book-review
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Soundings—Journeys in the Company of Whales: Doreen Cunningham
Published by Blackstone Pub / Scribner, 2022, 320 pages “Then, the whales came. I heard them before I saw them, their breath hissing through the air. Punctuating the silence. The sound was so startling, so alien, it broke the world… Continue reading
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Following Nellie Bly—Her Record-Breaking Race Around the World: Rosemary J. Brown
Published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2021, 184 pages “I want to go around [the world] in eighty days or less. I think I can beat Phileas Fogg’s record. May I try it?” The idea came from Nellie Bly,… Continue reading
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Women Who Walk—How 20 Women from 16 Countries Came to Live in Portugal: Louise Ross
Published by Moyhill Publishing, 2018, 254 pages What motivates someone leave the country of their birth to live and work elsewhere? Louise Ross tries to answer this question by talking to 20 women from a variety of backgrounds who moved… Continue reading
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How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt—A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer: Mick Conefrey
Published by ONEWorld Publications, 2011, 224 pages “Take every precaution and abandon all fear.” Mary Hall, c. 1905 Why is it, when asked to imagine an explorer, people inevitably think of a sunburned unshaven white man squinting into the sun?… Continue reading
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Two Trees Make a Forest—In Search of My Family’s Past Among Taiwan’s Mountains and Coasts: Jessica J. Lee
Published by Catapult, 2020, 284 pages “I saw in Taiwan something of the ways that places draw us in—and sometimes push us away again—and there grew in me an inarticulate longing.” This is a lyrical book about home, language, the… Continue reading
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Go, Girl! The Black Woman’s Book of Travel & Adventure: Compiled by Elaine Lee
Published by The Eighth Mountain Press, 1997, 368 pages Elaine Lee is an African-American woman who has made travel a way of life. Her compilation of 52 pieces of travel writing by African-American women encourages black women to travel by… Continue reading
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The Year of Living Danishly—Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country: Helen Russell
Published by Icon Books, 2015, 368 pages Helen Russell lived in London, working crazy hours with hardly any time off. When her partner is offered a job at Lego in Jutland, Denmark, they realize that it is going to be… Continue reading
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Dancing with Cuba—A Memoir of the Revolution: Alma Guillermoprieto
Published by Pantheon, 2004, 290 pages Alma Guillermoprieto is a Mexican journalist who started out wanting to be a dancer. As a young woman, she trained in New York and then spent six months in Cuba in 1970 teaching modern dance. This… Continue reading
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Porcelain Moon and Pomegranates—A Woman’s Trek through Turkey: Üstün Bilgen-Reinart
Published by Dundurm Press, 2007, 240 pages Üstün Bilgen-Reinart is a Turkish woman, who moved to Canada to study when she was 18 and stayed on. But in the late 1990s, she moved back to Turkey to spend more time… Continue reading
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The Summer Book: Tove Jansson
Published by Random House / Sort Of Books, 1975, 160 pages Tove Jansson is a Finnish writer best known for her children’s books about the Moomins. This is one of her few books for adults—a gentle, meditative narrative about the… Continue reading
Women's Travel Books 