Alastair Humphreys likes to cycle to remote huts in Scotland.
The Mountain Bothies Association administers about 100 such huts.
“… No tap, no sink, no beds, no lights, and, even if there is a fireplace, perhaps nothing to burn …”
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Said to be written by Bourdain — his longtime assistant Laurie Woolever actually only had one meeting about this book with her boss before he killed himself at the age of 61 in June 2018.
A shocking end to one of our favourite travel and food gurus.
But Bourdain had long talked about writing a summing-up travel book, highlighting his favourite foods, cultures, meals and destinations. Woolever made it happen.
The book includes short summaries of 43 destinations from his many years filming Parts Unknown and No Reservations.
Profane, opinionated and often hilarious.
Bourdain was a tough guy. But travel opened his eyes. He wanted to tell the truth, to challenge the powerful, to expose wrongdoing. He’d call out racism at every opportunity.
He championed industrious Spanish-speaking immigrants—from Mexico, Ecuador, and other Central and South American countries—who are cooks and chefs in many United States restaurants,
Amazon – World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, April 20, 2021
I’ve booked a number of flights lately. #PandemicOver 😀
I ALWAYS start with Matrix Airfare Search by ITA Software A few companies — e.g. Southwest — opted not to be included.
Even if my date of flight is fixed, I always start with “See calendar of lowest fares”.
Clicking around, once I have the price, date, details (usually AC or WJ), I go directly to the airline website to book the flight. One. Less. Middleman.
I try to avoid booking on a series of airlines as — when something goes wrong — each blames you and the other airline for your woes.
Google Matrix originally let you book flights. But the airlines complained so they dropped that feature.
If I can’t get the price promised on Matrix, I try Expedia or one of the other aggregators. Once in a while they have a block of cheaper tickets no longer available directly from the airline.
If that’s too confusing, here’s a comprehensive tutorial.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Recently I used another Google flight site, deciding to fly to Lisbon on November 1st from Calgary.
From that page you can click from any country to any continent. From Canada to Europe, for example.
As usual, Air Transat was the cheapest way to get to Europe from Canada.
Erik Larson is one of our best non-fiction writers.
The Devil in the White City is the best of his books I’ve read, so far.
This one is excellent too. An inside early look at Berlin under the physically unimpressive Adolf Hitler and his lickspittles.
WW II would result in 70–85 million dead, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. Hitler personally responsible for many of those millions.
He committed suicide April 30, 1945. Could Hitler have been stopped earlier?
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin is the true story of American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, particularly the years 1933 to 1937 when he and his family, including his daughter Martha, lived in Berlin. …
Martha, separated from her husband and in the process of divorce, became caught up in the glamor and excitement of Berlin’s social scene and had a series of liaisons, most of them sexual, including among them Gestapo head Rudolf Diels and Soviet attaché and secret agent Boris Vinogradov.
In fact, daughter Martha was once presented to Hitler. One of the Führer’s henchmen hoped the dictator would be attracted. An American concubine would make his hateful regime more palatable to the USA.
Wow.
We’re living in the golden age of television.
Complex story telling. Superb acting. Realistic dialogue.
All the acting is good. I particularly liked Chief Carter played by John Douglas Thompson.
Give Kate Winslet ALL the Emmys.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Whodunnit?
Agatha Christie would like this book.
Shari Lapena is one of the best murder mystery writers working today.
Fred and Sheila Merton are brutally murdered the night after an Easter dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated.
Or are they?
They each stand to inherit millions. …
Readers try to eliminate suspects one at a time.
Republican politicians in the States have found that making extreme statements somehow motivates deplorable voters to show up on Election Day.
Democrats are typically more restrained in their ads. Those are often boring.
Here’s Charles Graham who’s running for Congress. I feel like moving to North Carolina so I could vote for him. #inspiring
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Excellent. Art. Philosophy. Violence.
And fly fishing.
“Peter Heller is the poet laureate of the literary thriller.” —Michael Koryta
Painter is my second Heller book, I liked this one better than The Guide.
I’ll read more from this author. Original and surprising. Opposite of the formulaic and predictable books of Baldacci, for example.
Jim Stegner is a troubled, brilliant artist.
He flees the art scene of Santa Fe to start fresh in the valleys of rural Colorado.
Here he spends his days painting and fly fishing, trying to find a way to live with the dark impulses that sometimes overtake him.
But one afternoon, on a dirt road, Jim comes across a man beating a small horse, and a brutal encounter rips his quiet life wide open. …
I clicked PLAY because it was Anthony Hopkins. Guaranteed to be a good movie.
And it is. I was quickly hooked. Hopkins has such gravitas.
Serial killer. Hopkins is called back from retirement because they need his psychic abilities.
Finishing the film I was surprised to see it was 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. And had gotten terrible reviews.
I recommend Solace.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I recommend this book published 2011.
Though Peter May is award winning and very prolific, this is the first of his many books that I’ve read.
The Blackhouse is a suspense thriller, first novel of The Lewis Trilogy, written by the Scottish writer Peter May.
The action takes place mostly on the remote and weather-beaten Isle of Lewis off the coast of northern Scotland.
Detective Inspector Finlay Macleod (known as Fin), a native of the island, is sent from his Edinburgh police station to investigate the murder …
One unique thread is the annual guga hunt. Men from Fin’s village of Ness sail end of summer to the tiny rock island of Sula Sgeir. They harvest a maximum of 2,000 gannet chicks (known as gouge) from their nests. That’s been a tradition since well before 1549.
Rick McCharles 