Some Good and Bad Travel Writing (or vice versa)

[emo_snal]

   This past weekend I once again took the six hour train trip to Eastern Victoria, this time for my friend Billie's 30th birthday party. That was fun but I came here to write book reviews. In fact, on my return trip she gave me back all the books I had loaned her to read, having read them, so I returned like a mobile library with six books in my

Comments

[mexpatriot]

Bob Geldof? Think: Bono. Huge douche.

Bruce Chatwin is good. You would like Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands.

[emo_snal]

Ahaha when I posted this I was a bit worried everyone would comment that they loved him and I was deriding a cherished cultural icon but that doesn't appear to be the case ahaha

[lenine2]

I really enjoyed your review of Geldof's book. I remember what a huge sensation all of that made. I only knew him from The Wall. When he became famous for Live Aid and did interviews I had a dislike for him that I couldn't put my finger on. But everyone around me was buying the album and feeling like they did something important.

Interesting that Live Aid spawned a lot of other "aids". One that is still around is Farm Aid.

[emo_snal]

Interesting. Yeah so obviously I felt like he was wankery from his book but then I started googling him as background for this entry and kind of expected to feel bad for thinking he was wankery... nah. Just one small example, Doctors Without Borders tried to warn him that giving money to the Ethiopian government would absolutely not help the situation and he literally told them to go fuck themselves. He appears to have a "I'm right and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves" attitude about everything. And frankly I suspect the real appeal of Live Aid for him was how absolutely great it would make him look.

[chocolate_frapp]

I'm all for helping starving people in Africa (or any other part of the world) but some charities aren't really helping them, they're just giving them bibles and telling them not to use birth control, which is only making the problem worse.

[emo_snal]

oh tell me about it! When I'm in Africa I meet these people who tell me about all the money their church raised to send them to some "previously uncontacted tribe" in some remote area and honestly it's usually a sweet old couple who mean well but to me they might as well have just said they kick puppies for fun. You raised all this money to reach these super remote people..... just to tell them they're wrong???

[spaciireth]

I wouldn't claim to know a whole lot about Bob Geldof, but my general knowledge of him is that he is a bit of a wanker, so you're not wrong. He doesn't like engaging with criticism, particularly to do with Liveaid, even though there are plenty of valid criticisms to be had.

[emo_snal]

Yeah he definitely came off to me as a total douche in his book. Its all a bit of a self-hagiography

[iddewes]

I think everyone in the UK still knows who he is, but especially those of us who were teens in the 80s. I do believe he meant well, and that he did a good job of mobilizing people to help, but he made a lot of mistakes and apparently didn’t take kindly to having them pointed out. I think he is something of a control freak too.

[emo_snal]

It's ironic because basically, from everything I've put together since posting this, he's literally the epitome of rich white man thinking he can solve all the world's problems by just assuming his gut inclination is right and everyone else is wrong.

Also I've realized another problem with the book is he, the main character, experiences zero character growth. From when we first meet him in the book he's already as enlightened as he portrays himself throughout.