You can use your Las Vegas-Clark County Library District card to borrow titles from these partner libraries:
1 of 1 copy available
In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere— of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These cities were the sources of endless comfort and escape, and of a lasting fascination. Streets unspooled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled in the places where Mark hoped he could someday be anyone—perhaps even himself.
Now, as a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent nearly two decades crossing the skies of our planet and touching down in dozens of the storied cities he imagined as a child. He experiences these destinations during brief stays that he repeats month after month and year after year, giving him an unconventional and uniquely vivid perspective on the places that form our urban world.
In this intimate yet expansive work that weaves travelogue with memoir, Mark celebrates the cities he has come to know and to love, through the lens of the hometown his heart has never quite left. As he explores emblematic facets of each city’s identity— the road signs of Los Angeles, the old gates of Jeddah, the snowy streets of Sapporo—he shows us with warmth and fresh eyes the extraordinary places that billions of us call home.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
July 5, 2022 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593591567
- File size: 347010 KB
- Duration: 12:02:56
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
Mark Vanhoenacker, the author of SKYFARING, is an international airline pilot whose charming and intimate memoir is also a love letter to many of the world's principal cities. The combination travelogue/autobiography is artfully narrated by Kyle Soller with tone and pacing that are consistently wonderful in their unhurried way. Vanhoenacker's personal journey as a gay man is threaded throughout his impressions of seeing the world while comfortably ensconced in a passenger jet. His worldview--literally--encourages listeners to embrace life and live it to the fullest. Vanhoenacker magically transports listeners to cities as varied as Munich, London, Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles, and many other locales. The audiobook is enhanced by Soller's charming enthusiasm and sincerity. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine -
April 25, 2022
Gazing through the windshield of his 787, commercial airline pilot Vanhoenacker (Skyfaring) conjures the beauty of cities around the globe in this moving reflection on the meaning of home. After recalling his childhood in 1980s Pittsfield, Mass.—when his yearning to escape home for “skyscrapers, glittering lights, sweeping roads, a busy harbor, an airport (or three)” first took off—Vanhoenacker takes readers on a dazzling trip through hundreds of locales he’s traversed in his past two decades as a pilot. Rome and Cairo, “cities of beginnings,” prompt Vanhoenacker to muse on the power of origin myths, and the wolves that connect his New England home with the Eternal City. Other cityscapes, like those of Liverpool and Brasília, recall engineering diagrams of airplanes; while urban planner Lúcio Costa’s intention in the late 1950s was to design Brasília’s two axes like a cross, Vanhoenacker writes that Costa’s blueprint’s aeronautical allusions—particularly its name, Plano Piloto, which translates to Pilot Plan—have been a source of fascination among historians. Elsewhere, poetry beats at the heart of such cities as Delhi, London, Fargo, and Venice, while roiling rivers give Seoul and London, among others, their defining features. As he marvels at the locales he’s visited, Vanhoenacker offers a taste of the high life that informs and awes in equal measure. Jet-setters will be enthralled.
-