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gregor-samsung · 2 years

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“ Kabul (5900 ft., 36 miles from Charikar), June 11th [1934].

From Herat to Kabul we have come 930 miles, of which forty-five were on horseback. A winding hill-road brought us down from the Charikar plateau to a smaller plain inside a ring of mountains; running water and corrugated iron glinted among its trees. At the entrance to the capital the police deprived the Vicar and the Curate of their rifles, to their great distress; but being in turbans, no one would believe they were government servants. We drove to the Foreign Office, where hot-red English ramblers were climbing over iron railings; to the hotel, where there was writing-paper in each bedroom; to the Russian Legation, where they had had no answer to M. Bouriachenko’s telegram; to the German shop, where they refused to sell us hock without a permit from the Minister of Trade; and finally to our Legation, where the Minister, Sir Richard Maconochie, has asked us to stay. It is a white house, dignified with pillars and furnished as it would be at home, without any mosquitonets or fans to remind one of the Orient. Christopher says he finds it peculiar to be in a room whose walls aren’t falling down. Opinion at the Legation agrees on the silliness of refusing the Russian diplomats in Kabul transit visas through India. Even if they go as far towards the frontier as Jelallabad, the Government of India sends in official complaints. The result is a sort of gentlemen’s agreement between the two Legations and the Afghan Government that the English shall not travel in the north of the country and the Russians in the south. That is why the authorities at Mazar could not allow us to the Oxus, though they would not admit such a reason lest it appear a limitation of their sovereignty. We were lucky to have got as close as we did, particularly as it appears that Haji Lai Mohammad, who bought the car, and our chauffeur Jamshyd Taroporevala, spread a tale that we were Secret Service agents engaged in map-making. Next time I do this kind of journey, I shall take lessons in spying beforehand. Since one has to put up with the disadvantages of the profession anyhow, one might as well reap some of its advantages, if there are any. British diplomacy in Kabul just now hangs on the Minister’s roses. At the King’s birthday party, on June 3rd, they were in full flower, and the Afghans, who are all rose-lovers, had never seen such big formal blooms. Next morning, visiting cards from the Minister of Court were fluttering from the finest trees; they had been left by his gardener in the night. Now all the other ministers want cuttings too, and are also in a turmoil over the peonies, which have been promised them for next year. Magnificent as the formal roses are, I yet prefer an Afghan tree which stands by the gate in front. It is fifteen feet high and covered with such a profusion of white blossoms that hardly a leaf is visible. “

Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana; first published by Macmillan & Co. Ltd, London, 1937.

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kanejw · 4 months

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What was read 2023

The Lottery & Other Stories - Shirley Jackson (1949~)

A Life Standing Up - Steve Martin (2007)

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy (1985)

Licks of Love -John Updike (2000)

Lovesickness Collection - Junji Ito (2011)

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes (1966)

The Anarchy The relentless rise of the East India Company - William Dalrymple (2019)

The Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan W.Watts (1951)

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (1869)

The Course of Love - Alain de Botton (2016)

Tender is the Night - F Scott Fitzgerald (1934)

Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson (1980)

Moby Dick - Herman Melville (1851)

A Faint Heart (1848)White Nights (1848) A Little Hero (1857)An Unpleasant Predicament (1862) The Crocodile (1865) Bobok (1873) A Gentle Spirit/The Meek One* (1876) T1877) Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk (2005)

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (1980/3)

Diary - Chuck Palahniuk (2003)

Darkness Visible - William Styron (1990)

The Poorhouse Fair - John Updike (1958)

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner (1929)

The First Forty-Nine Stories - Ernest Hemingway (1939)

Mythos - Stephen Fry (2017)

The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck (1931)

The Road to Wigan Pier - George Orwell (1936)

The House of the Dead - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1861)

Walden - Henry David Thoreau (1854)

The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)

Normal People - Sally Rooney (2018)

Joy in the Morning - P. G. Wodehouse (1947)

After Dark - Haruki Murakami (2004)

The Lodger - Marie Belloc Lowndes (1913)

The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe (1979)

Family Happiness - Leo Tolstoy (1859)

The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy (1866)

The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy (1889)

The Devil - Leo Tolstoy (1911)

Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre (1938)

