| Wild Life: Dispatches From a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs by Keena RobertsWhat it's about: Keena Robert's funny, tender coming-of-age story vividly details life in two different worlds: wildlife research camps in Kenya and Botswana, where her primatologist parents worked part of the year, and an elite prep school in Philadelphia, where Keena struggled to fit in.
Chapters include: The First Three Times I Almost Died; High School Water Hole; There Are No Doctors Here; Goodbye, Narnia.
For fans of: the delightful Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty, who grew up on a South African game preserve; Alexandra Fuller's moving Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. |
|
| The Seine: The River That Made Paris by Elaine SciolinoWhat it is: an entertaining, smart, and detail-rich look at the Seine River, from its modest Burgundy source to its end at the English Channel.
Don't miss: fascinating details about Paris and the Seine; stories about the ancient goddess Sequana; talks with locals, including a grape grower in Champagne, Paris booksellers, and River Brigade members.
About the author: Elaine Sciolino, a former New York Times Paris bureau chief and the bestselling author of The Only Street in Paris, has been based in France since 2002. |
|
|
The Crow Eaters : A Journey Through South Australia
by Ben Stubbs
What it's about: Outsiders think of South Australia as being different, without really knowing much about it. Combining his own travel across the million-square kilometres of the state with an investigation of its history, Ben Stubbs seeks to find out what South Australia is really like. In the spirit of the best travel writing and literary non-fiction, he lingers in places of quiet beauty and meets some memorable people. Along the way he debunks most of the clichés that plague the state. Travelling to Maralinga, Ceduna, Kangaroo Island, the Flinders Ranges, Coober Pedy, the storied Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth and the once-mighty river that is the Murray, Stubbs brings this diverse state to life. He even addresses head-on the question ‘Is South Australia weird?’
|
|
Books You May Have Missed
|
|
| Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony HorwitzWhat it's about: Going from West Virginia to Texas via car, barge, mule, and more, Confederates in the Attic author Tony Horwitz traveled through a sharply divided U.S. in 2016 to retrace the eye-opening 1850s journey of reporter (and future landscape architect) Frederick Law Olmstead.
About the author: A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Horwitz died in 2019 at the age of 60. He is survived by two sons and his wife, novelist Geraldine Brooks, who won a Pulitzer Prize herself in 2006 for March. |
|
| The Salt Path by Raynor WinnThe problems: A friend's betrayal found 50-somethings Raynor and Moth Winn kicked off the Welsh farm they'd fixed up over 20 years. That same week, Moth learned he had a terminal disease.
What happened: Homeless and at a loss, they set out to walk and wild camp along England's challenging 630-mile South West Coast Path.
Read this next: Caroline Van Hemert's The Sun Is a Compass, another inspirational memoir about a couple at a crossroads and the redemptive power of nature. |
|
|
Between river and sea : encounters in Israel and Palestine
by Dervla Murphy
What it is: Following A Month by the Sea, her acclaimed exploration of life in Gaza, Dervla Murphy describes with passionate honesty the experience of living with and among Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in both Israel and Palestine.
|
|
|
I Guess I'll Just Keep On Walking
by Noel Braun
What it is: Since the suicide of Maris, his beloved wife of forty-two years, Noel Braun struggled to find himself. All his life assumptions were overturned and he lost his sense of identity. Endeavouring to find some anchorage, he embarked on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. He decided to walk the most popular routes of the Camino; the ancient pilgrimage route that lead across France and Spain to Santiago de Compostela in the north-west of Spain. This journey is described in his earlier book The Day was Made for Walking, but the journey was far from over, and Noel felt compelled to resume his quest. At the age of eighty, he returned to France to pursue a less popular route that took him across France and into Spain. Two years later, the urgent need to continue has him walking through Portugal into Spain. Despite his ageing body and his many doubts, he has the confidence and faith in himself to face the arduous physical demands and reach Santiago de Compostela. Woven into his spiritual and emotional journey are fascinating stories of the people he meets. I Guess I’ll Just Keep on Walking is a sequel. The physical and the spiritual merge with the ancient and modern. It delves into history and, at the same time, is a memoir and travel guide.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|