I’ve been on a bit of a travel memoir kick lately.
With that said, I did read a few books this month.
(As a reminder: I always track my reading both on Goodreads and via Instagram stories.)
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‘ALL OVER THE PLACE: ADVENTURES IN TRAVEL, TRUE LOVE AND PETTY THEFT‘ BY GERALDINE DERUITER
Geraldine DeRuiter, writer of the award-winning travel blog “The Everywhereist,” expounded on her blog’s adventures in book form. In “All Over the Place,” Geraldine details some of the adventures she’s had while accompanying her husband, Rand, on his work trips across the globe. From stealing glassware in a Spanish restaurant, to bring Rand to her mother’s Italian village to getting lost on the London tube in search of a clock, Geraldine shares her travel stories with a wider audience.
This book was definitely all over the place. I really the sarcastic and self-deprecating tone DeRuiter takes in her writing, and I do love that this book focused less on Travel In The Pursuit Of Finding Love And One’s Self, and more on just DeRuiter living her life — even if her life happened to take her along on her husband’s work journeys. With that said, it was a little hard to follow along at points because DeRuiter would just kind of pick a story to tell and take a very roundabout way of getting to the point. It was a fun read, but definitely a bit meandering.
‘THE LOST GIRLS: THREE FRIENDS. FOUR CONTINENTS. ONE UNCONVENTIONAL DETOUR AROUND THE WORLD.‘ BY JENNIFER BAGGETT, HOLLY CORBETT AND AMANDA PRESSNER
Jen, Holly and Amanda all make a pact: to quit their high-pressure New York City media jobs and spend a year of their late 20s traveling around the world. Starting in South America, the three girls travel around the world: hiking the Inca Trail to the Machu Picchu ruins, volunteering with preteen girls in rural Kenya, taking up residence inside a yoga ashram in India, visiting spas and rivers across Laos and rafting through New Zealand.
I was a little hesitant to read this book after reading some of the Goodreads reviews, and I went into it wanting to hate it (was I a little jealous of three girls taking a gap year around the world in their late 20s? Definitely) but “The Lost Girls” surprised me. It was long (550 pages!) but it was at least a well-written easy read. I was surprised to read about Jen, Holly and Amanda’s efforts to travel responsibly and ethically, and about how much they did seem to take away from their travels. I thought this book struck a really good balance between talking about the adventures the girls had, the relationships they fostered among each other and other travelers and the locations themselves (including culture, history and descriptions). However, the story is told from the perspective of all three girls, and the writing is the same for each perspective, which makes it a little hard to differentiate between each narrator — especially because all three are living very similar lives. But overall, I still surprisingly enjoyed this one!
‘THE GLASS CASTLE‘ BY JEANNETTE WALLS
Jeannette Walls and her siblings learned to take care of each other, despite growing up under an alcoholic father and an absent mother. The Walls siblings grew to be successful adults despite everything, living and working in New York City. The Walls parents chose to follow their children, opting to be homeless while watching their progenies thrive.
This was a re-read for my friend Lexie’s book club! I loved it just as much the second time around as I did the first. Walls spared no detail in her writing, and her story is truly incredible.
‘DAMNATION SPRING‘ BY ASH DAVIDSON
Rich Gunderson’s entire family’s livelihood is rooted in the timber industry of northern California’s redwoods. As Rich and his wife Colleen raise their son, Chub, with meager money earned in Damnation Grove’s dying logging industry, Rich takes out a small fortune of a loan on a swath of ancient redwoods, a parcel of timber that would secure him for life. As Rich struggles to pay his loan, hoping he can bide his time until the day comes when he can harvest his timber, Colleen begins realizing that pesticides used in logging operations are infiltrating Damnation Grove and causing a series of miscarriages. Colleen and Rich soon find themselves on opposite sides of a building conflict as both want what’s best for their family.
This was a book club book from a few weeks ago that I just now got around to finishing. Davidson lives here in Flagstaff, so I’ve had several friends recommend “Damnation Spring” to me over the course of the last several years. It’s long, but the prose is beautiful. With that said, it is a very, very slow read (especially in the beginning), and I had a hard time keeping focused on it for long periods of time. However, the characters were beautifully written and complex, and several scenes were genuinely moving. Davidson also did a fantastic job with her research and the whole novel felt so authentic.
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