With
the Great Reading Adventure, we want to
encourage people to talk about what they
have read with friends, family, colleagues
and neighbours. On this page we will post
a selection of comments received by readers
about what they think of Around
the World in Eighty Days.
We also encourage people to share their
own travel tales.
Send your contributions to melanie@brunel200.com
We have 'released' 1000 copies
of the full-text edition of Around
the World in Eighty Days as a book
crossing initiative. Each copy has a numbered
sticker inside asking anyone who picks it
up to let us know where they found it. The
books have been initially released at airports,
train stations, bus depots and takeaways,
and we will be tracking where the books
go to over the coming weeks. We've had responses
from Chinese takeways in Plymouth, platform
19 at Edinburgh train station, Gardermoen
Airport in Oslo, a shopping mall in the
suburbs of Prague, Ituzaingó, Province
of Buenos Aires, Argentina and the following
tale from the Sinai Desert...
I've just come back from the Sinai desert,
where I took my book crossing copy of Around
The World in Eighty Days. Rather than travel
into the desert on camel with the local
bedouin, I chose to go by Jeep with them.
This meant we could drive for two hours
and go through the mountains via wadis (sandy
valleys between rugged mountains) deep into
the desert - which would have taken two
days by camel!
While the bedouin were making a fire to
brew tea (made of herbs that were gathered
at the time) I took a photo to record the
moment. Then while they prepared lunch (chicken
joints, sliced potatoes, tomatoes, onions
and herbs) to cook in foil in the embers,
we took another photo and went for an hour
long trek over the ridge and down into the
next valley - another photo opportunity
under the spectacular rock formations!
We were not roughing it however, and I left
the book at the hotel in Nuweiba where it
was found by Ruth Corner who lives in Al
Quesir in Egypt. Last I heard it was winging
its way to Frankfurt as reading matter for
a plane journey with some English-speaking
Germans! - from Val Ghose, Dorset, January
2006
Copy 107 released by Bath Library Service,
reached Puerto Vallarta in Mexico on 22 January
via Frankfurt and has now been passed on to
someone from Calgary, Canada.
If you have joined the Great Reading Adventure,
participate in a reading group or book club,
love libraries and bookshops you
will be interested in Beyond the Book [http://www.beyondthebookproject.org],
a website dedicated to mass reading events
in the UK, USA and Canada. The website forms part
of a three-year research project directed from
the Department of American & Canadian
Studies, University of Birmingham which
aims to find out why people come together
to share reading.
Penny England from Bradford on Avon sent a
photo of her son reading the book at La Mongie
in the Pyrenees at around 2,000 metres.
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