J.R. Daeschner knows more than a little something about participatory journalism. In True Brits: A Tour of 21st Century Britain in All Its Bog-Snorkelling, Gurning and Cheese-Rolling Glory, he travels the United Kingdom in search of all things eccentric and extraordinary. With little regard to safety or sanity, Daeschner squares off for a shin-kicking contest in the Cotswolds and snorkels bravely through the murky muck and cold of a Welsh bog. He makes his way to every village festival and small-town celebration he can, knowing that such events survive "because they reinforce a sense of identity, community, and continuity." More importantly, he understands that "people take an inordinate pride in the local idiosyncrasies that distinguish them from a thousand other places: they’re proud to be peculiar." In Daeschner’s world, this is certainly cause for celebration.

LACEY GALBRAITH

Long ago Jamaica Kincaid proved herself to be a writer of enormous talent with works such as Annie John, Lucy, My Brother and The Autobiography of My Mother. She tackles the travel memoir with her latest, Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya. In writing that is gracefully evocative, she describes trekking through the Himalayas of Nepal in search of seeds to collect for her garden back home in Vermont. With her small yet eager band of botanists, she encounters Maoist guerillas and a natural world where the sky looms large and brilliant blue, where fruit bats hang from trees and butterflies suddenly appear in a swarm. To read Among Flowers is to follow Kincaid into this other world, to fall into that state where, as Kincaid writes, it is “so dreamily irritating to be so far away from everything I had known.” LACEY GALBRAITH

Michael Konik’s Ella in Europe: An American Dog’s International Adventures is in many respects a love story. A white Lab mix, Ella is just about the smartest dog around, hip enough to wear snazzy red bandanas yet gentle and sweet-natured enough to volunteer in nursing homes and hospitals. She’s a true original, and in an effort to show his gratitude for her companionship, Konik arranges to take Ella on a canine-friendly tour of Europe. The Europeans are more than welcoming, and together Konik and Ella experience everything from a rowdy Belgian beer house to the tranquil canals of Venice to the legendary haute cuisine of Paris’ Le Grand VŽfour.

LACEY GALBRAITH

Two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey is no stranger to praise, but Wrong About Japan: A Father’s Journey with His Son, could garner a more distinguished honor: his son’s love and respect. Clasping onto shy 12-year-old Charley’s new interest in Japanese comics and film animation, Carey joins his son’s Saturday morning jaunts cruising around Greenwich Village’s sci-fi and video stores. Together they discover their passion for Japan. With comedy, adventure and insight, Carey’s warm, first-person travelogue journeys across land, cultures and the daunting pre-teen/father generational divide. Carey’s initial suggestion of a trip to Japan gets a lukewarm response from his son. Charley yearns to check out “cool” locales, eat raw fish and buy comics, and that’s it. ” No Real Japan,’ said Charley. You’ve got to promise. No temples. No museums.’ ” Skipping the tourist destinations, the duo’s pilgrimage takes them to Tokyo where they wander past kimono-clad women and cartoon character impersonators, by the communal baths and through subway stations displaying “a very alien-looking ticket dispenser.” The father does manage to slip a slow-moving four-hour Kabuki theater performance onto the itinerary, and Charley’s response was the same as mine when my Japanese host-mom duped me into attending such a performance: “How could you do that to me?” The Careys’ journey leaves them with lingering questions of whether their thoughts about Japan were proven right or incorrect. Baffled by the toilet masterpieces of Japan, where commodes transform into seat-warming bidets, they discover Japan is notable for more than atomic bombs and Godzilla. Exploring the intricacy of a country and a culture where he “could not read or speak the simplest phrase,” Carey easily traverses the scene with his simple expressive writing. Arigato Carey-san. Thank you, Mr. Carey. Tiffany Speaks is a former editor for Newsweek Japan magazine.

Expedition photographer Gordon Wiltsie, whose award-winning pictures grace National Geographic, has crisscrossed the earth on foot, by dogsled and on skis all while toting a camera. A companion to many modern-day explorers (including the late Galen Rowell and Jon Krakauer), in To the Ends of the Earth: Adventures of an Expedition Explorer Wiltsie chronicles 10 climbs and treks all ambitious, death-defying adventures that took him up looming peaks, across frigid plains and through mysterious rainforests. This is Wiltsie’s personal diary of being a load-carrying, pot-washing, full-fledged expedition team member and the man responsible for capturing each dramatic moment on film. From Tibet’s Potala Palace to a polar wall on Canada’s Baffin Island, Wiltsie’s spectacular images capture the exploits and travails of expedition teams, plus the inspirational landscapes and exotic cultures of the places visited.

