Yet Another Book Trail — New Books to the Reading List
Dear Reader,
I sat down to check my emails, clicking Junk on those I never want to see, skipping those that I didn’t find interesting and reading the rest when I paused for a chat with James Clear for yet another time!
James Clear
James Clear’s newsletter is one of those that resonates with my thoughts. In his recent newsletter, as always, he shared a quote from someone else he found interesting.
“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”
Thoughtful words for sure! But what I found more interesting was the person who penned them down. James Clear introduced her to me as, “Explorer and Travel writer Freya Stark”.
My Obsession!
I have made a you_can’t_break_this kind of rule to travel somewhere for two weeks(minimum) once in every 2 months(at least). I come back home and try to put together those travel moments and interactions into visual stories on Youtube(you can watch the latest one here — The Soul of Mumbai).
I follow a couple of travel writers on Substack, watch travel vlogs and documentaries and I am waiting for a travel book that’s taking forever to be delivered(ordered on 3rd Oct and yet to be dispatched!)
The point I am trying to make is — I am obsessed with all things travel. So it was only natural that when I got to know about Freya Stark, my eyes lit up and I wanted to know more!
Freya Stark — the explorer and traveler
Freya Stark is a British-Italian traveler who had been to Lebanon, Baghdad, Iraq, Iran and more places and published many books based on these travel wanderings and adventures.
And here’s an extra bit of information that was intentionally delayed for a better effect..
She was born in 1893 and most of her travels happened in the 1920s and 1930s! Did your eyes light up too or did your jaws drop? That was not only interesting but also adventurous and dangerous..
A solo female traveler visiting places in the 1900s that only a handful of people(including male explorers) from the West had been to would have surely had all sorts of challenges.
The Valleys of the Assassins
So I searched for her books and read a few pages of The Valleys of the Assassins..
“I came to the conclusion that some more ascetic reason than mere enjoyment should be found if one wishes to travel in peace: to do things for fun smacks of levity, immorality almost, in our utilitarian world” — from the first page of the preface.
“Fantastic, I am reading this”, I thought and added it to my reading list.
What’s John Murray Journey?
This was the title I found on Amazon — “THE VALLEYS OF THE ASSASSINS: A JOHN MURRAY JOURNEY”
When I continued the search, this time for John Murray, I got to know it’s a British publisher which has Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle among the authors it has published. And John Murray Journey, to keep it simple, is like Penguin Classics, exclusively for travel-based books.
“In a year where we all had to stay put, where travel plans were put on pause, it has been a delight to journey the world with these remarkable authors — over land, by road, along rivers, through mountains and, occasionally, on a camel. Each book captures the wonder that comes from traveling and each richly deserves to be rediscovered.” — Kate Craigie, senior editor at John Murray
The Book Trail
Here is the book trail I left behind as a result of all these findings and quick reads:
- The Valleys of the Assassins by Freya Stark
- A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
- A Vagabond for Beauty by Everett Ruess
- The Cruel Way by Ella K Maillart
- Mississippi Solo by Eddy L Harris
All books have made it to my TBR.
Parting words
Thanks to James Clear, I now have some more interesting travel reads.. and thanks to Freya Stark for giving me a prompt that made this scribbling possible!
And thank you, dear Reader, for your time!
See you again, soon I hope, with another Book Blabbering Blog!
Until then, check my Youtube channel below where I post videos that are nothing like those viral ones and are all about the observations of the mundane moments of everyday life. Super interesting? I know ;)
And forgot to tell you something..
John Murray Journey books have vibrant covers!
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