Scan barcode
corrine's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Gives me the delusional belief that any journaling I do will be just as interesting
jay_leeqt's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
aydanroger's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
4.25
spenkevich's review against another edition
4.0
He came.
He saw.
He brought a poodle. Good boy, Charley.
Charley with Nobel Winning author John Steinbeck
If you are like me, you will recognize the impulse of wanderlust. John Steinbeck felt this too, opening his book Travels With Charley with a humorous reflection on how people always told him his wanderlust would be cured with old age but, at 58 when he set out with his dog, Charley, this hadn’t seemed to abate even a little. ‘Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know,’ he writes, and so he sets off to see what he does not yet know of the land and the people in it. While the book is usually thought of as a travelog, Steinbeck’s thoughts and reflections on his journey through the ‘new America of the 1960’s becomes more an intimate portrait of the writer himself and his thoughts on loneliness, travel, the country in a state of change and, ultimately, himself. It is a lovely little book, full of Steinbeck’s signature charm and wit, and while it is a gaze at an era now gone, it is still a meaningful and beautifully introspective read.
‘I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.’
For those with the traveling spirit, this is practically a book of meditations with hardly a page that goes by without one sentence worth underlining or committing to memory. When I first read this, I was going through a huge Steinbeck phase in college and getting out on the road was something always on my mind. And itinerary whenever the opportunity presented itself. There are some gorgeous reflections on taking journeys to be found here:
Through the book we ride along shotgun with Charley on our lap (good boy) and experience the states with him as he passes through. ‘I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments,’ he says in typical old-Steinbeck fashion, ‘and nowhere is my natural anarchism more aroused than at national borders.’ Steinbeck longs for freedom and while he admits the natural impulse at an older age is to resist change, he has set out to see it and meet it. Unfortunately it has been discovered that some details are fabricated, or embellished, and some of the people he meets along the way are caricatures or composites, but the story is ‘true enough’ and if you feel it in your heart, it might as well be true. I came to Steinbeck through his fiction that always felt like a truer understanding of life than most things I’d known anyways, so whatever.
‘One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.’
Whether you have a love for travel, an appreciate of Steinbeck, or just need a good book that will make you feel nice inside, Travels for Charley is a winner.
4.5/5
‘People don’t take trips—trips take people.’
He saw.
He brought a poodle. Good boy, Charley.
Charley with Nobel Winning author John Steinbeck
If you are like me, you will recognize the impulse of wanderlust. John Steinbeck felt this too, opening his book Travels With Charley with a humorous reflection on how people always told him his wanderlust would be cured with old age but, at 58 when he set out with his dog, Charley, this hadn’t seemed to abate even a little. ‘Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know,’ he writes, and so he sets off to see what he does not yet know of the land and the people in it. While the book is usually thought of as a travelog, Steinbeck’s thoughts and reflections on his journey through the ‘new America of the 1960’s becomes more an intimate portrait of the writer himself and his thoughts on loneliness, travel, the country in a state of change and, ultimately, himself. It is a lovely little book, full of Steinbeck’s signature charm and wit, and while it is a gaze at an era now gone, it is still a meaningful and beautifully introspective read.
‘I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.’
For those with the traveling spirit, this is practically a book of meditations with hardly a page that goes by without one sentence worth underlining or committing to memory. When I first read this, I was going through a huge Steinbeck phase in college and getting out on the road was something always on my mind. And itinerary whenever the opportunity presented itself. There are some gorgeous reflections on taking journeys to be found here:
‘Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.’
Through the book we ride along shotgun with Charley on our lap (good boy) and experience the states with him as he passes through. ‘I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments,’ he says in typical old-Steinbeck fashion, ‘and nowhere is my natural anarchism more aroused than at national borders.’ Steinbeck longs for freedom and while he admits the natural impulse at an older age is to resist change, he has set out to see it and meet it. Unfortunately it has been discovered that some details are fabricated, or embellished, and some of the people he meets along the way are caricatures or composites, but the story is ‘true enough’ and if you feel it in your heart, it might as well be true. I came to Steinbeck through his fiction that always felt like a truer understanding of life than most things I’d known anyways, so whatever.
‘One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.’
Whether you have a love for travel, an appreciate of Steinbeck, or just need a good book that will make you feel nice inside, Travels for Charley is a winner.
4.5/5
‘People don’t take trips—trips take people.’
adamsgardner10's review against another edition
4.0
Steinbeck plays the original Bill Bryson here, with fewer witty asides and a few more sweeping observations about America – “generalities”, he calls them. Writing at a time (1962) we look back on now as simple and stable, he drives a big loop around the country with a camper on his pickup and a poodle in the passenger seat.
I really liked the range of people whose stories he tells, and the characterization of Charley the poodle. Especially interesting are the parts where Steinbeck passes through your home states (praises flinty, forthright New Englanders; nostalgic, but gracefully self-aware about it, for the California of his youth).
Did he embellish some details and reconstruct some dialogue? Yep. Does it take away from the book? Not at all. A warm and wise chronicler of the country and its people.
I really liked the range of people whose stories he tells, and the characterization of Charley the poodle. Especially interesting are the parts where Steinbeck passes through your home states (praises flinty, forthright New Englanders; nostalgic, but gracefully self-aware about it, for the California of his youth).
Did he embellish some details and reconstruct some dialogue? Yep. Does it take away from the book? Not at all. A warm and wise chronicler of the country and its people.
delaneyswann's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
One time I lived in a hut rumored to be built by John Steinbeck. Then I asked the oldest member of the community and he said that John Steinbeck had lived in the hut but had not built it. his forebears had told him that John was not a very good worker. And that view really helped me color in the lines on this book.