2 comments about Mishima's Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend.

1. Christopher Ross goes on a quest for the sword used to assist in the suicide of Yushio Mishima, one of Japan's most famous authors. Along the way, the reader is treated to a history of Japan, lessons on Kendo, and insight into Mishima himself, and icon (or iconoclast?) of Japanese literature. In essence, the quest for the physical sword takes secondary importance, behind Ross's quest to understand the man, the times, and the context of his suicide.
   
   For those that read Twigger's Angry White Pajamas, this book is a more serious, and more culturally detailed view of the same genre. Perhaps the connection comes as Christopher Ross was the uber-guru that Twigger wrote about...
   
   If there's one issue I have with the book, it's that the writer at times talks down to the reader. For example, most anyone reading this has experienced international travel - the audience is a cosmopolitan set. Explaining the details of an inflight entertainment system detracts from the overall story.
   
   That said, the book is still concise and well written, and worthy of a read from any afficianado of Japan. It certainly earns a prominent place on my bookshelf!



2. I found this book by accident while waiting for someone, and I was enthralled by it. Ross uses the sensational circumstances of Mishima's very public and gruesome suicide to explore Japanese martial culture in general and tries to explain his own fascination with it along the way.
   While he keeps tracking Mishima's life and death as a guide to his narrative, it becomes clearer and clearer that Mishima is conceivably of no importance outside his role as a popular author of nationalist appeal, and that his very theatrical life and death actually stand for very little. His careful reconstruction of himself and his image is not so uncommon, and in the end there is just another guy coming to terms with the very big chips on his shoulder, although he does so in a spectacular way.
   But along this way Ross manages by description of his travels and interviews to highlight and clarify Japanese history and fascination with death in a highly insightful way.
   Sometimes this book is just about Christopher Ross: For instance there is a whole section, where he describes feeling unwell and having to interrupt his stay in Japan to return to the UK. One can't help wondering if his editor slept through that part, since it seems to have very little to do with the rest of the story.
   Fortunately these deviations are relatively brief, as is the whole book, and you have basically read past them before they really trouble you. The rest of the ride is wonderful for people who share Ross' fascination with the martial aspects of Japan.

2 comments about Travelers' Tales Japan: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides).

1. This is a great book. It's lots of short "stories" - some are excerpts from other books (that I've actually read), but some also seem to be short "stories." I really like it because I can pick the book up, look in the table of contents for a title that sounds interesting, and find one with a length that fits the amount of time I have available right then. I particularly enjoy reading it out loud to my travel companions - share the fun! I admit that some of the excerpts are a little dry - but still informative - but some are simply hysterical. It really gives a nice and varied insight into the Japanese culture. Take it with you on your trip for varied reading pleasure, or read it in parts when you return to extend the enjoyment of your trip!
   
   I've also given others from this series as gifts to friends who are traveling - India, Paris, Tuscony...



2. I picked up this book a couple of months before moving to Japan for a year of study and was completely captivated. The various writers are effective in giving the reader a brief glimpse into some of the most unique and enchanting qualities of Japanese society. Four years later, I still pull out this book occasionally to rekindle the feelings of wonder I experienced when I first opened it. The book also provides the titles of many of books from which the passages are taken, which is a great resource for sprouting Japanophiles. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, along with the entire series of Traveler's Tales books.

2 comments about Inside China.

1. This book has a very sad and depressing tone. I was anxiously waiting for it to arrive, but I was truly disappointed, even more so because it is published by National Geographic, from whom I expected something better. I should have gotten a clue just by looking at the cover picture, an intentionally blurred photo of the Shanghai skyline.
   
   The book basically depicts the ugly, "inside" (thus the title, Inside China) parts of China: turmoil, conflict, contrast, hardship and misery. With so many spectacular photos that could have illustrated China's rise, the authors chose the most mundane images, at best. Especially troubling are the numerous pictures of "bargirls", massage girls, and prostitutes. Additionally, for every photo of progress, there is another one of poverty, displacement and worker exploitation. Maybe that's the authors' artistic way to express contrast. I must have missed the point entirely.
   
   The quality of the photography is not up to par with National Geographic standards. Many night shots are grainy or blurry. The only ones I could really enjoy were the few landscapes at the beginning of the book.
   
