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By the Seat of My Pants: Humorous Tales of Travel and Misadventure
Lonely Planet knows that some of life's funniest experiences happen on the road. Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, these experiences can give birth to our most profound travel lessons and illuminations, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories. This collection presents 31 globe-girdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken. The collection brings together some of the world's most renowned travelers and storytellers with previously unpublished writers.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
336 people are currently reading
780 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
July 6, 2018
A mostly meh collection of short travel stories; a few stood out, but most were the kind that are readable but almost instantly forgotten. I’m deducting an extra star because, for reasons unclear to me, this supposedly humorous travel anthology ends on a depressing story about racism and death in Australia.
June 24, 2017
Like any road trip, this book had its ups and downs. But unfortunately, there were more downs than ups.
I read one other Lonely Planet travel anthology earlier this year, "A Moveable Feast", and I found that to be infinitely better. The difference in quality between that anthology, in which almost every story was a winner, and this anthology, in which over half of the included stories are duds, is bizarre considering both books share the same editor.
There are some particularly egregious stories here, sadly too many to mention, that are little more than exercises in self-promotion, but there are also a few delightful stories that deserve highlighting. These are as follows:
1. "Wangara's Cross" by Joshua Clark
2. "An Idyll in Ibiza" by Karl Toro Greenfeld
3. "Left Luggage" by Jeff Greenwald
4. "An Award-Winning Performance" by Deborah Steg
5. "Coming to America" by Amanda Jones
6. "The Prince and I" by Kathie Kertesz
6 stories out of a total of 31. That's pretty sad.
I read one other Lonely Planet travel anthology earlier this year, "A Moveable Feast", and I found that to be infinitely better. The difference in quality between that anthology, in which almost every story was a winner, and this anthology, in which over half of the included stories are duds, is bizarre considering both books share the same editor.
There are some particularly egregious stories here, sadly too many to mention, that are little more than exercises in self-promotion, but there are also a few delightful stories that deserve highlighting. These are as follows:
1. "Wangara's Cross" by Joshua Clark
2. "An Idyll in Ibiza" by Karl Toro Greenfeld
3. "Left Luggage" by Jeff Greenwald
4. "An Award-Winning Performance" by Deborah Steg
5. "Coming to America" by Amanda Jones
6. "The Prince and I" by Kathie Kertesz
6 stories out of a total of 31. That's pretty sad.
January 15, 2016
I loved the premise for this collection—travel snippets, each with a humorous twist. Most of the pieces I enjoyed while a few fell short. All in all it was a fun read. A great travel book to bring along while traveling (which is what I did).
September 12, 2017
Mixed bag
I enjoyed a number of the stories but they were a bit up and down. While all of the stories took me away, I found some needed more to fill them out.
I enjoyed a number of the stories but they were a bit up and down. While all of the stories took me away, I found some needed more to fill them out.
July 31, 2017
By The Seat of My Pants é uma colectânea de pequenas histórias, organizada por Don George para a famosa editora de guias de viagem Lonely Planet, que relatam com humor os percalços e as desventuras que sempre esperam o viajante. Vi o livro à venda por mero acaso, numa secção da livraria que não costumo visitar, tive curiosidade para o folhear, e decidi-me imediatamente a comprá-lo quando vi na lista de autores a Jan Morris e o Pico Iyer. A primeira porque é uma das minhas escritoras de viagens favoritas, o segundo porque tinha imensa vontade de o ler, uma vez que só o conheço de alguns artigos de revistas e das suas conferências e entrevistas em vídeos do YouTube.
Como são mais de trinta histórias, algumas delas mesmo muito curtas, o nível é naturalmente desequilibrado, havendo umas melhores e bem divertidas e empolgantes, e outras um pouco mais aborrecidas. Mas no geral lê-se muito bem, é um livro descontraído, bom para esta altura de verão e férias.
