On a lighter note…

This book, by Galye Forman, is subtitled “A Year of the Fringes of a Shrinking World.” Perhaps it would have been more accurately subtitled: “Interesting Stories Interspersed with a Whole Lotta Whining.” Because that’s what I felt like after reading the book.

Gayle and her husband Nick check out from life for a year to travel the world. Gayle’s a NYC reporter, world traveler, extrovert, etc. Nick is an ex-punk rocker, introvert, and librarian. He’s never traveled, and he talks Gayle into going. (First warning bell: she whined and complained that she didn’t want to go, and then condescended — or at least that’s what it felt like to me — to go with him.) They start in Tonga, then head to China, Cambodia, India, Kazakhstan, Tanzania, South Africa, and the Netherlands, stopping at various other locations in between.

When I started it, I was all interested, comparing it to the world-traveling experiences of Michael Palin. The places she stopped and the stories she told were fascinating. She rarely stopped in touristy places, doing touristy stuff. And because of that, she met some interesting, out of the way people. My favorites were her visit to Bollywood (she’s an extra in Humko Tumse Pyaar Hai), and her hanging with the Tolkienists in Kazakhstan. (The most weird and slightly disturbing was the chapter, amusingly titled Laid Off, about the prostitutes in the Netherlands.) Sometimes her stories were funny, sometimes poignant (like the down-and-out kids in Cambodia and her experiences with them).

The problem is that I would have enjoyed all this much more if she hadn’t spent the book whining. I suppose it was part of her world experience, and she tries to draw relevance from it in the end. But I was put out with all the time she spent fighting with her husband. I understand why she went with him — he was going to go whether or not she came along — but, stop the complaining and obsessing already. Or, at least stop writing about it. If she had, I, at least, would have enjoyed the book a whole lot more.