Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance

by Don George (Editor), Pico Iyer (Foreward)

Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance includes these forty-one scintillating and sizzling tales of

“On the Amazon” by Isabel Allende
“Once Upon a Time in Italy” by Bill Barich
“Naxos Nights” by Laurie Gough
“Passionate and Penniless in Paris” by Maxine Rose Schur
“Sleeping with Elephants” by Don Meredith
“Romance in Romania” by Simon Winchester
“Looking for Abdelati” by Tanya Shaffer
“Special Delivery” by Lindsy van Gelder
“England’s Decadent Delights” by Douglas Cruickshank
“I Lost It at Club Med” by Po Bronson
“Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow” by Taras Grescoe
“Where the Hula Goddess Lives” by James D. Houston
“In a French Cave” by Beth Kephart
“How to Buy a Turkish Rug” by Laura Billings
“The Dangers of Provence” by Peter Mayle
“Hog At the Memphis World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest” by David Kohn
“Philosophy Au Lait” by David Downie
“Your Money’s No Good Here” by Tim Cahill
“Embraced in Spain” by Barry Yeoman
“Italian Affair” by Laura Fraser
“Tampax Nightmares” by Susan Hack
“On Japanese Trains” by Sallie Tisdale
“Oscar Night in Angkor Wat” by Jeff Greenwald
“The Last Tourist in Mozambique” by Mary Roach
“Inside Colombia” by Dawn MacKeen
“Fade into Blue” by Amanda Jones
“Navigating Nairobi” by Alicia Rebensdorf
“Out of Africa” by Wendy Belcher
“The Man Who Loved Books in Turkey” by Lisa Michaels
“The Meaning of Gdańsk” by Jan Morris
“How Zurich Invented the Modern World” by Carlos Fuentes
“Storming The Beach ” by Rolf Potts
“Conquering Half Dome” by Don George
“Looking for Mr. Watson” by Bill Belleville
“Bewitched on Bali” by Pico Iyer
“Lost in the Sahara” by Jeffrey Tayler
“Fear, Drugs, and Soccer in Asia” by Karl Taro Greenfield
“My Junior Year Abroad” by Edith Pearlman
“Expatriate, with Olives” by Lucy McCauley
“The Aussie Way of Wanderlust” by Tony Wheeler
“When We’re Going to Be There” by Chris Colin

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Anthologies, Memoir, Short Stories, Essays

349 pages, Paperback

First published November 7, 2000

Reviews

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure if this sated my wanderlust desire or exacerbated it. Some of the tales were just wonderful, taking me from Kenya to Thailand, back to Cádiz and on to Brazil. The stories that I was less enchanted by were made up for by those that I enjoyed. Overall a great read.

[Rrlgrrl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely collection of travel essays! This is a book I could only read a couple of essays at a time, partly because of the different locations focused in each essay. I found each one to be very engrossing and easy to picture in my mind. I now have even more places to add to my list of places I want to visit and experience. Beautiful writing!

[Den_Petrovsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is filled with adventures in Italy and France. Yes, some of the pieces are old, written decades ago, but there's a pattern here: for American travelers and traveling writers, Europe still mean France, Italy, maybe Germany and the UK, which combined accounted for at least 25% of the book. Cute, but no thanks. I expect these travelers to take me further than Paris.

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a a very nice compendium of travel literature and I would have awarded it that difficult-to-earn 5th star but for the last few pieces that drug down the ending; they were solid duds and an unfortunate way to end the collection. Worth reading, but not all the way through.

[Ralph N · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these stories were amazing, but the majority of them were lame.

[East Bay J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanderlust from salon.com collects the travel writing of more than thirty authors into one handy, dandy travel writing sampler. Some of the stories were great and they all had something of interest to be gleaned from spending the bit of time it takes to read each one.

Bill Barich’s memoir, “One Upon A Time In Italy” is a standout. “Passionate And Penniless In Paris” by Maxine Rose Schur is a lovely, romantic tale. The idea of new found friends is explored delightfully in Lindsay von Gelder’s “Special Delivery.” Taras Green gets my thumbs up for “Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow” because, well, it’s about absinthe. “Where The Hula Goddess Lives” is an amazing tale of travels in Hawaii and includes some interesting info on the history of Hula dancing. I love me some barbecued pork and David Kohn’s “Hog Heaven: At The Memphis World Champion Barbecue Cooking Contest” made me hungry! I like Barry Yeoman’s “Embraced In Spain” because it is a beautiful story of courage and acceptance. Susan Hack’s “Tampax Nightmares” is straight up hilarious. I feel like I got a new sense of Japan from “On Japanese Trains” by Sally Tisdale. And the award for absolute best writing style goes to Tim Cahill for “Your Money’s No Good Here.”