Como são mais de trinta histórias, algumas delas mesmo muito curtas, o nível é naturalmente desequilibrado, havendo umas melhores e bem divertidas e empolgantes, e outras um pouco mais aborrecidas. Mas no geral lê-se muito bem, é um livro descontraído, bom para esta altura de verão e férias.
June 20, 2020
A series of short tales of the pitfalls of traveling by different authors/travellers.
I love these lonely planet collections. The stories are interesting, funny, unexpected and at the very least short if you don't enjoy one. Particularly enjoyed 'The Sights in Prague', 'The Garden Kitchen' and 'Naked in Oaxaca'.
I love these lonely planet collections. The stories are interesting, funny, unexpected and at the very least short if you don't enjoy one. Particularly enjoyed 'The Sights in Prague', 'The Garden Kitchen' and 'Naked in Oaxaca'.
January 22, 2022
First few stories are of the travel sarcasm ilk. More enjoyable after that.
February 5, 2018
Highly enjoyed many of these stories. My favourite stories (in order of appearance) had me laughing out loud and pondering random encounters and the meaning of it all, if there is one: Something Approaching Enlightenment by Rolf Potts, Snaking Through Italy by Wickham Boyle, Let The Buyer Beware by Edwin Tucker, and a very fitting end of the anthology, Wangara's Cross by Joshua Clark. Other stories I won't mention had wholly unlikeable narrators that made me quite happy this is a collection of short stories and thus I wasn't trapped with them on a sweaty bus on its way to Columbia via the bumpiest unpaved roads for four days without a bathroom. (Yes, a couple were that painful.) Since I'm currently not able to travel, reading this collection was a nice armchair ride, complete with running water and my own snacks. Definitely a fun trip!
May 28, 2022
By the seat of my pants is not a special book and that is precisely what makes it so good. If you were ever tired and needed a break or looking for that book which you can read on a beach, this is it.
The stories aren't out of the world funny but quite a few of them are witty. It's just a very pleasantly relaxing feeling while you read through this. There is, however, a twist at the end if you thought this was all about light humour.
The writing varies from story to story but overall very well edited.
Overall an easy going 4 star.
The stories aren't out of the world funny but quite a few of them are witty. It's just a very pleasantly relaxing feeling while you read through this. There is, however, a twist at the end if you thought this was all about light humour.
The writing varies from story to story but overall very well edited.
Overall an easy going 4 star.
December 30, 2017
I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection with a few exceptions. Some made me glad to be home, others made me long to see more of the world. But all contained thoughtful moments of humanity. And I think most of us can relate to the misadventures in travel that turn into our best stories once home.
Read
July 25, 2014A mixed bag. Most stories are okay, a few really shine:
"Left Luggage" by Jeff Greenwald
"The Garden Kitchen" by Holly Erickson
"Coming to America" by Amanda Jones
"An Award Winning Performance" by Deborah Steg.
"Left Luggage" by Jeff Greenwald
"The Garden Kitchen" by Holly Erickson
"Coming to America" by Amanda Jones
"An Award Winning Performance" by Deborah Steg.
March 20, 2012
expected a lot more laughs and smile for the stories. Some of them were borring
June 10, 2019
that I was already familiar with some of the stories, like Doug Lansky's story about being locked in the toilet, which I have read now at least three times, and Pico Iyer's problems on his Ethiopian trip, which I had read of earlier. Still other writings were from authors I was familiar with, even if the particular stories were not ones I remembered, like Tim Cahill and Simon Winchester and Jan Morris. Yet not all of the surprises in this particular book were good. A great many of the essays in this collection appeared to be apologies for why the author did not write about the topic demanded--for example, Danny Wallace's opening essay about the sights of Prague that he did not see, or the blackout in Ushuaia that prevented Michelle Richmond and her husband from seeing the Northern lights as she had intended. Indeed, quite a lot of these stories had a high level of cliche in that they made the author look bad, or at least made the trip look bad, possibly as a way of reducing envy on the part of the reader.
