For those of you gutsy enough to post the first page of your manuscript out there to be judged by an agent (and possibly commented on by other readers), check out Nathan Bransford's blog at
http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/ and then click on the Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge to enter this contest (which closes sometime around 5 PM Pacific time on Wednesday, January 30th). Last time I checked, there were more than 400 entries. Apparently Nathan doesn't plan to sleep much this week.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Favorite Travel Books
I love to travel, so naturally I love to read books set in exotic settings that lure me into going there. Having lived in Peru for two years, I'm drawn to stories where people not only travel, but learn to understand countries and their people. One of my favorites is Jamie Zeppa's Beyond the Earth and Sky; a Canadian teacher's adventurous story of her journey to Bhutan to teach primary students. She describes the scenes so vividly, as I was reading, I felt like I was actually standing there. And much of the country sounds so pristine and beautiful - there are so few places like this left in the world and those are the places I love the most. I have yet to travel there, but Bhutan is number one on my list.
A humorous and meditative travel memoir I enjoyed was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. You will probably laugh your self silly and in parts think "this is not for me." When it comes to the latter, I found myself hyperventilating when Gilbert described meditating for three hours in a temple in the blistering heat of India, and not moving a single muscle. Any of you who know me realize I have to exercise for hours just to sit still long enough to write!
For those of you who might find Bhutan too remote for your taste, I'm now reading River Town by Peter Hessler, a travel memoir about China, a country that strikes me as way too industrial and polluted for my off-the-beaten path taste. But I'm kind of an outdoor girl, not much of a city goer. Except for Prague, though, which is one of my new favorite places. But that's another story altogether. Anyway, Hessler taught English and American literature in Fuling in 1996 and he does an excellent job of engrossing the reader in his many plights; from teaching students so brainwashed by communist propaganda they can barely think for themselves (otherwise they probably wouldn't go along with that whole displacing millions of people to build a dam would they?), to mastering a complex language, a near prerequisite for an expatriate to feel established in a foreign community.
A humorous and meditative travel memoir I enjoyed was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. You will probably laugh your self silly and in parts think "this is not for me." When it comes to the latter, I found myself hyperventilating when Gilbert described meditating for three hours in a temple in the blistering heat of India, and not moving a single muscle. Any of you who know me realize I have to exercise for hours just to sit still long enough to write!
For those of you who might find Bhutan too remote for your taste, I'm now reading River Town by Peter Hessler, a travel memoir about China, a country that strikes me as way too industrial and polluted for my off-the-beaten path taste. But I'm kind of an outdoor girl, not much of a city goer. Except for Prague, though, which is one of my new favorite places. But that's another story altogether. Anyway, Hessler taught English and American literature in Fuling in 1996 and he does an excellent job of engrossing the reader in his many plights; from teaching students so brainwashed by communist propaganda they can barely think for themselves (otherwise they probably wouldn't go along with that whole displacing millions of people to build a dam would they?), to mastering a complex language, a near prerequisite for an expatriate to feel established in a foreign community.
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