books by Pico Iyer     books:       The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto40 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 1992 Vivid ... In my opinion, Pico Iyer seems to be a very moody writer. He usually writes well, but then there are moments when he comes into his own and writes with an amazing surreal quality. The transition from good to surreal is very smooth: It is like being transported to another (sometimes surreal, but very vivid) realm and you'll lose count of the time. I was particularly impressed by his prose wherein ...             The Asiatics: A Novel4 reviews Frederic Prokosch Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005 A beautiful work of the imagination Frederic Prokosch wrote this imaginary journey from Lebanon across Asia to Hanoi in 1931 before he ever set foot in Asia. In the novel, the narrator, a young American, travels in catch-as-catch-can manner across the exotic continent. The landscape descriptions are extraordinary. Everywhere he meets with adventure and exotic characters who lament the end of Asia as they know it (this in 1931!). ...             Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of The World14 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 1994 Great ideas for an intrepid traveller. Pico Iyer has a keen eye and great facility with words, and therefore his books always make for great reading. "Falling off the map," is a book that describes at lenght about some lonely places in the world. He has an uncanny knack of painting a vivid portrait that instally transports you to these places. Iyer defines lonley places as those places that are not the topic of conversation at any ...             Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance13 reviews Villard, 2000 GHOST STORY TERROR! Travel books are the only books I make time to read these days and I read about 30 of them a year. I've just finished this one and have put it on my top ten list. I used to read Wanderlust in salon all the time and was sad to see it go. I was thrilled as hell to see an anthology of the best of Wanderlust. Pico Iyer and Laurie Gough are my favorite in this collection. I don't think I'll be able to ...             The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama19 reviews Pico Iyer Knopf, 2008 The Open Road Pico Iyer's new book subtitled "The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama" takes its title and theme from an essay by D. H. Lawrence about Walt Whitman and his poem, "The Song of the Open Road". Lawrence wrote "The great home of the Soul is the open road. Not heaven, not paradise, not `above'" The human person (or "soul" for Lawrence) "is a wayfarer down the open road" and democracy flowers ...             Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign10 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 2005 One of his better books An uneven collection of essays. I particularly enjoyed the piece on Leonard Cohen. Iyer's best essays are usually of the introspective sort.             The Snow Leopard (Penguin Classics)68 reviews Peter Matthiessen Penguin Classics, 2008 a great travel log with a little zen Matthiessen is a talented writer who consistently manages to capture the essence of what he sees. He insists that he is a fiction writer, first and foremost, but the honesty and vibrance of his words in nonfiction are phenomenal. As an "travel log"-type book, this is one of the best. His interactions with the sherpas and his colleague, GS, are human and believable. There are extremely personal ...             Complete Short Stories (Penguin Classics)5 reviews Graham Greene Penguin Classics, 2005 A kaleidoscope of human faiths This edition features all the short stories written by the author. Here is a small selection of those I've enjoyed most. In "Under The Garden" William Wilditch, after spending a long time abroad, is now visiting the family house, Winton Hall, which he hasn't seen since his childhood and where his brother George lives. After the first night, Wilditch finds it difficult to distinguish between ...             Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East15 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 1989 Late 80s Asia Pico Iyer has written an interesting set of annecdotes on Asia during the late 80s boom years. It covers the isolation of Burma, the sex trade in Thailand, the night life in Nepal, and everything inbetween. The book takes a deeper view beyond the stereotypes to understand the complexities of the cultural merging. The book really has two main values. First, it gives an annecdotal view of a ...             The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home22 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 2001 Smart, humane , edgy and I couldn't stop reading I love this book. I'm sending it to all my relatives who, like the author, are modern post-ethnics with no true sense of ethnic allegiance. His insights are quite droll: a person with no deep national loyalty may be staunchly loyal to one airline. And some huge portion of all airmiles are earned on the ground! He captures the absurd, the sad, the hopeful aspects of being a bourgeois post-ethnic ...             The Best American Travel Writing 2004 (The Best American Series)7 reviews Pico Iyer Houghton Mifflin, 2004 Traveling the Un-American World As with any compilation of anything, whether or not this volume truly represents the "best" of its chosen subject is a matter of fruitless dispute. Pico Iyer's introduction, describing a supposed theme in this year's offerings of a certain melancholy or weariness to American travel writing as a genre, rings hollow; while the field of publications from which the submissions were gleaned is pretty ...             Travelers' Tales - A Dog's World2 reviews Travelers' Tales Guides, 1998 A book that every dog lover should read at least once!! This book had me bursting out in laughter, some of the accounts are simply hilarious!! And other times, it's so heartwarming that I start to sniffle a bit... wow, talk about an emotional roller-coaster. Then again, I go through the same thing whenever I watch the Animal Planet channel. Seriously though, besides being a great joy to read this book also contains a wealth of tips and information on ...             Illumination1 review DK ADULT, 2007 Great pictures, lousy book I have many books from Lynn Davis. All of them are really good photography, nothing to add to that. This book however is a little bit different. It is an exhibition catalog (in a very large format) from her work during the past years. As always, the pictures are wonderful. My concern is about the book itself. It is a lousy work. The printing is OK, but something happened during the binding and ...             Cuba and the Night: A Novel16 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 1996 Cuba Dark and Light I've only been to Cuba once, a few years ago, but Pico Iyer's novel brought back to me the essence of that fantastic island and its marvelous citizen prisoners. If you were to read only two books before you make a trip yourself, read Cuba and the Night and Tom Miller's non-fiction Trading with the Enemy.             A Place I've Never Been Pico Iyer Amazon.com, 2005 Having written so often about the places I've seen, I find that the places I've never seen have a special attraction for me, a curious pull. I have to see them with my eyes shut, or begin to make my way around them through reading and research, conversation and intuition; the whole process is exhilaratingly different from the travel writing I'm used to, in which I go to a place, scribble down notes and then, back home, try (and usually fail) to ...             The Lady and The Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto Iyer Pico I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2006             Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions4 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 1998 Imagine a pomegranate--juicy, pithy, tart and satisfying. After hearing Pico Iyer speak I began devouring TROPICAL CLASSICAL only to discover it's not an easy read. There are many jewels of interest and pleasure in these essays, but I delighted most in Iyer's use of simple-looking words I don't quite know. The dictionary always revealed a definition so pure any other word would have missed the point. Like Barry Lopez, Iyer exposes his views of the ...             Abandon18 reviews Pico Iyer Vintage, 2004 Brilliant! Please don't waste your time on the mean spirited and the witless reviews below. Buy this book, imbibe this book, and make your own decision. But this reviewer, anyway, found Abandon to be exquisitely conceived and crafted, indeed an altogether lovely, work of literary Art. Iyer's vision and prose grows ever more subtle and refined, article by article, book by book.             A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces3 reviews Lawrence Weschler University Of Chicago Press, 2006 curious look into eccentric lives In this book the author writes nonfiction articles about various interesting characters. He talks to an art promoter, a cartoonist and all sorts of others. The art promoter was an Indian who discover an unknown abstract expressionist in New York, and gets him know in the art world. It's a strange thing how it works out. There is something funky, and offbeat about all these characters, but ...              search for books adventure, american, asiatics, classical, classics, complete, directions, falling, flights, foreign, fourteenth, illumination, journey, kathmandu, leopard, not-so-far, passion, penguin, real-life, romance, seasons, selected, several, shopping, stories, travelers, tropical, wanderer, wanderlust, writing books:    Kindle - Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device This is the future of book reading. I have used it and love it! randomly chosen VHS: La Chevre (Sub) we recommend a great travel log with a little zen leave a comment home  impressum - about us