The French House by Don Wallace

The French House: An American Family, a Ruined Maison, and the Village That Restored Them All, Don Wallace. Naperville ILL.: Sourcebooks, Incorporated, 2014. e-book, 328 pps.

Don Wallace and his wife Mindy fell in love with Belle Ile, a small island in the Brittany province of France. They found a house for sale and bought it. The French House details their financial and cultural struggles to restore their home as well as their love affair with the island. Although they were summer residents [and not true ex-pats], I enjoyed this read.

I have my own dreams about finding a tiny island someplace to go live where the people are friendly but not pushy and there is clean water to swim in, a warm climate, maybe a few mountains and woods, and lots of birds. I enjoy traveling. Although I cannot afford to go to the more glamorous places yet, I meander around in the woods or on trains every chance I get. Consequently, I am a fan of Paul Theroux and I also read ex-pat books whenever I can get my hands on them.

There are pictures in The French House of the house itself, some old walls and scenery, and people. They were decent pictures which added to the enjoyment of the book for me. I like old walls and ocean shots in particular.

I also liked that Mindy spoke good enough French and that Don was picking up French [with some humorous mistakes] as fast as possible. I think it is important to adapt to our environments-- which includes foreign countries-- rather than expect that the world will adapt to us. Should I ever re-locate, it is my intention to become fluent in the language and culture of the place I pick. I do not want to live in a planned community of ex-pats who speak primarily English and go to the franchise stores that are available in the states.

It is unfortunate that people of all walks of life consider that they are entitled to government-given happiness or are somehow owed a living. Don and Mindy Wallace have more money than some folks do. Even so, they went after what they wanted and were willing to make the necessary sacrifices to get it. Some may criticize this last paragraph as a straw man sort of argument but I am leaving it in here anyways. Those are my own thoughts.

sapphoq reviews says: I liked The French House. Highly recommended.

http://DonWallaceFranceBlog.tumblr.com


https://www.pinterest.com/donwallace9674/  [partially blocked by a "sign up for Pinterest"].

A Supremely Bad Idea by Luke Dempsey

A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All, Luke Dempsey. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2008. e-book, 239 pps.

     Luke Dempsey is a transplanted English man living in New York City at the time of the writing of A Supremely Bad Idea. He became hooked on birding and found a couple of pals to share his passion with. They birded in NYC of course and the road trips began.

sapphoq reviews says: I found Luke Dempsey's writing to be extremely entertaining. I related to the madness that is familiar to all serious birders. For birders with a sense of humor, highly recommended.

Sir Vidia's Shadow by Paul Theroux

Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents, Paul Theroux. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014, 2000, 1999, 1998. e book 372 pps.


     I was delighted to come across Sir Vidia's Shadow in e-book format. My [traumatic brain injury] visual and perceptual difficulties dictate the use of an e-reader these days. I am a fan of the writings of Paul Theroux. This particular book included travel but the focus was different. I enjoyed it immensely.

     Sir Vidia S. Naipaul is an English writer with ties to India who has lived in a bunch of places. Paul Theroux first encountered him in Africa where they became friends. V.S. Naipaul [as he is usually identified by those of us who only know him through his writing] saw the young man in Africa as a writer first before anyone else was wont to do so. Their adventures in Uganda evolved into letter-writing and meet-ups elsewhere through the years of their long-term friendship.

sapphoq reviews says: Paul Theroux has written an interesting account of V.S. Naipaul which provided for me a rare glimpse into a man who was at once secretive and ornery. Equally exciting to me was Paul Theroux's obvious evolution as a writer through the years. I expected to like Sir Vidia's Shadow because I love Paul Theroux's ability to impart both a sense of place and of being Other throughout his published work. I suspect that I myself would not have been able to tolerate V.S. Naipaul's quirks had I been offered his friendship, but Paul Theroux was able to and grew as a result. Highly recommended, especially to those who are fans of the writings of either man, fans of travel literature, and perhaps fans of psychological sorts of "case studies."

Freeways to Flip-Flops by Sonia Marsh

Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family's Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, Sonia Marsh.  Lake Forest, CA: Gutsy Publications, 2012.  e-book, 292 pps.


The Marsh family were living a ritzy life in Orange County, California.  The monetary demands required to keep in pace with consumerism were having an adverse effect on Sonia's husband Duke.  Their oldest boy of three was beginning to get into trouble.  The middle son was very much into "buy, buy, buy."  The youngest was quiet but well-behaved so far.  Sonia and Duke decided to sell their home and move the family to one of the islands in Belize.  They did.