Tragically, explorer and photographer Galen Rowell perished when his small plane crashed near Bishop, California, in August 2002. Thankfully, Rowell’s photographic work and his numerous books (among them, Mountain Light and My Tibet) survive to enchant and educate us about the glories of wild places shrouded in light and shadow. A renowned climber, photographer, writer and eco-advocate who routinely ventured into the most remote corners of the earth, Rowell was tireless, passionate to the end about the conservation and celebration of the earth’s landscapes and wildlife.

Alison Hood was formerly a National Park Service Ranger at Muir Woods and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

<B>A captain’s taste of island life</B> Sebastian Junger first drew attention to Linda Greenlaw, then the captain of a swordfishing boat, in his 1997 bestseller, <I>The Perfect Storm</I>. Subsequently, Greenlaw penned her own popular book, the best-selling <I>The Hungry Ocean</I>. After 17 years of swordfishing, she returned to her home on Isle au Haut, Maine, to harvest lobsters. Her new memoir, <B>The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island</B>, spans one season of work on the tiny island, during which she lives with her parents and enlists her father, a retired steel company executive, as her crew of one. Although Greenlaw goes into near-technical detail about the history, methods, dangers and frustrations of lobstering, her real gift is vividly re-creating the characters and civic hubbub of a community that has (at last count) only 47 year-round residents. There’s Rita, the snoop, thief, seer and nostrum peddler; Victor, the peruser of mail-order bride videos; and the crafty but colossally inept handymen known as the Island Boys. The author doesn’t spare herself ridicule. Now 40 and admittedly still shopping for a mate, she wryly observes that she has returned to a place where there are only three single men two of whom are gay and the third her cousin.

Greenlaw also plumbs her evolving relationship with her parents, finding her father calm and reassuring and her mother bright, engaging and volatile, but something of a pain. The link with her mother strengthens, however, when the older woman falls seriously ill.

Even as she turns her gaze inland, Greenlaw remains alert to the beauty and hazards of the surrounding waters. To date, she observes, I have lost eleven personal friends in what can best be described as six separate showings of the ocean’s conscienceless temper.’ . . . I am often torn between wanting to know more, and wishing I did not know as much as I do. What Greenlaw does know and illuminate here with anecdotal precision is that chance and circumstance continue to shape her views, just as inexorably as the pounding sea shapes the contours of her beloved island.

There’s an entire subgenre of travel literature about English people who seek out better weather and spicier food than they find at home. In The Caliph’s House, travel writer Tahir Shah shares his family’s experiences with Dar Khlalifa, a ramshackle old estate in one of Casablanca’s least desirable neighborhoods. The story features exotic locales and plenty of culture shock, but is largely one of renovation, as the Shah family live huddled on the floor in one room for nearly a year while walls are moved, a stairway installed, and age-old techniques used to create colorful mosaics and traditional terracotta tiles. They must also contend with Jinns and a house staff whose suggestions for appeasing those angry spirits include avoiding the toilets completely, sacrificing at least one lamb per room and asking the kids to sleep in the oven while the Jinns are fooled by life-sized mannequins in their beds.

The last time I saw Paris all right, the only time I saw Paris was a few years ago in April. It was neither warm nor cold, which meant I had no chance of packing the right clothes, and it rained seven of the eight days I was there. None of that mattered; all was just as it should have been. Drinking hot chocolate at Angelina’s, walking home in the rain after a 21-sample cheese-tasting, or watching street vendors sell Eiffel Tower trinkets under the real thing, Paris was wonderful. This spring, two books give readers the chance to live or relive the dream of spending April or indeed any time in Paris.

Paris is to haute cuisine as it is to haute couture. Understandably, Gourmet has featured stories about the city since the magazine’s inception. Many of these essays have been collected in Remembrance of Things Paris: Sixty Years of Writing From Gourmet. Far from consisting only of food stories though the pieces on particular restaurants, chefs or dishes are, well, scrumptious the writings are also portraits of the city itself, its inhabitants and those fortunate enough to land assignments there. They range from Don Dresden writing about how chefs and customers alike cope with the cream and butter shortages of postwar Paris to Joseph Wechsberg (author of several pieces in the book) writing about the lost joy of walking through the city. But food is the main topic of Remembrance of Things Paris and reading it on an empty stomach is probably not a good idea.

