Book picks similar to
Milele Safari - An Eternal Journey by Janette Mary Hawke


4-there-is-not-an-ebook
6-ebook-not-at-zlibrary
book-hoarding-addiction
literary

In Search of Africa


Frank Coates - 2006
    As the country struggles towards independence, Kip also struggles to understand his mother's vindictive hatred of the father he has never met - and resolves to uncover the mystery of his parentage. In Uganda, Rose Nasonga, a girl at risk after her idyllic village life becomes a nightmare of civil war, uses her beauty to escape into the world of fashion, but learns that her new life can be equally destructive Out of the horrors of war, across the boundaries of time and race, Kip and Rose discover that their lives are mysteriously linked. And that the paths they travel alone, and ultimately together, lead them inexorably to their greatest discovery.

Campervan Kama Sutra: Outback Australia, with a camper trailer, three kids and a dog.*


John Perrier - 2015
     Our intrepid adventurers work their way through numerous mishaps, including, but not limited to, an ill-advised river crossing, an inappropriately packed roof rack and some truly horrible singing. During their journey they stumble across a motley assortment of characters such as a confused check-in clerk, a grey nomad with an eye for detail regarding torches, and several Crazy Germans. While reading Campervan Kama Sutra, you’ll not only fall in love with Australia’s vast, ever-changing countryside, but you’ll also delight in the tragicomedy that arrives with unerring regularity. You’ll laugh until something hurts. *P.S. There was no dog.

Beginnings and Endings: A Selection of Short Stories


Jane Suen - 2017
     All come together in Beginnings and Endings, a trilogy of short stories that will bring a lump to the throat. Grits Girl explores the beginning of a lifetime of love over a favorite bowlful of breakfast. The Accident is an ironic story of how life can change in the blink of an eye. In The End of Summer, two men come to terms with their past through an unexpected detour and the innocent joy of a child. Each story is layered with unexpected twists and turns, and there’s a bonus flash fiction, Pick Me, to bring you a smile that will last the day.

A Small Part of History


Peggy Elliott - 2008
    Inspiring. Heartbreaking.In the summer of 1845 Rebecca Springer and her family join the Oregon wagon train in search of land thousands of miles away. It's a hard and dangerous journey through blizzards and searing heat, over prairies, desert plains and mountains and, at times, it seems as if it will never end. But an unbreakable bond develops amongst the travelling women as they are tested, physically and emotionally, and their shared experiences of new life and tragic death will bring them closer than blood ever could.How the west was won and the terrible price that was paid.A Small Part of History is an epic, heartfelt story of courage in the face of appalling adversity, and a haunting portrayal of how America was forged. Above all, it is a story of people and how the ties that bind us most strongly are those of friendship, of family and of love.

Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist


Willie Weir - 2009
    Hop on a bike and that view will brighten drastically. Travels with Willie is about finding adventure and facing fear, embarrassing blunders and language barriers, ice cream and kindness, Cuba and Colombia, Turkey and Thailand, the world's steepest street and the world's cheapest engagement ring, catching a thief and losing a zebra, a father's touch and a farmer's embrace, buying time and spending another night. Fellow bicycle travelers will smile with recognition, and arm-chair travelers might find themselves wandering into a bike shop, looking for a passport to adventure.

Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters


Jane Goodall - 2000
    We see her at eleven founding the Alligator Society ("You have to be able to recognize 10 birds, 10 dogs, 10 trees and 5 butterflies OR moths"); at seventeen developing a crush on the local minister ("He has a beautiful long nose and he loves dogs"); at twenty punting at Oxford -- and falling out of the boat ("And I stood in the water -- up to my chest -- and roared and roared with laughter"); at twenty-two working at a film company and saving for a trip to Africa.At twenty-three, she took that trip, to "the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood." In Kenya's White Highlands, she rode horses, danced, and developed her observational skills on both animals and men ("He is very handsome & Clo & I sat in the car admiring his bottom & feeling sorry for him because he was getting filthy & oily"). The men returned her interest ("What the devil am I to do with all these middle aged married men. They hang in multitudinous garlands from every limb and neck I've got").The turning point of her life came when a friend told her, "If you are interested in animals, you must meet Louis Leakey." And when she did meet the legendary anthropologist, he saw in this young secretarial school graduate the ideal candidate to undertake a revolutionary study of chimpanzees. He sent her to the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve on Lake Tanganyika, where she immersed herself in the lives of wild animals as no one had ever done before. Goodall has told this story in other books, but never so immediately and emotionally. She describes a chimp rain dance ("Every so often their wild calls rang out above the thunder. Primitive hairy men, huge and black on the skyline, flinging themselves across the ground in their primaeval display of strength and power . . . Can you begin to imagine how I felt? The only human ever to have witnessed such a display in all its primitive, fantastic wonder?"); a female chimp mating with five males early in the morning ("Hello -- No 5 is queuing, down on the bottom branch. 'Thanks Big Boy, but don't hang around.' No 5 leaps out of the way as No 4 charges down . . . Soon over & off he goes. Now perhaps a girl can have a bite of breakfast"); a colobus monkey clasping its dead baby ("She kept trying to groom its poor little coat. Oh, it was heart rending. I'm only so glad I've never seen a chimp with a dead baby. I just couldn't bear it").AFRICA IN MY BLOOD is a dramatic, moving, funny, and important book that tells the story of how an English girl who loved animals became one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century.

Traveling Light


Linda Pastan - 2011
    “Pastan . . . expresses a full range of the possibilities and potencies of the human, feminine voice” (Boston Globe).from "In the Forest" The trees are lit from within like Sabbath candlesbefore they are snuffed out.Autumn is such a Jewish season,the whole minor key of it.Hear how the wind trembles through the branches, vibratoas notes of cello music.

