Posted on June 23rd, 2010 by Laura Byrne Paquet
As British writer David Aaronovitch points out in the introduction to his 2000 travel book/memoir, Paddling to Jerusalem, in the last few years writers have walked around England under the guise of just about every gimmick imaginable. From south to north, around the coast, up the middle, round the sides, in wheelchairs, on one leg, […]
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Posted on November 5th, 2009 by Laura Byrne Paquet
It’s a doozy of a title: The Third Tower Up from the Road: A Compilation of Columns from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency’s Kevin Dolgin Tells You About Places You Should Go. And the cover photo of the Great Wall of China is a bit misleading. Yes, there’s a funny, lovely column in the collection about Dolgin’s […]
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Posted on March 9th, 2009 by Laura Byrne Paquet
Although I strongly suspect these two Aussie women, Pip and Kym, are playing up their Aussieness for the cameras, I still enjoyed this little video that tries to teach non-Australians a bit of Down Under culture–from how to make bush tea to what the heck “Good on ya” means. It’s a promo to draw attention […]
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Posted on March 6th, 2009 by Laura Byrne Paquet
OK, I realize I’m very late to this party–the book came out three years ago. But I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea, the story of mountain climber-turned-philanthropist Greg Mortenson, and I was captivated. For those of you who, like me, somehow missed this book when it first came out, here’s the scoop. After […]
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Posted on February 15th, 2009 by Laura Byrne Paquet
It all started when I began wondering where passports came from. I pitched every magazine editor I knew on a story about the history of passports, but no one–and I mean no one–was interested. Fine, I thought. I’ll broaden the concept and make it into a book. The history of passports eventually became a chapter […]
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