Day 1 Armchair Traveling, an Introduction

 

We’ve all been wanting to travel for the past 2 years. Who hasn’t?

As I thought about Bout-Of-Books for this summer, for travel season, I decided to focus on books about journeys.

I have always been a serious reader of all types of books about travel from historical accounts and journals to historical fiction. These travel books describe a journey from here to there. Some are spare, some are densely described. Some are tales of adventures or peoples, customs and traditions, others are stories that fill the reader with delight, interest, and in many cases, adventure fraught with danger, thrills, and chills. Some are books that take you along a road, others a footpath, and still others a river. Best of all, they teach you about what’s along the route and, in many cases, what’s changed over time.

As I embrace armchair travel, who hasn’t over the past year or two, I began asking questions about this broad and rather fluid genre. In the blog entries that follow, I will write about books that take me places while I read in place in my armchair.

Here are two books that take you places; both released this year. The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts and West with Giraffes by Linda Rutledge.

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts is a lovingly crafted work of historical fiction based on the diaries and letters of Annie Wilkins, a 63-year-old farmer from Maine in 1954 who rides her horse across the United States accompanied by her intrepid dog. Following her story, readers learn about the hardships of riding day after day in all types of weather. It’s a pretty amazing trip for a 60+ woman. The author describes what the rider saw, how the roads changed from two lanes to interstate, and how rural lands and the presence of horses disappeared by the 1950s. What a tale.

West with Giraffes by Linda Rutledge is a fictionalized account of Woodrow Wilson Nickel. Rutledge sets up the story as a memoir told by Nickel, now 105, of his adventure at 17. It was the adventure of a lifetime for a young man who survived the dustbowl of the Texas Panhandle. He escapes to New York City only to drive across country to San Diego in 1938 with two giraffes on the back of his pickup truck.

 

 

I reviewed The Ride of Her Life here https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55333765-the-ride-of-her-life

West with Giraffes here https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53453400-west-with-giraffes

Stay tuned for more Armchair Travels while Reading in Place tomorrow.