...Deadline. But i has a complaint. A kvetch, if you would.
My take on that was that the reader was
supposed
to think
"What the fuck?!" and thus Georgia's "What the fuck is going on here?" is meant to be an echo of that. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how cleverly that question gets answered in the next book.
My own primary complaint is
that no one seemed to regret or even have qualms over deceiving their audience with false blog posts. The necessity is clear, but no one seemed to mind, or care what it would do to their credibility if they ever got to the point where they could go public with the story.
In Deadline, did anyone else notice that
at one point Georgia's death date is given as 2032; Feed takes place in 2040. I'm wondering if it'll turn out that there's a technique for transferring memories from an original body to a clone. As well as growing a clone to adulthood quickly.
Toddson, I think that may be an error. I noticed an error in one of the blog post dates, too. The date of the Rising got moved during the editing process, and I think there was an incorrect date or two in
Feed
as well.
huh ... thought it might be a clue as to what was going on. Well ... she needs to get the third book out ASAP.
Sorry, I should have specified fiction, but not fictional places.
John Irving's Until I Find You
Yes, this is the type of thing I'm looking for. The theme doesn't have to focus on traveling, but the story needs to involve traveling to more than one place, or be an extended journey, i.e., I'm not really interested in the type of thing that involves someone moving to Tuscany and settling in. I'm hoping the discussion will involve how non-fiction travel writing compares to fiction about travel.
For the record, the non-fiction I'm considering putting on the list includes the following works. The problem will be keeping the list under 30, so anything here you that you think is really amazing, or not quite worth the time, would be good to know.
Almost definitely these, since they have an average rating of 4 or above on Goodreads:
Arabian Sands
(Wilfred Thesiger)
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
(Laurie Lee)
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
(Rebecca West)
Confederates in the Attic
(Tony Horwitz)
Danube
(Claudio Magris)
In a Sunburned Country
(Bill Bryson)
Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft
(Thor Hyerdahl)
Labels
(Evelyn Waugh)
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
(Eric Newby)
The Snow Leopard
(Peter Matthiessen)
A Time of Gifts
(Patrick Leigh Fermor)
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
(John Steinbeck)
Venice
(Jan Morris)
These were all in the 3.5-4.0 range on Goodreads and many were on “best of” lists:
Among the Russians
(Colin Thubron)
Finding George Orwell in Burma
(Emma Larkin)
The Great Railway Bazaar
(Paul Theroux)
In Patagonia
(Bruce Chatwin)
Into the Wild
(Jon Krakauer)
The Journals of Captain Cook
(James Cook)
The Road to Oxiana
(Robert Byron)
The Valleys of the Assassins: And Other Persian Travels
(Freya Stark)
The Sex Life of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
(J. Maarten Troost)
Video Night in Katmandu
(Pico Iyer)
A Yank Back to England
(Denis Lipman)
I would recommend The Songlines over In Patagonia, myself. But Chatwin's very good nonetheless.
My favorite Krakauer is probably Eiger Dreams, but I'm a climber after all.
And a non-fiction list without any John McPhee just makes me sad. Try Coming Into the Country or The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed or The Control of Nature (which is certainly relevant these days--the New Yorker just re-posted one of the essays from that collection on its website).
For fun, I can highly recommend one of Tim Cahill's collections: he tells marvelous stories about his travels all over the world. Like Pecked to Death by Ducks or Pass the Butterworms.
