Forgotten trails and crazy tales

This month’s bookshelf doesn’t mind name-dropping

There’s always a buzz when the latest effort from one of travel writing’s big hitters lands on our desk. Paul Theroux’s Figures in a Landscape: People and Places (Hamish Hamilton, £17) gathers together his recent misadventures – Ecuador, Malawi, America – while the profiles are often steeped in destination: Henry David Thoreau in Maine; Graham Greene in Africa. Theroux is as honest as ever and the collection paints an intimate self-portrait of this restless and ever-interested traveller.

You suspect Theroux would be intrigued by Adam Weymouth’s journey up the Yukon in a canoe, following the salmon migration. Part-adventure, part-investigation, Kings of the Yukon (Particular Books, £17) is focused on the people who live near – and depend on – the 3,200km-long river as it flows via Canada and Alaska to the Bering Sea.

Elsewhere, Alistair Moffat’s journeys on Scotland’s ‘forgotten paths’ – Roman roads, pilgrimage routes, old railway lines – help him understand the people who once wandered them, forging a fine history of the wild, walkable country along the way. The Hidden Ways (Canongate, £10) is out now in paperback.

And lastly, for those seeking some fun ideas to spice up their next adventure, TASCHEN’S Crazy Competitions: 100 Weird and Wonderful Rituals from Around the World (£20) contains some doozies. Having said that, we might give Japan’s ‘who can make a baby cry quickest’ comp a miss, though.