"I have a restless personality, a compulsion to keep travelling, and
I've always enjoyed reading about people who made their lives into a
perpetual journey. The literature of wandering and nomadism is also in
part a literature of harsh, arid environments - deserts, steppes, tundra
- where trees, agriculture and sedentary societies have found it
difficult to take root."
1. Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca
The extraordinary, mesmerising and true adventure of a Spanish conquistador shipwrecked off the coast of Texas in 1527. Naked and barefoot, with three companions, he walked all the way to the Pacific coast of Mexico, accruing a procession of thousands of Indians who hailed him as a god and a healer. This is the first book ever written about the North American interior and still one of the best.
2. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
A travel book about Australian Aborigines in which very little actually happens apart from Chatwin's speculations on the human urge to wander. Aborigines won't talk to him, he invents his main character, the book's structure dissolves into a mosaic of notebook entries - and yet he writes so beautifully, and thinks such interesting thoughts, that none of these flaws matter.
......
Read the rest of Richards picks...
1. Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca
The extraordinary, mesmerising and true adventure of a Spanish conquistador shipwrecked off the coast of Texas in 1527. Naked and barefoot, with three companions, he walked all the way to the Pacific coast of Mexico, accruing a procession of thousands of Indians who hailed him as a god and a healer. This is the first book ever written about the North American interior and still one of the best.
2. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
A travel book about Australian Aborigines in which very little actually happens apart from Chatwin's speculations on the human urge to wander. Aborigines won't talk to him, he invents his main character, the book's structure dissolves into a mosaic of notebook entries - and yet he writes so beautifully, and thinks such interesting thoughts, that none of these flaws matter.
......
Read the rest of Richards picks...
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