Wouldn't take anything for their journeys now

REVIEWS BY MICHELLE JONES

The following books record trips of a lifetime, life-changing travels and a career spent traversing the globe. Undertaken by people at different stages of life, the journeys here all underscore flexibility—with regard to expectations and itineraries—as the key to meaningful experiences.


Frequent travelers

The photographs in Annie Griffiths Belt's memoir, A Camera, Two Kids and a Camel, are stunning, which is no surprise given her 30 years as a National Geographic photographer. Interspersed among her images—of a farmer struggling against the frigid North Dakota wind, women in Jerusalem worshipping during Ramadan, her own children snuggling with Bedouins—are stories about her life, taking her family on assignment (her husband, Don Belt, is a writer for the magazine). "I love that the camera has become my passport to other realities," she writes, "an excuse to go behind the scenes, arrive early, stay late, or simply follow someone home."


To celebrate 20 years of marriage (and the accumulation of thousands of frequent flier miles), cook- and guidebook authors Cheryl and Bill Jamison planned a three-month foodie dream itinerary. Avoiding (for them) overly familiar Europe, they concentrated on several Pacific Rim nations, South Africa, Brazil and India. In Around the World in 80 Dinners, they devote a chapter to each stop, concluding each with listings and a recipe. While the insertion of snatches of conversation or exchanged comments doesn't quite work, the couples' detailed descriptions of their many meals are sensory delights referencing aromas, textures and flavors (this is not a book to be read on an empty stomach); and their honesty about their experiences is a rare treat.


Fate is foolish

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods," muses King Lear. Scott Huler (Defining the Wind) would likely agree, especially after vowing (on-air) never to read James Joyce's Ulysses—a challenge to the gods if ever there was one. In a twist of fate worthy of a mythological hero, Huler sets off to retrace Odysseus' famously long trip home from the Trojan War, calling it his last great adventure before settling into middle-age and fatherhood. His chronicle of that journey, No-Man's Lands: One Man's Odyssey Through The Odyssey, is an entertaining, conversational travelogue as well as an in-depth analysis of Homer's epic. Huler mixes in popular culture references (The Wizard of Oz is a favorite), humorous encounters with people and places, and tales of lucky coincidences and stupid mistakes. Along the way he also engages in an Aristotelian debate over Odysseus' character: "Is Odysseus the clever rascal who gets his men out of the tight jam? Or is he the pigheaded moron who gets them into it?"


Lost in translation

Laugh-out-loud moments fill Lori L. Tharps' Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain, which begins with a recounting of her adolescence as the "Only Black Girl In . . ." a suburb of well-heeled whites, told with witty sarcasm akin to that of Gish Jen's narrator in Mona in the Promised Land. Later, Tharps heads to Salamanca with the aspirations of any student: mastering language, soaking up culture and having fun. She hadn't planned on becoming the "Ambassador of Black," perceived as easy sex object on one hand and threatening freak on the other, but she gets over it, finds cool roommates and even falls in love with the cute guy in her German class before returning to the States to get on with her life.

Except she doesn't leave Spain behind, or rather, it comes for her, yet after marriage and a son, Tharps is still at odds with a culture that doesn't seem to have a place for her. Once she begins a quest to find a history of black people in Spain—interviewing professors, visiting hole-in-the-wall churches—even the language in Kinky Gazpacho changes; gone are the choppy, journal-like sentences, the humor is restrained. When Tharps finally finds hidden traces of Africans in Spain, she also finds peace of mind and sees things she'd missed in all her years of excursions.


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