Word: train
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That's true even if you're Paul Theroux, arguably the dean of all living travel writers and certainly one of the most accomplished. In his latest, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux retraces the steps he took in his first notable travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar, published more than 30 years ago. Ghost Train's conceit is Theroux exploring not only how the places he visited back then have changed, but how he has as well. "The decision to return to any early scene in your life is dangerous but irresistible, not as a search for lost...
...Vincent eventually quit the call center and go to work for another company (or maybe found one, Theroux doesn't quite say) that makes low-cost shirts for big American brands like Kenneth Cole and Tommy Hilfiger. These guys are "exploited?'' They don't seem to be. Considering Ghost Train is supposed to hark back to the journey Theroux took three decades ago, we might get a better sense of whether or not Vidiadhar and Vincent are exploited if we knew what their parents' lives were like. But Theroux doesn't bother to find...
...there aren't enough of those moments. Instead, we get plenty of cringe-inducing inner ruminations (such as Theroux's particularly creepy thoughts on the inherent eroticism of the uniforms that female train-ticket attendants wear in Japan), and breathtaking generality - the best example of which is the bizarre rant at the very end. On the last page, Theroux writes this: "Most of the world is worsening, shrinking to a ball of bungled desolation. Only the old can really see how gracelessly the world is ageing and all that we have lost...
...engineered is the word. The 39 Clues is, like some lab-grown genetically engineered life-form, a series without a real author. J.K. Rowling conceived Harry Potter on a crowded, four-hour-delayed train trip between Manchester and London. The 39 Clues was born about three years ago in a corporate boardroom. Levithan runs a weekly "idea group" at Scholastic - "basically, about a dozen editors get together every week, and we just brainstorm ideas," he explains. Amy and Dan were one of those brainstorms. (Originally the series was called The 79 Clues before Levithan and co. decided to scale...
...could feel my pain; who, after his wife and daughter's fatal car accident, had to be talked out of giving up his Senate seat because he wanted to be at his sons' side; who, if voters know nothing else about him, know that he takes the train home to Delaware every night and has never missed a soccer game...