Reviews van reisliteratuur

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Op zaterdag 19 november 2005 16:56 schreef La_Guiri het volgende:
Blijft een leuk topic. Ik heb al maanden niet gelezen, teveel aan mijn hoofd enzo, dus een review van een boek dat ik al lang geleden gelezen heb.

Titel:
Groene dromen ( uit de Lonely Planet reisliteratuur)

Schrijver:
Stephen Benz

Reis kopiëren / hoog op de lijst van toekomstige bestemmingen / bestemming boycotten?
Ik heb het boek gekocht nadat ik een paar maanden vrijwilligerswerk in Guatemala had gedaan en ik hopeloos verliefd op dat land geworden was. Vandaar dat ik geinteresseerd was in alles wat ook maar met Guatemala te maken had. Later ben ik nog eens teruggegaan naar Guate en ben toen ook in Mexico geweest en dat is dan erg leuk om terug te lezen.

Waardering in smilies:

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Op donderdag 8 december 2005 11:14 schreef Rory78 het volgende:
Wie nog een goed boek wil lezen over NYC, maar niet direct op zoek is naar reisliteratuur, kan ook eens dat boek van Max Westerman, genaamd 'Max and the City', eens overwegen. Ik heb het ook en het staat boordevol leuke anekdotes die je op straat in Manhattan kan beleven. Nogmaals, geen reisgids, maar een bundeling columns van de USA-reporter van RTL.

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Op donderdag 9 februari 2006 04:20 schreef Jaguarized het volgende:

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Gelezen, erg dun, snel uit. Verslag komt nog.

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Op woensdag 8 februari 2006 17:29 schreef Cabron het volgende:

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Hé leuk! Deze heb ik meteen besteld!
Ik ben van plan om van de zomer door Midden Amerika te reizen. Zoveel mogelijk lezen dus voor die tijd

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Op woensdag 8 februari 2006 17:29 schreef Cabron het volgende:

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Hé leuk! Deze heb ik meteen besteld!
Ik ben van plan om van de zomer door Midden Amerika te reizen. Zoveel mogelijk lezen dus voor die tijd

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Op woensdag 8 maart 2006 22:12 schreef Tooheys het volgende:

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Lees dan vooral The full Montezuma van Peter Moore (hierboven al genoemd) over zijn backpackreis met de girl next door in midden Amerika. Heb al zijn boeken gelezen, fantastisch droge Australische humor, ook 'the wrong way home' een reis over land van Londen naar Sydney is erg aan te raden. Hier nog meer Peter Moore fans?

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Op woensdag 9 november 2005 17:24 schreef Gripper het volgende:
Leuk topic!! M'n eerste bijdrage is een klimverhaal, aangezien ik dat zelf ook doe. "De ijle lucht in" van Jon Krakauer. Aangezien er in mijn kast heel wat klimliteratuur (maar ook gewone down to earth reisboeken) staat, zal ik de komende tijd regelmatig eens een recensie posten.

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De wildernis in
Jon Krakauer
In dit boek beschrijft journalist en klimmer Jon Krakauer het relaas van de 24-jarige Chris McCandless. Het lichaam van Chris werd in de zomer van 1992 gevonden in een oude bus midden in de wildernis van Alaska. Rondom zijn dood waren er nog al wat vragen, vooral omdat Chris in april van dat jaar zelf er voor had gekozen om de wildernis in te trekken met niet veel meer dan een geweer en een zak rijst.

Krakauer beschrijft de tocht van Chris en bezoekt de mensen en plaatsen die hij aandeed tijdens zijn reis. Zo vormt hij beetje bij beetje een beeld van wat Chris allemaal doormaakte en hoe hij uiteindelijk belandde in de oude bus in de wildernis.

Ook de ouders en vrienden van Chris komen aan het woord, waardoor ook een idee wordt gegeven over de persoon Chris McCandless zelf. Hierdoor leeft de lezer zich steeds meer in in de situatie waar Chris zich uiteindelijk in aantreft.

Het waar gebeurde verhaal van Chris McCandless heeft veel stof doen opwaaien in de Verenigde Staten. Krakauer schreef er eerst een kort artikel over in het blad Outside, waarop er een stortvloed aan reacties binnenstroomde bij de redactie. De reacties waren erg uiteenlopend, van mensen die het dom vonden dat mensen als Chris helemaal in hun eentje en zonder enige ervaring de wildernis in trokken, tot mensen die juist veel meer wilden weten over deze jongeman en erg met zijn familie meeleefden. Daardoor gestimuleerd ging Krakauer op pad om het hele verhaal te achterhalen.

De kleine pocket is goed leesbaar, maar wordt hier en daar wat langdradig. Mensen die Krakauer alleen kennen van zijn bestseller 'De ijle lucht in' komen er bedrogen uit. 'De wildernis in' kan naar mijn mening niet eens in de schaduw van deze bestseller staan.

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Few things are as exciting as the idea of travelling somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with better weather, more interesting customs and inspiring landscapes –and where it seems we will finally be happy. But the reality of travel seldom matches our daydreams. The tragi-comic disappointments are well-known: the disorientation, the mid-afternoon despair, the lethargy before ancient ruins. And yet the reasons behind such disappointments are rarely explored. We are inundated with advice on where to travel to; we hear little of why we should go and how we could be more fulfilled doing so. In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton, best-selling author of The Consolations of Philosophy, tackles the curious business of travelling. In a series of thought-provoking, lyrical and often humourous essays, he writes about airports, landscapes, museums, holiday romances, photographs, exotic carpets and the contents of hotel mini-bars. De Botton mixes his own thoughts about travel with those of some great figures of the past: Edward Hopper, Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh and Ruskin among them. The result is a beguiling, highly original work which, unlike existing guidebooks on travel, actually asks what the point of travel might be - and modestly suggests how we could learn to be happier on our journeys.

