Book Twenty-Six: The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost

Ah, yes... the travel memoir.  The couch potato's guide to exploring the world or living vicariously through another.  I love/hate the travel memoir.  Dear Reader, you're enjoying the blog of an individual who experienced the beach for the first time when she was thirty-two--that was two years ago.  I'm a late bloomer. 

I enjoy the idea of vacation and travel.  Trust me.  I have the same pins as you do; but it's the actual doing of it I can't quite deliver on.  A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle started it.  If I couldn't actually go to these other-worldly places, I could at least read about others experiences.

Author Rachel Friedman recounts the yearlong adventure when, as a newly graduated college student, she buys a ticket to Ireland to avoid making 'those' decisions.  What ensues is a new friendship and adventures that span three continents.

While I enjoyed the book, I didn't connect to the author and her tale of woe.  Yes, backpacking across Australia and South America sounds fun; but the eternal theme here is Friedman is avoiding her personal crossroads of 'what to do now that I've graduated college?'  Perhaps a decade ago, I could have joined Friedman in her adventures; but at this stage I'm more 'Eat Pray Love' and Kathleen Flynn's personal gem despite not being a divorcee. 

As I see it, The Good Girls' Guide to Getting Lost is a decent travel memoir.  For this reader, it will be hardly memorable.  Kudos to the author for her 'where are they now' moment which assured me we all get to live happily ever after.