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What book does the best job of transporting you to a different place?
Posted at 6:00 AM on October 28, 2009
by Eric Ringham
(33 Comments)
Filed under: Culture
On today's "Midmorning," Kerri Miller and former librarian Nancy Pearl discuss books that carry the reader to other places. What book does the best job of transporting you to a different place?
Comments (33)
I totally agree that "The Sword of Truth" by Terry Goodkind is a transporter - at the climaxes it is very difficult to put it down and come back to the real world. Also The Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher is pretty good too. It's so easy to imagine being there and having those powers and fury-craft.
The Chronicals of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.
The Golden Compass and Dr. Zhivago both transport me to a frigid air where I can see my breath. Brilliant.
The Harry Potter series. I feel like I actually know the characters and locations rather than just read about them.
Anne McCaffrey's series on the Dragon Riders of Pern. I started reading them by chance when someone left a book in the cabin I was staying in at summer camp many years ago.
Colonists from Earth and their descendents have been living on Pern for so many centuries, they have forgotten all about their former planet. Like the people of Pern, you are pulled into the story of the Dragon Riders and forget about the world around you for a while.
Bill Holm's "Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays" and his "Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imagined." Holm was a very gifted writer with a real ability to take his reader along with him for his adventures, hilarious, and Minnesotan to boot!
I'm in the middle of William Gibson's Neuromancer, and damned if it doesn't make me believe its cyberpunk setting isn't actually reality. I'm convinced that while it takes us to a vivid future at this moment, the verisimilitude will align with reality.
One Second After, by William R. Forstchen.
Pretty much a dry run for things to come.
Get ready or be prepared to spend some nights in the Katrina Superdome.
Usually the book that transports me is the one I'm reading. So right now it's "The Day the World Came to Town" by Jim DeFede. When the US closed down our airspace after 9/11, 38 of the thousands of planes that were ordered to land, landed in Gander, Newfoundland, population under 10,000. It's the story of how the Newfies took care of 6,595 unexpected guests. Gives me the shivers.
Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin. A sickness induced fever-dream of wandering a city and interacting with all sorts of strange people, the russian doll stories are amazing, leave you sleepless and sweaty even on the coldest Minnesotan nights.
I read Ken Follet's, Pillars of the Earth, a few months after my sister died in 2007. It thoroughly swept me up for four days. I couldn't put it down, staying up until 3 in the morning reading without getting the least bit tired. For the first time since her death, I wasn't mired in grief. Instead, I was transported to another world of new and different characters, scenes and dramatic plotlines.
Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood
Not only gorgeous descriptions of Berlin, Greece, and other places around the Mediterranean, but heartbreakingly complex fictionalized memoir of several different kinds of exile: physical, social, familial. Isherwood was WH Auden's best friend, and his fictional alter-ego is a character in this book, and others of Isherwood's memoirs.
There are two books, "A Time of Gifts"(1977) and "Between the Woods and the Water" (1986) (Part 1 and 2 of a trilogy) that transport me to Pre WWII Europe. Both books are the boyhood memoirs of British author, Patrick Leigh Fermor. Sir Fermor (nearing his 95th birthday) is currently writing the third and final book of the trilogy.
1)"Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight" absolutely the best written memoir I have ever read about Africa during the turmoil and transition time of east central Africa during the 1960's and 70's. It has been on the NY times best seller list - what insight this author had even as a young girl.
2)an old book that I found at a rummage sale is "We Took to the Woods" by Louise Dickinson Rich which describes a time between the world wars. What an idyllic place! Today the area and the author are kept alive by a group that has preserved the home site and conducts author retreats. it is beautiful! There is website.
3) Please do not forget "Three Cups of Tea"
My favorite travel books are about France:
"The American Woman in the Chinese Hat" by Carol Maso
and "French Lessons" by Alice Kaplan
Book: "Taming Storm Surges" by local author Bob Onan (lawyer and engineer) is a novel that has all the qualities you are talking about. It transports you to various places around the world plus it has a sweet love story within it. It taught me about a lot things I didn't know before.. Kerri, you will love it.
These are not really travel books, but James Herriott's books about being a vet in Yorkshire England during the 1930s-1960s transport me to a different place and time. They give me a great picture of that place at that time and make me laugh out loud at times.
The first book in the series is All Creatures Great and Small.
These are not really travel books, but James Herriott's books about being a vet in Yorkshire England during the 1930s-1960s transport me to a different place and time. They give me a great picture of that place at that time and make me laugh out loud at times.
These are not really travel books, but James Herriott's books about being a vet in Yorkshire England during the 1930s-1960s transport me to a different place and time. They give me a great picture of that place at that time and make me laugh out loud at times.
Transported to a different world?
Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earth Sea, and everything else great in that vein.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes me to a lot of different places; the planet Magrathea, the Restaurant and the End of the Universe, and many other stars and planets. The author describes each place in great detail. It puts you in the center of the action.
Not necessarily travel books, but these transport me to mysterious places that different characters react to in interesting different ways: "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver (missionary drags his family to Congo - what an awesome place!), "The Far Pavilions" by MM Kaye (British child is orphaned in India, "adopted" by Indian nursemaid), and oddly enough "Drop City" by TC Boyle (laid back hippies in California get kicked off commune and decide to really get free and natural in harsh Alaska). Thanks for more book ideas.
Not sure if it counts simply because it's a place I can't go to, but I am in favor of the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. It's a fantasy series of books that just pulls one in and immerses them in a world that challenges the immagination to visualize everything that comes through the text.
One of my favorite travel books. The Electric cool-aid acid test by Tom wolff. The book has literal travel fallowing Ken Kesey and his pack of merry pranksters around the country in their historic day-glow bus. It also describes a time of internal, self travel. The book explorers psychedelics and the mind . Also the american spirit and cultural shift in the 60's.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God are great travel books, not so much about the places, but more about the people and the cruelty that we can deliver through our own benevolence.
A favorite of mine is "Duchess of Bloomsbury Street" by Helene Hanff. It's a sequal to her memoir "84 Charing Cross Road" where she finally gets to London. A slim volume but a wonderful book about her longed-for trip to London. I felt like I was there with her. Even tho' it occurrs much later than 84, and after one of her main London contacts had died, it is still amazing to see London through Ms. Hanff's eyes.
Tulip Fever by Deborah Maggoch...(17th century Amsterdam). Another is "All Creatures Great and Small" by James Herriot.
Several years ago I picked up Edwidge Danticat's "The Farming of Bones." It's a haunting fictionalisation of the 1937 Haitian massacre.
I totally agree with Kerri about "Out of Africa". This book introduced me to a world I didn't know existed...a new time and place. Loved it and occasionally go back to it to read a favorite passage or two. Magical and dreamlike.
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Having lived in Poland and Bosnia, David Sedaris' book 'Me talk pretty one day' embodies all of the experiences (good, bad and funny) of living in a foreign country and trying to learn a new language. It brings me back to the good 'ol days when I was not afraid to humiliate myself on a daily basis.
Amitav Ghosh's books are incredible at this:
Shadow Lines.
In an Antique Land
Currently, most of my reading time is spent with my kids. We have been enjoying the Jungle Book. The words focus more on the story than describing the setting, but still draw pictures on your imagination. Even now I can picture the fierce red eyes of Rikki Tikki Tavi.
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