In 2008, I quit my corporate job, sold off everything I owned and moved overseas with my husband Drew. Since then we've traveled around the world, started our careers over as creative types and nurtured our love of sleeping in late. Oh and we had a baby. Cole, our almost 2 year old has been traveling since he was four months old and probably knows more Thai than me (not that he brags).
Free Book Friday: What Boundaries?
Lisa Chavez and Cheryl MacDonald are two women searching for something. Mid-career, successful but wanting more, they ditch the day jobs (Lisa worked in pharmacy and Cheryl as a Director in a Fortune 500 company), sell everything, buy a backpack and head to Europe.
Sound familiar?
When I’m looking for a good travel book, there are essentially two kinds. The literary adventures that describe travel in such a way that even if I took the author’s exact route, I would never have the same experience. The details are more crisp, the author’s knowledge of history and relevance are more detailed and while it brings you to another world, that place doesn’t exist for the rest of us. It’s like travel in HD. Our mere mortal eyes can’t see that clearly. Then there are the books you buy because you are planning a trip. You’re daydreaming about quitting your job or traveling Europe or Morocco or wherever but you want to know what it would be like. You need someone to help you understand what it would mean for you– the unpracticed traveler, sans history degree and refined palate, to travel to these places with your bad knee or delicate stomach. What Boundaries? is one of these books.
Lisa is our narrator, and she often reminds me of a toned down Bill Bryson. She struggles with travel in the beginning, a comedy of errors and attitude, she bemoans the weight of her pack, she longs for comfort food (indulging in American staples like the Hard Rock Cafe Paris), she gets tired of camping, and she talks endlessly about the joy of bacon. If you’ve traveled long term, you might recognize any of the things she’s going through. It’s amazing, but you have get homesick. It’s the best trip ever, but you still have to adjust. However, like any adventure, over time you learn. The fantastic itinerary and bulleted lists get thrown out the window. You starting traveling without reservations. You are more open to trying new things. You learn little tricks like finding a private residence to rent is cheaper than staying in a hostel. Instead of rushing between cities, you linger in the countyside. Slowly, the tourist becomes a traveler.
This is Lisa’s first travel book, but in her life in pharmacy she was also a published author. It shows. It’s a rare combination of clear writing and fresh eyes– it’s the story of someone discovering travel, not mastering it.
Available: January 3, 2010
Want a Free Copy?
Leave a comment below and tell me what you’d do if there were… no boundaries. I’ll choose the winner on next week’s Free Book Friday.
Announcing Last Week’s Winner of The Tipping Point
Rachel Cotterill who wrote, “I’d love to read this book for two reasons.
First, I tend to think I’m fairly immune to ‘trends’, and I’m sure it would be interesting to see all the little ways in which that’s not true.
But second and probably more important, as someone who’s just about to start pitching my novel to publishers, I’d like to have as good a grasp of marketing as I can possibly achieve. I’ve done some successful but highly localised marketing for theatre productions in the past, but I need to start understanding the global scale.” Good luck Rachel, let us know how it goes!