turned down in 1944 in one of those ‘worst decisions’ moments by an eminent Stockholm publisher. Since that time Pippi has been featured in eleven books translated into sixty four languages, television shows inGermanyand theUSand – remarkably – both US and Soviet-made movies.

Pippi is nine, immensely strong, and has a wonderful time making adults appear stupid.

“When she’s not dancing with the burglars who were just trying to rob her house, she’s attempting to learn the “pluttification” tables at school; fighting Adolf, the strongest man in the world at the circus; or playing tag with police officers. Pippi’s high-spirited, good-natured hijinks cause as much trouble as fun, but a more generous child you won’t find anywhere.”

Amazon offers a paperback edition in the Puffin Modern Classics series.

The Nancy Drew Mysteries

Collected in the late sixties and early seventies, these stories of a smart, resourceful girl detective who not only didn’t need to be rescued, but often came to help her hapless boyfriend. “Attractive, titian-haired”Nancyis older than her audience (that’s a general rule – kids like to read about someone a bit older than themselves, never younger) and drives a convertible.

First appearing in 1930, fifty-six Nancy Drew novels were produced, written by several writers under the pen-name of Carolyn Keene.

Kim

Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is a boy-and-old-man tale of loyalty and courage set inIndia during the British Raj. Kim is an orphan boy, assumed to be Indian but actually the son of an Irish soldier, who runs through city streets working as a messenger for the secret service. That’s right – a boy secret agent! But between stealing documents from Russian agents, Kim accompanies a wise old Tibetan lama along the Grand Trunk Road, learning wisdom and spiritual truth from the elderly monk. A classic that retains all its excitement!

Audiobooks Now has a copy you can listen to.

Old School Adventure Stories for Young Readers

Dangerous Book for Boys
This week we’ll look at children’s books in the classic style, where adventurous youngsters take on the world in a healthy, outdoorsy, risk-of something-terrible-happening sort of way. These aren’t the Beatrix Potter type of story, where apparently naughty children who disobey their wise parents run into trouble and have to be rescued. No, these are kids who are very much in charge of their own destiny. Adults are often at the edge of the picture, either oblivious to what’s going on, or – quite often – the cause of all the peril. At best, adults are needed to do things that kids can’t do themselves, like drive cars or arrest villains.

After all, the most popular children’s books of our lifetime feature deliberately old-fashioned elements; Harry Potter goes to a boarding school, plays team sports, and fights an evil that most of the world is completely unaware of. Kids love danger – that’s why Conn and Hal Iggulden’s Dangerous Book For Boys was so successful. They love the sense of excitement that comes from challenging themselves, and pushing beyond the PlayStation culture. Encouraging them to read stories with these elements stimulates their imagination and gets them thinking about doing more active, adventurous things.

I decided to ask a broad selection of people – mostly writers and librarians, but all sorts of book-loving folk – for their nominations. Quite a lot of great books were suggested that don’t quite meet the criteria, either because they featured non-humans as their protagonists (is Paddington a hero? How about Curious George?). Others – like the sci-fi classic “Ender’s Game” aren’t really old school enough.

Stay with us this week for a mixture of old-school classics and some newer titles.

Sporting Books

Play Their Hearts Out bookSports books have been this week’ s theme. We began with a look at why sports books have a potency beyond mere athleticism with The Sports Illustrated list of 100 best sports books and we recommended the audiobook version of “The Boys of Summer”, available at AudioBooksNow.

We looked at ways of learning or improving your own game, whether it’s golf, tennis or Bocce.

Most popular sports books are biographies and memoirs, so we came up with recommendations for the very best.

Goodreads gave us lists of favorite sports fiction voted on by members and books on women in sports. Joe Layden’s “Women in Sports: The Complete Book on the World’s Greatest Female Athletes” came out as a clear recommendation.

Lastly we looked at sport in a wider context, and came up with something quite unusual – Final Whistle, Stephen Cooper’s elegy to members of a London rugby club who volunteered to serve in the First World War, and did not return.

And don’t forget to check out our collections of sports audiobooks, including special sections on baseball and golf!

Sport and the Rest of the World

This is what academic types like to call “Sport and Society”. It’s that part where the activities of athletes connects with real life, and makes their skills more than just “Good at running around with a ball.”

My recommendation here is a little out of the mainstream. The Final Whistle is a book about rugby, which is certainly not an everyday sport in North America. But, really, it’s not. It’s about fifteen players from the Roslyn Park club in London, who served and died in the First World War. Nominated for the Times Sports Book of the Year.

“This is the story of fifteen men killed in the Great War. All played rugby for one London club; none lived to hear the final whistle. Rugby brought them together; rugby led the rush to war. —- together their stories paint a portrait in miniature of the entire war. An old press cutting gave numbers – 350 served, 72 died – but no names. So began a quest to rediscover these men and capture their lives, from their vanished Edwardian youth and vigour, to the war they fought and how they died.’

‘Haunting and beautiful . . . this tells the story of men from one rugby club but it is a universal narrative of heroism and loss. He writes superbly and has produced a book of commendable scholarship. I cannot recommend it enough.’ Fergal Keane”