One of my ranting book reviews

Listening to: Beirut – Scenic World

I am reading this book called The Voluntourist and it’s another one of those fucking infuriating books where some writer has a mid-life crisis and decides to go travel the world with a portion of it paid by a book advance. Wow. What a risk you’re taking. Putting your life on pause and … getting your publisher to fund your trip for you. *slow applause* I forget what the last book I half-read was before I got so sick of the author’s unawareness that I had to stop. That book annoyed me more because the author was clearly fairly well-off and I just could not care about her troubles (no it was not Eat Pray Love). This book annoys me for different reasons – as I’m reading about his life and how he reacts to things, I can’t help but judge him for coming off as sheltered, passive and just generally unaware of things.

One of the main recurring threads is that he’s trying to create a more meaningful life. The catalyst is his father’s death but the fuel is that his wife doesn’t want kids but he does. So he tries to find a purpose besides being a father. For one thing, I really do not understand how couples can get married and stay together when one person wants kids and one doesn’t. This isn’t really a compromise. One person is clearly not getting what they want and the other person probably feels guilty about it all the time. Or maybe the other person doesn’t feel guilty and wouldn’t that be indicative of something else altogether? I sort of keep reading to see what changes his mind – I am pretty sure he doesn’t get a kid in the end and I sort of hope he doesn’t, mainly because I hate how on tv shows the person who wants a kid always wins out.

But this guy just throws himself into all these volunteer opportunities like rebuilding homes for New Orleans and teaching kids in Costa Rica and China. Maybe he’s just being dramatic but he comes off like he just randomly signs up for this stuff and doesn’t research anything and doesn’t try to prepare himself by learning basic phrases or understanding the culture. Reading about his experience in Costa Rica was kind of like “uh … ok …” but being Asian and reading about his experience in China is like “OK WHAT THE FUCK.” I’m reading the chapter and I keep thinking “how the hell does he not know what this phrase is” or “why is he surprised by this” or “did he not even fucking know what nihao means?” Is it just written the way it is for the benefit of readers or is it really just him? It seems like going into these things he didn’t know Spanish or Chinese. And coming from a California high school I’m thinking “who the fuck doesn’t take Spanish in high school? Ok – probably people who already speak some Asian language. But that’s the only excuse.”

It also pisses me off that it seems like he just signs up for this stuff without ever discussing it with his wife. Each time he jets off to a new country I can’t help but imagine him stamping his foot like a child and going … “I want a child! And since I can’t have one I’m going to go off on my own!”

I am on page 155 though so something about his writing is redeeming enough to get me this far. But just barely. Usually about 10 pages after I take the time to write a blog post ranting about a book, something else will set me off and I’ll chuck the book onto the ground and think “what a fucking waste of my time.”

I always feel weird about writing posts that are super critical of books or restaurants because I feel like they might have google words or whatever it is that tracks when websites post certain phrases. Like, I would not be surprised if this author has a tracker on the title of his book to see what people are saying about it. I don’t like posting reviews on Amazon about books I don’t like because I always think it’s just my opinion and I don’t want the author to go online and read a negative review about a piece of work they had dedicated time to.

But I just keep reading this book and my thoughts keep circling back to my annoyances.

The thing that really set me off and started this whole post at 1am was this quote that actually had nothing to do with his mid-life crisis- inadequately-prepared-sojourn being funded by some publisher and the unfortunate buyers of this book:

Wang Xue speaks excellent English … she’s on summer break from a university in Xi’an where she’s studying to be a packaging engineer. I had no idea that packaging engineer was a profession

To which I thought, WHAT THE FUCK. “I had no idea that packaging engineer was a profession”?! Did this guy think boxes just MAGICALLY appeared and enclosed all the shit we purchase in the world?! Did fucking elves design that container, that bag, that carton?

I keep wondering where this guy grew up. The book cover says he lives in Burke, Virginia.

If I get to a chapter where he volunteers in India and didn’t bother to learn any Hindi, I’m going to fucking lose it.