Around the World in 50 Books

Right, if you want to accurately recreate my year you''ll need to read the following books. As I generally take any opportunity to offer an opinion on something, especially if I think it's rubbish (which is most things), I've included a bit of reviewing too.

I did my best to only read good books whilst I was away but occasionally, well, you'll see...

Glamorama - Brett Easton Ellis isn't as clever as he thinks he is.

The Historian - Great yarn, rubbish ending

Joy Luck Club - Don't think I was the target audience for this book.

Count of Monte Cristo - Loved it

Day of the Triffids - better than I feared

A Million Little Pieces - Painfully good (Lana lend me the sequel)

The Alchemist (re-read)

Bourne Identity - Different from the film

The Perks of being a Wallflower - not sure it's the new "Catcher" but enjoyed it a lot.

Breaking Vegas - I read it because I liked the cover. Someimes I'm really shallow.

Harvest - Everyone seemed to love this book. I thought it was bobbins.

To Kill a Mockingbird (re-read)

The War of Don Emmanuel's Netherparts - suitably South American

Personal Days - there was an impressively long sentence in the third chapter, other than that it was entirely forgetable.

The Falls - Always wanted to read a Rankin as he seems like a nice bloke. It was predictably average.

Don Quixote - I never realised this was a spoof. Pretty funny for something that's 500 years old. Pretty postmodern too.

Tibet's Secret Mountain - Check me reading mountaineers' journals

Woman In White - whoever told me that this was better than The Moonstone was mistaken.

Dubliners - I only understood one of the stories in this - guess I'm still not ready for Ulysses

Shakespeare - I've always been a bit scathing of Bill Bryson books, turns out that they're rather good.

Hound of the Baskervilles - I didn't enjoy this as much as the large amounts of other Holmes books in this list but lead you to surmise.

Tortilla Flat - Funnier than Cannery Row (goes without saying that it's also funnier than Grapes of Wrath).

Imperium - Proper beach book.

The Great Gatsby - Nothing happened and not in a good way. Yawn.

Kidnapped - oh, look at how clever i am writing in dialect. Yawn, again.

The Black Tulip - better than Three Musketeers, not as good as Monte Cristo.

Even Cowgirls get The Blues - Tom Robbins is as clever as he thinks he is and that makes me jealous.

The Gate - Okay, I didn't actually finish this but I reckon I read enough for it to count.

High Fidelity (re-read)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Lots of lists of fish.

The Man in The Iron Mask - Nowhere near as swashbuckly as I hoped it would be.

The Polysyllabic Spree - The main reason I made a note of what I was reading - just so that I could foist a whole heap of books onto you, just like that rotter Hornby did to me.

The Three Musketeers - I like reading Dumas. It's pulp trash, but because it's 150 years old it looks respectable.

The Truth (with Jokes) - I've not found many books as shocking as I found this. It made me spit out food and stutter offensive facts at strangers. It also made me glad not to be an American.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - I just don't really like short stories that much. I don't see them as proper reading.

The Throwback - Funnier than I was expecting

A Fraction of the Whole - I'd not heard of this before I started reading it, but really enjoyed.

We Could have been The Wombles - Thought this was going to be the kind of irreverent, coffee-table, music-geek factbook that I love. It wasn't; it was rubbish.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - I hadn't realised that Moriarty only appeared in one Holmes short story - I had figured that he was a presence throughout the series (not that I've read every story but I've made a fair dent in the oeuvre)

Imperial America - Think I'd've preferred it if it had been about the 2004 elections, as it suggested on the cover, rather than a collection of mid-eighties essays.

The Beach (Reread) - I read the Beach about ten years ago. Then I thought it sounded exotic and supercool. Reading it now it sounds some like some kind of hippy hell. The main character lasted five months on The Beach. Me? I doubt I'd last five hours.

Belief in God; Good, Bad or Irrelevant? - I think this was put out by a Christian publisher, which makes it an incredibly brave publishing decision. Cringingly funny watching a theology professor trying to exercise his punk credentials.

The Damage Done - Don't think I'll become a heroin dealer after all.

D_ S__ by P__ J__ - They say all publicity is good publicity, therefore I'm not going to name this book, merely dismiss it as the worst thing I've ever read. On two positive notes: it was so simplistic that I read all 500 pages in a period not much more than 24 hours, so i guess someone did something right; and if this clunking time-waster can get published I'm pretty sure I can. Now all I have to do is write something.

Frankenstein - about a third of this book was unnecessary description. Yawn.

Quite Ugly One Morning - a re-re-read to try and detox from wordy classics and terrible thrillers. The new Brookmyre is out now. Pan-daemon-ium. I'm pretty excited about reading it, so don't tell me what happens. Okay?

Shantaram - two of my travel companions from this year have rated this as their "bestest ever" book; a third met Linbaba and gave him a bear hug.

City of Thieves - Corker of a read

The Island of Dr Moreau - Not sure what I made of it. Enjoyed it, I guess.

Tropic of Cancer - Oooh, how very risque?