Island living was difficult to get used to.  There were rashes and insect bites, geckos crawling up the walls, shortages of water, and a problem with the educational system beyond elementary school.  The family settled into a compound with three other families of ex-pats and a caretaker family.  Consequently, they did not entirely "go native."  The oldest son straightened up his behavior but the youngest hated living in Belize.  The savings account balance was going down and there was also a problem with getting adequate income to come in.

sapphoq reviews says:  Among some ex-pat circles, Belize is often suggested as "the perfect place" for those who wish out of the United States.  Perhaps not.  Or perhaps the results are better when people strive for assimilation into the neighborhood and the culture rather than staying within a clique of ex-pats.  At any rate, the book was a bit draggy in parts but I stuck with it.  I would have liked to know exactly what kind of geckos were crawling up the walls of their first Belize home.  Kudos to Sonia and Duke for deciding to move rather than dumping their eldest son at WWASPS or a similar agency with a history of abuse.  Freeways to Flip-Flops was not the best ex-pat read but not the worst either.  Recommended to people with kids who are looking to split the U.S.A.

The Pillars of Hercules by Paul Theroux

The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean, Paul Theroux.  New York: Ballantine Books/ The Random House Publishing Group, 1995.  e-book, 491 pps.


I am a fan of Paul Theroux.  We have two things in common.  I love to travel and I love trains.  Theroux has logged many more miles than I have in many more places than I've been.  There is something to settling in on a comfy chair or beach towel with a Paul Theroux in hand and several hours devoted just to reading.  A few critics will tell you that Paul Theroux dares to criticize the people and places that he haps upon.  I myself much prefer his honesty to the sugar-coated guidebooks that always endeavor to organize narratives into grand unrealistic symphonies.  Because life isn't really like that.  There will always be petty people, rip-off artists, wars, squalor, and dirt.  Tucked away behind the glittering hotels and the slick brochures are glimpses into meanness.  Certainly, the tourists at Gibralter assaulting the primates there are forgetful that we all share a common ancestor.  There is a certain messiness to travel and for depicting the messes, I've become fond of Theroux's writing.

The Pillars of Hercules is about traveling in the Mediterranean.  I liked the grit.  It was refreshing to read about the litter on the beaches in the winter, the wastelands that are the souvenirs of wartime, and the crappy food on the Turkish cruise ship.  I also liked the way that Theroux painted the various fellow travelers that he happened upon along the way-- the Turks on that same ship making music, the fellow who worried that he would never find a woman to settle down with, the train passengers who might have been pleasant to spend time with or not so pleasant.  All of it engaged me.  

sapphoq reviews says:  If you like travel writing with a difference and you don't mind longish books, there is something in The Pillars of Hercules for you.  A bit of political commentary and a lot of literary references await you.  It was through Paul Theroux that I've discovered other great works of literature imbued with a sense of place.  The Pillars of Hercules is not for those who prefer their travel writing to be typical and devoid of the author's commentary.  Highly recommended for folks who enjoy some intellectual along with their travel narratives.   

Isn't It Pretty To Think So by Nick Miller

Isn't It Pretty To Think So? Nick Miller.  Berkeley: Fernando French Publishing, 2012.  ebook, 995 pps.

Isn't It Pretty To Think So? is a coming of age novel by Nick Miller and appears to be his first.  It is somewhat autobiographical and fully reminiscent of the talent of J. D. Salinger but way more entertaining.  There's a lot of screwing in the book.  I think the young women were lucky, although as it turns out the narrator wasn't always so lucky.  There's bits of drugs and partying wildly in the book too, along with a typical misdirected belief that switching to beer and wine fixes someone in the throes of an addiction cycle.  Even so, I would not have it any other way.  There was a television series on for a couple of years that had an accurate understanding of addiction.  Once the character went off to rehab, I tuned out of the series.  Somehow I don't want the protagonists to be too good or too healthy.  It is obvious to me also that the beliefs of the characters in a novel are not necessarily those of the author.  So I stand by my statement that the way that the narrator was portrayed was far more realistic than if he had sprinted off to rehab.  If he had sprinted off to rehab, I probably would not have finished this book.


The young man in the book being unlucky in love and jobs and stuff like that zooms off and lives here and there until he winds up renting a room in a funky mansion in Los Angeles.  The mansion turns out to be a drug-infested party place much like the one that I lived in during part of my raucous college years.  There is a party daily, a couple of house cleaners who make everything fresh again on Mondays, and an in-house drug dealer.  Replete with the bars and odd folks living in the mansion and in the neighborhood, our twenty-something kid realizes he ain't getting any writing done and splits for someplace else.  

