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Originally Posted by Quoth
I can understand that and it's perfectly valid. A school teacher read Prince Caspian to us when I was 10 near the end of summer term, so that coloured my outlook. I'd read much Irish, Greek, Norse legends and fairy tales by then and read LOTR when I was maybe 12 or 13.
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Even when young, I had a very limited tolerance for anthropomorphized creatures. I really tried with LOTR, but I found it a terrible slog and abandoned it with relief. In fairness to Narnia, I probably came to it too late.
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His elder brother, Peter Fleming might really have been a spy and writes better, though I've only read two of his travel stories.
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I’ve read
One’s Company and
News from Tartary, both excellent; I think
Tartary in particular is one of the classics of the genre. The last time I looked, they were the only two of his titles available as ebooks; I’ve always meant to dig up his Brazil book and Maillart’s account of the Tartary trip, but I strongly prefer not to read paper.
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Of course anything "autobiographical" by anyone can be a bit suspect on what is included, excluded, distorted and made up!
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Not denying there’s a lot of art involved in good travel writing, but it needs to fall far short of outright fabrication. Of course memories are suspect, too.