Ebook339 pages5 hours
AA Gill is Away
By A. Gill
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this ebook
A. A. Gill is one of the most feared writers in London, noted--according to the New York Times--for his "rapier wit." Some even consider the mere assignment of a subject to Gill a hostile act. But when the notice "AA GILL IS AWAY" runs in the Sunday Times of London, the city can rest peacefully in the knowledge that the writer is off traveling.
"My editor asked me what I wanted from journalism and I said the first thing that came into my head--I'd like to interview places. To treat a place as if it were a person, to go and listen to it, ask it questions, observe it the way you would interview a politician or a pop star," Gill writes.
Upon his return, readers are treated to an account of his vacations to places like famine-stricken Sudan, the pornography studios of California's San Fernando Valley, the dying Aral Sea or the seedy parts of Kaliningrad.
The result is one of the most fascinating, stylish and irreverent collections of travel writing.
"My editor asked me what I wanted from journalism and I said the first thing that came into my head--I'd like to interview places. To treat a place as if it were a person, to go and listen to it, ask it questions, observe it the way you would interview a politician or a pop star," Gill writes.
Upon his return, readers are treated to an account of his vacations to places like famine-stricken Sudan, the pornography studios of California's San Fernando Valley, the dying Aral Sea or the seedy parts of Kaliningrad.
The result is one of the most fascinating, stylish and irreverent collections of travel writing.
Author
A. Gill
A.A. Gill was born in Edinburgh, but has lived in London for most of his life. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
Read more from A. Gill
God's Promises for Your Every Need, NKJV Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5To America with Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Angry Island: Hunting the English Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to AA Gill is Away
Related ebooks
The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Man Short: "An Insider's Tale of T.G.I. Friday's in the 1980s" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best Women's Travel Writing 2011: True Stories from Around the World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaggie Chardonnay: Exploring Neuromarketing In Wine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World's Cheapest Destinations:: 26 Countries Where Your Travel Money is Worth a Fortune Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSomebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, 1880–91 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Granta Book of Travel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Best American Travel Writing 2016 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vintage: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Burning Down George Orwell's House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Factotum in the Book Trade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Anatomy of Humbug: How to Think Differently About Advertising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood, Bones & Butter - Behind the Story (A Book Companion) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Importance of Not Being Ernest: My Life with the Uninvited Hemingway Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Editorial Expectations: Yours and Theirs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFractured: Why our societies are coming apart and how we put them back together again Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLuxury Wine Marketing: The art and science of luxury wine branding Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStumbling to Rome on the Via Francigena Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoyager: Travel Writings Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vagabonding on a Budget: The New Art of World Travel and True Freedom: Live on Your Own Terms Without Being Rich Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Essential Oyster: A Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5California's Wine Country - The Napa Valley Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Travel For You
Lonely Planet The Solo Travel Handbook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fodor's Bucket List Europe: From the Epic to the Eccentric, 500+ Ultimate Experiences Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFodor's Bucket List USA: From the Epic to the Eccentric, 500+ Ultimate Experiences Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLonely Planet The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lonely Planet Japan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Drives of a Lifetime: 500 of the World's Most Spectacular Trips Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fodor's The Complete Guide to the National Parks of the West: with the Best Scenic Road Trips Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpotting Danger Before It Spots You: Build Situational Awareness To Stay Safe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spanish Verbs - Conjugations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRV Hacks: 400+ Ways to Make Life on the Road Easier, Safer, and More Fun! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLonely Planet Mexico Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fodor's Best Road Trips in the USA: 50 Epic Trips Across All 50 States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vagabonding on a Budget: The New Art of World Travel and True Freedom: Live on Your Own Terms Without Being Rich Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLonely Planet The Lonely Planet Travel Anthology: True stories from the world's best writers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Travel Agent Secrets - How to Plan Your Vacation Like a Pro Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Disney Declassified Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fodor's New Orleans Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unseen Body: A Doctor's Journey Through the Hidden Wonders of Human Anatomy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Everything Travel Guide to Ireland: From Dublin to Galway and Cork to Donegal - a complete guide to the Emerald Isle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFootsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for AA Gill is Away
Rating: 3.989795926530612 out of 5 stars
4/5
49 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I first heard of A.A. Gill through his acerbic restaurant reviews so naturally I needed to read his travel tome "A.A. Gill is Away". Here Gill exercises his travel writing skills, covering places and events like the long delayed funeral of Haile Selassie, the "murder" of the Aral Sea and Gill even takes the time to write a script for a pornographic film shot in California, where he meets the legendary Ron Jeremy.Sadly Mr Gill passed away a few years back so there will not be more books authored by him in the future but his oeuvre is as strong as anyone, and I'll certainly be reading anything of his that I can bet my grubby hands on.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A collection of travel articles by critic Gill that ran in The Sunday Times of London between 1998-2001. Gill was something of a misanthrope, but one with empathy. His articles describe traveling to Hiroshima and ending up in an argument with a Japanese activist about who was to blame for the bombing, or a drive up the California coast sneering at the wealth, only to turn his cynicism on himself. He attends the Royal Agricultural Show, Fashion Week in Milan, goes to highly dangerous locations such as the war-torn Sudan and Uganda, and puts a lot of effort into reaching what the Guinness Book of Records named "The Biggest Ecological Disaster in the World", the city of Nukus in Uzbekistan. Traveling with Gill isn't to everyone's taste. He's got a razor sharp tongue, but he's so funny and often surprising.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a series of articles about AA Gill's travels around the world.
