This light but still quietly devastating little travelogue might be the best thing Lucy Knisley has ever written. (Drawn? Created? Mixed media confuses word choice.) Her first two travelogues (French Milk and An Age of License) were explorations of her own maturation as she saw different parts of the world, but this one is on a whole other level. Her grandparents Allen and Phyllis are 93 and 90 years old respectively, and have signed up to go on a Caribbean cruise with a group from […]
The round headed buffoon goes on a series of holidays. (“It’s not a holiday!” – R. Gervais)
Written during season one of the SKY1 show, An Idiot Abroad, this diary goes a bit more in depth for the various trips that make up the season. The concept for the first season of the show was to send eternally put upon Karl Pilkington around the world to see the Seven Modern Wonders of the World. Unlike the show, the diary goes in chronological order with Karl heading to Egypt to see the Great Pyramid (in the show he goes to China first). Along […]
in search of the celestial drug
In my mind exists a temple; a museum of the works of art that helped shape my inner world. Some works are on loan and some are part of the permanent collection. The permanent works that name and sustain me are existentialist: Solomon’s Ecclesiastes, Aurelius’ Meditations, Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Hendrix’ Axis: Bold as Love, Dylan’s electric Manchester performance, Rippel-Ronai’s Park at Night, the Bhagavad Gita. These are useful for determining how to live authentically and courageously in an unknowable universe. A less obvious […]
No Reservations. And no novel structure, but still good.
I have been a Bourdain fan for a while and really enjoyed Kitchen Confidential so when I came across this book for less than $2, and had an upcoming vacation, I snagged it because I thought it would be a good vacay read, and I was validated, though I wouldn’t say the book was a total success. This novel follows the adventures of Bourdain during his first television series of the same name and we travel with him to exotic locales, and even more exotic […]
Coming of Age: Finding Direction in Lucy Knisley’s “An Age of License”
After an invitation to speak at Raptus Comic Fest in Bergen, Norway, Knisley takes the opportunity to plan a trip around Europe to visit friends and family. Over the course of her travels she struggles with past relationships, work, and an uncertain future. She spends pages analyzing her love life, both with her ex John, and her current beau Henrik. What makes this difficult for her is that she still has feelings for John that she can’t seem to move past, and yet she knows […]
The Complicated Lives of Simple People
In leaving the ground, he left all of the craziness behind. Nothing could touch him, no hatred, no rumors, no law. If only it were possible to just keep flying, on and on until the land turned into ocean and back to land again. If only he could go far enough to be certain what was left behind him never caught up. Susan Crandall’s The Flying Circus is an adventure story at heart – in true ‘running away to join the circus’ vein – […]