Wonderful appreciation for the absurd, especially the nuevo-Inglesa. His views on these out-of-time places are often hilarious, always well expressed. I remember my first trip to Argentina, traipsing around the chic Buenos Aires hood of Recoleta, when my eye was caught by a haute couture boutique showing - instead of the usual “Paris, Milan, Beverly Hills” - a women’s top saying “Bronx, Compton, Santa Ana” (three of the least haute hoods in the USA). For once, i dashed inside a shop of this sort...

Pico Iyer might be the most difficult contemporary writer to summarize or review. a product of Eton, Oxford (Double First Class degree) and Harvard, he might very well have a 180 I.Q. one is intimidated by his intellect and academic training. Time Magazine. 10 cover stories. anything you write about him, aren't you merely setting yourself up for a devastating cross-interrogation?as I wrote in my first review of his work, a noticeable feature of his work is the continual and continuing innocence

A fun and entertaining view on some of the more unique places on Earth. A bit outdated now of course, but still an interesting look at the atmosphere in a few remote areas 25 years ago, including Iceland. Surprisingly I quite liked his account of my home country, I think he pretty much nailed it. Again, some of the information is outdated, but I feel that he quite captures the spirit of Iceland and Icelanders in a way that I could not have done myself. Besides from Iceland I enjoyed the chapters...

A slightly dated book in which Pico Iyer travels to the Lonely Places of our alarmingly interconnected planet: Iceland, North Korea, Bhutan, Cuba, Paraguay, Argentina, Australia, Vietnam. I like Iyer's non-judgmental attitude towards travel writing, unlike the cantankerous Paul Theroux who can easily get on your nerves. Iyer writes about these strange lands with trademark eloquence and erudition, managing to both entertain and educate the reader in equal measure. Recommended!

A quick look over the other reviews and ratings reinforces my view that this book was very hit and miss.Consisting of eight individual travel non-fiction short stories in different locations, it really was a mixture. All were written in the period 1987 to 1992, and the author has specifically noted that they were not updated with the power of hindsight or retrospectively edited, which means they become a snapshot in history.They are all linked in that the author considers them Lonely Places or p...

The timestamp for the first chapter is 1990. I imagine myself then, 26 years ago, cognizant of the places being referred to in the book only thanks to an atlas, and a penchant for remembering country-capital-currency courtesy school quizzes. Just text in the head, with no images to go along, in a world before the internet. What then, are these lonely places? From Iceland up there to Australia down south and from North Korea to the right and Paraguay to the left (ideologically, just the opposite!...

A lovely collection of Pico Iyer's travel pieces for various magazines, brought together under a theme that is intriguing, and immensely relatable. Pico Iyer's introductory essay to the book is extraordinary writing, and I will come back to it again and again. The essays themselves are mixed things, a couple of them I loved, a couple did nothing for me, and another was just about okay reading. In all of them, however, Iyer's remarkable command of the travel writer's idiom shines through. You may...

A fascinating look at many different remote places that exist within the increasingly connected world. The most fascinating thing, I found, was that even though it has been about 15 years since these pieces were written, most of it is still pretty accurate. The author's visits included Bhutan, Iceland, North Korea, Paraguay, Vietnam and Australia. I think that Vietnam may be more modern now than described, with more connection to the world, but I don't know that the other places have changed. Au...

The premise of the books is actually quite good. The idea that some places are quite remote and are therefore lonely relative to the connectivity that other places have to each other as a globalizing world makes distances shorter. The author has a clear point of view and background as he describes and visits all places unknown.The book, for me, lacked heart relative to other travel books that might be more trans-formative or gushing with the mind opening heart expanding experiences one has when

I love to discover the unusual & this book is full of it. Before reading this book, I wanted to travel to every place that I haven't been, with some places higher on the priority list than others. After reading this book, Iceland has moved up a few notches in the ranking.UPDATE: Nov 2017: I finally made it to Iceland! And now I want to go back...