True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2000)

Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco (1988/9)

Inferno - Dante Alighieri (~1308-1321)

Iliad - Homer (Samuel Butler translation 1898)

Carry On, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse (1925)

The Passenger - Cormac McCarthy (2022)

Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy (2022)

Fear: Trump in the White House - Bob Woodward (2018)

Rubber Balls and Liquor - Gilbert Gottfried (2011)

kiss me like a stranger* - Gene Wilder (2005)

The Adventures of Auguie March - Saul Bellow (1953)

Rickles’ Book A memoir - Don Rickles (2007)

The ‘Rosy Crucifixion’ Trilogy. Sexus - Henry Miller (1949)

The Heart of a Dog - Milhaud Bulgakov (1925)

Dracula - Bram Stoker (1897)

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (1939)

Albert & the Whale - Philip Hoare (2021)

A Waiter in Paris - Edward Chisholm (2022)

The Road to Oxiana - Robert Byron (1937)

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dknuth · 2 years

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The Road to Oxiana

With a lot of time on the way to Bishkek, I decided it was a good time to re-read The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron.

In the 1930's Byron, a Brit, decided to drive from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan. The book is a journal of his trip and was listed as one of the best non-fiction books of all time by The Guardian. and a model for all future travel books.

His ability to maintain a good humor and interest and joy in his surroundings through the trials and tribulations of the trip is very inspiring.

His descriptions of the country are beautiful. But as a very plain writer, they are certainly intimidating for me.

"From the pass above Amiriya we looked back over a mounting array of peaks, ranges, and buttresses to the white cone of Demavend in the top of the sky; and forward over a plain of boundless distances, where mountains rippled up and sighed away like the wash of a tide, dark here, shining there, while shadow and sunshine followed their masters the clouds across the earth's arena. Trees of autumn yellow embowered the lonely villages."

or

"Dawn, like a smile from the gallows, pierced the gusty, drizzling night. "

It's a great book to read before a trip of uncertain experiences, serving as a role model for a traveler.

#travel #travel books

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venetianwindow · 2 years

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Book reviews 📚

I occasionally write book reviews on Goodreads (spoilers beware). Now that there’s a bit of a back catalogue, I wanted to share a list of my favourites with you. This list will be updated every now and then - keep an eye out if you enjoy my writing! Thanks for all your support. 💗 - Sal (studygram)

Brighton Rock, Graham Greene

The Castle, Franz Kafka

Difficult Loves, Italo Calvino

Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev

The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire

Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Long Day’s Journey into Night, Eugene O’Neill

Reasons to Stay Alive, Matt Haig

The Road to Oxiana, Robert Byron

The Stranger, Albert Camus

We, Yevgeny Zamyatin

#studyblr #studyblr community #bookblr #book review #writing #venetianwindow #jeonchemstudy #heyzainab #studyvan #huitingreads #astudentslifebuoy #hiyatranquil #heypeachblossom #heysantiago #fifth book of architecture

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studyingwithcatsandtea · 3 years

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17/11/2020, 08:39

Day 25/100 of productivity

I’ve somehow made it a quarter of the way through the 100 days of productivity!

The last few days have been split pretty evenly between working on stuff for seminars and researching for an essay I need to write on the Greek world. I’m going to draft the essay today and hopefully tomorrow or Thursday start research on my next essay, which is about Anglo Saxon Britain. I also have a lot of research to do for a presentation- deadlines are looming and I’m a little scared 😅.

📚- The Road to Oxiana (Robert Byron) 🎧- Wasteland, Baby! (Hozier)

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keanesource · 4 years

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keaneofficial: Very excited to bring the #CauseandEffect tour to South America (not long left!). We’ve really enjoyed playing to so many of you these past few months. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been reading, listening to and watching during the down time. See you soon! Tim⠀

LISTENING:⠀

Joni Mitchell - Cactus Tree⠀

@angelolsenmusic - New Love Cassette⠀

@foals - The Runner⠀

Caroline Polachek - So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings⠀

@rufuswainwright - Greek Song⠀

@postmalone - Circles⠀

(Head over to @spotify to listen to our playlist picks)

READING:⠀

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron ⠀

Love Is Blind by William Boyd⠀

WATCHING:⠀

BBC The Silk Road documentary with Dr Sam Willis

#keane band #keane #Tim Rice Oxley #keanesource #cause and effect #picture #text #Mod Elinor

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rank-sentimentalist · 5 years

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For Your Consideration

@alice-quinn-at-oxford, some titles for your potential reading

Older

Herodotus, The Histories

Travels of Marco Polo

Journals of Captain Cook

Twain, Innocents Abroad

Stevenson, Treasure Island

(Anything Ponce de Leon?)