The stories range from extraordinary, bitter and funny depictions of parts of the world that are often little known, to rather better known areas observed just a bit differently.
The quality of the stories varies from 5 star to 3 star, but are almost always interesting. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is another book I used to flick through during the endless tedious hours at my bookstore job. AA Gill is a British columnist, ostensibly a travel writer, but not the kind with a tagline at the end which says "the writer was a guest of X Travel." Gill is as much a political and social writer as he is a travel writer, and this compendium of his columns for the Sunday Times ranges across topics from a Sudanese famine to the California pornography industry to one of the worst environmental disasters of all time - the drying up of the Aral Sea by Soviet agriculture. This one in particular struck me with its ending, because I've noticed at my current job how British journalism is typically incapable of wrapping up a story without some kind of neat ending:A story like this, a story of such unremitting misery, ought to end with a candle of hope. There should be something to be done. Well, I'm sorry, but there isn't. Plenty of better men with clipboards and white Land Cruisers have been here to put it back together again, but they've retreated, dumbfounded and defeated.Gill is notorious for his scathing criticism and "rapier wit," but in the prologue he says: "Like many writers who resort to humour, really, I want to be taken very, very seriously." He succeeds at both, with a distinctive writing style that's both funny and thought-provoking, and I definitely intend to buy his other books.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received this book for Christmas having never read Gill before. It is a collection of articles written for the Sunday Times and GQ magazine arranged geographically into chapters South, East, West & North.I think the book started well with the articles on Africa - the one on Uganda was outstanding. Throughout he challenges the reader: we all know the problems faced by people of Africa but how much do we really care? Do we get up and actively do something or do we turn the page and read about something else? 'East' had an eye-opening chapter about Japan, a country I now realise I know very little about, and an excellent one about the Aral Sea highlighting an ecological disaster that very few people know about.Towards the end of the book I began to get annoyed with Gill. He is scathing about the lifestyles of the wealthy in his articles on Milan and Monaco and points out that these lifestyles are about posing, parties and living the high life whilst, actually, the participants are lonely individuals who aren't really happy at all, despite their wealth. This brings me to my objection - Gill states in his introduction that he wanted to 'interview places', that's fine but in doing so he has watched the people and formed his own judgements without out appearing to speak to these people. Does he look at them and decide that they can't be intelligent or happy or that they're all the same - try speaking to them, they might surprise you!I liked this book and enjoyed Gill's writing and humour. The whole point of journalism is to inform and spark debate. Simply not liking him because you don't agree with his views or background is missing the point. I didn't agree with everything he wrote but it certainly got me thinking.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is a must, dry, funny and the chapter thats starts with Japanese toilets is classic!!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Very much in the style of Who Hates Whom, this delightful little travelogue was alternatively depressing and funny. Not great social commentary, but worht a few laughs.
Book preview
AA Gill is Away - A. Gill
Ҫa book_preview_excerpt.html }۲Ƒie3R }l]FFu7n6#O8O32_rZU@Sr7(deËϧyL՛߿}[}?>dOUË꒖1Vssg>K_kℯWn?XuOU3WCfJcT/țNxqoKB u3q.TSek>!Vݵ+WiڄgYR;ju#ϿJt
'(^WL7g_~ݧYO~?w7Ϫo?Ϳ(c/srg?˗qyx'^Z6\Cw/as_7sp㱘2~LMOtisun|)7
MMcJ|wkߍg*"ZܸU^7KZ>]Pj:4<6EN}Z˼p͌O//1>r c_}3]o27Ӡx3|CG7C8}0£UJz4,0.c+ O?+זSu-Yq⣗~hh(8\ӂ1jJUU7Bq>@cZ>^*bːwy
*5}E8 MuUcZĹmIkD2;jh0`?#MwpG3)61ĶыPH]x;7G
p{v>4}}}57)+n$71 (y0seԥ>
Ar5)禇AӴ&S 9\uM]!pxCj