Naked men, country music and French connections

The Naked Man Festival and Other Excuses to Fly Around the World
By Brian Thacker
Allen & Unwin, $27.99

There are, as Aussie Brian Thacker has discovered, a lot of wonderful, weird and downright whacky festivals out there. If you search the internet you'll find at least one being promoted somewhere in the world every day of the year.

To gather the material for this book he went to a dozen of them in Australia, Japan, the United States, Vietnam, Haiti and Scotland. The result is an entertaining - and at times laugh-out-loud funny - sampling of events.

Many, such as Japan's Naked Man Festival, which gives the book its name, are ancient ceremonies with quasi-religious origins. That particular event involves 10,000 men wearing only a nappy-like garment, in freezing weather, fighting to carry a symbolic stick across the thresholds of a Buddhist temple.

Some festivals celebrate different aspects of human endeavour, such as the Tamworth Country Music Festival, a surprisingly cheerful occasion given its focus on musical misery, or Sydney's Mardi Gras, a spectacular gay and lesbian sexual statement.

More are made up to capture tourist dollars, such as the UFO Festival in New Mexico, where Thacker chatted with lots of folks who have been kidnapped by aliens.

My favourite is the Tomato Festival Thacker went to in Ripley, Tennessee, where locals give thanks for the produce on which their lives depend. It's an event so unspoiled that the presence of someone from Australia became headline news. Unfortunately now it's been written up the festival has probably lost its innocence.

But if you dive into the internet you'll find there's plenty more where that came from.

A Year in the Merde
By Stephen Clarke
Random House, $26.95

Why do the English love poking fun at the French? Whatever the reason A Year in the Merde is a very funny send-up of an entente that is often not so cordial.

Supposedly based on author Stephen Clarke's experiences working in Paris for a year, the book features a character called Paul who is hired to start a string of cafes.

From the start he finds himself in the merde with his inability to speak the language, or deal with colleagues and French girls. In his search for both l'amour and lodgings our hero visits most of the city's 20 arondissments and discovers the beauty and history of Paris.

It's not really a travel yarn but it does offer an idea of life as a foreigner living in Paris ... plus a few chuckles at the expense of the French.