The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. The Best American Travel Writing 2005 includes William Least-Heat Moon · Ian Frazier · John McPhee · William T. Vollmann · Simon Winchester · Tom Bissell · Madison Smartt Bell · Timothy Bascom · Pam Houston · and others Jamaica Kincaid, guest editor, is the author of numerous award-winning works, including the memoirs My Brother and The Autobiography of My Mother and the novel Annie John. Her travelogue Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas appeared in 2005. She lives in Vermont with her two childen and a garden, in which she travels a great deal.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
I Want My Money Back:
I was very excited to get this book, because I was under the impression that I was going to get to read some amazing writing. Well, it must be so amazing that it's over my head, because I was bored to tears. "A Really Big Lunch" is probably the most boring story I have ever read. The author spends his entire article detailing a gigantic feast he indulges in down to the tiniest detail. Unless you're a foodie or gourmand, it would have been better as photography. "My Thai Girlfriends" is about an American... more info
Glad I'm not there:
Travel has become so much easier that it has made travel writing harder. Travel writers used to feed the imagination by tales of exotic places the reader could only dream of seeing, reached after long and arduous journeys. Simon Winchester's piece about Ascension Island and Ben Ryder Howe on the Darien Gap are the closest to being in that old-fashioned genre in this book. These days we can jet to Timbuctu or Samarkand and stay at the Holiday Inn.
To make up for the lack of difficulty getting there,... more info
What would be so bad about uplifting, humourous writing?:
I'm sorry. I haven't even completed the book. And,in fact, I may not complete it. There's too much to read to subject myself to such negativity. So, the search for stories for this book was for "rare pieces that weren't 'aggressively positive'; or that 'underline my sense of my displacement.'
Give me a break!
This is travel writing! "A Walk in the Woods" still stands out as my all-time favorite piece of travel writing. Please don't misunderstand - I read copious amounts of non-fiction, and... more info
Essays Highlight the Dark Underbelly of Travel:
This year's editor Jamaica Kincaid has done an excellent job of choosing essays that, more than chronicle exotic journeys, speak about the perplexities of the human condition as her selections are often scabrous, sardonic, and emphasize the dangers and follies that roil beneath the surface of a travel itinerary. Here are some highlights: 1. "War Wounds" by Tom Bissell. A son and father, a Vietnam vet, travel through the father's war trajectory forty years later as Bissell explores what it means to be... more info
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