Freakonomics - More accessible than I thought it was going to be.

Moby Dick - See Frankenstein, only more so. There's only so many descriptions of bits of boats and whales you can take before you start harpooning strangers.


Superfreakonomics - See, that's how accessible Freakonomics was...

White Fang - Figured that, as this is a "kids' classic" the story woukld be entirely guessable. It wasn't.

Weird Food and Karaoke

So that's that. Back from the USSR. Twenty-one countries across four continents. Karaoke in seven languages across four alphabets. Scorpions, guinea pig, beetle, starfish, ants, dog, duck embryo, seahorse, snake, spider none of it so much as made me gag - my main regret is not buying that rat in Yang Shuo (a secondary regret is not buying Dennis, sorry Ellie).

So did it change me? Probably a little bit. If you'd asked me at the start of the year what the thing I would most likely repeat would be there's pretty much no chance I'd've said working in an orphanage, but it turns out that even I have an altruistic streak (incidentally, if you fancy a week or so without hot water or toilet paper in the middle of Cambodian nowhere sometime next year, let me know).

Did I ever take the same photo as everyone else? Yeah, of course I did - Angkor Wat; Red Square; The Maoi; Machu Picchu; Sydney Harbour; The Great Wall; Iguazu Falls; The Terracotta Warriors - A cliche's a cliche for a reason.

Only thing left to say is...
Traveller Cliche, these are your Best Bits:

Finally finding that swimming pool * El Calafete * Glacier trekking * Half kilo steaks for $1 * Punta del Diablo * Learning the best ever card game whilst trying to cross the border at Chui * Beach parties at Florianopolis * Andy's Tour * Paraty * The sweaty boys at Carnival * Losing JP, then meeting people who you'll be spending the next two months with with the worst hangover of the year * "Dan has velcro gloves for catching squirrels" * Speed boat through Iguazu Falls * Getting up close and personal with toucans * Paraguayan karaoke and Pirate Bar * Zip-lining * "One day Wes you'll be a man like me" * Salar d'Uyuni * Lana falling down a silver mine * The La Paz experience * Getting increasingly cocky going down The World's Most Dangerous Road * The goal that almost retained our dignity at 3000m * Dead Woman's Pass * Michael falling over a stick * Pumaman * The Porter switchbacks * The Waimu Picchu Elite * Gringo on the Dancefloor * "This is a game I like to call 'Smash It'" * Tanya falling down a manhole * The caged condors * One of literature's great monologues * Conga on the bus * ceviche * Rushing the mountain * Pedalo on an oasis * Dune buggying * The Ballestas islands * Roast chicken in Lima * Paillon del Diablo * Jenga in Banos * Bullying a terrapin * Tom with ants in his pants * Tubing Amazon style * A monkey stealing Michael's cake * Shooters and karaoke in Quito * Best steak in South America * Swimming with turtles * The boobie dance * Seeing a hammerhead * Stepping over an albatross * Swimming through a shoal of sardines as it was getting eaten by sealions from below and pelicans from above * Sliding down Pucon * Biking around Easter Island * The fish in that restaurant * Sunset over the Maoi (Day Three) * Being followed by a dog for five hours * Biking around the Atacama Desert * Cafe with Legs * Bunjee jumping from Auckland Harbour Bridge * Sky-diving at Lake Taupo * Dolphins playing in our wake in Charlotte Sound * Keas eating the windscreen at Arthur's Pass * The Paradiso * Sydney with Stacey and Lana * The view from Manly Ferry * Singapore Zoo * The Perhentian Islands * Full Moon hedonism * Wondering why Aranya Prathet isn't in the guide book * Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm and the Capitals of the World * A bag of insects, a stray elephant and a run-in with some ladyboys * Nou, Dani and Jan Tou's cook-offs * Mangosteens and jackfruit * Borrowing five crates of Klang from Mary's shop * Khemerak Sereymon, Naey Kren and Yamaha Day * Jonny, his drinking game and an "I heart Cambodia" tattoo * Mr Krum * Mr Klang the toothpick holder * "Hmmm, tastes like crickets" * Beating a Connect 4 hustler * Beating Dara, Sambo, Socha, Ratha and Sot at volleyball * The waterfight getting out of hand * The drinking game with the gekko * "Don't forget us" * In the Tubing * The waterfalls at Luang Pra Bang * Falling through the floor of a bamboo hut * A monkey eating Anna's bracelet * Wondering if the elephant would drown * A holiday from holidays * Lunch with Sir Jimmy * Proper jungle at the Kinabatangan * Face off with a macaque * Riding on the roof of a jeepney * The Batad Rice Terraces * Return to takeo * Casey in The Rock * The kids loving an English lesson on bike parts following a week of modal verbs * 5am aerobics and the Grade 2 classroom * "Dani no have." * "Excuse me, can I touch your head?" * "Well one of them's a mango" * Goss scoring 99% in Vietnamese * The scariest moto ride ever * mudbathing * drinking a snake heart shot * The sinking of the kayak * Ha Long Bay piracy * "You'll float out to sea" * Creamy Dreams * Trekking in Sapa, with a broken toe * Karaoke carriage * Hong Kong light show * Off-road tandems * Yichang's Tri-alphabet karaoke marathon * Snowball fights at the Terracotta Warriors * Shanghai night boat * "The Backwards Crew, The Backwards Crew, We walk backwards fast as you do." * Pantomime dragons * The bit of the Great Wall past the No Entry signs * "We should probably start with a seahorse" * The dramatic conclusion to the Visa debacle * Hiking by the Ger camp * The legend of the Mongolian Phlegm Chisellers * Dog-sledding around Lake Baikal * Sausage Lady * Red Square in the snow * The "Last" night in St Petersburg

