During random social occasions it’s always with a pinch of pride and much more self-pity that I gulp down when I am introduced to new acquaintances as a “writer”. In fact, once my friends drop the “W word”, the person who until a moment ago was thinking “who’s this long-haired nerd standing in the way...

“Of all the adventures and challenges that wait on the vagabonding road, the most difficult can be the act of coming home. On a certain level, coming home will be a drag because it signals the end of all the fun, freedom and serendipity that you enjoyed on the road. But on a less tangible...

An excerpt from Chapter Two: Earn Your Freedom: Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel , by Rolf Potts "Vagabonding is about gaining the courage to loosen your grip on the so called certainties of the world. Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time...

(Picture credit: Flickr/ derekb ) This past weekend I spent a few hours nosing around the travel section at a local bookstore. With nothing much better to do in another steamy Malaysian Sunday afternoon, I got easily attracted by the air-conditioned comfort of the Temple of Vanity (i.e. one of the abundant malls). I went...

Code Green , by Kerry Lorimer Reviewed by Kristin Van Tassel Lonely Planet’s recently published Code Green , a guide to ecologically responsible world travel, is an important addition to their substantial collection of travel service literature. Compiled by Kerry Lorimer, Code Green features close to 100 destinations—spanning Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, New...

In the Sierra Madre , by Jeff Biggers Reviewed by Sara Levine “The Sierra Madre. No other mountains in the world posses such a timbre of intrigue and wonder.” So opens Jeff Bigger’s book In the Sierra Madre , and so he would like us to believe. In 1998 author Jeff Biggers and his companion...

I'm happy to announce that "Tantric Sex for Dilettantes," my India travel tale from Perceptive Travel , was selected by Tim Cahill for inclusion in the 2006 edition of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Travel Writing , which came out this month. This is the first time I've had a story among the main selections of...

I have short pieces appearing in two new books from Travelers' Tales -- "Mandu Rolf Bap," a food sidebar appearing in Susan Brady's The World Is a Kitchen: Cooking Your Way Through Culture ; and "Embracing Unpredictability," a travel tip section in Tim Leffel's Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune: The Contrarian Traveler's Guide...

I was pleased to learn recently that Vagabonding is included among the influential books mentioned in the newly released You've GOT to Read This Book!: 55 People Tell the Story of the Book That Changed Their Life . Edited by Chicken Soup for the Soul guru Jack Canfield, You've Got to Read This Book! explores...

Women Who Run , by Shanti Sosienski Reviewed by Melanie Mock The runner I most admire is my sister, Amy. She hadn't run a step -- save for PE class -- until several years ago, after the added weight of birthing three kids sent her shuffling to the track in cotton shorts and too-small shoes....

. Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey Edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokman Reviewed by Aly Young As a self-proclaimed travel freak currently teaching English in Korea, I love venturing into new places and letting the unknown surroundings stimulate my senses. I am particularly curious to hear how...

Warning: Failure to Buy This Book Could Result in Death or Serious Injury. Mark Batty Publisher: New York, 2005. Reviewed by my nephew Cedar Van Tassel, who is seven years old This is a book about warning signs. The author wrote the book because he thought warning signs from other countries are neat. The book...

Earlier this month I mentioned the debut of Jen Leo 's latest travel-humor anthology, What Color is Your Jockstrap? (to which I contributed one story). As part of this announcement, I mentioned that Jen would be giving one free copy of the book to a Vagablogging reader who entered her email drawing, and now I...

Back in May, World Hum's Top 30 Travel Books of all time included Tony Horwitz's Baghdad Without a Map , which occupied the #26 slot . Curious about Horwitz's take on the World Hum Top 30, I emailed him asking which travel books he might have included. This is what Tony told me: Off the...

Two months ago, World Hum's Top 30 Travel Books rundown put Jeffrey Tayler 's 2000 tome Facing the Congo in the #28 slot . Tayler is a regular visitor to my summer writing classes at the Paris American Academy , so I recently had the chance to ask him what he thought of the World...

Last month, Jen Leo debuted the fourth volume in her ever-growing collection of travel-humor tomes, What Color is Your Jockstrap? Unlike Jen's previous anthologies, this is not a womens-only affair; in addition to funny female writers like Susan Orlean and Laurie Notaro, this book features stories from the likes of Tim Cahill, J. Maarten Troost,...

Back in May, World Hum's Top 30 Travel Books of all time included Tim Cahill's Road Fever , which occupied the #21 slot in the countdown . Since I know Cahill from the Key West Literary Seminar , and also from my online interview of him in 2004, I emailed him to see what he...

Last month, World Hum's Top 30 Travel Books of all time included Peter Hessler 's River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze , which weighed in at #20 on the list. Curious to know Hessler's take on the Top 30 -- as well as his own suggestions for books that might have been included --...

Last month, World Hum posted its list of the Top 30 Travel Books of all time, to which I contributed a number of reviews. After the dust settled and readers weighed in with their own recommendations , it occurred to me that I correspond with a number of the authors who made the list. What,...

This week, Brooklyn-based writer (and erstwhile traveler extraordinaire) Ayun Halliday debuted her fourth book, Dirty Sugar Cookies : Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste , which "takes readers into the unpredictable mind and comical experiences of a true anti-foodie, giving even the most hopeless cooks a moment of relief from self-criticism, and the least discriminating eaters a...