A review by yourfriendtorie
Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World by Pico Iyer

3.0

I randomly picked this book out of the small collection in the house where we stayed in Hawai'i. Being in vagabond mode, I enjoyed the quaintly written travelogues of "the world's loneliest places." Most travel writing is challenging for me. This was better than Bill Bryson (is he a travel writer?), whom I just can't get into, but Iyer's writing was still somehow lacking. He gave good historical backgrounds to the places he wrote about (North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iceland, Paraguay, Bhutan...am I forgetting any?). Reading re-intensified my desire to travel to certain places (Vietnam), and shed light on otherwise mysterious places I never really thought about (Bhutan, Paraguay). I thought the best essay was definitely the one about Cuba, a place and experience so many travel writers attempt to describe but mostly can't quite get right. Anyway, Iyer seemed to feel about the place the same way I did, and that is a beautiful, intimate thing.