Twentieth-ish

Isabella Bird

Jan Morris

Freya Stark, Valley of Assassins

Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

Lawrence Durrell, Alexandria Quartet

Norman Lewis, Naples ‘44

Bruce Chatwin, In Paragonia

Tony & Maureen Wheeler, Across Asia on the Cheap

Robert Byron, Road to Oxiana

Gerald Durrell, The Whispering Land

Bantock, any of the Griffin and Sabine books

Jelly-Shapiro, Island People

Marguerite Duras, The Lover

Ana Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters

Cortasar, Hopscotch

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

Lawrence Osborne, Ballad of a Smaller Player and Bangkok Days

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum and The Name of the Rose

Suketu Mehta, Maximum City

Peter Mtthiessen, Snow Leopard (as opposite in climate)

‘Pop’ Travel and/or Film

Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Strayed, Wild

Mayle, A Year in Provence

Garland, The Beach

Tailor of Panama

Constant Gardener

Locally Topical?

Havana Noir

Robert Arellano, Havana Libre and Havana Lunar

Ian Fleming, Dr. No (whose villain was based on Fu Machu)

Grann Lost City of Z

More Thriller

Roger Hobbs, Ghostman and Vanishing Games

Taylor Stevens, The Informationist, The Innocent (and more)

Helen Giltrow, The Distance

Olen Steinhauer, All the Old Knives

LeCarre, Night Manager

Genre: SF/F Variations

Lara Elena Donnelly, Amberlough and more)

Malka Older, Infomacracy (and more)

James Hynes, Publish and Perish and The Lecturer’s Tale

Beth Bernobich, Time Roads

W.L. Goodwater, Breach

Graphic Novels/ Comics

Greg Rucka, White Out and Queen and Country and Stumptown

Christopher Sebela, High Crimes

Anthony Johnston, The Coldest City (Atomic Blonde)

Disclaimers: I’ve read some of it, but not all by any means. No idea how well these fit your own interests or parameters. Some educated guesses based on what I know. I cannot offer TW information on any of these offhand.

#alice-quinn-at-oxford #travel #books #suggestions #pashley

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allbestnet · 6 years

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Guardian Essential Library

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Annals by Tacitus

The Armada by Garrett Mattingly

Aubrey's brief lives by John Aubrey

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

Beethoven's Letters by Ludwig van Beethoven

Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould

C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too... by John Diamond

Candide by Voltaire

The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven by Charles Rosen

Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh

Collected Poems by Edward Thomas

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

The Complete Poems by Christina Rossetti

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

The complete poems, 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

Danube by Claudio Magris

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen

Diaries by Alan Clark

Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend by Thomas Mann

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote's Delusions: Travels in Castilian Spain by Miranda France

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James D. Watson

Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage by Richard Holmes

E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane

Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey

English Society in the Eighteenth Century by Roy Porter

Eothen by Alexander William Kinglake

Essays on Music by Theodor Adorno

Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Alexander Pushkin

Experience by Martin Amis

The Face of Battle by John Keegan

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

The Glenn Gould Reader by Glenn Gould

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux

Henry James: A Life by Leon Edel

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi

If This Is a Man and The Truce by Primo Levi

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

In Siberia by Colin Thubron

In Xanadu: A Quest by William Dalrymple

The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by James Boswell

The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth by Paul Hoffman

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II by Fernand Braudel

Memories and Commentaries: New One-Volume Edition by Igor Stravinsky

Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements by Paul Strathern

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp

Old Glory : A Voyage Down the Mississippi by Jonathan Raban

On the Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Orwell and Politics (Penguin Modern Classics) by George Orwell

