Blogs I Read: Knife Tricks

A couple of years ago, Paul Lukacs, a friend of mine, took a sabbatical from entertainment law to embark on a roving journey through Asia:

"I am taking at least a year off from work and have decided to use a blog to diary my travels and keep people informed of my general whereabouts. I am the 87-millionth person to have this idea. To further the cliche, I have purchased a backpack and filled it with Heart of Darkness, Burmese Days and several Graham Greene novels. Still working on the Tilley hat."

What originally set his blog, Knife Tricks, apart from those other 87 million travel blogs was Paul's intelligent writing, his often droll insight on local and global culture and politics and his refusal to lapse into the banal. He also offered up his take on the numerous books that accompanied him. Now back in L.A., he has continued to comment on politics, travel, literature and law in his usual erudite fashion.

I am recommending this blog mainly because it inspires me to be a better blog writer. I often feel smarter after reading one of Paul's articles because a) the writing is so good and b) he expands my consciousness of what is going on in the world, macro and micro, important and irrelevant.

I suggest starting from the beginning of his blog just to make sure that you've read all of the posts from his trip. However, many of his travel posts stand alone, serving as mini but complete peeks into the world of a wanderer.