   If you are looking for a collection of spectacular photos of China and its people, look elsewhere. I was so angry when I finished the book that I considered giving it away, but even that would be too embarassing for me. I guess I will just have to throw it away, even if that means wasting the $35 it cost me.



2. The book opens with the question: How does one get inside China? In 272 pages, Inside China, featuring an expansive collection of photographs from an equally impressive list of photographers and essays by six experts on Chinese culture, politics, history, and economy, makes an earnest attempt to capture the China that it once was, is, and will be. Much of the book is devoted to the China of today, juxtaposed between tradition and the burgeoning capitalism. Unlike most propaganda and travel brochure images that the West is more accustomed to seeing, this collection of photos takes the reader deep inside China, into the hearts, lives, insecurities, and hopes of the Chinese people. No, this is not a book about what looks exotic or alluring to the Western eyes. This book is about the Chinese people and the reality they have to confront each day, which inevitably brings the reader face to face with images of poverty, demolished villages, arid farmlands, overworked factory workers, rising skyscrapers, remnants of Communism, struggles for democracy, and the rise of nouveau riche. These are the uncensored expressions of the Chinese people, seen through the eyes of photographers and journalists who entered China not as foreigners, but as unbiased individuals who were willing to accept the Chinese people as they are.
   
   As a Chinese-American who was born in China, I feel this book presents one of the most honest and compendious portrayals of the Chinese people. Most of the subjects were captured in their work clothes, unposed, simply doing what they do everyday - living, surviving, and dreaming of a better life. These photos also attest the skills of the photographers, who have somehow made the camera invisible, bringing the reader that much closer to the subjects. In a nation that is struggling to find its own identity, the divide between the past and the future is often blurred, as represented by the symbolic blurring in the cover photo. What gives meaning and significance to the ordinary and the mundane are the shared humanity between the subjects and the onlooker and the hope that the future will bring a more beautiful day. Fittingly, the book ends with a hopeful photo in which the promises of the future and the relics of the past are intertwined. So, how does one get inside China? You leave all of your judgments and preconceptions at the border, and you look at the truth in the eye.
   
   A few personal favorites:
   - Reza's photo of a girl dancing in a circumcision ceremony in Xinjiang
   - David Butow's photo of Nanjing Road on a rainy night
   - David Butow's photo of a parade of Santas in Shanghai
   - Kenneth Jarecke's photo of a pro-democracy hunger striker
   - Benoit Aquin's photo of a crossroad in Xilinhot during a dust storm
   - Mark Leong's photo of a teenage boy standing at the edge of a pool in a fat reduction hospital
   - Mark Leong's photo of girls cleaning vegetables at a rural home
   - Michael Wolf's photo of workers' living quarters

No comments about The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century Journey through India.

5 comments about Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, A.

1. Unlike other critics, I had a hard time dealing with Newby's commitment to sticking to the facts and his telling the story free of any detours into what it meant to him or what he had learned about himself or his countrymen along the way. Perhaps an appreciation for his style comes after one has read enough travel books that he/she sees the kind of wistfulness for which I had hoped as useless, cliched BS. But, being a relative novice to the genre, I lacked that kind of cynicism and, consequently, did not enjoy the book as much as I had hoped to.
   
   Also, my lack of familiarity with central Asian geography and history hendered my enjoyment of the book. Newby usually relies on an assumed foreknowledge of the reader, so he doesn't spend much time explaining things. This made it hard for me as I oftentimes had to go back a few pages to figure out where he was or what particular tribe with which he was currently encountering.
   
   Furthermore, I personally have a hard time with large, Moslem names, so it was very hard to remember who all of the locals were, what their jobs were, what their personalities were like, and how they had already interacted with Newby. This may have been more due to my laziness than Newby's writing, though, so it's hard to fault him on that front.
   
   I was somewhat disappointed with this book; however, I can see why many people enjoy it and why it has garnered critical acclaim. For seasoned travel book readers or those with a high familiarity with central Asia (especially around the Pakistani-Afghan border), though, I think this book would be right up your alley.