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

The Painter of Modern Life by Charles Baudelaire

Persuasion by Jane Austen

The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost

Politics by Aristotle

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Prelude by William Wordsworth

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

The Quest for Corvo : An Experiment in Biography by A. J. A. Symons

Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy by John Updike

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Selected Writings [Oxford World's Classics] by William Hazlitt

The Social Contract and Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Sonnets by William Shakespeare

The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich

Sun Dancing by Geoffrey Moorhouse

Survival In Auschwitz by Primo Levi

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared M. Diamond

Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems by Thomas Hardy

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey

Troilus and Cressida; A Love Poem in Five Books by Geoffrey Chaucer

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

#books

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squarekufic · 2 years

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Of all the research projects I have done, this is certainly the one that is dearest to me:

The Road to Oxiana Project

A long list of articles on every and each Islamic monument Robert Byron visited and mentioned in his long journey from Venice to Delhi.

Each article examines what Robert Byron wrote, how he described the monuments, and adds some contemporary notes on what we know about its history and architecture. Plus, of course, the role of inscriptions.

78 monuments, 1 map, and 5 extra articles that examine features and background of The Road to Oxiana, probably the best travel book ever written.

Learn more on the monuments on the Road to Oxiana ->

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itsathingandyoucandoit · 3 years

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Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, p. 239. Six pages earlier he writes “I have been reading Proust for the last three days (and begin to observe the inflection of uncontrolled detail creeping into this diary).”

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tanyushenka · 6 years

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Photographs: Rowze-i Sharif, Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, 1933-34 1,2. Exterior view of two fifteenth century funerary shrines (since demolished) to the south of the main shrine. 3. Exterior detail; glazed tile ornament on the drum of a fifteenth century shrine (since demolished) to the southeast of the main shrine. 4. Exterior view of the fifteenth century shrine dedicated to Dar Laman (since demolished), located to the southwest of the main shrine. Photographer: Robert Byron (1905-1941) was a noted British traveler, art critic, and author trained as a Byzantinist. Byron is often credited with introducing an educated reading public to the importance of Islamic and Byzantine art. His most celebrated work, The Road to Oxiana, is an account of his journey through Iran and Afghanistan in 1933-1934. Also a talented photographer, Byron thoroughly documented the buildings (many now altered or destroyed) about which he wrote. He died in 1941, during the Second World War, when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath, Scotland, en route to Egypt. He was only 35.

#Afghanistan

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gregor-samsung · 3 years

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“ Kabul, June 17th [1934].

We solved a mystery on the way back from Ghazni. Some small trees of the sallow type were growing along a stream near the road, and Seyid Jemal stopped to let his assistant pick a few branches from them, which he threw into the back of the lorry. As they fell at our feet, they gave out that same elusive smell which has pervaded the whole journey since we first met it at the Afghan frontier, and which now, in its overwhelming sweetness, brought the minarets of Herat before my eyes again. It emanated from clusters of small yellow-green flowers, which are unnoticeable from a distance, but which, if ever I smell them again, will remind me of Afghanistan as a cedar wardrobe reminds me of childhood. Seyid Jemal has heard that soon after we crossed it, two lorries were completely wrecked by the stream that delayed us on the Baglan plain, and that the Kunduz ferry has overturned and sunk, drowning five women. We are now staying in the hotel here, which is run by Indians and is not uncivilised; they have just built an annexe and telegraphed for a German chef. Kabul for the most part has an easy unpretentious character, as of a Balkan town in the good sense of the term. It clusters round a few bare rocky hills which rise abruptly from the verdant plain and act as defences. Snow-mountains decorate the distance, the parliament sits in a cornfield, and long avenues shade the town’s approaches. In winter, at a height of 6000 feet, the cold may be inconvenient. But at present the climate is perfect, hot yet always fresh. Cinemas and alcohol are forbidden. The Legation doctor has had to give up treating women at the instance of the Church; though they sometimes visit him disguised as boys. And the whole policy of forcible Westernisation is in abeyance. All the same, Westernisation is progressing by example, and one feels that perhaps the Afghans have struck the mean for which Asia is looking. Even the most nationalist of them makes a pleasant contrast with the mincing assertiveness of the modern Persian. “

Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana; first published by Macmillan & Co. Ltd, London, 1937.