Cycling the Earth: A Life-changing Race Around the World


Sean Conway - 2016
    He was immediately inspired – but it was a huge undertaking and he’d hardly been on a bike in years. Could he really cycle all the way round the world, solo and unsupported?Six months later, after completing a punishing training schedule and packing up everything he owned into boxes, Sean was in Greenwich Park on the start line of the adventure of a lifetime. Soon he was way ahead of schedule, averaging 180 miles per day, and on course to break the round the world cycling record. But then disaster struck, and Sean was forced to confront the possibility that he may not be able to complete the race...In the course of his 16,000-mile journey, Sean travelled the famous pan-American highway across the Atacama Desert, outran tornados, relied on fellow travellers to ferry water across the Australian outback, and inadvertently joined a cycle club in Mumbai. He learnt things about himself he didn’t know and rediscovered a spirit of adventure that changed everything. This is a book about an amazing and sometimes incredibly difficult journey, but it’s also a book about never giving up when there’s an opportunity to follow your dreams.

Amie: An African Adventure


Lucinda E. Clarke - 2014
    She was happily married and she had her future all planned out. They would have two adorable children, while she made award winning programmes for television. Until the day her husband announced he was being sent to live and work in an African country she had never heard of. When she came to the notice of a Colonel in the Government, it made life very complicated, and from there things started to escalate from bad to worse. If Amie could have seen that one day she would be totally lost, fighting for her life, and enduring untold horrors, she would never have stepped foot on that plane

Wild Mama: One Woman's Quest to Live Her Best Life, Escape Traditional Parenthood, and Travel the World


Carrie Visintainer - 2015
    World travel? Adios. Solo explorations in the mountains? Ciao. Creative outlets? She wondered, are diapers my new white canvas? Immersed in a whirlwind of sleeplessness and spit-up, she was madly in love with her new baby, yet also felt her adventurous spirit and core identity crumbling.So Carrie laced up her boots and set out on a soul-searching journey, with revelations near and far. Inside a local Walmart, she realized that new motherhood is like traveling to a foreign country, with a new vocabulary, unknowable customs, and extreme jetlag. Lying in a yurt in the Colorado forest, she came to terms with her postpartum depression. While sailing on a gulet off the coast of Turkey, she examined feelings of guilt about leaving her child in pursuit of adventure. And then, while perched in a handsome stranger’s motorcycle sidecar in the Mexican jungle, she found herself face-to-face with her central quandary: Domesticity vs. Wanderlust.Finally, she discovered she could—and should—have both.

Tales of an African Vet


Roy Aronson - 2007
    Roy Aronson has seen and done some remarkable things. He has tracked lions and cheetahs, anesthetized rhinoceroses and king cobras, collared rogue elephants, performed eye surgery on a lion out in the bush, been attacked by a puff adder, come face to face with an angry hybrid wolf, and nearly lost a foot to a crocodile. Dr. Aronson has also worked with some of Africa’s most dedicated conservationists and wildlife veterinarians. He has witnessed their passion and bravery and been with them when hard decisions had to be made.Tales of an African Vet brings together Dr. Aronson’s adventures in a rare behind-the-scenes look at those who treat wild animals in their natural habitat. For those drawn to outdoor adventure stories, African wildlife, or the veterinarian’s trade, it is a riveting book replete with rich insights into both the animal and human cultures of Africa.

After Tears


Niq Mhlongo - 2007
    A piercingly funny yet poignant novel by the author of Dog Eat Dog.

In the City of Love's Sleep


Lavinia Greenlaw - 2018
    Raif is a stalled academic, as uncertain of the past as he is the future, whose girlfriend is about to move in. They meet by chance, nothing important is said, yet Iris turns away and starts to run. She is running from what this encounter has woken in her. In the City of Love's Sleep is a contemporary fable about what it means to fall in love in middle age. It charts the steps two people take towards one another and what it means to have taken those steps before.

Surfer's Code: Twelve Simple Lessons For Riding Through Life


Shaun Tomson - 2006
    For Tomson, surfing is a hobby, a sport, a religion, an obsession and more-it is a way of life. Tomson's life lessons have guided his career to the top of both professional competition and the world of business. Now, he shares these powerful lessons, born on the world's best swells, with all people-including those who might never step on a surfboard. These lessons are born of the collective wisdom of the surf community and are a powerful source of inspiration in the face of extraordinary challenges of every day life. "I tell people that I didn't develop or create the code. I simply wrote down what was out there all the time in my heart and in the hearts of many surfers, always there but sometimes overlooked. I like to think the code was always there, a part of every surfer's life, unspoken maybe, but in our hearts, ever since the ancient Polynesians started surfing so many thousands of years ago." -Shaun TomsonJust a few of the lessons shared in Tomson's Surfer's Code:I Will Never Turn My Back on the OceanI Will Take the Drop with CommitmentI Will Never Fight a Rip TideI Will Always Paddle Back OutI Will Watch Out For Other SurfersThere Will Always Be Another WaveI Will Catch a Wave Every Day All Surfers Are Connected By One Ocean

Zek: An American Prison Story


Arthur Longworth - 2016
    Zek lays bare the brutality of life spent behind bars. It is naked. It is ugly. And it is beautiful.Arthur Longworth was born in Tacoma, Washington, was state-raised, and entered prison at the age of 21 with a seventh-grade education. He has written for the Marshall Project, Vice News, and Yes Magazine, and is the recipient of three National PEN awards. Completed in 2005, Zek utilizes the literary structure of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to tell the story of a day in the life of a prisoner in the United States. It is likely Arthur Longworth’s most widely read work, as it has been passed among prisoners and prison guards for over a decade. Zek is available now for the first time on the outside.