Gail Pool's Blog

The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

By Eric Weiner.  Avid Reader Press, 2020, 330 pp.

As Eric Weiner observes in his introduction to The Socrates Express, "In the literary world, how-to books are an embarrassment, the successful but uncouth cousin.  Serious writers don't write how-to books, and serious readers don't read them.

How bold then to write a how-to book about that most serious subject, philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom.  A clash of high cultu...

Atlas of Imagined Places: From Lilliput to Gotham City.

By Matt Brown and Rhys B. Davies.  Batsford, 2021, 168 pp.

Another recommendation from the TLS.  MC, in his NB column, notes that the 20 maps in this atlas trace 5000 fictional locations that may be "entirely made up" but "set somewhere in Earth," or "based on somewhere real" but "have been renamed," such as Hardy's Wessex.

A notable comment from one Amazon reader is that the "Book arrived with all the pages bound upside down.  Not...

The Unknown Islands, Raul Brandao, Tagus Press, originally published 1926.

Writing in the TLS, Bernhard Malkmus calls The Unknown Islands, by Raul Brandao,  a "beautifully crafted account of the social life and natural history of the Azores archipelago" and recommends David Brookshaw's "sensitive and nuanced translation--the first in English."

Hiking to Siberia: Curious Tales of Travel and Travelers

By Lawrence Millman. sunnyoutside, 2012, 126 pp.

Lawrence Millman is a refreshingly old-fashioned adventurer.  In his travels he generally heads out to little-known, hard-to-reach, hard-to navigate places that require stamina and endurance: as he notes, "travel" and "travail" are etymologically related.  Curiosity drives his journeys.  "I'm trying to discover the few remaining places that have not lost their marrow," he says.

Hiki...

The Stone Boudoir: Travels through the Hidden Villages of Sicily

By Theresa Maggio.  Perseus, 2002, 246 pp.

"Something thrums in the stones of Sicilian hill towns, and I have become obsessed with them," writes Theresa Maggio in her colorful and very personal guide through this distinctive part of Italy. 

Maggio's paternal grandparents were Sicilian, emigrating early in the twentieth century from the town of Santa Margherita, which was destroyed in the earthquake of 1965.  Although her g...

The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird

By Joshua Hammer.  Simon & Schuster, 2020, 324 pp. (I read the Kindle edition.)

People have been raiding birds' nests for centuries: for food, for breeding, for scientific inquiry, for mischief,  for profit, and—strangely—for the mysterious allure of the eggs themselves.  "I think that if required on pain of death to name instantly the most perfect thing in the universe," said the minister and abolitioni...

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl

By Jonathan C. Slaght.  Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020, 349 pp. (Kindle Edition)

In an interview published in the Guardian, Jonathan C. Slaght said that if you googled "Blakiston's Fish Owl," his photo would come up.  I decided to try it—and there he was, embracing a large, hairy bird, a member of an endangered species that Slaght is doing his best to save.  Both of them looked pretty fierce.

Ferocity—or at least a...

In a sense, all travel writers are novelists, with themselves as heroes."
--Malise Ruthven, Traveler Through Time: A Photographic Journey with Freya Stark, 

The Salt Path: A Memoir

By Raynor Winn.  Penguin, 2018, 271 pp.

Imagine that you are 50 years old, you have just lost your farm, which was not only your home but also your livelihood, and you've learned that your husband, whom you've passionately loved since you were both teenagers, has a degenerative brain disease that is untreatable—what do you do?

If you're Raynor Winn, you decide that what you and your husband, Moth, should do is walk England's South West Coast Path, 630 miles, wild c...