I can'ttttt anymore, I'm gonna die of boredom. I was so looking forward to reading this book, but it is SO BLAH! I was expecting more of a travelogue style of writing, not a completely stand-offish overview. The author didn't really get into experiencing these cultures, it seemed. He gave a sentence here and there exchanged with a local at a restaurant or bar, but that was about the extent of it. I just couldn't trudge through the rest. I thought about maybe adding this back to my to-read for la...

I wouldnt have picked up Iyer again after reading his 'Video Night in Kathmandu', but was drawn by a friend's reco and d super-selection of places - North Korea, Argentina, Cuba, Iceland, Bhutan, Paraguay. Also Vietnam and Australia but have read a bit about them especially the latter bcoz of cricketing articles too.The writing isnt bad, it just lacks conversations and 'joy of idleness' as Theroux put it. Each place starts off well and there r some superb observations, but then gets into a rut.

Having taken a growingly serious interest in travel writing, and having wanted to read Pico Iyer ever since I came across this quote, "Kindness is water, religion is like tea. You can survive without tea, you can't survive without water," I decided to pick up Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World two days ago.In six eloquently crafted essays, Iyer introduces us to six different places, each fascinating and lonely in its own right.What makes a lonely place? According to Iyer, lonel...

What a beautiful book!!With literature so beautiful that it makes you want to put the book down so you can go over the sentences in your mind again, and mention of intelligent references all over making you reach out for the encyclopedia and set in places so far removed from the world that they make you curious, this book is just perfect.I've been a fan of Iyer's for a long time from his TED talks and essays in magazines but now I know it's for a lifetime. The man knows how to travel, what to lo...

Pico Iyer is an oustanding travel writer. Or I should say, writer. He has an insight, a way of really drinking in a place, that makes me feel I'm there.This book is a particularly timely read in a weird way. He writes about places that are isolated or undervisited in the mid-1990's, including Cuba and North Korea. Most of these countries are still off the beaten path, for one reason or another, yet still quite in the news today. North Korea in particular gives unexpected insight into the current...

That Pico Iyer - how is possible to be so erudite and entertaining as he is? What a great idea, to group a bunch of places as disparate as Iceland and Australia together and reveal their commonality as Lonely Places - not so much places where people might be lonely as places that have "fallen off the map", or fallen out of time - Cuba is a particularly good example of this being once or twice or thrice removed from the Westernized, globalized, relentlessly forward-looking mainstream way of life

UGH. This easily goes down as one of the most boring travel books I've ever read! The concept seemed good: writing about some of the loneliest places on the planet. But does lonely have to equate to boring? I can't say I even understand why the author traveled at all, except to come home and write a boring book about it; not a shred of the author's personality or a sense of humor could be found in these 200 dry and impersonal pages. The fact that the book is severely dated (published in 1993) pr...

An interesting idea for a group of travel essays, include countries that are isolated either by geography, by politics, or socially. Somewhat dated in that I'm sure that some of the countries included are very different now than they were in the early 90's, such as Argentina and Paraguay. There's some funny bits, but the problem I have with the book is that Iyer writes like a well trained journalist. Meaning that he doesn't get involved with anyone, there's very little interaction with the local...

"Lonely places are not just isolated places, for loneliness is a state of mind.... Loneliness cuts in both directions, and there are 101 kinds of solitude."For Pico Iyer, the countries he examines in this book vary widely in their solitude. In some cases, it's geography (like Australia); in others (such as North Korea), it's a political decision. Hence, the 101 kinds of solitude.The unfortunate thing about this book is that it was written in 1993, and with any travel book from that time, some th...

In a communication skills class in college, my prof (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akash_K...) considered Pico Iyer as a benchmark in today's world in terms of written prose. Now I understand.In a collection of essays about his travels across the globe, Pico has a unique sense of capturing the essence of the place. He could be philosophical, interested , concerned and yet be blase, in the same sentence. His essays leave a lot to imagination, and yet revealing all the character of the places. I h...