This book begins with an introduction and then contains almost 250 pages of travel essays written by a variety of authors. Many of the essays at least purport to be humorous, although I must admit I did not laugh a great deal while I was reading this book. How much of that depends on the poor humor writing skills of the authors and how much depends on my own sense of humor (or lack thereof) is a matter of debate, I suppose, but while it is obvious that the author was looking for a great many writers who went a great many places, there are a lot of similarities about the stories that help to make them oppressively samey. There is a lot of taking advantage of credulous people, whether the traveler is being taken advantage of by others or is taking advantage of others, as in the case of the tourist who doesn't know that real cowboys don't wear polka dots. A lot of them also rely on the gap between the expectations of the traveler and that of the people in an area, and most of them fall flat from where they could have been, despite some promising setups like the Afghan Tourist Office.
One of the more distressing aspects of this book was the way that many of the female authors ended up commenting a great deal about nudity in their works. Apparently women authors thought it was fun and exciting to admit to partial or full nudity, whether that involved trying to make love with one's partner only to have people walk into the wrong room and catch them in flagrante, or whether it involved taking a sauna with locals in Oaxaca after all of one's money had been stolen. It's not as if the guys did much better, with their own failure to recognize the different standard of living and cultural standards of the places they visited. Some of the writers choose to be ugly Westerners, and some of them choose to mock the people whose country they visited, but for the most part these essays appear calculated to excuse the writers of failures to complete the tasks assigned to them on a given trip or to try to make the reader feel less envious about not having traveled to a particular country because of the hassles they faced, and it is a ruse that wears thin after a while.
This book begins with an introduction and then contains almost 250 pages of travel essays written by a variety of authors. Many of the essays at least purport to be humorous, although I must admit I did not laugh a great deal while I was reading this book. How much of that depends on the poor humor writing skills of the authors and how much depends on my own sense of humor (or lack thereof) is a matter of debate, I suppose, but while it is obvious that the author was looking for a great many writers who went a great many places, there are a lot of similarities about the stories that help to make them oppressively samey. There is a lot of taking advantage of credulous people, whether the traveler is being taken advantage of by others or is taking advantage of others, as in the case of the tourist who doesn't know that real cowboys don't wear polka dots. A lot of them also rely on the gap between the expectations of the traveler and that of the people in an area, and most of them fall flat from where they could have been, despite some promising setups like the Afghan Tourist Office.
One of the more distressing aspects of this book was the way that many of the female authors ended up commenting a great deal about nudity in their works. Apparently women authors thought it was fun and exciting to admit to partial or full nudity, whether that involved trying to make love with one's partner only to have people walk into the wrong room and catch them in flagrante, or whether it involved taking a sauna with locals in Oaxaca after all of one's money had been stolen. It's not as if the guys did much better, with their own failure to recognize the different standard of living and cultural standards of the places they visited. Some of the writers choose to be ugly Westerners, and some of them choose to mock the people whose country they visited, but for the most part these essays appear calculated to excuse the writers of failures to complete the tasks assigned to them on a given trip or to try to make the reader feel less envious about not having traveled to a particular country because of the hassles they faced, and it is a ruse that wears thin after a while.
December 24, 2019
This is a motley mix of 30+ stories that recount miscalculation, miscommunication, actions backfiring, and unwarranted confidence. Most are tales of gentle or slight escapades. The stories are all by different authors, and are not organized with any obvious logic. The assortment rather reflects taking a weeklong trip off the beaten path. You're sampling experiences. The pressure's off. You don't have a lot of control. You're going with the flow.
I read this before going to sleep, navigating 3 to 5 each night. After each reading I felt as if I had just had half of an overseas vacation. Some of the characters are not as interesting as advertised. Some of the tellings are a bit self-important. Few offer any savory payoff. I smiled often, but chuckled only rarely. The book feels like a journey along a chain of tourist zones - it's a pleasing break from ordinary life, but overstatement, self-importance and mishaps pop up frequently. The episodes that didn't offer much independent appeal still harmonized with the whole collective escape. I have reread it a couple times now.