2. "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" by Eric Newby (1958) is a minor classic among travel books that was, recently for me, a true pleasure to read. It's new info, insightful, light but not shallow, humorous, yet apropos to current events. Its preface by one of my favorite 'snobs' (Evelyn Waugh) was enough recommendation for me. An amateur British mountain climber with his sidekick in the wild mountains of North-east Afghanistan. Very subtle, very English. Eric Newby died in 2006. I'm happy he was a writer.



3. I got this book on the recommendation from the book Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide, which described it as "among the best travel books ever written". Having read the book, I would have to agree.
   
   This book could be a humor book almost as much as a travel book. Newby's style of writing is, at times, felt like watching a Monty Python sketch in its dry British humor and the unexpected places that one constantly found it coming up.
   
   Eric Newby starts the book as a man working in the fashion industry after World War II, who realizes that he's in the wrong job. He calls up a friend who worked for the foreign service in Afghanistan and asks him if he wants to go to Nuristan in northeast Afghanistan. He quits he jobs, does four days of mountain climbing in Great Britian, and heads off.
   
   I will not spoil the adventures he has just in getting there but will say that they are amazing, unexpected and fascinating. You really get the sense of a seat-of-your-pants road trip in the way that he almost blindly goes into what would be anyone's trip of a lifetime.
   
   His description of Afghanistan and its people who he meets and who guide him is wonderful and accurate to everything I have seen in this country myself. To anyone who likes travel books or simply wants to read a fascinating adventure, you need to read this book.



4. I love this book, his humor and imagination, the descriptions. It's his best!
   Highly Recommended!



5. Ok, I have read the reviews about this book, most of which have "got it" and some of whom have not. Firstly get a map or even better a globe (a kind of round map) and see just how far London (England) is from Afghanistan. Now try and imagine driving there in a family car, not one of those road going ocean liners known I believe as "SUV's", through countries, some of which are considered too dangerous for westerners to enter.
   
   Remember that even at the time of writing, Britain was still recovering from the effects of WW2, indeed rationing continued until 1954, and those who had the money to travel might have considered a trip by train to Blackpool (a seaside resort in the north-west of England) quite an adventure. So the idea of on a whim jumping into the family jalopy and driving 2/3 of the way around the world might be considered a tad eccentric. The 2 adventurers are total amateurs, if I remember rightly; they are stuck on a glacier half way up the mountain, and have to refer to their mountain climbing textbook on how to get off it!
   
   Imagine 2 gentlemen after having a couple of gliding lessons deciding to build a rocket in their back garden and go into space? That's the sort of order of magnitude of adventure that Newby and Carless embarked on. Also one has to bear in mind that in the 50's, Afghanistan was to all intents and purposes cut off from the "modern" world and quite literally the back of beyond.
   
   As a Brit, I am aware of the issues of our colonial past, but I still retain a soft spot for the pith helmeted "gentleman adventurer", the sort of people who in the 20's might have climber Everest but turned back when they couldn't get the grand piano and rowing boat past the 5th base camp at 27,000 ft.
   
   It's hard to describe in these days of Google earth how large the world was in those days. Its been many years since I read this book, and I am writing this review because I have loaned it to a friend who is going to Kathmandu for a wedding and wanted to give to her a book to read on the plane that would make her laugh.
   
   This book is unlikely, and funny, and I feel the world is a little sadder for the loss of the generation of men who could attempt such whimsy.

5 comments about In Xanadu: A Quest.

1. I really enjoyed this book! Each little observation is spiced with whit, and brilliant inuendo. Each story line intrigued me more and more and to each amateur adventurer out there, I say you'll love it!



2. Even if you did not know that this was one of Dalrymple's earlier works, there is quite a bit in the narrative to suggest this. That is not to say that book is not really worth your time - it definitely is - but what is even more interesting is to see & observe the elements of erudition & wonder, & story-telling, that have always been so compelling about WD.
   
   But this is also personal story of a twenty-two year old - complete with a heartbreak - dashing across two continents. WD has certainly tried to talk about many personal episodes - & some of these are as hilarious as they're self-deprecating - but there are definitely pieces, thoughts, & events that probably would not be part of a more mature WD work.
   
   This book is the story of WD & his companions chasing down of Xanadu in Mongolia with a phial of oil from the Holy Sepulcher & all that happens in between.
   
