Travel Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Braving the World by Pam Saylor

Braving the World by Pam Saylor

A dynamic couple decide to make retirement a gateway to shared overseas adventures in Braving the World: Adventures in Travel and Retirement by Pam Saylor.

This engaging memoir covers all the highs and lows of an ambitious stay abroad. Pam and her husband Dave each had areas of expertise and both were highly detail-oriented, which would be crucial to the year-long escape they envisioned, the “bel sogno,” the beautiful dream: a year in Italy, half in Rome, half in Venice. Before they could leave they had to rent out their home, find a year-long dog sitter, sell their cars, store […]

SPR2021-05-25T04:14:55+02:00March 31st, 2021|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Travel Book Reviews|

24 Hours of Love at the Silver Bell Wedding Chapel by Jacki Gluck

24 Hours of Love at the Silver Bell Wedding Chapel is a heartfelt and fascinating glimpse into one of the most famous chapels in the wedding-heavy wonderland of Las Vegas.

The amount of strange love that has been founded between those walls can fill far more than a single book, but author Jacki Gluck, through direct interviews with the original owners of the chapel, Jim and Vicki Duszynski, has created a remarkable homage to this Sin City staple. The fact that the purveyors of this place are also her parents gives the story even more of a heart-tapping tone, as […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2020-02-24T08:08:08+02:00February 21st, 2020|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Review: Can’t Forget the Motor City… by Joseph Nicks

Can't Forget the Motor City by Joseph Nicks

The tradition of travel writing in America is a long and proud one, but travel poetry doesn’t have the same mainstream following. However, in Can’t Forget the Motor City…, a new collection of poems from Joseph Nicks, the genre gains a strong voice that anyone who has longed for the open road will appreciate.

These poems span four decades of a life spent wandering and wondering, always looking for something new and invigorating. From musings on repetitive youth in the Great Lakes to the sluggish, sunny pace of California, these poems exude a hunger for elsewhere, with the poet […]

SPR2020-08-24T09:10:53+02:00May 20th, 2019|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Poetry Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Finding Myself in Borneo: Sojourns in Sabah by Neill McKee

Finding Myself in Borneo: Sojourns in Sabah by Neill McKee A former volunteer for CUSO (Canadian University Service Overseas) recalls those halcyon years living and working in Sabah, Borneo in the entertaining travel memoir Finding Myself in Borneo: Sojourns in Sabah.

Author Neill McKee vividly describes his escalating culture shock as he encounters “the East” in its many aspects: sights, smells and, notably, sweltering temperatures. In the sleepy village of Kota Belud, he learns Malay and teaches various subjects in English to students barely fluent in that language, often with no textbooks. Humorously imagining exotic Borneo as the model for Tolkien’s Middle Earth, he and his friends found the […]

SPR2019-02-13T10:36:52+02:00February 12th, 2019|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Review: The Sojourners by T. L. Hughes

The Sojourners by T. L. Hughes

Mike Hogan lands in London with two friends looking for work but instead follows his heart across Europe on a soul-opening adventure in The Sojourners by T. L. Hughes. There’s drinking and late night philosophy in pubs, a meditative surfer in Germany, and love in Greece and Turkey, while Mike ruminates on the people and places glimpsed from trains, buses and mopeds, letting readers accompany him on this poetic travelogue.

The novel begins with twenty-something Mike and friends Luke and Decky completing a road trip from California to the East Coast, boarding a plane and landing in London looking for […]

Greg Rideout2018-12-19T13:45:36+02:00November 5th, 2018|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Contemporary Fiction Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Review: Breaking the Fourth Wall by Michelle Sevigny

“Even with ropes, a fall in the wrong place could be fatal.” So reads the guidebook for the trail that author/adventuress Michelle Sevigny traverses.

After confronting some painful events in her middle years, most recently the loss of her beloved dog to cancer, Sevigny seeks comfort through her longtime enjoyment of hiking. Walking the Likya Yolu, the Lycian Way, with its 500+ kilometers of winding paths on the southern coastline of Turkey, seems the ideal antidote to her nagging sense of emptiness. The trail is marked…sometimes. In other places, she needs to rely on a technology that even she found […]

Barbara Scott2019-02-11T09:54:33+02:00May 24th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Review: Cubicle to Cuba by Heidi Siefkas

Cubicle to Cuba: Desk Job to Dream Job is an engaging travel memoir about Heidi Siefkas leaving her job at an internet start-up, dropping everything, and working as a tour guide in Cuba. Siefkas gives the nuts and bolts about adapting to life in Cuba, as well as traveling to Australia, Italy, Peru, and other points around the world. As with her previous memoirs, it’s a spirited and page-turning read.

Siefkas has lived quite an interesting life – after nearly facing death after being crushed with a falling tree branch, which also saw the dissolution of her marriage, she’s always […]

Lysa Grant2019-02-11T09:54:45+02:00May 5th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Items May Have Shifted by NJS Kaye

In Items May Have Shifted: How to Travel With Your Baby or Toddler, journalist NJS Kaye presents a “guerrilla guide” to traveling with young children based on copious experience and scholarly research.

Having taken her twin boys on 21 flights before their first birthday, Kaye provides the ins and outs of getting through security, boarding a plan quickly and efficiently, and changing a baby in an airplane restroom. She also covers tips for long car or bus trips, train travel, and even cruise ships. Each chapter ends with a short summary of “Souvenirs” with parental proverbs ranging from the […]

Lisa Butts2016-06-25T07:49:59+02:00June 25th, 2016|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Travel Book Reviews|