Carol McIlwain’s Managing the Bucket List: The Journey Begins, Volume I is part travel memoir, part bucket-list reference guide, and part wide-ranging meditation on how seeing the world can deepen a person’s understanding of history, culture, nature, and global politics. McIlwain frames her post-retirement “Travel Big Year” as both an adventure and an intellectual project, moving from explanations of bucket lists, UNESCO sites, wonders of the world, and religious landmarks into a packed year of trips through Portugal, Patagonia, Italy, Seattle, Switzerland, northern France, Australia, Alaska and western Canada, Spain and France, the Danube, Costa Rica, and southern Florida. What emerges is not a sleek little travelogue, but a big, earnest, densely packed record of a mind trying to make sense of the world by walking through it.

What I appreciated most about the book is its sincerity. McIlwain writes like someone who doesn’t just want to collect places, but to be changed by them. Her descriptions often have the feeling of a journal opened after a long day, still warm from motion. I felt that most strongly in Patagonia, when she describes eating a bag lunch across from Perito Moreno Glacier, listening for the deep crack of calving ice and trying, again and again, to catch the moment on camera. That’s the kind of travel writing I like, not merely “I went here and saw this,” but the small human comedy of awe, impatience, and wonder all tangled together. I also liked the way she treats travel as a form of education. A visit to the Vatican turns into a reflection on Michelangelo, power, faith, and artistic endurance; the Camino de Santiago becomes not just a route, but a symbol of fellowship and persistence; Costa Rica’s rainforests and renewable-energy commitments open into broader questions about stewardship. At its best, the book makes curiosity feel like a moral habit.

McIlwain’s style is informational, and there are moments when a castle, cathedral, glacier, or city arrives wrapped in a lot of background. I found that accumulation of detail endearing because it reflects the book’s central temperament. This is a planner’s travel memoir, written by someone who thinks in systems, lists, contexts, histories, and connections. The ideas are especially interesting when McIlwain lets travel complicate her thinking, as when she connects difficult histories, colonial legacies, religious conflict, UNESCO preservation, and the fragility of peace. I didn’t always need every detour, but I respected the ambition behind them. She’s asking the reader to see tourism not as escape, but as a way of becoming less provincial, less passive, and perhaps a little more responsible.

Managing the Bucket List: Volume I is less about checking boxes than about resisting the smallness that can come from staying too settled in one view of life. Its spirit is generous, practical, and urgent: go while you can, learn while you’re there, and let the world revise you. I’d recommend this book to thoughtful travelers, retirees planning a major season of exploration, lifelong learners, and readers who enjoy travel writing with a strong historical and geopolitical backbone rather than a purely lyrical one.

Pages: 544 | ASIN: B0G9BBB4DY