I picked up a copy of I'll be Damned If 'll Die in Oakland, a "sort of travel memoir" by Al Martinez, a former columnist for the Los Angeles Times, on the bargain self of the bookstore where I work a few weeks ago. When Martinez was young, his mother, angry about a shoplifting incident, told him he would never amount to anything, never see the world, and would die in his home town of Oakland. Martinez eventually developed a love of travel and wrote this book about his adventures on the road and around the world with his wife and children. Martinez is very witty and quite the curmudgeon, and this book is highly entertaining. He gives a bit of very sage advice in it, too: "If you let everything else go to hell, you can travel on a modest income." Definitely words to live by. Sadly, Martinez passed away at the age of 85 just a couple of months ago. And no, he didn't die in Oakland, but in Santa Monica, California. In any case, the book is definitely worth a read.
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