Journey to the Land of the Flies and Other Travels

Rating:
Summary: Time Well Spent
Review: This book is superb. Far more than just a travel book, it mixes philosophy, opinion, insight and comedy in one recipe. If you like to travel (or just think about travel)....this book is time well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Fun, quirky little book
Review: This is an odd book, part travel reminiscence and part random musing. The essays hop and skip about through history, literature, and culture. There are no obvious themes, but an appreciation of oddities of life is throughout. I find it charming, and re-read it frequently.

Rating:
Summary: TOO MUCH BUZZING AROUND....
Review: This is the second book I've read by Mr. Buzzi in the past week and it is an odd experience indeed! He writes very well, but.........everything is so disconnected, almost stream-of-consciousness. When you've finished, you don't feel like you've read "a book". It's more like jazz....like you've been "reading" jazz. It's improvisational. If you don't mind all the jumping around from thought-to-thought and topic-to-topic, it's ok, but I happen to find it very annoying. It's almost as though Mr. Buzzi just started writing some random thoughts after he had downed a couple of double espressos!

If you want some kind of traditional structure and coherent narrative I don't think you'll enjoy this book. However, if you want something that is written well,(in terms of sheer virtuosity) with lots of literary references that you can identify with, this just might be right up your alley...

Here is an example, from a section of the book dealing with St. Petersburg: "The Stroganov mansion is at the corner of the Prospekt and the Moika canal, where Prince Yusupov threw Rasputin, who had survived poison and pistol shots. Throwing people into the Moika was a custom. Dolokhov, Pierre, and their companions (War And Peace) seized the commissar of police, who was hurrying to arrest them, bound him shoulder to shoulder with a bear, and threw the pair into the Moika. Thieves were thrown into the Fontanka."

Notice how Mr. Buzzi mixes together real people from history with fictional characters? Oh, heck.......that bothered me too! I have a hard time trusting an author that does that. It makes me wonder if any of the autobiographical material is actually "real"!