Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey (Footsteps (San Francisco, Calif.).)

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Summary: I BEG TO DIFFER TOO! IT WAS MY BIBLE!
Review: Laurie Gough's "Kite Strings" put me on the road to travel and to pursuing other excellent travel writing. So far, I've found no book to match this one. After reading it, I was so inspired to take off myself and explore the world, that I took a year off and haven't been able to force myself back. Like Gough, I wanted a journey rich with experiences where I'd live among other cultures and learn from their wisdom and laughter. What a shock to read this one strange review here from someone calling herself "westsailgirl" in New Zealand. She obviously could not have read the book--maybe the odd paragraph here and there--or she wouldn't be so perversely inaccurate about it. I practically used Gough's book as my bible in how to appreciate other cultures of the world. What on earth could this New Zealand girl mean by saying the author has no respect for people or cultures? That's what her whole book sings with!! If anything, Gough has too much respect, is too open-hearted and too willing to let herself fall into another culture's mythologies. That's one of her lessons and she explores it with grace, humility and wisdom in this highly thoughtful, funny and lyrical memoir. Where in the book does she ever mention being afraid of cannibals? Never. And having being to Fiji, I know that she used the correct term to describe those males who are raised as females. Was she supposed to make up another word for it? It's not as if she called them that to their face. How troubling to think that mean-spirited political correctness is still alive in NZ, a country the author loved and wrote about so generously. Besides, I doubt Gough was the only non-Brit (she's Canadian) shortlisted for the prestigious Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for nothing. In case you didn't know, westsailgirl, that's the award for the best travel book written in the English language. Gough's book deserves all the awards and rave reviews it's getting.

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Summary: CULT-CLASSIC FOR BACKPACKERS
Review: Okay, now I understand what all the hype is about surrounding this book for the backpacker crowd. it took me a while to finally get my hands on acopy (i only use libraries and borrow from friends and never buy from stores) but this is the best book i've ever read. i'm a backpacker who has been around the world as the author has and i understand most of the things she went through and it killed me to have to this book end. it's true when people say they couldn't put it down. get your hands on this book. you won't be sorry! it will make you cry and then make you laugh and then make you want to start traveling.

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Summary: A BOOK TO SAVOUR
Review: This book has given me so much pleasure. The words are carefully crafted; paragraph after paragraph is a lyrical treat where the reader is swept away from place to place, adventure to amusing escapade, to the sheer delight of arm chair travel. I haven't travelled much as yet (I live in northern B.C. where we're far from the madding crowd) but after reading this book, feel as though I could take on the world. I'll read it again and again, to get that sensuous and sultry south pacific feeling back.

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Summary: An inner and outer journey of discovery
Review: Up until now, Bill Bryson has been my favorite travel author, and I still find him hugely funny, but Laurie Gough is an excellent and funny writer, AND she has real adventures (unlike Bryson, who usually just stays in motels and eats in restaurants). Laurie Gough travels alone with a backpack up mountains, through dark foreign alleys, and from one tropical island to the next. She also has a gift for writing. We studied her book in my travel lit class and we were supposed to compare her odyssey to other odysseys in literature. I got so wrapped up in her story that I went out looking for other stuff she's written. I recommend this book highly!