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While I Can: Finding Purpose and Legacy in a Distant Land
While I Can by Jo Dibblee is an inspirational travel memoir that documents the author and her husband’s decision to throw caution to the wind and leave their home in Canada to embark upon an adventure of a lifetime to Baja, Mexico.
What starts out as a plan to spend a winter there turns into something so much more as they fall in love with Baja, the community, and the people. While Michael pursues his dream to master kitesurfing in one of the best places on earth for the sport, Jo gets involved in fostering dogs and eventually helping set up Team Baja Humanity, a grassroots project that aims to uplift communities in need in Baja.
Their travels end up being a life-affirming journey of discovery that changes them and their lives in ways they never imagined when setting out on this epic adventure.
I absolutely loved this book. It’s gloriously optimistic and brimming with raw emotion. As Jo Dibblee takes the reader along for the ride, her writing vividly conjures up the experience of embracing the unknown and opening yourself up to life’s possibilities. The writing is top-notch, and I really enjoyed feeling part of the author’s emotional journey.
A key theme of the book is grasping life by the horns “while you can.” It is this moto that propels Jo and her husband onto their path of Baja after recent health scares put their own mortality into sharp focus. Overall, Jo’s book is full of hard-won life wisdom and is a pleasure to read.
“Most things in life must be experienced and learned; there’s no shortcut or free pass. It is from these moments we know and do better, or, at the very least, become wiser. It wasn’t as though we hadn’t done our research and talked to others, but there were plenty of things we did not, or could not, know.” (p 43)
Through her words, Jo portrays the transformational effect of travel and weaves a story that is full of love not only for travel but for people, relationships, communities, and the wider world. She effectively brings her experience to life with well-written, vivid descriptions and extraordinary emotional intelligence. Her words are sure to inspire a healthy dose of wanderlust in her readers! Her commitment to other people and being of service to those in need is both touching and inspirational.
Pages: 196 | ASIN : B0CC3P6S36
Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels
Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling Around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards by Katherine Kerestman is a historical recount of the author’s travels to unique places that one would not think to visit. The book is organized into chapters that are mostly titled by places the author travelled to. This makes it easy to read a chapter about a specific place and gives the reader the option to skip around in the book. This book is your tour guide to strange and unusual destinations.
The author has made interesting language choices. Apart from the introduction the language used through the book is quite informative and has a formal tone. At times the informative language is supplemented by more descriptive language – particularly when describing artifacts and architecture that the author particularly enjoyed. These descriptions are rich and draw the reader in, making it feel like we are standing in front of The Tower of London or in a beautiful opera house. Many natural landscapes are also described in detail, giving the reader a thorough description of the author’s experiences. Although the language is quite formal, the rich descriptions peppered with historical facts work together to hold the reader’s interest.
This book is born out of Kerestman’s interest in what she terms as the macabre. Readers may find some the places described in the book to be ghoulish and creepy. There is a wanderlust approach to the destination the author took. Most of the locations appear to be places that intrigued the author and not someplace of historical value. Following the paths of Kerestman’s journey readers travel to destinations that are not always on the top destinations tourist lists.
Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling Around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards is a entertaining and informative book that will delight readers who wish to experience the strange and unusual in travel.
Pages: 208 | ASIN : B08MQD99HT
LITERARY TITAN 