I read the 2016 edition.
I read this before going to sleep, navigating 3 to 5 each night. After each reading I felt as if I had just had half of an overseas vacation. Some of the characters are not as interesting as advertised. Some of the tellings are a bit self-important. Few offer any savory payoff. I smiled often, but chuckled only rarely. The book feels like a journey along a chain of tourist zones - it's a pleasing break from ordinary life, but overstatement, self-importance and mishaps pop up frequently. The episodes that didn't offer much independent appeal still harmonized with the whole collective escape. I have reread it a couple times now.
I read the 2016 edition.
July 12, 2025
Crónicas de viajes a diferentes países. Experiencias buenas y malas que nos enseñan a conocer y entender culturas distintas a la nuestra.
El libro incluye breves historias donde quienes las vivieron nos cuentan el impacto que estas aventuras dejaron en sus vidas.
Por ejemplo, nunca cierres con un pie una puerta de un carro en un lugar donde puede tener un significado muy desagradable, no confíes en la gente, aunque finjan ser hijos de un millonario, no cambies bolígrafos por cabritas, atrévete a viajar y conocer gente interesante, a disfrutar de música diferente y a enterarte de que hay miles de camellos salvajes en Australia.
El libro incluye breves historias donde quienes las vivieron nos cuentan el impacto que estas aventuras dejaron en sus vidas.
Por ejemplo, nunca cierres con un pie una puerta de un carro en un lugar donde puede tener un significado muy desagradable, no confíes en la gente, aunque finjan ser hijos de un millonario, no cambies bolígrafos por cabritas, atrévete a viajar y conocer gente interesante, a disfrutar de música diferente y a enterarte de que hay miles de camellos salvajes en Australia.
January 24, 2018
I loved these short stories of world travel. One was set entirely in Lucca, Italy. Another was about flying with a snake into Italy. How about the love story of a young woman from New Zealand going to America? Too many great stories to mention. Sure, some were ordinary, but the good far outweighed the bad.
I borrowed this book from a great little B and B in Virginia. With the innkeeper's permission, I brought it home, put it at my bedside, and read a story a night when I had nothing else to read. It is a gem!
I borrowed this book from a great little B and B in Virginia. With the innkeeper's permission, I brought it home, put it at my bedside, and read a story a night when I had nothing else to read. It is a gem!
June 20, 2021
Very funny short story collection about travel. I loved the heart warming stories, and the funny ones were great. I hadn't read travel before, so this was something quite different for me. It has kind of encouraged me to go traveling but also not at the same time. The more dangerous sounding stories kind of put me off, but the funny and great experience ones makes me want to go! It is a very short read and you do get through it quite quickly, would recommend if you like the Darwin Awards books as this kind of has the same tone to it
June 29, 2019
By the Seat of My Pants: Humorous Tales of Travel and Misadventure by Don George: 8/10
As with any collection of essays, some are bound to resonate with certain readers more than others. And I'll be honest, the stories that didn't strike me were sometimes pretty difficult to get through. However, the stories I loved left me wanting so much more. Overall, this collection is a very entertaining read and I'm sure everyone could find at least one story that strikes their fancy.
As with any collection of essays, some are bound to resonate with certain readers more than others. And I'll be honest, the stories that didn't strike me were sometimes pretty difficult to get through. However, the stories I loved left me wanting so much more. Overall, this collection is a very entertaining read and I'm sure everyone could find at least one story that strikes their fancy.
April 10, 2020
I started reading this when we were told to stay inside and away from everyone because of Covid-19 on March 16th, I choose to read it as a little escape. My concentration at the beginning of self isolation wasn’t the best so having short stories to read was perfect. Plus I got to travel and have adventures around the world while being home and hoping that one day in the future we will be able to travel and have adventures again. I recommend reading some great stories.
May 10, 2022
Misadventure generally makes for interesting travellers' tales. Weirdly all my favorites in this volume were square in the middle of the book, including the ones with snakes in.