All to the tune of Low by Flo'rida

Pug in a Shellsuit

Today I saw a pug in a luminous green shellsuit, bimbling around the grounds of St Catherine's Palace. It looked ridiculous, possibly even more ridiculous than me in my Peruvian hat, Chinese coat combo, although it's a close call. Not looking ridiculous (all the time) is one of the reasons I'm kinda looking forward to going home. That and catching up on a year's worth of stuff. And cheese. And maybe some of you guys (which reminds me, I probably don't have your number any more, if you could drop me a line with it that would be cool, unless I don't know you, in which case don't bother, I'd find it a bit too eerie if you managed to stalk me down).

Had my official last night two nights ago. My Trans-Siberian crew did Secret Santa (I got Chloe and enormous spring - Nothing says Merry Christams like an enormous spring), cruised around Petrograd in a pink limo (classy) before going clubbing (unreal, you wouldn't believe me if I told you, so I won't).

Since then, aside from a little bit of sight seeing, I've pretty much just been thinking about roast dinners and stilton.

Venice of the North

I'm in St Petersburg. Which basically means I'm home. It's all European and the locals don't look or sound anywhere near as much like Bond villains as they did in Omsk.

The buildings are pretty majestic but they're very short and there's a lot of open spaces. Peter Parker should count himself lucky that he wasn't bitten here. Maybe there's loads of spidermen around but the St Petersburg ones just don't get a mention because there's not really any where to swing and dangling's just not a good look for a superhero.

Lenin-a-like

The Bolshoi, The Metropol, Gorky Park; Moscow is chock-full of places that I've heard of but never really thought about where they are.

Obviously I'd heard of Red Square (I didn't know that the Red bit of it was just a corruption of the Russian word for beautiful, no stories of blood flowing through the streets - how disappointing?), although it was looking more white than red when I was there just now - a veritable wonderland of winteriness.

I'd heard of The Kremlin too, but putting my ignorance on public display I had no idea what it was. I thought it had something to do with St Basil's Cathedral (you know? that one with the domes - incidentally, there's a pretty good story about that involving Ivan the Terrible, an architect and a pair of eyes), it doesn't really, it's a walled bit of the city with enough cathedrals of its own that it doesn't need St Basil's with its Disneyland icing.

Went to see my second dead dictator of the last month. It turns out I look an awful lot like ol' Vlad; it's not often I say that about an eighty year old corpse (hopefully I look at least a little bit less waxy, although, with the length of time I've been travelling, I can't be too sure).

45 Minutes in Omsk

I've just finished wallowing in my own filth for 81 hours. Longest train journey in the world? Ate that up for breakfast, along with more pot noodles than the whole of my uni days.

The down side of spending so long on the train is that I've got pretty much no news. I did visit Omsk, which is ridiculously fun to say, but in the 45 minutes I was there I didn't get to see all that many of the sights. Just the train station, which was pretty similar to all the other stations we stopped at, only with less weird looks from the locals as I made the effort to put on trousers and boots rather than just wandering round in the snow in shorts and flipflops.

From Russia with Gloves

I'm in Siberia and it's nowhere near as cold as I thought it was going to be. So cold I didn't thik twice about jumping in Lake Baikal, although to be fair, once in I didn't think about anything other than getting out again. Very cold. Very big too, apparently there's so much fresh water there that if everyone in the world tried to drink it it would take 44 years.

Top three things that I've done since being in Russia that I hadn't done before:

Dog-sledding - More fun than I'd feared it would be, although my dogs seemed intent on taking short cuts which meant I spent more time than I'd like being dragged along behind an overturned sled.

Driven a skidoo - I think I can add that to the list of things I'm not that good at.

Sauna - yeah I've been into a sauna before but I've never done it properly. I've never stayed in it til it hurt. I've never run straight out to roll around in the snow all scantily clad. And I'd never been whipped by a slightly overweight Russian man.

The first leg of the Trans-Siberian was relatively painless. Although the border crossing took the wrong side of ten hours, for most of which our carriage wasn't connected to anything even slightly resembling a train, which got enough Weird Points to pull me through the wait. It didn' get as many Weird Points as the hat Kim bought in the Mongolian black market. It had legs. Not enough hats have legs nowadays.