Geography and Travel Writing

I sit in the main room in a tapestry effect covered armchair in the geography and travel writing section. To my right is a walnut set of folio-sized drawers with worn brass handles. What's in these drawers I wonder. On top of the drawers are stacks of old maps in plastic folders. Heavy dark wood shelves surround me, full of titles evoking far-away places. Pico Iyer’s Falling off the Map invites me to explore isolated, remote places. But as I turn around, I see Iain Sinclair’s London Overground, a travel writing journal of his excursions and observations of urban life. Reading a few pages transports me to the variety of cultures Sinclair encounters in different parts of London. His writing seems to effortlessly juxtapose natural elements, wildlife with machines and man-made sounds.