An Egyptian Journal

I read this in recovery from peritonitis before it was realized cancer was infiltrating a main artery in my small intestine, and at the time major gastro bleeds were causing me to collapse, followed by unrelenting pain and hospitilization as various surgeries were considered and infection threatened again to kill me. When I 1st read I'd been in a Demerol stupor 17 days and hadn't eaten in 23 days.I had to re-learn how and reaquaint myself with smell plus endure drug related withdrawal that turned out to be a horrific "gift " of the medical "treatment." I was reading to find my way back. But I came home, knowing I was still ill, not knowing why (a very hard thing to hold for ten horrifying years), feeling anxiety in attacks from the med withdrawal and trying to just heal myself.I gave up on care. It was six months before I could force myself to regular care again I was so jaded, insulted, violated and defeated. Worried about leaving my kids, deciding to just be with them. I drew because that's my talent, and for some reason I could handle non fiction travel books. I really liked I found this one. This one I enjoyed. I'd like to travel. I'd like to see the Nile, China, different spots, but I go in books. So I've read a lot of travel books especially those Like Travels With Charlie, Sea of Cortez, island related ones, or many others especially those written by authors that decided to diary a trip. One reason, I think they manage to bring the experience through their sheer insight and written ability to you captured within a time, within a perspective, within an ordinariness that somehow relates the times of their writing/life and visualizes the place they take their set of perceptions to see. Good writers traveling are expansive and free. It is amazing how much I love I Wonder Where I Wander. Books of authors moving are one of the real favorites of my reading. That said I had this book. I think I may have ordered it from this book seller- but I don't know why, maybe it was recommended. Maybe it was a gift, but I doubt it. No one seems to know I like this kind of thing. So how I came to have it, can't recall. There is a lot from those days I can't recall. I'm still paying the bills from a lot of botched care though, that brings it to mind, you recall that $80,000 debt daily. Anyway as I faced my Waterloo,(and I'm realizing had to from that day on plan life around restroom availability-here his descriptions tho brief but of that travel issue-restrooms-is amusing and Golding deals with a mess of it on a boat for a month in his "loo" dealings kept mostly to imagination) he faced/presented in book form a trip up the Nile. At his 75 years with his wife, I thought that was interesting, after a Nobel, he was recording observations and irritation, daily venturing, the inconvenience mixed in with the brilliant observations or historical material being seen, felt, learned first hand. It was Golding generally slowly moving you through the experience.

I haven't read Lord of the Flies since high school, but it was hard to believe this book was written by the same author. At age 72, Golding agrees to sail the Nile with his wife and "crew" and write a book about it. This creates an anxiety that surfaces throughout the book, like Seinfeld's show about nothing. With charm, wit and a sense of fatalism, he sets off on what becomes a largely uneventful trip. It is this dilemma - his attempts to find sights and local color - and his descriptions of these travails that are the heart of the book. An enjoyable read, with some history and insights on Egyptian culture, it is filled with the delight and crankiness that accompany any trip worth taking.