Completed: The 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames

Andrew Eames seems a bit arrogant, in the way he wrote this book. It is written in the style of someone whose nose is always a bit up. Jumping over that relatively minor hurdle, I enjoyed about half of this book. Sorry in advance about some of the rambling-ness of this post...!:

It's somewhat similar to The Year of Living Biblically, in that I very much enjoyed parts of it, but very much didn't enjoy other parts. The parts about Agatha, about Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and about the lead-up to the Iraq War (which Eames was right on the brink of, during his travels) were phenomenal, and gave me much food (and many words) for thought. But the long, drawn-out pieces of European and near eastern history, which seemed both out-of-place in the text (they weren't linked directly to the later pieces about the author's travels) and written, again, in a bit of a condescending tone. As though, if only history had listened to Eames, much of this ridiculousness would not have happened. 

But outside of this, there were a few really excellent moments. Talking about realizing your own destiny (p19) made me want to more consciously think through my wants versus my needs, and it made me all the more glad that I'm going back to school in the fall, and doing that for me. 

I loved the discussion on p37 of 'transport' versus 'holiday': "The essential difference was not the speed or the plate of guinea fowl, but the fact that, for us, the process of getting there was at least as important as the destination." This was quite profound for me - it has been a long time since I enjoyed the travel-to portion of a getaway. Made me long for a train journey myself (though not strongly - I've never been able to sleep well on trains). 

Along his journey, Eames met a man named Alp Aslan, in Turkey on the train. Alp was from Konya (a place I have always wanted to go). And here I really loved Eames' description. He wrote Alp as follows: "He had the serenity of someone who'd seen the world and was now happy to have returned home, where he could share that experience with others and to listen to theirs..." - I really loved this. I hope I'm like Alp someday. I need to get my feet to a few more countries first. 

The other favourite moment did not include Eames' words, rather Max Mallowan's (Agatha's second husband, an archaeologist). Max described their lives together as "forty-five years of a loving and merry companionship. Few men know what it is to live in harmony beside an imaginative, creative mind which inspires life with zest." Such a beautiful love story, those two. I look forward to reading Mallowan's memoirs, which I also own! So many more books to read...

Title: The 8:55 to Baghdad - From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie

Author: Andrew Eames

Published: 2004

Pages: 390

Total Books Blogged: 31
Total Pages: 8822