Foodies and fashionistas aren’t the only ones attracted to the French capital, as demonstrated by the wide assortment of writers found in Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology, edited by Adam Gopnik. This fascinating collection is arranged chronologically starting with pieces by influential thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams and Thomas Paine. Popular culture is represented by a Cole Porter lyric, an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story and a piece by modern dancer Isadora Duncan. James Baldwin writes of spending Christmas in a Paris jail, while James Weldon Johnson head of the NAACP in the 1920s writes of experiencing equality for the first time during a 1905 visit. The variety of people represented in the book from Mark Twain to Elizabeth Bishop to M.L.

K. Fischer, for example and the wide spectrum of their experiences gives Americans in Paris a broad appeal, making it accessible to an audience beyond that of Francophiles and lovers of literature.

Both these books are good for reminiscing about or anticipating a trip to Paris. Read them from a comfortable chair at home, during a transatlantic flight or at a small cafŽ table in the city itself.

The last time I saw Paris all right, the only time I saw Paris was a few years ago in April. It was neither warm nor cold, which meant I had no chance of packing the right clothes, and it rained seven of the eight days I was there. None of that mattered; all was just as it should have been. Drinking hot chocolate at Angelina’s, walking home in the rain after a 21-sample cheese-tasting, or watching street vendors sell Eiffel Tower trinkets under the real thing, Paris was wonderful. This spring, two books give readers the chance to live or relive the dream of spending April or indeed any time in Paris.

Paris is to haute cuisine as it is to haute couture. Understandably, Gourmet has featured stories about the city since the magazine’s inception. Many of these essays have been collected in Remembrance of Things Paris: Sixty Years of Writing From Gourmet. Far from consisting only of food stories though the pieces on particular restaurants, chefs or dishes are, well, scrumptious the writings are also portraits of the city itself, its inhabitants and those fortunate enough to land assignments there. They range from Don Dresden writing about how chefs and customers alike cope with the cream and butter shortages of postwar Paris to Joseph Wechsberg (author of several pieces in the book) writing about the lost joy of walking through the city. But food is the main topic of Remembrance of Things Paris and reading it on an empty stomach is probably not a good idea.

Foodies and fashionistas aren’t the only ones attracted to the French capital, as demonstrated by the wide assortment of writers found in Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology, edited by Adam Gopnik. This fascinating collection is arranged chronologically starting with pieces by influential thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams and Thomas Paine. Popular culture is represented by a Cole Porter lyric, an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story and a piece by modern dancer Isadora Duncan. James Baldwin writes of spending Christmas in a Paris jail, while James Weldon Johnson head of the NAACP in the 1920s writes of experiencing equality for the first time during a 1905 visit. The variety of people represented in the book from Mark Twain to Elizabeth Bishop to M.L.K. Fischer, for example and the wide spectrum of their experiences gives Americans in Paris a broad appeal, making it accessible to an audience beyond that of Francophiles and lovers of literature.

Both these books are good for reminiscing about or anticipating a trip to Paris. Read them from a comfortable chair at home, during a transatlantic flight or at a small cafe table in the city itself.

"Maybe I am so drawn to Sicily because I am half-Sicilian and the island is hard-wired into my genes," writes Theresa Maggio in The Stone Boudoir. "Or maybe Sicily is a vortex that pulls some people in a center of the universe, like the Omphalos at Delphi, a navel stone that connected some inner world to the outer. . . ." Maggio, who quickly sheds her writerly self-consciousness to create a simple and charming narrative, needs no excuse for searching out her grandparents’ family in Santa Margherita. Her unifying thread a desire to find the tiniest mountain towns, going mostly by the luck of the road and of the sounds of the village names around Mount Etna is more natural than the often forced tone of "finding my roots" books. Traveling mostly in winters, when fares were cheap, and working between trips, staying once as long as a year, she pieces together a family portrait of unshowy sweetness. Unshowy, because Maggio really is half-Sicilian, and her family members like Nella, the "niece of the daughter of my grandmother’s first cousin" are at the same time funny, resilient, sentimental, nervous, superstitious and pious. "Anything that was good’ in Nella’s house was never used. The red ceramic teapot on the back of the stove never felt hot water," Maggio writes, "the glass cruets on the table never tasted oil or vinegar, and as far as I know I am the only one who has ever sat on the dining-room couch." Maggio finds the codes of village life are subtle, indeed. "The wash line tells a story in a semaphore code anyone can read. Without speaking or even being seen, a woman can say, Ha! I have my wash hung before you’re even up.’ Or she can hang boys’ briefs, men’s work clothes, and black shawls to say, I have three sons, two are out of diapers, my husband’s got a job, and my widowed mother lives with us.’ . . . And a woman can signal her lover it is safe to come up by leaving only her nightgown on the line." Still, not everything is funny. Sicilian plumbing is so full of holes (or, depending on who’s talking, held hostage for bribes by a Mafia monopoly) that Nella sometimes goes as much as three weeks without fresh water. Her childhood home, a stone cottage, was destroyed in an earthquake in the winter of 1968, forcing her to live in a tent for a year and a metal barracks for the next 20, because reconstruction money was repeatedly drained off by corruption. Many of her neighbors prefer to live in the old cave dwellings rather than the quake-prone cinderblock complexes at the foot of the mountain.

