Other books that might interest you

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  Skye - The Island and Its Legends

  Otta Swire

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  An oral history by “Scotland’s forgotten folklorist” whose tale inspired the Neil Gaiman novella The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains (The Spooky Isles).   This is a fabulous treasury of legend and wonder—tales of monsters who dwell in lakes; of small people who trap humans in earthen mounds where time stands still; of dark, shapeshifting spirits whose cloak of human form is betrayed by the sand and shells which fall from their hair. In the absence of a written tradition, for generations of skianachs, these tales, handed down orally, contained the very warp and weft of Hebridean history. They take us far beyond Christian times, to the edge of the Iron Age, and interweave with threads from the wider Atlantic tradition of Gaelic heroic myth and legend.  Absolute Escapes—which lists Skye as one of the “8 Books You Should Read Before Visiting Scotland”—raves, “This fascinating book written in the 1950s still has relevance today as it maps a route around the island, mixing mythology and local history to capture the spirit of the land and its legends. This is a great guide to the Isle of Skye, and a jolt to the imagination.”   “Swire’s prose makes for a very entertaining read . . . as a source of folklore, it’s unbeatable.” —The Spooky Isles

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  The Race for Timbuktu - The...

  Frank T. Kryza

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  In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers––and fortune hunters––than the lost city of Timbuktu. Africa's legendary City of Gold, not visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages, held the promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale. One of the contenders was Major Alexander Gordon Laing, a thirty–year–old army officer. Handsome and confident, Laing was convinced that Timbuktu was his destiny, and his ticket to glory. In July 1825, after a whirlwind romance with Emma Warrington, daughter of the British consul at Tripoli, Laing left the Mediterranean coast to cross the Sahara. His 2,000–mile journey took on an added urgency when Hugh Clapperton, a more experienced explorer, set out to beat him. Apprised of each other's mission by overseers in London who hoped the two would cooperate, Clapperton instead became Laing's rival, spurring him on across a hostile wilderness.  An emotionally charged, action–packed, utterly gripping read, The Race for Timbuktu offers a close, personal look at the extraordinary people and pivotal events of nineteenth–century African exploration that changed the course of history and the shape of the modern world.

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  Itasca State Park Minnesota -...

  Patricia L. Lawrence

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  Audio Journeys explore the (disputed) headwaters of the Mississippi River with park rangers.  A trail takes us to a spring coming out of the ground in the Minnesota mountains.  The spring forms a pool before gliding from the rocks to become the mighty Mississippi River, most people believe.  Itasca is a derivative of two Greek words, true and source.

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  Chasing Cherry Blossoms in Wuhan

  Sally Cook

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  This story talks about travelling in China ,and Wuhan in particular ,just before the outbreak of Covid 19 in that city in 2019.. It highlights darker aspects of this travel as well as the humourous, kind hearted side. It traverses four provinces and highlights memorable experiences whilst looking for cherry blossom  in these areas.. It is enhanced by sound effects.

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  Driven - The Secret Lives of...

  Marcello Di Cintio

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  In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi."The taxi," writes Marcello Di Cintio, "is a border." Occupying the space between public and private, a cab brings together people who might otherwise never have met—yet most of us sit in the back and stare at our phones. Nowhere else do people occupy such intimate quarters and share so little. In a series of interviews with drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country with nothing but a suitcase, Driven seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the unknown stories that surround us.Travelling across borders of all kinds, from battlefields and occupied lands to midnight fares and Tim Hortons parking lots, Di Cintio chronicles the many journeys each driver made merely for the privilege to turn on their rooflight. Yet these lives aren't defined by tragedy or frustration but by ingenuity and generosity, hope and indomitable hard work. From night school and sixteen-hour shifts to schemes for athletic careers and the secret Shakespeare of Dylan's lyrics, Di Cintio's subjects share the passions and triumphs that drive them.

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  Highways and Byways in Sussex

  E. V. Lucas

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  A very personal and opinionated wander through the Sussex of around 1900, illustrated with anecdotes, literary and poetic quotations, gravestone epitaphs and a gentle sense of humour. The author colours the countryside with his nostalgia for times past and regret for the encroaching future, his resentment of churches with locked doors, and his love of deer parks, ruined castles and the silent hills.(I must add my apologies for my attempts at the Sussex dialect in the chapter on that subject.)[This book is of Reading Grade of 9.55 (i.e. equivalent to 9½ years of U.S. education. Reading Ease score of 63.72 (on a scale from 100 to 0 .. where 65 is easy, 30 a little hard, 0 difficult). These are Flesch-Kincaid readability scores.]

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