In the new someplace else, he meets his mentor.  His mentor is an older fellow who pretty much gets him to write-- the book in hand coincidentally.  And then there is finally a woman worthy of our budding author and I'm not telling you any more.

sapphoq reviews says:  995 pages was a lot of book and yet I enjoyed every hormone-laden, angst-swimming, love lost and found minute.  Very accessible to all except those who have no business reading books for older readers and those who object to cussing and sex and want us to care that they do.  Folks if you are so fractured that you cannot deal with a few f-bombs in print or the horniness of youth, you probably should not be reading this particular blog.  If you enjoyed Catcher in the Rye once upon a time when you were young, or you know that Hemmingway had a couple of series of e.c.t. treatments, then you are bound to like this rollicking rocking book with a bit of a serious side to it albeit no mental hospitals.  So yeah, get this book and settle in for a long read.  Highly recommended.

Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa, Richard Grant

Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa, Richard Grant.  New York: Free Press, 2011.  paperback, 336 pps., incl. index.

     I first encountered Richard Grant through an earlier book of his called God's Middle Finger which narrated his trip through the Sierra Madres.  I was delighted to find Crazy River on the shelves of my local bookstore.  Although different in tone from his earlier work, Crazy River immediately drew me in.  I haven't been to Africa (yet) but this book transported me to a very different world.

     The Malagarasi River, dotted with small fishing villages between the wild places, is full of pissed off hippos and crocodiles and bandits.  Grant skillfully interweaves the stories that the river has for him into the histories of other adventurers, politicians, and the East African peoples.  The crew that Grant hires in Tanzania is composed of men who each have their own story to tell.  Crazy River carried me away from my reading chair to a place I had never been.  I was there as Grant made his way through checkpoints and red tape, as prostitutes tried to pick him up, as children demanded money.  I was also there on the river itself with the tsetse flies and passages of choking weeds.  And there as Grant actually got to view the source of  the Nile itself. 

     By the end of Crazy River, I had a visceral sense of the horror of genocide and specifically the genocide that took place in Rwanda.  Grant tells the story of some two thousand people that took refuge in a Catholic Church in Nyange.  The priest there, one "Reverend" Athanase Seromba, was more than compliant in the slaughter of those seeking sanctuary in his church building.  He arranged to have his church building bulldozed.  He let the drunken militia in with their grenades.  He then pointed out any survivors who were then killed off with bayonets.  The priest did this because the folks hiding in his church building were the wrong tribe.  The priest himself belonged to the other tribe. 

     Crazy River is a most excellent book eluding a real sense of place.  This book is a definite keeper and the finest example of the modern travel essay.

sapphoq reviews says: Highly Recommended.

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. New York: Mariner Books, 2008. large paperback, 496 pps.

I've been engaged in reading as much Paul Theroux as I can get my hands on over the last several months and am now just pausing long enough to write the reviews. Ghost Train is the repeat of a trip which Theroux took as a younger man in The Great Railway Bazaar. He left from London (now on a second wife) and trained his way through to India (this time with a detour around Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan), The Far East, Japan, and back via Russia. He also had to take an occasional bus and a couple of plane flights. Along the way, Theroux mixes with the local folks, stays in hostels and hotels, and reads. As in his other accounts of his travels, Theroux has a gift of mixing history of a place with literary works and stories told by people he meets along the way.

Theroux is quick to point out what has changed and what hasn't. Several Indian cities have become meccas for IT, manufacturing, and call centers. The call centers themselves I found interesting. The Indians who work there take on American sounding names and are tutored extensively so that they "sound" like native speakers rather than like Indians. Often it is a college graduate making less than 4000 U.S.D. a year providing customer/tech support India relies on cheap labour in order to be competitive. In India, Theroux comes across many people who dislike Bush 43 especially in relation to the war over in the Middle East. There is abject poverty in India also which he describes without romance or rancor. There are bits also about Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. There are riots and bombing in Ceylon. Over in Thailand, there is a movement among fundamentalist Moslems to establish their own country in the south. Everyone certainly seems to be fighting these days, that is for sure.

