Some Summer Reading

A couple of emails have asked for recommendations for the summer. Here are some goodies you may have missed; all are available by paperback

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris

Jan Morris is one of the twentieth century’s greatest travel writers. These days Morris has retired to her house in North Wales and although still writing Trieste was her last travel book. Trieste was deliberately chosen as the scene for her last travel book. Morris first came here as a soldier in 1945

“It offers no unforgettable landmark, no universally familiar melody, no unmistakable cuisine, hardly a single native name that anyone knows.”

Yet Trieste is one of Morris’ favourite cities a place that has constantly changed ownership over the centuries. This place has been a haven for writers, James Joyce included. Morris describes how Joyce and wife turned up, Joyce leaving her at the station to look for accommodation but getting side tracked by a came of cards (I think). It is that kind of place.

European history at its best. This is a stupendous book. If you’ve not read Morris before the treat yourself!

Colin Thubron

For my money Thubron is be best travel writer of his generation, and the best one alive who is still traveling and writing. In recent years he has specialised in out of the way places in Asia such as China, Siberia and many of the Muslim states that were once part of the Soviet Republic.

In his younger days Thubron was more of a hiker and wild camper, well some of the time. Many of the journeys he undertook then — particularly in the Middle East — are now impossible. As such these books are not only remarkable but a reminder of how much diplomacy has failed us!

Try any of these:

The Hills of Adonis: A Journey in Lebanon

Jerusalem

Journey into Cyprus

Mirror to Damascus

Patrick Leigh Femor — the Great Walk

Leigh Fermor is one of the greatest English stylists writing today. He is rightly revered as a travel writer for a series of books published after World War II. Fermor is also a great linguist and spent the war working behind enemy lines in Greece.

Just prior to WWII, as a very young man, Leigh Fermor set out to walk from home to Constantinople, across Europe as the Nazis were preparing for war.

Leigh Fermor only began to write up this account many years later and partially as a result we have the most stunning books, wonderfully scholarly, beautiful to read. And they’re great stories.

If you fancy yourself as a long distant walker you must read these. I reckon these are two of the best books I have ever read from any genre.

A Time of Gifts — the first volume from the Hook of holland to the Middle Danube.

Between the Woods and the Water, The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates.

There is a third volume to come. Leigh Fermor’s diaries were left behind in Rumania as he had to flee the Germans and he never thought he would find them again. After the Berlin Wall fell the Telegraph flew him out to Rumania, he found the house and was astonished to find that the family had cared for his diaries like treasure, just in case he ever came back.

Leigh Fermor fans are desperate for the third volume to be finished, quite honestly before he dies. I hope he does though I’ve not heard any mention of it for a while. still, if all we have are these two volumes it is a great achievement.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit

I reviewed this some time ago on Amazon:

This book is rather humbly subtitled a history of walking. But it is much more than that, this is a wonderful work of philosophy, imagination and wonder.
A history this book is rich and wide ranging. Yes we do get an almost Chatwin-esque detail of how walking has entered the western consciousness, but we also gain some wonderful insights into both the society of yesterday and today.

Consider just one little fragment: the significance of womens’ love of shopping! Apparently, walking to the shops was virtually the only activity which Victorian society felt it appropriate that allowed women to venture out of the home on their own. So ‘doing shopping’ is about liberation, about revolution and gentle rebellion. Radical walking is certainly a feature of this book.

For me, there is nothing like walking hiking or treking. As Chatwin used to suggest, it is the most natural means of movement and transport. Even Bruce Chatwin at his most fantastical would have been astonished by the scope of this book.

Since Wanderlust’s publication I have bought this for several walkers and the first thing they have done after finishing it is to have bought another copy for a friend. If you are a walker then this is an essential text.

But just because this is about walking doesn’t mean that this is somehow boring or of a certain nice. Consider some of the Chapter headings. yes they include titles like ‘The Legs of William Wordsworth’ and ‘Of Walking Clubs and Land Wars’. But here there is also ‘Paris, or Botanizing on the Ashphalt’, ‘The Mind at Three Miles an Hour’, ‘Walking After Midnight: Women, Sex and Public Space’ and, lastly, ‘Las Vegas, or the Longest Distance Between Two Points’.

This is unique. It is fascinating, authoritative, quirky and entertaining.

If you like walking, over mountains or just strolling after lunch, than this is a book for you. Truly original.