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I don't review books I don't like!
*****= An all-time favorite
**** = Outstanding
*** = Above average
** = Enjoyable
* = Good, with reservations
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****A Woman's Passion for Travel
More True Stories from a Woman's World
edited by Marybeth Bond and Pamela Michael
Reviewed November 18, 2004.
Travelers’ Tales, San Francisco, 1999. 298 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (910.4082 WOM).
Here’s a collection of forty-two travel essays written by women.
They cover a wide variety of experiences and moods, from funny to
inspirational to disturbing. I’m afraid the ones that most stuck
with me were from the section “In the Shadows” of nightmarish things
that happened to women far from home, but that was only a small
section. They cover experiences (mostly pleasant ones) in
countries all over the globe.
This book was the perfect choice for me when traveling across Germany
by train to visit my sister or driving to see a castle. The
essays are each complete in themselves, so you can dip into them
whenever you’re in the mood for some musing or a smile.
Here are a few samples of bits of wisdom I can pull from the book at
random:
“A meandering river may be a metaphor for life’s journey, but running
rapids in the Grand Canyon seems a particularly apt metaphor for being
a mother.”—Leila Philip
“Travel allows one to feel new when it is no longer possible to feel
young. Every day, just by being alive, kids have experiences from
which they grow and learn, while the rest of us have to pursue the new,
struggle against inertia, and push ourselves to keep growing, a task
that
gets more difficult as we become set in our ways. But when we
take
a trip and enter unfamiliar settings, we reconnect with our childish
sense
of wonder and discovery, and we discover an unexpected bonus: the
clock slows down and life seems to expand.”—Letty Cottin Pogrebin
“Here’s what I love about travel: Strangers get a chance to amaze
you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a
simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart
and makes you a different person when you go to sleep—more tender, less
jaded—than you
were when you woke up.”—Tanya Shaffer
“One thing I’ve learned when traveling is that there is always an
unexpected moment of truth that crystallizes the clash between the
postcard scenario and real life.”—Dianne Partie Lange
Copyright © 2004 Sondra Eklund. All
rights reserved.
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Reviews by Sondra Eklund