( 9 reviews )
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Posted: Aug 15 2009
A humorous collection of travel tales by women writers I picked up because Laurie Notaro is included and I figured she would be among equal talent. She was not. Decent writing and a few chuckles, interesting tales of far off and not-so-far off travels. There's much better beach/summer chick lit out there (like any of Laurie Notaro's works). Grade: C
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Oct 6 2008
The thirty-two pieces in this book, all by women, cover quite a range. In the first piece, Ellen Sussman relates the story of her first trip to a nude beach, a theme revisited later in the book by Elizabeth Asdorian in "The Naked and the Wed," an article about the difficulties of seeing the entire wedding party at a beach where clothes are forbidden. Other authors discuss almost everything travel related, from smuggling prescription drugs into the United States to the difficulty using bathrooms in foreign countries to how to respond when airport security in Laos alerts you that your bag is not quite ticking but rather vibrating. The pieces here are mostly magazine fare and a rather mixed lot at that. Several I enjoyed immensely. Tamara Sheward's "Pills, Thrills, and Green Around the Gills" is an extremely funny account of how not to travel in Laos and what to do if, against all advice, you insist on traveling in a flight on a plane that inspires anything but confidence. Susan Orlean's "Lifelike" is a fascinating glimpse at taxidermists and the 2003 World Taxidermy Championships. I'm not sure what exactly this article had to do with travel, the ostensible theme of the book, but I found Orlean at her best here as she shares a world far removed from most people's everyday experiences. A third piece worth mentioning is Amy C. Balfour's "Just Another Malibu Minnie," an account of the author's participation in a triathlon. In addition to these three, there are other solid pieces worth reading, but I found the collection too uneven to be truly outstanding. Still, the length of the articles allowed me to move quickly through the book, hoping the next piece would be a gem. Sometimes, it was.
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Posted: Apr 5 2008
This book was recommended to me by a former fellow traveler to Morocco as being laugh-out-loud hilarious. I just must have a different sense of humor, because it did not tickle my funny bone enough for me to even finish it. And I hate to leave a partially read book unfinished.
