A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller

by Frances Mayes

Paperback, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

914.04561 May

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Crown (2007), Edition: Reprint, 420 pages

Description

The author who captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany expands her horizons to immerse herself--and her readers--in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places. This book is a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. She rents houses among ordinary residents, shops at neighborhood markets, wanders the back streets, and everywhere contemplates the concept of home. Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape, and social and culinary traditions of each area, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to the reader.--From publisher description.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Bibliofemmes

This book didn't lend itself to much discussion in bookclub, but I enjoyed the reading and the insight into how to meaningfully travel. Reminded me of Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways, which changed the way my family and I travel. cp

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LibraryThing member bookwoman247

I was surprised by the calibre of the writing, which was exquisite.

Normally, I'm not interested in southern Europe, but she wrote so beautifully about it that I was stirred. Seeing it all through her eyes, I almost feel as if I were there. Her passion is contageous.

Now, I'll have to read her

Tuscany books!

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LibraryThing member sweetiegherkin

I honestly did not think I would make it through this book. It sounded like an interesting and informative read, but it did not turn out to be so. I started thinking that reading about other people’s travels is perhaps just not that entertaining, but then I recalled that I have read other

travelogues without being bored to tears. It was just something about this particular book. For starters, this “year in the world” is really just various vacations and trips to get together with friends, not a cohesive one-year plan such as Elizabeth Gilbert’s in Eat Pray Love. There are few transitional passages so one moment you’re reading about Greece, the next Italy, and then again back in Greece without any introduction into these forays to help you make sense of it all. This may be a product of the abridged version I read, but I do not know. As other reviewers have pointed out, it seems like the most important thing to Mayes is eating. You would think after traveling to more than seven countries, there would be something more interesting to write about then ‘we stopped in a coffee place and had an espresso’ (not a verbatim quote, but indicative of her style). All of this food talk *might* have been okay if it had been discussed as cultural products and given some fleshed out description other than a simple repetition of the menu. The author occasionally gives some historical details, which are more in line with what I expected, and she discusses gardens in the U.K., which I personally enjoyed as gardening is an interest of mine. She also sometimes refers to ancient myths or to poetry and literature and while this is somewhat interesting, I think it says more about Mayes than about the countries she visits (particularly the latter). Mayes also talks a lot about protection from “the evil eye” and other superstitious thoughts and again, I think this says more about her than anything else. A small detail that bugged me was Mayes would frequently bestow highest praise on a particular town by saying, “I could live here.” When you start saying this over and over again, I think it’s time to find a new descriptive phrase. That Frances Mayes could live somewhere means nothing to me, the general reader. It would have been better for her to actually think about why she could consider living there and then describe those reasons. And while I usually appreciate listening to an audiobook read by the author, Mayes’s voice was monotone and nearly put me to sleep. All around, not an enjoyable reading experience. This book reads more like someone’s personal journal published without any editing beforehand to make it readable for others.

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LibraryThing member debnance

When I saw this book was being published, I immediately put it on my must-read list. I ordered it and decided to make it my entree for summer reading. By nibbling on it and picking off pieces of it, I've managed to make it last for over a month. In many ways, it was a perfect summer read, for a

person who couldn't travel herself. Mayes took me to places I've always wanted to go, Portugal, Spain, Greece, even Turkey and North Africa. But the book annoyed me, too. Mayes seemed hypercritical, judgmental off-and-on about her accomodations and her meals. She jumped around while describing her setting so that I felt like I was looking at her world through the eye of a jerky video camera. Yet she also wrote poetically at times, describing foods she ate and places she visited so beautifully that I felt I'd eaten, too, that I'd travelled with her. The last chapter is a wonderful summing up of the need to travel that could equally well apply to the need to read as well. Mayes reminds us of T.S. Eliot's idea that in voyaging, we come back to our beginnings and understand our own world for the first time. A good reason to travel. A good reason to read.

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LibraryThing member punxsygal

I would love to be able to travel in this style. The author and her husband decided to drop their jobs and follow their dreams in travel. For the most part, they picked a location and stayed awhile, getting to know the local pastry shops, restaurants where the locals go, while visiting the

important museums, churches, and gardens. It was a delight to read of the many flavors and colors of the locations they visited.

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LibraryThing member Harrod

Delightful to read...descriptions of places and food intermix in a way only Mayes can entertain. I read her stories and coming away wanting more....

LibraryThing member thornton37814

Frances Mayes takes us on a journey through several European cities and to cities in Turkey and Morocco in this book. It's not quite a world-wide trip, but it is a year of travels that I would probably enjoy. I love her descriptions of food, gardens, libraries, bookstores, etc. Her passion for good

food and good literature shines through this volume. Some of the narratives are more engaging than others, but I suspect that is more of an aspect of what the location had to offer or of the circumstances in which she found herself in some of the locations than of being bad writing. Many people would say that they were uneven. I think that she was trying to give people a true sense of her year of travels, including the ups and the downs. It's hard to write with the same passion about a place one did not completely enjoy. I'm ready to pack the suitcases, get out the passports, and join her! The only thing preventing that is money.

