Engaging and insightful travelogue across France and Morocco. B&W throughout, particularly impressed with Craig's drawings on camelback. His thoughts on the differences between taking time to write Blankets, and how rushed in comparison, having a time schedule to finish this travel diary. ( )

Fieldnotes:
Morocco/South of France/Barcelona, March 5 - May 14, 2004

1 (Acknowledgedly) Self-Indulgent Travel Diary
1 Apparently Miserable Time
1 Temper Tantrum Before He Left
2 Injuries

29 Counted Instances of the Author Whining about Being Lonesome / My Lover Who Left Me / Wishing He Were Elsewhere
7 Weird Uncomfortable Goo-Goo Eyes About "Cute Girls" Who Were Uninterested
7 Scatological Jokes (Travel Diarrhea Just Isn't That Funny)
6 "Hick" Jokes That I Found Irritating

At least 2 references to "remembering this (something good) during my whiney moments"
0 Times he remembers such a thing during his MANY whiney moments

The Not-So-Short Version
I didn't like Blankets. At all. If I had realized that this was the same author, I would have left it at the bookstore. But I like to travel (both armchair and otherwise) and love to see sketchbooks of people's travels (especially as I don't have the talent to capture things I see in that way).

The author self-describes that his being "sickeningly sad and desperate to the core" is really "just whiney & egocentric & somehow oblivious to the real suffering outside of you" and a "doofy tourist acting out Orientalist fantasies in a poverty-stricken land". So if self-awareness makes you as a reader more able to stomach that behaviour, maybe this will work better for you.

Me? I found the author frustrating, sulky and unpleasant. I understand that he was grieving his prior relationship with a woman who was very ill, but that doesn't mean I want to wallow with him. I've spent a lot of time abroad and sometimes bitter and homesick and unhappy, yet this didn't resonate for me. I just rolled my eyes at the most recent drawing of him crying because he is so lonesome. Honestly, he just doesn't seem to be able to deal with his own company at all, which makes him a rather needy companion (even in print form). Add his need to see the "real" Morocco while simultaneously doing "his best to provoke the fundamentalists" and you have a person whose tribulations begin to seem awfully self-inflicted. Top off with a panel about travel diarrhea and this shall be immediately recycled.

His drawings of the cities he (sometimes) explores and the people he meets are gorgeous - though especially in Morocco, I really felt the lack of colors - drawing the Bab Bou Jeloud without any blue just doesn't capture it. ( )

Spell binding travel journal through france and morocco. I like that's rough and unpredictable. I hope he does more like this. ( )

I kept plodding along this book hoping for something magical to happen. It just didn't quite get there. ( )

Picked this up on a whim not knowing what it was about, and after reading the first 20 or so pages decided it was not something I wanted to read. But I didn't have anything else on hand and just keep on going, by page 50 I was hooked and finished the book an hour later, ready to re-read it. At first I hated it, because it had no plot and the author seemed like a whinny American, but really started to enjoy the trip and he eventually became more like a real person instead of a whinny brat. I'd never read anything else by the author by now I plan to look for more of his work. ( )