This book makes me want to be a travel writer.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthologies are tough to rate since there are many contributors, but this is a strong assortment of travellers' tales. It's a good mix of female and male writers describing small adventures all over the globe.

The tale of a small adventure can be more interesting than one describing a grand adventure. The story can clearly capture one piece of the travelling puzzle, that insight the writer has about themselves or the people and places they visit.

Don't miss "Out of Africa" by Wendy Belcher. Chris Colin's "When We're Going to Be There" is a charming account of an imagined road trip with future kids.

Tony Wheeler, of Lonely Planet fame, did a fun piece on "The Aussie Way of Wanderlust." "I've spent half a lifetime wondering who goes where, and the results of my surveys may be unscientific but they're certainly conclusive: Australians go everywhere," he writes. "Everywhere it's the same story: more Australians than there should be. Come on, there are less than twenty million of them. If there's an Australian on the [hotel] register there should be three Germans, seven Japanese, fifteen Americans. It's never that way."

[Ülle Hilep · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many many scenes from different situations by various travelers-explorers. The list of different authors is long; stories vary on style and substance, covering all continents.
But my favorite part of this book is the introductory essay on why we travel.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a welcome companion on my trip to Dubrovnik. I enjoyed reading about others doing world traveling and seeing their obstacles and how they viewed the world. Some of these essays are poignant and well-written while others are meandering and without a purpose. Some of the essays were included only to represent certain places around the world, I felt, rather than exploring the true meaning of Wanderlust.
What I did find interesting in each story, though, was how dated everything was. These stories are written before the internet and safety threats, where travel agents were still used and crossing into various African and Ukrainian borders was no big deal. Those stories did instill jealousy when I realized I would probably never see certain corners of the world. But the places that I have been able to see like the Sahara Desert made the storytelling all the more real and beautiful.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This featured too much pontificating about travel and not enough actual travel stories. I don't really care what these authors think travel is about -- I want to know their stories, their adventures, the places they've been.

Rolf Potts' story about trying to sneak onto the set of The Beach was just that, but it was one of few highlights. I was also amused by Chris Colin's Dave-Eggers-lite essay, but Eggers sustained it over the course of a whole book, and better.

[Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really enjoyed the Foreword of this book Why we Travel by Pico Iyer. I thought that it managed to sum up all of the reasons better than anything else I have read on the subject (and I have read quite a few travel tomes in my time). Due to the fact that I am an Absinthe decadent my fave story was "Absinthe makes the heart grow". My second favourite was "Naxos Nights". I really liked Lauri Gough's writing style. Stellar.

[Katy Jean Vance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this was pretty good. I love travel essay collections, and it was a delight to read many of these. A few of them slogged and one was downright boring. Most were a good mixture of funny, heartwarming and inspiring, which is just what I'm looking for in vicarious travel. :) Recommended for travelers, whether that travel happens in your armchair or in some rickety gondola somewhere you don't speak the language.

[Nancy McClure · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love an good travel anthology. I want to read the snippets, the frozen moments, the Here And Now of every traveler, everywhere. I still dream of capturing on video various moments of my own traveling past, and I suppose I use these parallels to both goad me to log my own fleeting moments, and to vicariously live through others'. Good stuff.

[Rachel Kopel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, fell into my hands at a library book sale, but it was really a delightful read. Especially since I could read a couple of chapters before bed and save the rest for another night. My favorite entry was SPECIAL DELIVERY by Lindsy van Gelder.

[Becky Straub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, traveling vicariously through others...very enjoyable.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for an armchair traveler who is interested in a variety of destinations.

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some really beautiful travel essays, my favorite of the book being "Fade into Blue"

[Diane in Australia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars = I liked the book. I'm glad I read it.

[Pratik Patankar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful collection of stories to revive the wanderlust in you :)

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some chapters (tales) were fantastic, funny, enlightening, or insightful. Others were awful.