I hardly ever have my nose out of some sort of travel book and hve just finished The Last Heathen, Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia, by Charles Montgomery. It a fascinating, quietly amusing and well written/researched account of his travels through Vanuatu and Solomon Islands retracing the footsteps of his Anglican missionary great grandfather, and he manages to clarify (for me) the uniquely Melanesian way of meshing belief in christianity with ancestor worship and magic. And I personally know several of the people who appear in the section on Solomon Islands, and gave a "lecture" in the same village as the author on Malaita. Small world.

Before than I was enmeshed in Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz (tracing Cook's travels) and Beyond the Coral Sea by Michael Moran, which recounts travels in the old empires of the South-West Pacific, i.e. Papua New Guinea. Who says I'm obsessed with Melanesia?

Now I'm giggling over Lets Get Lost by Craig Nelson, and his misadventures and cultural interminglings in various places around the world (inlcuding PNG).

Nadine Vancouver, Canada