Todd Tyrtle
Sometimes I want to read an introspective travel book where the author explores their own psyche as much as they explore the outside world. Other times, it's fun to just read about someone having interesting adventures in far away places. This book's a fine example of the latter category. A very light, quick read but also quite enjoyable.
Scary - he writes about the George W. Bush presidency decades before it occurred. Fortunately W's rule ended differently than this book did...
Great book - should be required teen reading along with Doctorow's Little Brother and M. T. Anderson's Feed.
Really fun read. I have memories of hanging out with friends for a season, summer, or grade in school and everything is amazing. You all have so much fun together doing ridiculous things and living like siblings. Reading this felt like being a fly on the wall for a lifetime spent like this among three friends. Yes, they were famous and that informed some of the stories - but the interesting part wasn't that they were famous - it was capturing that friend-meets-family dynamic.
One of those books you're sad is over because now you can't experience it again.
A mixed bag of pieces but overall more good than bad and some truly inspiring ones that have me looking forward to spending more time at markets, cooking at home and eating locally.
Great art, disappointing storyline. Usually I'd put down a book that is this below my expectations but it was short enough that my hopes of “Well, maybe there'll be an interesting twist in the end.” kept me reading. I'm glad it was a short read or I'd feel I'd wasted my time.
Another book right at my Hindi reading level. Fun book with entertaining illustrations.
Wow - they were worse than I'd even imagined! Really entertaining but I had to take breaks - so many people doing so many bad things all around the world. It boggles the mind.
The content itself was really good - quite helpful. I didn't care so much for the actual delivery, however. I am not a fan of SNL, and don't really see the ‘genius' of Chris Farley and other SNL cast members (maybe in improv he was better? Definitely what I've seen of Tina Fey doing improv vs. sketch comedy supports that possibility). So in that sense it felt like a great offering at the altar of Lorne Michaels. And that name dropping really detracted from the experience of the book such that I found myself having to just remind myself of the value of the content even when the examples of why the content was good had just the opposite effect on me.
Fantastic cookbook with great recipes. This was the book that taught me not only how to make amazing black bean soup, but has the only refried bean burrito recipe that tastes right to me (it took me years to find it!)
I tried to finish it, I really did, but I just couldn't. To me it seemed the author put a great deal of effort into writing a book to say how much she disliked being in China and how unpleasant the experience was. If she didn't like it there, why should I like reading about it?
This is not to say that all travel books should be nothing but positive - negative with a sense of humour works really well (Bill Bryson has moments like this). Negative with the author having learned something is also good. But to me, this was like reading a series of well written (but very negative) reviews at Tripadvisor.com.
I used this on a previous trip across Ontario and it served me well. The roads it suggested were good and though I didn't use it, I find the summary of services available by town in the back helpful.
Going to be using it again in a few weeks...
An OK read. The route was interesting, and the photos and descriptions were nice, but the book itself read more like a series of events than a story. Not much about the folks the author meets, not much about how the author felt. The brief chapter at the end by his friend Harry was more what I was hoping for. Humor, wonder, failures, successes - there was more of that in Harry's chapter than the rest of the book combined. To me this book reads more like a gazetteer, sadly. But of course what I look for in a read isn't what everyone looks for so take my opinion with that in mind.
I have a soft spot for books like this and this one didn't disappoint. It also sent me down the rabbit hole of the insanity that is RAAM.
I have to admit, as little as I liked carrying camping gear and loads of heavy equipment on my bike in the past, the more I read stories about riding through this part of the world, the more the Route 66 bicycle route map set calls out to me. Someday - when the Canadian dollar is worth a bit more again...
As someone who was a kid in the mid 1970's, it was a fun visit to the time of my childhood. The story was compelling and the artwork was really great.
Good read, my favourite book on cycling since Byrne's Bicycle Diaries. I particularly liked how he was able to address the driver/cyclist conflict in an evenhanded and positive way.
I bought this without thinking on my last trip to Mumbai. I wanted something to bring the memory of the city and its people back to me when I went back home and this book really did it. It is a beautiful read with lots of heart. The author is very good at not just bringing you in to someone's life quickly, but to make you care deeply for them. I'm sorry to have finished it because now I can never enjoy reading it for the first time again.
Content of the book was fascinating and really interesting. I learned a lot reading it.
My only criticism is that the e-book version (Kobo, anyway) really needed editing. There were many cases where there was missing punctuation so you had to guess where sentences began and ended based on their capitalization. But every once in a while that was wrong too!
As someone who was a kid in the mid 1970's, it was a fun visit to the time of my childhood. The story was compelling and the artwork was really great.
Fantastic read. Timely as I turn a bit inward (in a good way, I think), reduce my use of technology and social media and wrestle our own budget under control. I like her humanity as well. I recently tried reading a book on a similar topic and I found the author cold, judgemental, and apparently flawless in their pursuit of simplicity. It's not very motivating for me to read that.
Ms. Levine, on the other hand, still wants to buy stuff, struggles with the idea of “necessity” and shares the good and bad of her experience.
After reading another “1 year project” book in which it seemed the author's partner did little but belittle and ridicule her and her project, I liked how Ms. Levine's partner was. Refreshing to read a book where the author really likes the people in their lives.
Sometimes I want to read an introspective travel book where the author explores their own psyche as much as they explore the outside world. Other times, it's fun to just read about someone having interesting adventures in far away places. This book's a fine example of the latter category. A very light, quick read but also quite enjoyable.
While I enjoyed the book and the journey itself, comments about some of the countries and reactions to people in some villages was not so great at times. The good parts were a 4.5/5, but a few incidents impacted my enjoyment.
I love stories about the evolution of cuisine. Where do dishes come from, what travels and migrations led to them, and so on. This book delivers all that about what North Americans, and particularly Canadians, think of as “Chinese food” along with a beautiful family story as well.