Theroux also recounts bits of history while he is visiting Myanmer (Burma), Cambodia, and Vietnam. The behind-the-scenes decisions of politicians (Bush 43, Nixon in particular) were a fascinating glimpse into some of the background behind military actions. He describes in detail his tour of the killing fields, the genocide commited upon the orders of Pol Pot and exactly who helped that corrupt murderer to attain and stay in power. India, China, and Russia all continue to support Pol Pot (each for their own reasons). Theroux also talks about Vietnam and how the Viennese are faring these days. Although he leaves out the prison terms being bantered around for such offenses as e-mailing a relative in the U.S.A. from an internet cafe, he does address the war in Vietnam quite well.

There are throngs of people in the larger cities in Japan. Theroux takes some time there to go cross country skiing in the less populated north and to enjoy the use of two bathhouses before setting off for a final train trek through Siberia and China back through Poland and Germany to England. On the trains themselves, berths (sleeping compartments) are almost always shared and food bought at train stations from the locals is usually safer than what is offered in the dining cars. There is a bit of reflection in this book not present in his earlier journey across Asia. I enjoyed in particular Theroux's musings on invisibility and ageing.

sapphoq reviews says: This book comes highly recommended to the armchair traveler who likes a true sense of place along with an interweaving of history and a sprinkling of literature.

Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey

Abbey, Edward, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968. paperback, 337 pps.

Naturally since I am on an island in the northeastern part of the United States this week, I decided to pick up an Edward Abbey book about living in the desert of Utah for reading. Abbey was a guy (he is dead now) who liked his living and had many things to say about stuff I am just getting educated about now. The books covers a couple of
summers worth of time spent living in an old trailer at Utah Arches before Industrial Tourism came in and wrecked everything. Abbey had a pithy style of telling stories interspersed with humor which I admire greatly. He spoke about the desert surrounding the town of Moab, the hikes he took, his reflections on nature as found in the desert, the great irrigation and dam projects which served to and continue to serve to obliterate much of what was once remote and beautiful. Glen Canyon was one such place and Abbey described a rafting trip there before the engineers took over.

Abbey and his friend with one bum leg navigated the Glen canyon on a blow-up boat-- no leaks, rips, or holes the whole trip. There was catfish aplenty, a few day hikes which Abbey took alone, petroglyphs and pictoglyphs left by the natives in times past. It sounded grand and I would have liked to float through Glen Canyon myself.

On another trip, Abbey went down the Grande Canyon in Arizona (I'd been to the rim) and he stopped at the Indian settlement at the bottom. The folks there had been wise enough to refuse the government's offer of a "free road" which would have enabled more tourists to wreck havoc with their way of life. Abbey stayed in the tourist hostel one night, then rented a house. He floated a few more miles down the Colorado River and slept out in the stars among some old ruins. It sounded wonderful!

Abbey's dealings with the tourists passing through Arches is not to be missed. Of particular hilarity are the questions that the tourists asked him over and over again. His comment on television caused me to laugh out loud. Something there about vacuum tubes. Many of the tourists complained about the rutted road they had to take to go into the Arches and leave by in order to get to the highway. At that time, there was also no soda machine-- that little "problem" has probably been fixed by now.

It is hard to summarize this book. A few of the things Abbey talked about I had passed through on my cross-country trip several years ago. Most of it was foreign to me and even so I was moved when reading about the plight of the desert out west. I came away with a distinct feeling that I will not purchase any land west of the 100th meridian and a desire to see more of the desert which I had caught only glimpses of in my travels.

Highly recommended for those who like the outdoors and simple living.

sapphoq reviews books and more

Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost

J. Maarten Troost, Lost on Planet China. New York: Doubleday, 2008. paperback, 382 pps.

I have become a fan of Troost. I was first introduced to his rollicking style in The Sex Lives of Cannibals and went
on to laugh through Getting Stoned with Savages. Lost on Planet China is Troost's third book and I hope there are
many more to come.

J. Maarten Troost decided to go check out China. He was unable to pick up any Mandarin Chinese and knew virtually
no one when he landed in China. The book narrates his haphazard voyages around mainland China. I learned several
things from this book: the air in China is incredibly foul, and so are the bathrooms. Prostitution is rampant there.
Karaoke bars are very popular. At one such bar, he was forced to sing "Hotel California" for his guide of the day
whose name was MewMew. People are numerous. Lines are disorderly and little kids are encouraged to use the streets
as a restroom. And I won't quickly forget the mental image of schoolkids pissing on the Great Wall.

While retaining his humor, Troost also addresses the race toward Industrialization and Bigger Cities that continues
to be going on in China as well as the desert which continues to threaten to overtake Bejiing. Not a riotous book
but still recommended to those who like his writing.

sapphoq reviews books and more

Down the Nile, Rosemary Mahoney

Rosemary Mahoney, Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2007. paperback, 269 pps
excluding bibliography and reading group guide.

