Essays vary in quality and interest.

In this latest annual edition of The Best American Travel Writing, Padma Lakshmi has curated a diverse selection of articles and essays intended to inspire wanderlust. Overall, for me this was at best a pleasant read, just not as inspiring as I'd been expecting or hoping for. This was partly my fault for selecting the 2021 edition and it not occurring to me that the content could be quite different from previous editions with traditional travel having been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In hindsight, I should have chosen an earlier year. There was a bit more focus on travel philosophy than I would have preferred — I rather needed someone to be going somewhere interesting or exciting. "Five Oceans, Five Deeps" turned out to be my favorite story — deep ocean exploration is fascinating in an eerie, anxiety-inducing way! ( )