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| View Larger Image | Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik: One Woman's Solo Misadventures Across Africa
by Marie Javins
| | List Price: | $15.95 | | Price: | $10.85 | | You Save: | $5.10 (32%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 164621 | | Studio: | Seal Press | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 288 | | Publication Date: | August 11, 2006 | | Publisher: | Seal Press |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik is a spirited African adventure of a solo woman traveler whose overland excursion across the continent includes challenges, inevitable mishaps, and more than a few debacles.
Author and world traveler Marie Javins is an unflappable narrator, who takes even the most bizarre and patience-trying situations with a dose of good humor. Javins fell in love with Africa when she traversed the continent in 2001 as part of a larger world tour. She later returned to spend half of 2005 revisiting the people and places that had so impacted her on her first trip. Javins was struck not by the desperation of Africa, but by its hope — the dignity of its people, the vibrancy of its cities, and the inherent adventure that is inherent it offered.
Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik is a funny and compassionate account of the sort of lively and heedless undertaking that could only happen in Africa. Javins's brushes with wildlife are punctuated with more serious dilemmas. Through it all, Javins's experience of Africa is life-altering, and her witty observations make for the best kind of travel literature which takes its readers into the heart and soul of the continent.
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CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 14 reviews)
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Stalking a Good Story 
A total disappointment...this book has been written a thousand times before. Marie Javins' account is a simple retelling of what happened to her while traveling and unfortunately she seems blind to the opportunity to discover and interact with the amazing communities and cultures of the Africa people.
Not only was this a fairly boring read, it completely lacked a connection to the places. It was so general that she could have been traveling nearly anywhere; she did the bare minimum to help her readers see both the beauty and suffering that was certainly taking place around her.
Given that traveling the continent is one of my dreams, I was really looking forward to reading another woman's account of her journey. Unfortunately, the entire book seemed more like a safari tale created and produced by Disney rather one that resonates with the true meaning of "safari."
August 01, 2008 | |
How It Is There 
Finished Marie Javins' Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik. Liked it in spite of myself, even though at first you think it is not that good. Then you realize that it IS good, really good. She is no Paul Theroux, nor is she trying to be. And that is all to her credit. She traveled up through Africa. He went Cairo to Capetown, she the reverse. Extremely different travels and travelers. She did things he would never be caught dead doing, like joining up with safari groups. As much as I liked his book a great deal, I liked hers as much precisely because she gives you all the personal and cultural detail out of the corner of her eyes. Her eyes are great. She complains a lot about things and yet that helps make us there with her. This IS what travel is like. She is good company. You would love to talk with her, meet her. A lot of people can complain and be terrible company. And she does not go back and rifle through books to flesh out her rants and observations. Rather she crisply and curtly describes the people and the hassles. And the tedium. Remarkable how well she writes about that. She is every bit as experienced as Theroux but not out to write a book. She is about moving along, seeing some things but not interested in making a big deal. She's not out to force grand ideas down our throats. As a result, her book conveys great vitality, the life of all those she meets. She did post her trip on an ongoing website, still up. So she got her immediate audience there. Big generational difference. Later when she wrote this book she had the site and the immediate responses and could draw on all that and recompose her narrative from that base. Her book is a sharp account of hard travels through Africa at the end of her year of touring the world & she writes with economy and clarity, & no sentimentality in spite of 9/11 happening in the middle of her trip when she is on the Muslim island of Zanzibar. And maybe her book will become after all a literary gem because of all of this. Ten times better than, say, Robin Davison's camel walk across Australia, Tracks. Better as a book. Javins can write. Davison cannot. Javins is mightily experienced at travel and this gives her a practical sense of scope and detail and perspective. She keeps it clipped and paced & you get a great sense of what this sort of trekking and traveling is like for the tough and sensitive souls who can do it. Reminds me so much of Tamminnee Taylor, the Australian young woman who traveled for over five years all over the world.
July 01, 2008 | |
Down & Dirty in Africa
For the sake of full disclosure, I should mention that the author, Ms. Javins, is a friend of mine. Savvy internet users could probably figure that out anyway. Still, I believe my opinion is as valid as anybody else's. It's up to you to decide how biased my review is. I find myself in full agreement with most of the other customer reviews, but bewildered by a couple who just didn't seem to get it. Maybe they bought the book without reading any of the descriptions.
Though this book focuses on Africa, much of "Dik Dik" was originally written as a weblog, while Marie spent a year traveling around the world alone. This is not a grandiose tale about the beauty of Africa, or an in-depth guide chock-full of handy tips for travelers. Instead, this is a street-level journey about traveling, with all the bumps, bruises, mistakes and surprises that go with the territory. This is a personal story and Marie's observations come from her unique, irreverent point of view.
Especially when put in the larger context of a year long, around the world tour, by herself, without the creature-comforts of air travel, I don't see how one reviewer could call this an "average tourist tale." How many women do you know that have done such a trip? I know only the one. Readers who were put off by the negative aspects of the trip, or Marie's complaints miss her point. This is what it's like, folks. And she wouldn't have it any other way.
April 12, 2008 | |
Completely disappointing
This is very disappointing, shallow, and simply about average tourist types with no insights offered. She apparently interacted only with other tourists, leaving Africans of various countries to be role players in her hotel, taxi, and trinket episodes. She colors this narrative with practically no desciptive writing of the terrain, agriculture, or cultural subtlties. It's all about herself and other visitors, mostly in game parks, offered without any character depth. She moved too fast to discover any. I am surprised she found a publisher. This book has been written a hundred times already.
March 17, 2008 | |
Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik
I was seeking true account information about Africa and I found this book to be too negative with a focus mostly on the bad and not the beauty and good of Africa.
October 03, 2007 | |
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