Rosemary Mahoney is a rower by choice. She likes it. She first began to row from a Casco Bay Island in Maine where
she used to live to the mainland. She continues to row where she now lives in Rhode Island. Having been to Egypt
a couple times before, Mahoney became enamoured of the Nile itself as well as with the folks who live along side it.
She decided that she wanted to row part of the Nile.

The problem is that (most of Egypt is Muslim and there are a few Coptic Christians thrown in for good measure) as a
woman in Egypt, Egyptian men did not believe that she should or could do much strenuous work. She found the purchase
of a skiff to be very difficult. She ran into an Egyptian man who did allow her to row his boat around the hotel
where she was staying at. The friendship between her and Amr resulted in her being a guest in his home on Elephantine
Island. At long last, she was allowed to row his boat partway up the Nile with his felucca sailing behind her. At
a halfway point, she takes her leave of Amr and succeeds in buying her own skiff. She rowed the rest of the journey
alone.

rosemary Mahoney has written a fine book. The rowing is essential to the story but also a backdrop. Through her
experiences, she illustrates the difficulties that vastly different cultures have in understanding each other. She
also quotes from the travels of several other Nile travelers-- among them Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale
was far more than the nurse I had learned about in grade school. For me, the book got off to a slow start, the middle
was excellent, and the ending was rather anticlimactically and suffered a certain lack. At any rate, this book comes
recommended to armchair travelers looking for something a bit different. I also must admit that Down the Nile seems
to me to be very much chick lit and not something that the average man would appreciate.

sapphoq reviews books and more

THE KING'S RANSOM 5/6/07

Folks planning to visit Sedona Arizona should consider staying at the King's Ransom [Quality Inn] on Highway 179. The prices to stay are reasonable, the pool is heated, the whirlpool spa is open-air but under a roof and has night lights, the grounds are beautifully landscaped. There is a K store downstreet and it is a short walk to Hillside where one can pick up the Sedona Road Runner which stops at several downtown locations. Internet access and two computers are available at the lobby [although a sign informs that access to MySpace dot com is blocked].

Over the lobby is a restaurant providing breakfast [yummy] and dinner [pricey] and a cafe providing lunch [yummy]. Art galleries for those disinclined to journey further downtown and two other restaurants are within walking distance. Marge's Draw, a trail which leads to Snoopy Rock, has a trailhead also just downstreet.

Sedona is part of an initiative to provide hooded traffic lights and NO streetlights so that way residents "can always see the stars at night." Anyone planning to stay at the King's Ransom should bring a flashlight for any night walking.

Rated: B+

sapphoq reviews

A TRIP TO THE BEACH by Melinda and Robert Blanchard 36/07

A Trip to the Beach, by Melinda and Robert Blanchard. New York: Random House, 2000. 295 pps., paperback.

The Blanchards decided to move from Vermont to Anguilla and open a restaurant. Their dream exploded from a shanty serving lunches and snacks into a full-blown restaurant with fine cuisine. With the help of islanders, they were slowly able to locate what they needed, built the restaurant, and found suppliers for the ingredients for their entrees. A few of Melinda Blanchard's original recipes are interspersed throughout the book, making my mouth water. It is particularly chilly here today so I am also hankering for a bit of island life. The book is definitely more interesting than this review makes it sound. Recommended for anyone who has daydreams of starting over in a warmer clime.

sapphoq reviews

THE TRAVEL DETECTIVE by Peter Greenberg

The Travel Detective by Peter Greenburg, Villard Books (a division of Random House), New York, 2001. paperback. 395 pages including helpful websites and index.

Although [sapphoq is guessing] this book was written before 9/11, The Travel Detective includes many helpful hints on how to bargain in order to travel cheaply-- or at least cheaper than accepting the first price offered. Peter Greenberg writes in a simple clear refreshing style as he catalogues his adventures and misadventures dealing with getting "the best service and the best deals."



Especially useful are the websites and phone numbers that any traveler should have. Especially fun is his description of what phrases really mean.

From page 39, direct quotes all:

"Secluded hideaway": Impossible to find.
"Carefree natives": Terrible service.
"Warmed by the Gulf Stream": Cold.
"Cooled by the Humboldt Current": Hot.
"Old World charm": No bath.

Worth a read by anyone who aspires to be a traveler and not just a tourista.
~sapphoq