 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book about a vacation
The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain Normally I love Twain, but this book (his first) quickly got repetitious. It's a travelogue of a 6-month cruise he took through Southern Europe and the Middle East. A lot of the humor is just mocking the clothes or strange customs of whatever port they were in that day, along with frequent references to the women being "homely" and the locals trying to cheat the travelers out of money. It's a bit surprising seeing Twain refer to "we Protestants," as he famously rejected religion in his later years. There's a sly running gag about the travelers' visits to various cathedrals, all of which seem to have the same relics from the same saints. No doubt the book felt more fresh in an era when foreign travel was difficult and information about other countries wasn't available with a few keystrokes. And Twain's witty turns of phrase are there throughout the book, giving a glimpse of the great writer he would become.
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