November 2024
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    I love to travel and I'm always fascinated when reading books that provide detail about the travel experience in the past. What are some books that go into the mundane details of getting around? Things like buying tickets, wiring money, communicating in another language, etc.

    A couple examples come to mind when I think about this topic. "Peter the Great: His Life and World" goes in to a lot of detail about Peter's travels through Europe, both from Peter's perspective and the people he meets. One chapter in particular stands out from the persepective of someone hosting him and writing about how Peter and his friends get bored and completely trash the house they're renting. In "East of Eden" one character travels to Brazil in the 1890s, but the book goes into zero detail of this trip. I keep thinking about what a facinating experience it must have been to take a trip like that at that time. However, in the same book there is a fairly detailed description of wiring money across the country through Western Union.

    I also love when books have fairly detailed descriptions of mundane conversations, places, and things. In 11/22/63 Stephen King gives a very vidid description of a 1950s grocery store and the items on each shelf. Knut Hamsen's Hunger provides detailed conversations with ordinary people, bartering with shopkeepers, discussing rent with landlords, and selling an article to a newspaper publisher. He captures Oslo in a way that almost makes me feel like I've experienced what it was like to take a stroll through town in the 1890s. What are some other books the provide a similar feeling.

    by PlasmaWhore

    1 Comment

    1. YakSlothLemon on

      Travel in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson has all that and is also a surprisingly fun read. It’s one of those books where you find yourself constantly reading little pieces out of it to your (long-suffering) friends, because it’s full of int anecdotes and stories about individuals and satirical poetry mocking tourists, along with all the nitty-gritty details of how people actually got around back in ancient Greece and Rome.

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