Reading in Reykjavík

Sub-title: Around New Zealand on two big wheels Year published: 2004 Genre: Non-fiction, travelogue Setting & time: New Zealand, 2003 (?) This is Evans’ second published travelogue, and a sort of sequel to It’s Not About the Tapas . This time around Evans stepped up the pace and got herself a motorcycle permit before embarking on a journey around New Zealand in search of the stereotypical Kiwi male: the hard-living, hard-drinking, ingenious bloke of pioneer days. This is, of course, a gimmick (such as most travel writers use in order to justify their journey) and it works well, even if it seems a bit affected. It lends humour to the narrative, as does her initial struggle to master the powerful motorcycle and the relationship she develops with the bike in the course of the journey. Then there is the destination. New Zealand comes across as the kind of place an Icelander would feel right at home, with its small-town culture, individualism and friendliness, and the varied landsca...

Year published: 2006 Genre: Non-fiction, travel Setting & time: Argentina, 21st century Polly Evans seems to have settled into a career as a travel writer, seeking out one adventure after the other. I don’t know what her journey in China was like, or her bike ride around New Zealand, but I know that her trip to Argentina was a typical whirlwind tour of tourist travel destinations. That she managed to squeeze out of it a semi-interesting travelogue is mostly due to 2 things: 1. She dug up some fascinating snippets of Argentinian history that she used to spice up the narrative. 2. She included horses and her efforts to learn to ride them. Without the historical tidbits and the descriptions of her riding lessons and her subsequent rides and relationships with horses and her increasing confidence as a rider, I don’t see how On a Hoof and a Prayer could possibly have been stretched to book length, or even been made interesting enough to get published. Much as I enjoyed her first bo...

Author : Polly Evans Year published : 2003 Pages: 304 Genre: non-fiction, travel, Spain Polly Evans, fed up with her stressful job as a journalist/editor in Hong Kong, decided to take a nice, long holiday. The obvious choice was Spain, where she had once spent a year, and so spoke the language after a fashion. She had a road bicycle built, light and strong, that would be her conveyance for the journey, and set off. The book tells of her journey, her adventures, people (and animals) she met, places she visited, along with some snippets of history. The first leg of the journey took her along the border with France, and the second through the Extremadura region in southern central Spain. It was the title that grabbed my attention when browsing for books on TitleTrader. I checked the reviews on Amazon, saw the book was about travelling in Spain, where I spent two enjoyable weeks a couple of years ago, so I sent in a request and got the book within two weeks. For once, I was not disap...