Books

Day 19: The Innocents Abroad 

A young Mark Twain makes fun of everything between here and Jerusalem. 

It works as a travelogue, but he also parodies contemporary travel writing, self deprecates hilariously, and evenhandedly roasts everyone he encounters.

I originally meant to read a Bill Bryson book as a palette cleanser following The Magic Mountain, but I discovered I’d run out of them. So I read this instead and liked it so much that I binged five more of his travel books in a row.

I can’t believe these books don’t get talked about more. They’re funny as hell, they’re delightfully anachronistic in their takes, and they’re peerless as time capsules of the travel experience of ~150 years ago.

“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”

Five stars for its class. Tender, irreverent, exotic travel writing at its best.

Roughing It

Mark Twain describes crossing the country, trying his hand as a prospector, and then sailing out to Hawaii.

Just like yesterday’s review: great travel writing, hilariously written. 

The Hawaii section hits like a ton of bricks. It evokes the place modern visitors know and love, but at a time before it had become widely known as an earthly paradise. It will make you nostalgic for a time long dead before you were born. 

Like the rest of his travel writing, this book is a mainline hit of the distilled essence of the times and places it covers. Plus, of course, a heavy dose of Twain’s personality and perspective. 

Five stars for its class.

Twain wrote a lot of travel writing like Innocents Abroad and Following the Equator. I’m impressed by his social criticism. A stone of American literature 🫧✨!Love it !