CN: um, snakes? Also, a lot of unreflected-on tourist perspective but not in a nasty way. Some side characters (not the storytellers) are upsetting in various ways eg use of racist epithet, but I never felt like that sort of awful behavior was condoned by the text.
CN: um, snakes? Also, a lot of unreflected-on tourist perspective but not in a nasty way. Some side characters (not the storytellers) are upsetting in various ways eg use of racist epithet, but I never felt like that sort of awful behavior was condoned by the text.
May 19, 2022
Great short stories from travel writers. It had me hooked with the first story set in the Czech Republic to the point that I had tears leaking from my eyes. My neighbor read it who is from there and she didn’t find it as amusing. I don’t blame her, no one wants to read bad publicity written about their country..but I didn’t see it that way. I felt that story could have happened anywhere in the world any it was just a case of Lost in Translation. 🧳 ✈️
July 29, 2017
Some of the strangest things that have happened in my life have taken place while I've been traveling and these tales of the adventures of others validate my experiences. Some of these tales are just strange, some made me cringe, while others had me laughing uncontrollably. An interesting look into the unexpected situations in which travelers find themselves.
August 21, 2017
Funny travel tales
I once accidentally went to Delaware, stumbled across the site of a massacre in Rhode Island, and also completely missed a turn to France. So these stories of woeful adventures entertained me. Some of them sound very much like what I would do. Good writing, well told stories.
I once accidentally went to Delaware, stumbled across the site of a massacre in Rhode Island, and also completely missed a turn to France. So these stories of woeful adventures entertained me. Some of them sound very much like what I would do. Good writing, well told stories.
April 17, 2020
Great variety of stories
You will be moved. Transported. You will laugh out loud. You need to read this book. I want to read it over and over again. Want to go to the places in the stories. I will bring many pens, practice my dancing and suspend my appetite. But for now I must quarantine while the world waits for this Coronavirus to go away.
You will be moved. Transported. You will laugh out loud. You need to read this book. I want to read it over and over again. Want to go to the places in the stories. I will bring many pens, practice my dancing and suspend my appetite. But for now I must quarantine while the world waits for this Coronavirus to go away.
June 1, 2022
If you like humorous travel essays, this is one of the better collections you can get. Like all collections, whether stories or essays, the items in this book are a bit uneven, but Lonely Planet has done a wonderful job of compiling excellent writing from the best travel writers. Highly recommended for those of us who can only occassionally get off on an advenure of our own.
May 16, 2018
Hit or miss, but overall good
Weird choice for the final story\essay, and rather depressing since so many were light hearted. Very hit or miss on the quality. Several had their twists given away by the title. Some were very, very good though.
Weird choice for the final story\essay, and rather depressing since so many were light hearted. Very hit or miss on the quality. Several had their twists given away by the title. Some were very, very good though.
August 31, 2018
An excellent book, definitely something for everyone in this.
Short tales from experienced and newbie travellers, funny and serious, experiences to be learned from - either to be repeated or avoided at all costs!
The short introductions to the authors is a great touch.
Short tales from experienced and newbie travellers, funny and serious, experiences to be learned from - either to be repeated or avoided at all costs!
The short introductions to the authors is a great touch.
July 25, 2019
Enjoyable compendium
Being a travel junkie, I enjoyed this collection of humorous stories about adventure and mis-adventure on the road. A quick reading set of short stories from various authors.
Being a travel junkie, I enjoyed this collection of humorous stories about adventure and mis-adventure on the road. A quick reading set of short stories from various authors.
July 26, 2022
I enjoyed this collection of short stories about travel. They are all relatively light-hearted, though some are funnier or more interesting than others. A few had me laughing out loud. This is good summer-time reading, or a good choice if you want to de-stress before going to bed.
September 1, 2022
Its a great collection of short travel stories, by different authors. You get different emotions as you are reading through, some will make you laugh, others cringe and I must say the last particular story was a tear jerker for me.
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