I am definitely an armchair traveler these days, especially for exhausting soul-searching journeys that require me to leave air-conditioning and my comfy bed behind. If I were going to undertake such an arduous trek, the El Camino de Santiago in northern Spain would be tops on my list.

This ancient pilgrimage route has been in constant use for centuries. I like that it meanders through several small cities and many villages along the 500-mile mostly dirt path. It is estimated that over two million people have done all or part of this walk, many seeking spiritual enlightenment, some merely for the physical challenge. Our author doesn't dwell on the spiritual but it comes through in his photographs and descriptions of nature and his fellow pilgrims. While he had no "eureka" epiphanies while walking, he met a lot of interesting people and shared some intimate stories with them. This was an easy read. It took me out of my sedentary life for a few hours…and made me recharge the fitbit habit. I can walk my own Camino at 10,000 steps a day for only 100 days. Maybe it will change my life! ( )

I liked this book as a straightforward, travel-journal style account of the author's pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. It was easy to read and painted a clear picture of the day-to-day life as a "peregrino." If you're looking for an in-depth novel, this isn't it. This really reads more like a travel journal. As personal as this experience is for everyone, I felt the style of this book was more that of an eye-opener (or even motivation) for anyone interested in participating in this pilgrimage, than a personal reflection of one man's journey (although it does touch upon that, as well).

Buen camino! ( )

The most common phase on the Camino de Santiago is, "Buen camino!" which is just a well-wishing for your journey.

The second might be, "Everyone walks their own Camino," which refers not to the route you take (although that, too) but to how you walk it or even do you walk? The sentiment is that it's a personal journey, not a sporting event with rules. You do it in the manner which suits you and which satisfies your needs, and not to meet the expectations of others. In other words, it's no one else's freakin' business how you do it.

This is germane to my reading this because, browsing through reviews while trying to decide if I wanted to try it, I was struck by the number comments along the lines of, "He's an elitist prig [or insert adjective of choice] and that's not the real Camino." Really? Mr. Koontz and I did a lot of things rather differently and I suspect that commenters #1–#zillion did things their ways. Koontz walked his; I walked mine; they walked theirs...ummm...why are we getting bent out of shape?

Perversely, those comments were why I picked up this particular Camino book.

But I didn't care much for it. For a Camino chronicle to be more interesting than, say, a slide show of your neighbor's vacation, it needs to open up a sight line inside the pilgrim to one extent or another. This didn't accomplish that. I felt all that Mr. Koontz offered was the surface. Even his girlfriend troubles, which I think were meant to seem intimate, came across as bloodless and faux-personal.

In a nutshell, his biography says he wrote this book to, "...share the experience." I think he didn't succeed very well. Coming in the wake of reading Bill Bennett's book on the same topic, this was unsatisfying. I don't recommend this as a book about the Camino. ( )