A book that combines two of my favourite things: travel and recipes! How could I resist? I’ve been eager to read Female Nomad and Friends: Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World since it came out in 2010. But, with one thing and another, I just got around to it now. And I’m [...]

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Way back in July, I blush to admit, fellow blogger Edie Jarolim very kindly invited me to participate in a blogosphere event called My 7 Links. Edie writes the wonderful pet-lovers’ blog Will My Dog Hate Me?, which is by turns hilarious, informative and heartbreaking, depending on the day. And My 7 Links is sponsored [...]

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That question occurred to me while reading a Financial Times article by veteran travel writer Paul Theroux about his new book, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives of the Road. Theroux subscribes quite enthusiastically to the belief that only journeys fraught with danger, disease, fear, loathing, despair and monumental challenge are worth reading about. [...]

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“This is the story of my midlife crisis,” writes journalist Lisa Napoli in the preface to her charming memoir, Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. (If midlife crises aren’t your thing, don’t stop reading–this is a book that focuses much more on the people Napoli meets than on herself.) [...]

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Antigua and Barbuda is the first country on the Year of Geography list I’ve actually visited. Granted, I was about 15 on my only trip of more than 24 hours; the other visits were quick stops on the way to and from Montserrat. But I did get to spend a very long night on one [...]

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As British writer David Aaronovitch points out in the introduction to his 2000 travel book/memoir, Paddling to Jerusalem, in the last few years writers have walked around England under the guise of just about every gimmick imaginable. From south to north, around the coast, up the middle, round the sides, in wheelchairs, on one leg, [...]

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It’s a doozy of a title: The Third Tower Up from the Road: A Compilation of Columns from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency’s Kevin Dolgin Tells You About Places You Should Go. And the cover photo of the Great Wall of China is a bit misleading. Yes, there’s a funny, lovely column in the collection about Dolgin’s [...]

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Although I strongly suspect these two Aussie women, Pip and Kym, are playing up their Aussieness for the cameras, I still enjoyed this little video that tries to teach non-Australians a bit of Down Under culture–from how to make bush tea to what the heck “Good on ya” means. It’s a promo to draw attention [...]

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OK, I realize I’m very late to this party–the book came out three years ago. But I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea, the story of mountain climber-turned-philanthropist Greg Mortenson, and I was captivated. For those of you who, like me, somehow missed this book when it first came out, here’s the scoop. After [...]

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It all started when I began wondering where passports came from. I pitched every magazine editor I knew on a story about the history of passports, but no one–and I mean no one–was interested. Fine, I thought. I’ll broaden the concept and make it into a book. The history of passports eventually became a chapter [...]

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