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In the past, when I still regularly attended graduation parties, such parties were always teeming with graduates-to-be harbouring fanciful travel plans. Everybody seemed intent on getting away a.s.a.p., as long as possible, and to a very far away and preferably out of the way place. They wanted to become travellers, a breed not to be confused with commonplace tourists. I've never been able to detect any intrinsic motivations driving this graduate travelling habit, e.g. a deep-seated and longstanding interest in a particular country or culture. It was simply a matter of opportunity, this jumping at the a chance to be thoroughly irresponsible for a while, before entering on the responsibilities of a steady job. And of course, everybody was going and it would be very un-cool to stay at home. After these people returned from their well-organised adventures, it invariably struck me how little they had changed, and how little they had to tell about the places they had been; apart maybe from random scraps on local customs that I could as easily and more completely have found in any travel guide book. Nevertheless most of these people, even years later, would be prone to lapse into dreamy states of blissful reminiscence at the slightest cue, expressing a deep longing to go back there, preferably to stay. It got me wondering why it is that the same things we find boring or commonplace at home are suddenly deeply interesting simply because they occur 5,000 miles away.
I remember one such party where I met an acquaintance who just got her degree in philosophy. I asked her if she was planning on her more or less mandatory world trip as well. But she just gave me a weary smile, tapped the side of her head and said: `Travelling is something you do in here'.
In a nutshell that's the question and the essence of the answer in Alain de Botton's thoughtful book on travel. Why do we bother? What do we expect, and why are we so often disappointed? And then again, why do our memories of the trip rarely reflect the disappointments? And what is the clue to not being disappointed? How do you go about really experiencing the place where you are and making it part of yourself? On all such questions De Botton has interesting and often entertaining observations to make. He shows us that the exotic is not defined by long-haul flights and palm trees, but can be found literally on your doorstep if you just know how to look. He explains why a travelling Englishman can be depressed on far away and exotic Barbados and euphoric in nearby, but in many ways equally exotic Amsterdam, or even around the corner in Hammersmith where he lives. As a Dutchman I was fascinated by his detailed analysis of a sign in the arrivals hall of Amsterdam Airport, explaining its exotic nature from a British viewpoint, and the reasons you would never ever find a sign like that in the UK, just across the Channel. De Botton is a master at finding such surprising angles to elucidate his subjects. Moreover he has considerable erudition to add, resulting in an engrossing mixture of philosophical insight, personal experience, and references to artists, writers, explorers and scientists of the past. Mostly these historical figures, Flaubert in Egypt, say, or Humboldt in South America or Van Gogh in the Provence, are exemplary `artists of travel', people who knew how to make the most of their expeditions. By taking their mindset, involving energy, patience and an eye for detail, as a template, De Botton generates some useful suggestions for the modern day traveller who no longer wants to bore himself by `scoring' obligatory highlights in the guidebook star-rating order, or who refuses to be a slave to his camera any longer. He may even give you some clues as to how to deal with that greatest travelling problem of them all, the fact that wherever you go, you always have to take yourself along.
In all, an elegant, intelligent, thought-provoking, amusing and useful little book, that nobody who takes travelling seriously should miss. Don't take it with you though - it won't last you much longer than an afternoon on the beach...

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In a series of erudite essays, author Alain de Botton recognizes travel to be more than the act of physically transporting oneself to another place. The travel industry is quick to tell us where to go but not how and why. It should be cathartic and emotionally fulfilling, yet many feel that once they arrive at their destinations, that the pleasures of travel takes care of itself at that point. For example, the author shares in one essay how he found himself in Madrid for the first time and admitted to the paralyzing fact that he cannot bring himself to go alone to a restaurant. His solution is to eat a packet of crisps from the hotel mini-bar. On the following day, instead of exploring Madrid, he lies in bed dreaming of his flight home. Moreover, when he decides to enjoy the sights, he decides to take a tour bus to avoid doing any research on his own.

His anecdotes raise good questions about the true art of travel - that we should not be tyrannized by guidebooks, hypnotized to see great sights no matter how personally dull, nor hamstrung by souvenir purchases as disposable reminders of exotic locales. What de Botton does particularly well is give voice and meaning to the multitude of epiphanies brought about by his own voyaging and mixing his own experiences with observations made by the great artists and writers. The author points out, for example, how we can learn the poetry of train journeys, gas stations and half-empty cafés from Hopper and from Wordsworth, we can certainly improve our appreciation of landscape. De Botton's writing flourishes when he describes the detail of images, even if his insatiable desire for revelation can get a bit wearing and trite. For example, he can look at the particular font and color in the signage at Schipol airport and see a certain level of exotica which lends insight into the culture and history of the Netherlands.

Interestingly, for all the minutiae presented, the author omits one of travel's most fulfilling aspects, people. There is much to be learned from the locals, perhaps over a drink at a cocktail bar, but this seems to be more burdensome for the author than he feels it is worth. Apart from his solitary mode of travel, the problem lies in the diversity of his subject. We all travel for different reasons, whether it be relaxation, work, adventure or self-fulfillment. He doesn't really acknowledge what motivates certain journeys for some people. Regardless, de Botton knows the fundamental fact that the pleasure we derive from travel is more dependent on one's mindset from the outset rather than the destination to which we travel. Finding the rewards from travel, no matter how much closer the world has gotten to our doorsteps, is as difficult as ever and just as rewarding.