travel - Macmillan Library

“I must have wanted to write a sea novel for years—I just adored Stevenson and Kipling and Conrad and Jack London and voyage-logs and sea stories and KON-TIKI as a boy.”
— Brian Doyle on his inspiration for THE PLOVER

We're very excited about THE PLOVER by Brian Doyle, which continues the story of Declan O Donnell from one of Doyle's previous novels, MINK RIVER. It's an April Indie Next pick, and is this week's Maximum Shelf Awareness feature (we're pretty crazy about it, too).

“THE PLOVER is a fun ride with meaning and heart, lots of it, as well as jokes, scares, storms at sea, surprises, magic, absurdity—and humanity, exuberant joyful humanity.” — Shelf Awareness

See the full summary, review and interview with Brian Doyle on Shelf-Awareness.com.

Get whitelisted and download your e-galley on Edelweiss.

Praise for THE PLOVER:

“Doyle has written a novel in the adventurous style of Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson but with a gentle mocking of their valorization of the individual as absolute. Readers will enjoy this bracing and euphoric ode to the vastness of the ocean and the unexpectedness of life.”
— Library Journal, starred review

“In near stream of consciousness, wave upon wave of words tumbles out in long, beautifully rendered, description-packed sentences... A rare and unusual book and a brilliant, mystical exploration of the human spirit.”
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A jack of all literary trades, Doyle augments his impressive oeuvre with this whimsical dreamscape of a nautical adventure about desolation and friendship. A joyous journey of discovery.” — Booklist

“Every sentence Doyle writes about the ocean smacks of authenticity...”
— Publishers Weekly

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We're not sure if it was the bizarre cuisine, the epic castles, the mad princes, or the horse-mating videos that caught the attention of the Dolman Travel Book Award committee, but it was something because Simon Winder's GERMANIA just made Dolman's shortlist for 2011 Travel Book of the Year!

Winder writes with a wish to reclaim the brilliant, chaotic, endlessly varied German civilization that the Nazis buried and ruined, and that, since 1945, so many Germans have worked to rebuild.

GERMANIA is an entertaining read covering serious topics---how we are misled by history, how we twist history, and how sometimes it is best to know no history at all. It's about the limits of language, the meaning of culture, and the pleasure of townscape.

Booklist says, "[Winder's] account is loaded with enjoyable digressions on German food, the charm of medieval castles, and German composers. [...] This is an enjoyable, often amusing, often serious effort to understand a people who remain at the center of European civilization."

Kirkus Reviews calls GERMANIA "a cheerful, dryly unserious survey and travelogue through the landscape and psyche of Germany," and says, "[Winder] offers an impressive discussion of the shattering effects of World War I, both on Germany and the world."

The 2011 Dolman Travel Book of the Year will be awarded on the evening of July 6th at Hatchards Bookshop in London.

[...]

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Tag: travel

Maximum Shelf: THE PLOVER

“I must have wanted to write a sea novel for years—I just adored Stevenson and Kipling and Conrad and Jack London and voyage-logs and sea stories and KON-TIKI as a boy.”
— Brian Doyle on his inspiration for THE PLOVER

Praise for THE PLOVER:

Germania on the Dolman Travel Book of the Year Shortlist

“I must have wanted to write a sea novel for years—I just adored Stevenson and Kipling and Conrad and Jack London and voyage-logs and sea stories and KON-TIKI as a boy.” — Brian Doyle on his inspiration for THE PLOVER

Praise for THE PLOVER:

“I must have wanted to write a sea novel for years—I just adored Stevenson and Kipling and Conrad and Jack London and voyage-logs and sea stories and KON-TIKI as a boy.”
— Brian Doyle on his inspiration for THE PLOVER