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A review by fictionesque
The Adventure of It All by Zephyr Matheney
4.0
Delightful! I've never read travel fiction before, but this was highly enjoyable and definitely motivates me to push beyond my own fears of traveling and doing so alone.
There are attributes of this book that make it obvious it was self-published (use of the dash instead of the em-dash, a few too many typos, gigantic indentations and indentations at the start of new sections/chapters), but these things are just visible to me because I know how to format a book, which most people don't. The average reader will not find these things distracting, and I didn't either.
Matheney has a lovely writing voice and this book really went down like a smooth liquor. There were points at which I grew really frustrated with the author (STOP BUYING SO MUCH. MY GOD). Most of these were easily overlooked, however, because the author does not dwell on each experience too much. She describes, gives the reader the info we need, then moves on. The author's complaining did wear on me a little bit about halfway through and onward--I liked hearing about her difficult experiences while traveling disabled and how she overcame them, but what frustrated me were the endless declarations of disliking this and that food, wasting time struggling to find packages of what to me seemed like extremely unnecessary specific junk foods, endless acid reflux, etc. I appreciated the author's candidness but sometimes there was just a bit too much. Some details can be omitted to preserve the magic of the trip more, and make it seem less like one long string of inconveniences.
There were also a few isolated incidents where the author would overexplain things previously mentioned in the book (ex: explain who a friend was that we'd already met, or explain what turkish delight is, or remind the reader of events earlier in the book). I remembered all of it clearly from earlier, so it was kind of annoying to be reminded like the author assumed I wasn't paying attention when reading.
Overall my complaints (like the author's, on occasion) are petty and this was a joy to read.
There are attributes of this book that make it obvious it was self-published (use of the dash instead of the em-dash, a few too many typos, gigantic indentations and indentations at the start of new sections/chapters), but these things are just visible to me because I know how to format a book, which most people don't. The average reader will not find these things distracting, and I didn't either.
Matheney has a lovely writing voice and this book really went down like a smooth liquor. There were points at which I grew really frustrated with the author (STOP BUYING SO MUCH. MY GOD). Most of these were easily overlooked, however, because the author does not dwell on each experience too much. She describes, gives the reader the info we need, then moves on. The author's complaining did wear on me a little bit about halfway through and onward--I liked hearing about her difficult experiences while traveling disabled and how she overcame them, but what frustrated me were the endless declarations of disliking this and that food, wasting time struggling to find packages of what to me seemed like extremely unnecessary specific junk foods, endless acid reflux, etc. I appreciated the author's candidness but sometimes there was just a bit too much. Some details can be omitted to preserve the magic of the trip more, and make it seem less like one long string of inconveniences.
There were also a few isolated incidents where the author would overexplain things previously mentioned in the book (ex: explain who a friend was that we'd already met, or explain what turkish delight is, or remind the reader of events earlier in the book). I remembered all of it clearly from earlier, so it was kind of annoying to be reminded like the author assumed I wasn't paying attention when reading.
Overall my complaints (like the author's, on occasion) are petty and this was a joy to read.