   Informed, eccentric, & never dull.



3. 
   Well not quite, but sort of.
   
   At least this is what I kept thinking of as the author (referred to as Fatso by Mick, an expatriate hippie in Kashgar) and his travel companion Laura (she's the one clad in black) head out across Iran.
   
   They are on a madcap quest, ostensibly to retrace the tracks of Marco Polo in his journey from Jerusalem to the seat of power of Kublai Khan in Xanadu, bearing oil from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
   
   Dalrymple, a student at Cambridge, came up with this idea to kill time between college terms. Presumably the quasi academic cover was in some way necessary, and the intermittent references to Polo and his voyage are mildly interesting. But really this is a chronicle of a road trip plain and simple - a 1980's kind of On the Road.
   
   The Silk Road, that is.
   
   Anyway, all this makes for idle but entertaining reading, filled with intelligent observations and humorous snippets.
   
   Here, for example, is the English menu from a restaurant in Turkey:
   
   Kujuk Ayas Family Restrant
   
   Ingliz Menuyu
   
   Soap
   
   Ayas soap
   Turkish tripte soap
   Sheeps foot
   Macaront
   Water pies
   
   Eats From Meat
   
   Deuner kepab with pi
   Kebap with green pe
   Kebap in paper
   Meat pide
   Kebap with mas patato
   Samall bits of meat grilled
   Almb chops
   
   Vegetables
   
   Meat in eathernware stev pot
   Stfue goreen pepper
   Stuffed squash
   Stuffed tomatoes z
   Stuffed cabbages lea
   Leek with finced meat
   Clery
   
   Salad
   
   Brain salad
   Cacik - a drink made ay ay
   And cucumber
   
   Frying Pans
   
   Fried aggs
   Scram fried aggs
   Scurum fried omlat
   Omlat with brain
   
   Sweets and Rfuits
   
   Stewed atrawberry
   Nightingales nests
   Virgin lips
   A sweet dish of thinish batter with butter
   Banane
   Meon
   Leeches
   
   Recommended reading if ever you find yourself on an over civilized vacation.



4. I read this book on an airplane journey, and laughed so hard at some entries that I cried.
   And then I got depressed, because I realized that at the author's age, I would have been incapable of the deft writing and erudition he displayed.



5. In the mid 1980s, William Dalrymple (then in his early 20s) made a journey retracing the steps of Marco Polo's famous journey during the 1200s, from the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to the site of Shangdu (or Xanadu, as is better known in literature), the summer palace of Kublai Khan, in Outer Mongolia, China. In reality, though, since Soviet Central Asia was then barred to western travel, he deviated in part from Marco Polo's route, going through the Baluchi desert, in southern Iran and Pakistan, and then up the Indus river, and through the then newly opened Karakoram highway to western China, instead of traveling to China through Samarkand and other cities in Central Asia. The book itself is a mixed bag, there is some interesting things in it (at least he did some homework in terms of research) but there are far too many of the sort of banal, smug and self-centered comments and experiences you see in much of the travel writing of westerners as they go through the third world.

No comments about LUXE Istanbul (LUXE City Guides).

1 comments about Among the Tibetans.

1. I was somewhat disappointed in this book. Certainly, the noble Ms. Bird had made this remarkable journey (and many others) in a time (the late 1800s) when 'women didn't do such things'. For that I applaud her spirit and determination.
   While interesting, in my opinion, most of the book comes across as fairly uninspired. She seems unable to share the sense of wonder one must feel when in the presence of such dramatic physical geography. Her description of the local citizenry is, to my mind, also fairly unimaginative. While her narrative is certainly straight forward and no doubt accurate, it seems she never really 'gets into it'.
   There are several moments in the story when we are given an insight into Ms. Bird's character and we see her as an enormously resilient and self-reliant person. There are also interesting glimpses of her Victorian roots as portrayed in her comments regarding local Tibetan customs and habits.
   All in all, I would recommend this book but I would caution the reader not to expect 'Lost Horizons'.

No comments about Visions of Mughal India: An Anthology of European Travel Writing.

No comments about Lingolook JAPAN (Lingolook Flashcards for Foreign Travel).