A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

This book was a terrible disappointment. I generally love Mayes' writing but found her rather insufferable in this selection. Much duller than her other books, it also shows a fairly nasty side of Mayes that I didn't like. Throughout the book she goes on rants about how things aren't up to her standards, leaving rental homes that had already been paid for because of tacky decor or because it was closer to a busy road than she would like. On top of that, and more grating to me was her constant berating of other people she encountered. She and Ed would giggle over some woman's choice of attire, this one being so out of fashion, that one looking like a sofa. The descriptions of overweight people was particularly galling. Describing one show more mother as an "albino hippopotamus" and depicting in detail her rolls and bulges because she dared to wear a white bathing suit in public - how dare she! There was one endearing chapter in which they visit Fez (although Ed was sick throughout this visit so perhaps without an audience to share her Mean Girl giggles with, she's less obnoxious). Unfortunately the Fez chapter was a mere 30 pages of 417. Not nearly enough to save the book from itself. I come away from this one really displeased with the author. I won't be reading more of her work. show less

I was surprised by the calibre of the writing, which was exquisite.

Normally, I'm not interested in southern Europe, but she wrote so beautifully about it that I was stirred. Seeing it all through her eyes, I almost feel as if I were there. Her passion is contageous.

Now, I'll have to read her Tuscany books!

An Amazon review I wish I'd read before I bought this book summarized my opinion of Mayes' travel writing: the writer criticized the discrepancy between the title and the substance:

"A year spent unmoored -- from home and errands and work and the ties that bind -- would have yielded a very different sort of book from this. These trips -- house rentals, hotel stays, even a cruise -- represent a series of vacations, instead of the year-long quest that the title promises."

In short, it's neither a *year* in the world nor a year truly *in* the world - a series of vacations bookended in real life aren't truly a year in the world any more than cruises and four-star hotels are an honest way of experiencing another locale.

Mayes shows us "rich" show more travel, rich in the sense of expense and not experience -- time spent sampling hotels, food, art, all the finer things, but not time intermingling, exploring. I bought this book while becoming aware of the prickles of my own wanderlust and was very disappointed by how little Mayes seemed to fit her own descriptor of "passionate traveler," but then, our ideas of travel are different.

It's true that she writes beautifully, lyrically, but I'm not interested in what she has to say. show less

Book on CD read by the author
3.5***

Subtitle: Journeys of a Passionate Traveler

I was not a great fan of Under the Tuscan Sun, so I’m not sure why I had this on my TBR. But a prompt to read a travel book brought this one to the forefront and I’m glad that I decided to try it.

Mayes recounts her many adventures traveling across Europe and Northern Africa from her home base in Tuscany. This was not one great adventure, but separate trips she and her husband took over time. Mayes shares their experiences as they roam through the British Isles, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, France and other areas of Italy. Her passion for travel certainly comes through loud and clear!

I particularly enjoyed the way she wrote about food. I show more could practically smell and taste the dishes, and I was constantly hungry for “more.” I also enjoyed the personal glimpses she gave of local citizenry or of fellow travelers. I was reminded of the adventures my husband and I had in his many years in international business; especially the surprise meals we had when we’d enter a restaurant and leave the selection up to the staff. We never had a bad meal doing this and enjoyed some truly spectacular ones (even when we didn’t know what we were eating).

The audiobook I got from the library was read by the author, but it was an abridged version of the book. (There is a full-length audiobook version, narrated by Cassandra Campbell.) I’m glad I had the text handy to fill in the blanks. However, reading of one adventure after another became repetitive. I think this book is best enjoyed as a collection of short stories that one reads a few at a time, rather than trying to do the whole thing in one fell swoop. show less

Your enjoyment of this book will largely depend on how much you like the things Frances Mayes likes -- food, flowers and antiquities, to name a few. The locales she and her husband visit are varied, but she spends most of her words for those interests. Very much a diary, including friends in the telling, it's theme is quite loose, finding yourself in other places. Unlike her previous works, she shows a nasty side here, with unkind (and unnecessary) comments about the passengers on a cruise she took.

Not a fan of this one, so it's not becoming a part of my library! While I was a fan of Mayes, I found her 'me, me, me' style in 'A Year in the World' tiresome and leaving a lot to be desired. Yes, she provides a lot of details about her destinations. Yes, her style is still eloquent and readable. But her rather frequent whining about relatively minor or to-be-expected details of their accommodations, surroundings, etc. is tiresome and smacks of entitlement. Which she is free to express but certainly detracts from the book!

When I saw this book was being published, I immediately put it on my must-read list. I ordered it and decided to make it my entree for summer reading. By nibbling on it and picking off pieces of it, I've managed to make it last for over a month. In many ways, it was a perfect summer read, for a person who couldn't travel herself. Mayes took me to places I've always wanted to go, Portugal, Spain, Greece, even Turkey and North Africa. But the book annoyed me, too. Mayes seemed hypercritical, judgmental off-and-on about her accomodations and her meals. She jumped around while describing her setting so that I felt like I was looking at her world through the eye of a jerky video camera. Yet she also wrote poetically at times, describing show more foods she ate and places she visited so beautifully that I felt I'd eaten, too, that I'd travelled with her. The last chapter is a wonderful summing up of the need to travel that could equally well apply to the need to read as well. Mayes reminds us of T.S. Eliot's idea that in voyaging, we come back to our beginnings and understand our own world for the first time. A good reason to travel. A good reason to read. show less