Sunday Travel Book Notes

On the shelf:
Sense of Place by Michael Shapiro
Australia, Great Southern Land: a New History of Australia by Frank Welsh
Googlewhack Adventure by Dave Gorman
Article about author Paul Fussell

Radio host Mike Cleary, a.k.a. The Food and Travel Enthusiast, wrote up a summer reading piece for the Contra Costa Times.

“The most fun, though, is when a book arrives at the house and just one glance at it tells you it’s something you can’t wait to get at.”

He listed the upcoming A Sense of Place as one of four of these kinds of books and called it “Excellent”.

British writer Frank Welsh is causing quite a stir about this historical book on Australia, Great Southern Land: a New History of Australia.

Philip Knightly’s review in the Telegraph is solid and positive.

“he has produced a genuinely original, enlightening, witty account of a nation and its difficult, complicated and contrary people. His theme is the astonishing speed of Australia’s development and the impossibility of predicting where the country is going.”

But Australian Poet John Kinsella has quite a different view on the book.

“RARELY have I been so angry over the publication of a book as I am over Frank Welsh’s Great Southern Land: A New History of Australia. In the past, if I have had to negatively review a book I’ve felt a pang of regret. This book is the exception. Welsh’s so-called history is a disgrace.” —“Disgrace dressed up as history”, Scotsman.com

The Literary Life column in the Telegraph (Filed: 27/07/2004), reports that “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure is the best-selling work of travel literature.”
I saw the book while I was in the UK, but it didn’t grab me. Right now, I’m not so interested in the write up of this book (here’s his website), as I am the Nielsen BookScan reports.

“A Googlewhack, for those who may be interested, is what happens when a two-word enquiry on the Internet search engine Google produces just one result: ie a solo website. Mr Gorman’s book, which details what happened when he went off to visit (in the real, not the virtual, sense) some of the websites, no matter where they were, was published by Ebury in January and sold 46,382 copies.

Works by Bill Bryson came second, third and eighth: Notes From A Small Island, first published in 1996 and still going strong, sold 26,702 copies; Down Under, originally published in 2001, sold 21,526 copies; and Neither Here Nor There, published in 1998, sold 14,684 copies.

I don’t know if it’s safe to assume that these are UK BookScan reports. And I’m wondering how they differ from U.S. BookScan reports. I’ll have to ask TT to check our numbers for Sand in My Bra. As far as I know, sales are more than 20k, but I don’t know if that is reflected on BookScan. Ahhhh the meaning of numbers. It can get so confusing I try to just stay away from them.

And lastly, here is a lengthy article on Paul Fussell from The Guardian this weekend.

His book The Boys’ Crusade: American G.I.s in Europe – Chaos and Fear in World War Two comes out this month in the UK. Who? Well, Rolf has written about him a few times on his Vagablogging blog.

• “Paul Fussell’s famous rant on the hypocrisy of “anti-tourists”
  
• “Paul Fussell on why “tourism” is not travel”
  
• “Paul Fussell on humility”