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LibraryThing member satyridae

I'm bailing out of this one after just a couple of discs. The prose is so studied, so mannered that it's limpidly painful. Okay, it's really just painful, but I've been listening to limpid limpid limpid for two solid hours and thought I should jazz up my review. Mayes comes off as pretentious,

over-privileged and entirely annoying. If she were next to me at the Prado, rabbiting on and on about limpid this and cerulean that, I'd feel a need to smack her one.

OTOH, if your idea of travel involves only 5-star hotels, ditto restaurants, and a comfortable insulation from the places you visit, this may be just the thing for you.

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LibraryThing member aylin1

I loved "Under the Tuscan Sun" but am not getting into this one enough to continue. Not sure why so will attempt this at another time (sometimes timing is everything).

LibraryThing member smbmom

Staccato - No story, Just Description - And yet, this book resonates in my life. I feel like I found a kindred spirit, a mentor perhaps.

It's not just a travel book, but a philosophy of life, or perhaps a guide to writing. Mayes describes travel as a quest.

"Cultural analysis had begun. What makes

them the way they are? That question is at the tap-root of my travel quests. How do place and character intertwine? Could I feel at home here? What is home to those around me? Who are they in their homes, those mysterious others?"

And, I see now that,

"The transforming angel: you go out, far out, and when you return, you have the power to transform your life. Roads always lead to Rome/Home."

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LibraryThing member bkmcneil

My grandmother gave me a copy of this for Christmas, knowing we share the same travel bug especially for this central-Med part of the world. Although I'd heard of Ms. Mayes from the "Tuscan" fame and subsequent film, I'd never read any of her work. At first, I found this a lovely book to dip in and

out of over morning coffee. After numerous chapters, though, the narrative tone became just too much. Too "Poetic" with a capital P for my taste. Too rich for my travel tastes/reality as well, although I'd obviously love to be able to stay at some of the lovely hotels described. She also seemed to be, unconsciously?, somewhat less enthused with the Islamic cultures/destinations included, which were of the greatest interest to me. With my TBR pile ever looming, I finally gave up on Ms. Mayes.

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LibraryThing member jepeters333

With her beloved Tuscany as a home base, Mayes travels to Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, and to the Mediterranean world of Turkey, Greece, and North Africa. Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape, and social and culinary

traditions of each area, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to the reader.

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LibraryThing member pninabaim

loved it, felt like I was traveling the world with her, thanks to her wonderful descriptions.

LibraryThing member untitled841

Good
Well researched.
I left highly educated about the region and it's history.
Frances Mayes made me want to travel again!

Bad
I can't afford to travel right now, so this book is a stand in for adventure.

LibraryThing member earthsinger

I just can't get into this book. I loved Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany (the latter not quite so much). A Year in the World feels just a bit too intellectual for me at this time of year. I'm not really into long descriptions of paintings. I'm going on holiday and will take it with me in

case, as I hate giving up on a book, and I do love Europe.

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LibraryThing member jeremi.snook

Struggled with getting into this book. Nice description of place but read more like a diary or daily journal.

LibraryThing member wdwilson3

Your enjoyment of this book will largely depend on how much you like the things Frances Mayes likes -- food, flowers and antiquities, to name a few. The locales she and her husband visit are varied, but she spends most of her words for those interests. Very much a diary, including friends in the

telling, it's theme is quite loose, finding yourself in other places. Unlike her previous works, she shows a nasty side here, with unkind (and unnecessary) comments about the passengers on a cruise she took.

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LibraryThing member virginiahomeschooler

This book was a terrible disappointment. I generally love Mayes' writing but found her rather insufferable in this selection. Much duller than her other books, it also shows a fairly nasty side of Mayes that I didn't like. Throughout the book she goes on rants about how things aren't up to her

standards, leaving rental homes that had already been paid for because of tacky decor or because it was closer to a busy road than she would like. On top of that, and more grating to me was her constant berating of other people she encountered. She and Ed would giggle over some woman's choice of attire, this one being so out of fashion, that one looking like a sofa. The descriptions of overweight people was particularly galling. Describing one mother as an "albino hippopotamus" and depicting in detail her rolls and bulges because she dared to wear a white bathing suit in public - how dare she! There was one endearing chapter in which they visit Fez (although Ed was sick throughout this visit so perhaps without an audience to share her Mean Girl giggles with, she's less obnoxious). Unfortunately the Fez chapter was a mere 30 pages of 417. Not nearly enough to save the book from itself. I come away from this one really displeased with the author. I won't be reading more of her work.

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LibraryThing member KittyCunningham

Dull, dull, dull.

LibraryThing member IrinaR

Not a fan of this one, so it's not becoming a part of my library! While I was a fan of Mayes, I found her 'me, me, me' style in 'A Year in the World' tiresome and leaving a lot to be desired. Yes, she provides a lot of details about her destinations. Yes, her style is still eloquent and readable.

But her rather frequent whining about relatively minor or to-be-expected details of their accommodations, surroundings, etc. is tiresome and smacks of entitlement. Which she is free to express but certainly detracts from the book!

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