Note: I’ve been on the struggle bus with book reviews for the past month or so—not because I haven’t been reading books. On the contrary, I’ve read quite a few good ones lately and I’ve felt rather guilty about not sharing the wealth. A few years ago, I decided that writing reviews on this blog would be a good way to generate content, demonstrate some level of literary criticism and hold me accountable to the valuable practice of reading. But recently I think I’ve viewed reading as a to-do for content, rather than just enjoying the habit for what it is. Not that anyone really cares, but I have decided to shift my reviews to shorter content for the foreseeable future. If you REALLY don’t care about what I think about the books I read, but you need a recommendation, you can always peruse my Bookshop.org “store front” for some titles to add to your TBR pile.

So, without further ado: here are my *very* few thoughts on A Time of Gifts.

Basic info:

• Author: Patrick “Paddy” Leigh Fermor, British
• Genre: nonfiction | travel log/memoir
• Setting: Europe in 1933/34 (London, boat to Holland, then a mostly walking tour down to Hungary on his way to Constantinople)
• Published in 1977 (interestingly almost 40 years after Fermor took his walking tour)
• Book 1 of 3 (Fermor intended two books, but a third book was published posthumously using his journals and notes)

Why I was interested: While surveying the travel section of my local Barnes & Noble, this title and the somewhat curious size of the book caught my eye. I had never heard of the author, although he was lauded for being a pioneer in travel writing. The cover seemed very not modern (it features a Brueghel the Elder painting form 1565) and the use of red ink on a dark green background on the back cover was very fascinating (if also a bit hard to read). Mentions were made of some countries that I’ve been privileged to visit (England, Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Austria) plus a few that are on my list (Slovakia, Hungary, Turkey). The whole book, from premise to artsy design, seemed full of wanderlust. Even though I was at a corporate store, I felt like I had unearthed a long-forgotten gem of a book from an old trunk of treasures—I was sold!

Did I like it? Absolutely yes! It was challenging, it was sweet, it was informative.

This book may be for you if you also like: other titles by Patrick Leigh Fermor; learning new words (I’ve never had to look up so many English words while reading a book as an adult, plus all the foreign words that Fermor included sans translation—probably assuming that his audience was much more learned than the average American in the 21^st century) travel memoirs; Europe; hospitality; Prague; architecture; walking tours; learning new languages; Germany; sleeping in barns; poetic descriptions of landscapes; Hungary; sleeping in castles; youthful optimism; Danube river; Vienna; unconventional modes of travel; art; Slovakia; artists; trying new foods; history; old churches; coming of age stories.

SDG