Sick of the crappy, oversized and over-priced travel books proliferating at bookstores around the country? Then follow in my steps and allow yourself to be pleasantly suprised by Sacred Journeys in a Modern World. Roger Housden, a writer with an impressive wanderlust, shares some of his trips with us in a sensitive and articulate voice. Housden views travel not as a means to an end or as a checklist of sights to be seen but as a way of shaking one's soul out of its everyday doldrums and "sensitizing the world around him." Heady stuff, but he backs it up, making Big Sur, the Sahara desert, the Ganges river, and even New York City swim with life and color through his intimate, emotional prose. Although the book occasionally verges dangerously close to New Age sentimentality, Housden on the whole reads like a beat poet who sobered up and settled down as a small town librarian. He supports his text with photographs he has taken himself. They aren't powerful in an of themselves but do serve to pull you deeper into his world. Sacred Journeys in a Modern World is a tenderly enjoyable book that will inspire the traveler inside of you.
By Todd Meigs
This review originally appeared in The Weekly Alibi.
© Todd Meigs
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