Maggio discovers street food: octopus, spiny sea urchins cracked open on the spot and scooped out with crusty bread, raw oysters, steamed clams, mussels. She watches processions of relics and saints’ day festivals and shares birthday dinners for hours. And she finds Sicily’s heart ultimately by letting the country come to her as much as she seeks it out.

A companion wine Thanks in part to Mount Etna’s rich volcanic contributions, the soil of Sicily is extremely fine for wine-growing, and the Nero d’Avola grape, though not yet well-known in the U.S., is apt to be the next Merlot, rich, cherry-fruity and with semi-sweet tones of coffee, smoky wood and chocolate, and with sufficient tannin to take a few years’ aging. The Morgante Nero, which sells for only about $12, is just one example; you may also find Nero being blended with Merlot and Cabernet for smoother wines that will open a little earlier.

Eve Zibart is restaurant critic for the weekend section of The Washington Post and author of The Ethnic Food Lover’s Companion.

It is all quite mad. In Them: Adventures with Extremists British journalist Jon Ronson follows a number of characters, including Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian living in London, whose loudly stated goal is a holy war on Britain, the country that shelters him.Omar, who calls himself Osama bin Laden’s man in London, stands around on street corners handing out leaflets and shouting things like "Be careful from homosexuality. It is not good for your tummy," though that is the least of his imprecations. It makes him sound winsome, which he is not. During the time Ronson spends with him (the late 1990s), Omar collects money for terrorist groups, calls for fatwas (death threats) against infidels and would gladly see Britain made into an Islamic nation by force.He lives off welfare money given him by the British government and cheerfully admits he uses British political and civil rights in order to try and destroy them. He gloats over American deaths on Sept. 11, and only when the government threatens to deport him does he begin to backpedal and squeal to Ronson that, of course, everyone knows he’s just a clown and not to be taken seriously.Omar is among the more potentially dangerous loose cannons popping off in Ronson’s entertaining and disquieting book about extremists in the United States and Europe. They are a varied lot, united in nothing yet sharing a common belief in a conspiracy of "Them," an elite group that rules the world by meeting in a secret room somewhere to decide such monumental issues as when to start wars, who gets elected president or prime minister, and how to control global financial systems.The only thing more startling than that is: Could the extremists be right? Ronson travels down byways both creepy and comical that make him doubt, if not his sanity, then the extremists’ lunacy.Take, for instance, the Bilderberg Group, universally dismissed as every extremist’s favorite fantasy. If it’s a fantasy, then why does Denis Healey, retired British Labor cabinet minister, heartily hail its existence and its goals – including the desire to eliminate extremist groups?Is it benign? Then why all the sinister cloak – if – not – exactly – dagger stuff that Ronson and another fellow are subjected to when they try to scout out Bilderberg’s annual meeting in Portugal and watch, open – mouthed, as cars carrying "many of the world’s most powerful people" roll past them to a meeting that no one will admit is taking place?Or take David Icke, a former sports journalist in Britain who has given himself over to the task of warning about a conspiracy to create a New World Order, with the additional information that its leaders are genetically descended from 12 – foot lizards. If he is so loony, why do so many establishment groups go to such lengths to demonize him and cancel his appearances?Are "they" doing it? What do "they" have to fear? Well into his book, Ronson writes, "My rationality had suffered a tremendous blow, and I now no longer knew what was possible and what was not."Despite his confusion, the author continues his journeys, traveling from Ruby Ridge to an auction of Nicolae Ceausescu’s shoes. Ronson finally ends up in the forests of northern California, where he sneaks into an opulently appointed sylvan glade to observe putative leaders of the New World Order at play: scores of well – known politicians and wealthy businessmen, sometimes naked, prancing about, urinating on trees, and attending the ritual burning of an owl image. Whether it’s sinister or simply sophomoric, Ronson wonders: The Branch Davidians were a cult and this is not?It is all quite mad. "Thank God I don’t believe in the secret rulers of the world," Ronson says. "Imagine what the secret rulers of the world might do to me if I did!"

Roger K. Miller, a former newspaper book editor and columnist, is a marketing writer in Wisconsin.