Suzanne Roberts - Bad Tourist

I love travel, armchair and otherwise, so I knew it would be a pleasure letting Suzanne Roberts take me around the world on a shoestring, from Indias Grand Elephant Festival, to the steppes of Mongolia on the trail of Genghis Khan, to the cool tiles of another one-star bathroom wondering if this would be the time shed puke herself to death. Even more satisfying are her honesty, courage, and eventual clarity as she tackles her own understoriesfamily dysfunction and alcoholism, internalized misogyny, and what the climate catastrophe means for the travel addicted among uscombining these essays into a thoroughly relatable journey of the heart.

Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country

If Michel de Montaigne and Chelsea Handler could get together in a bar in some farflung part of the world and get good and drunk, they might dream up a book like this. This is not your parents travel writing! If youre thirsting for a literary triple shot of sex, booze, and misadventures, Bad Tourist is your passport to a trip you wont want to come home from.

Michael P. Branch, author of How to Cuss in Western

Bad Tourist makes beautiful the absurdity and heartbreak accompanying us whenever we leave home. Robertss intimate, fiercely honest narrative voice imbues these realities with grace and demonstrates just how much is to be gained by living a life in the present tense.

Kathryn Miles, author of Quakeland: On the Road to Americas Next Devastating Earthquake

These thoughtful, hilarious, lusty essays will either have you renewing your passport or blowtorching it for good. Suzanne Roberts may be a bad tourist, but shes one hell of a great writer.

Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis

Suzanne Robertss journeyboth inward and outwardis illuminated by eloquent portraits of countries, cultures, and compassionate insights into human nature. I love this book.

Ann Marie Brown, travel writer and guidebook author

In an age where cultures, people, and places are so easily objectified, reduced to abstractions, commodities, or statistics, Bad Tourist is a collection that returns us, thankfully, to earth. Across India and Mongolia to Mexico and California, Suzanne Roberts shares the view at ground level, the brutality and grace and sometimes transcendence in the lives of everyday people. She reminds us that travel can be an act of remembrance. This is an important and moving work.

David Miller, travel writer and documentary filmmaker

Praise for Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail by Suzanne Roberts

Roberts dares to combine a hiking adventure with a healthy dose of humor and female bonding in all its complicated and turbulent best.... An utterly refreshing outdoors memoir free of the seemingly manufactured drama so many similar titles contain. A delightful and quite literary diversion.

Colleen Mondor, Booklist

At all turns, a gratifying read. It is intimate and funny, sharp and pensive, and its readersif not inspired to undertake their own adventureswill certainly be sad to leave Roberts at the trails end.

Michelle Schingler, ForeWord

Suzanne Roberts sets off on a remarkable Sierra journey that will test the limits of physical endurance, of friendship, and of faith in self.... This is not the usual wilderness story of independence, competition, and violence. Here, thankfully, is the more urgent story of intimacy, community, and compassion. A loving, and lovely, ode to life.

John T. Price, author of Not Just Any Land

A 260-page journey that is bound to take you beyond the John Muir Trail.

Kathryn Reed, Lake Tahoe News

In Almost Somewhere we get to travel both the physical John Muir Trailits history, its flowers and trees and shadowy peaksand the gritty emotional landscape of the three women who make the journey. Where are we in the world, anyway? Suzanne Roberts helps us know that the only place we can be is here, giving it all we have, day by day.

Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvork

A contribution to the growing body of womens nature writing, and a worthwhile, entertaining and occasionally funny story of the California wilderness.

Julia Jenkins, Shelf Awareness

This is not a backpacking primer, but rather one on young females in search of themselves as they prepare for life after college. We read about insecurities, jealously, lust, self-esteem, tears, bingeing, self-realization, learning to appreciate oneself for oneself, and interpersonal relationships. And come away with the authors realization that mountains in general, and the [John Muir Trail] specifically, provide a spectacular backdrop to work through these issues and absorb the associated lessons.

Kurt Repanshek, National Parks Traveler

Readers who have walked sections of the John Muir Trail will appreciate Robertss accurate descriptions of lakes and passes, of trail-worn feet, and of the fleeting moments when you seem to float down the trail.

Bradley John Monsma, ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

Will appeal to readers of travel and nature books, as well as those who enjoy reading about social interactions and group dynamics.

Kirkus

Almost Somewhere will not disappoint. It is a wonderful read for outdoor lovers and inspirational for anyone experiencing self-doubt. The message that resonates is as Roberts says, Its not just in the having done but in the doing... being Almost Somewhere.

Gloria Sinibaldi, North Lake Tahoe Bonanza

[Robertss] writing is filled with wonderful descriptions and is often sprinkled with lovely self-deprecating humor. Her voice... is realistic and rings true: A woman who is vulnerable and understands her limitations but is also determined to overcome challenges.

Tim Hauserman, Californias Adventure Sports Journal

This book is one I didnt want to end. I felt as if I were hiking with Roberts. When she finished, I would be finished, and like her, I would be sad to be done.

Eve Quesnel, Moonshine Ink

Suzanne Roberts

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

2020 by Suzanne Roberts.

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image Stocksy United/Audrey Shtecinjo.

Author photo Candice Vivien.

Acknowledgments for the use of previously published material appear in , which constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

All rights reserved.

Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from the Friends of the University of Nebraska Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Roberts, Suzanne, 1970 author.

Title: Bad tourist: misadventures in love and travel / Suzanne Roberts.

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020004131

ISBN 9781496222848 (paperback)

ISBN 9781496223968 (epub)

ISBN 9781496223975 (mobi)

ISBN 9781496223982 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : Roberts, Suzanne, 1970 Travel. | Roberts, Suzanne, 1970 Relations with men. | TravelPsychological aspects. | TourismPsychological aspects. | Self-actualization (Psychology)

Classification: LCC G 155. A 1 R 56 2020 | DDC 910.4092dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004131

Although this book is true to the authors fallible memory, some names and distinguishing characteristics have been changed to protect the identities of both the innocent and the guilty.