Copyright 2008-2012 Alex Sheshunoff
PARADISE MISPLACED
In the winter of 2001, I gathered the one-hundred books I was most embarrassed to have graduated from college without having read and bought a one-way ticket to the Pacific island of Yap.
I'm now finishing a book about it. It's broken up into 100 chapters each informed by a different book I took with me. The chapters range in length from several pages to a single paragraph. There are also a lot of jokes, several of which are funny.
Fortunately, I have a beautiful and talented agent Michael Murphy) so it might even get published? Need even more information before giving me a very large advance? Here is the full blurb. (Warning: written in third person.)
TALES FROM NOWHERE
One chapter of the above book made it into a travel anthology published by Lonely Planet. You should buy the book - not because of my chapter - but because it has lovely writing by real-life writers like Tim Cahill, Simon Westchester, Pam Houston and Pico Iyer.
They recently printed a second edition which is available here on Amazon.
Paradise Misplaced is sort of Julie & Julia meets Robinsin Crusoe. When Alex’s life isn’t working, he concocts the idea to buy a one way ticket to the South Sea island of Yap and takes along 100 "Great Books" in order to learn vital life lessons. The list of books alone, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to Seuss’ Green Eggs & Ham is worth a segment with Terri Gross.
Over the course of two years and the one hundred books, the life lessons he learns are actually (profound) reinforcements of ones Alex had already written on his airline ticket sleeve, waiting to leave for Yap from the Newark Airport.
Still not convinced this will win a Pulitzer? Here is the first chapter...entirely free!!!
Email
If so inclined, provide your address below and I'll send you a note when it comes out - and enter you in a chance to win a two week stay at the house we built on Angaur, an outer island of Palau. I will never ever give or trade your email address. That would be shitty.
From tying a loin cloth to building a house on an outer island with fourteen friends, this humorous, how-to-fantasy book will either inspire you to move to your own paradise in the Pacific or confirm that staying at home was the best choice all along. Either way, you will discover what to expect – and what books to bring along - if you too decide to give it all up and move to the South Pacific.
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