The Reader's Shelf—Off the Beaten Track: Unconventional Travel Narratives

Edited by Nancy Pearl -- Library Journal, 12/15/2006

Since the dawn of time, men and women have traveled the world for fame, fortune, and to satisfy their curiosity. People also travel for other, less conventional, but no less compelling reasons: a fascination with a person or place, to settle a bet, and for what can only be called whimsy.

In a classic of travel writing during the period between the world wars, The Road to Oxiana (Oxford Univ. 1982. ISBN 0-19-503067-2. pap. $17.95), Robert Byron and a friend venture by car into the heart of Southwest Asia (Iran and Afghanistan), then as now an unsettled and largely unknown place.

Eric Newby felt a similar wanderlust in 1950s London. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (Lonely Planet. 1998. ISBN 0-86442-604-6. pap. $12.95) recounts the author’s woefully unprepared trip to the Himalayas in Afghanistan. The British gift for wry understatement is applied to the amazing country he traveled through as well as to his misadventures.

Last Chance to See (Ballantine. 1992. ISBN 0-345-37198-4. pap. $13.95) is as funny as travel writing can be but with a serious purpose. The late sf writer Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine traveled the world searching out endangered species in their diminishing natural habitat to call attention to the fragility of their existence.

John McPhee has written a series of books chronicling the geology of the United States. In Rising from the Plains (Farrar. 1987. ISBN 0-374-52065-8. pap. $14), he examines Wyoming, where the great plains of the Midwest meet the eastern slope of the Rockies. McPhee has a knack for finding interesting sidelights, and the human exploration and settlement of the area are covered along with its unique geology.

Travel writer Tim Cahill may explore exotic places around the world, but his experiences and reactions will be familiar to anyone who has survived a long family car trip. A Wolverine is Eating My Leg (Vintage. 1989. ISBN 0-679-72026-X. pap. $14) is a collection of his misadventures from the Americas to Asia and beneath the sea.

Peter Hopkirk has written extensively about exploration and intrigue in Central Asia. Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling’s Great Game (Univ. of Michigan. 1999. ISBN 0-472-08634-0. pap. $19.95) investigates the source of Hopkirk’s lifelong fascination with Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, visiting locales where the novel’s events occurred and discovering some of the actual historical figures who inspired Kipling’s characters.

Michael Paterniti recounts one of the oddest trips he, or anyone else, has taken in Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain (Delta: Dell. 2001. ISBN 0-385-33303-X. pap. $10.95). Accompanied by the 84-year-old doctor who performed the autopsy on Einstein and stole the scientist’s brain, Paterniti travels across the country to return it (housed in a Tupperware bowl) to the great man’s granddaughter.

When Scottish author Duncan McLean won a literary prize, he knew immediately what he wanted to do with the money: travel to Texas to explore the roots of one of his favorite musicians, Bob Wills. Lone Star Swing (Norton. 1998. ISBN 0-393-31756-0. pap. $14) documents McLean’s love for Western swing and the results of his search along the back roads of America.

Assassination Vacation (S. & S. 2005. ISBN 0-7432-6003-1. $21) combines Sarah Vowell’s love of travel and U.S. history as she visits the locations and sheds light on the personalities connected to the assassinations of presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.

Food and travel collide in Stuart Stevens’s Feeding Frenzy (Ballantine. 1998. ISBN 0-345-42554-5. pap. $19) as three New Yorkers set themselves the daunting task of driving across Europe in a red Mustang and eating at all 29 Michelen three-star restaurants in 29 days.

As the result of an ill-considered bar bet, British actor/author Tony Hawks spends 30 days going Round Ireland with a Fridge (Griffin: St. Martin’s. 2001. ISBN 0-312-27492-0. pap. $13.95), meeting many eccentric characters (eccentric even for someone traveling with a large household appliance) and even becoming a minor media celebrity.

Ralph Leighton, a friend of late physicist Richard Feynman, recalls in Tuva or Bust: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey (Norton. 2000. ISBN 0-393-32069-3. pap. $13.95) how they planned and executed their campaign to reach remote Tannu-Tuva in Siberia, known, if at all, for the unearthly throat singing of its native people.