Why Not Start Your Own Travel Sketch Book?

From a friend's garden in California

I've been using the same book now for 20 years to make sketches of places I visit, whether it's up the road or across the ocean.  (I had a duplicate book strictly for home scenes for many years ... until I filled it up.  Petunias in my garden, newly dyed Easter eggs, rainbow chard from the farmers' market.  That sort of thing.)

Besides being able to review my various trips, I find my travel sketch book a wonderful diary.  What year was it I went off to Scotland, I ask myself?  And there it is: 1998.  Or I simply browse through the pages and enjoy such renderings as a calm morning sea in Maine, a celadon bowl in a D.C. museum. The book is small, easy to carry, with an attached pen-holder.  As well, I keep a few stubs of colored pencils in a tiny tin box that fits into my pocket. There's little to carry, nothing to weigh me down.

Here she is in all her glory.

Except for the little tin box with lid on the right, everything else stays home.

It's all great fun and, as I say, a lovely reminder of just where and when I went and what I saw.

Provence, France

Coronation Chair, Westminster Abbey

Diamond Head, Waikiki

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Ubud, Bali

Harbin Hot Springs, California ... with statues on the lawn.  In 2015 all of Harbin Hot Springs and half the neighboring town of Middletown were reduced to ash and rubble in the Valley Fire.

Entry to Sena Plaza, Santa Fe

National Portrait Gallery, D.C. ... Gertrude Stein statue made to look like a seated Buddha

Regent's Park, London

Friend at Groton Long Point, Connecticut

My All-Time Favorite Books: Memoir

I'm particularly partial to memoir and autobiography.  (The two words are often used interchangeably, though autobiography supposedly deals more with the chronology of one's life up to the point of writing and memoir with one aspect of one's life.)  I like them because I like to learn how others handle their lives.  Fiction I love, yes, but I also figure it's fabricated, so the author can have the characters do whatever he/she wants. But with memoir, real life gets in there and works itself around in the author's life so that one's choices, attitudes, and approaches are paramount. Here are some of the books I've read over the years and have kept rather than passing along to various library sales.  I go back and look at them from time to time, even re-read them.  (Or re-re-read them, as Out of Africa.)

1.  Emily Carles.  A Life of Her Own, The Transformation of a Countrywoman in Twentieth-Century France.   Set in France.

2.  Emily Carr.  1)  Growing Pains, An Autobiography.  2) Hundreds and Thousands, The Journals of an Artist.  3) The House of All Sorts.  Set on Vancouver Island plus England and France.

3.  Jill Ker Conway.  The Road From Coorain.  Set in Australia.

4.  Isak Dinesen.  Out of Africa.  Set in British East Africa (Kenya).

5.  Rumer Godden.  1) Two Under the Indian Sun (with Jon Godden).  2) A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep.  3)  A House With Four Rooms.  Set in England and India.

6.  M.F.K. Fisher.  1) Among Friends.  2) Long Ago in France, The Years in Dijon.  3) Last House:  Reflections, Dreams, and Observations 1943-1991.  Set in California and France.

7.  Elspeth Huxley.  1) The Flame Trees of Thika, Memories of an African Childhood.  2)  The Mottled Lizard.  Set in British East Africa (Kenya).

8.  Penelope Lively.  Oleander, Jacaranda:  A Childhood Perceived.  Set in Cairo and England.

9.  Mable Dodge Luhan.  Edge of Taos Desert, An Escape to Reality.  Set in New Mexico. 

10.  Beryl Markham.  West With the Night.  Set in British East Africa (Kenya) plus her flight to North America.

11.  Henry Miller.  The Colossus of Maroussi.  Set in Greece.

12.  Dervla Murphy.  1)  Full Tilt, Ireland to India With a Bicycle.  2)Where the Indus is Young, A Winter in Baltistan.  Set in Ireland, India, and Pakistan.

13.  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.  Cross Creek.  Set in rural Florida.

14.  Leonard Woolf.  1) Sowing.  2) Growing.  3) Running Again.  4) Downhill All the Way. 5) The Journey Not the Arrival Matters.  Set in England and Ceylon.

15.  Virginia Woolf.  A Writer's Diary.  Set in England.

These aren't necessarily the only memoirs by these writers.  Dervla Murphy, for instance, has many autobiographical pieces detailing her ever-interesting travels. Pick up just about any book by M.F.K. Fisher and you'll find her works on food and France suffused with her own autobiographical details. Dinesen's Shadows on the Grass is a companion to Out of Africa.  Godden's Kingfishers Catch Fire is a fictionalized version of her life in Kashmir with her two young daughters.  Penelope Lively recently wrote Dancing Fish and Ammonites with reflections on old age.  I list all five books of Leonard Woolf's autobiography because they are a unit.

To add?  1.  Funny in Farsi:  A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas.  (Laugh-out-loud funny.)  2.  My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme.  (Good old Julia.)  3. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller.  (Knocks your socks off.)