To Shake the Sleeping Self

I really enjoyed this book and at times I felt like I was right beside Jedidiah, there were cringeworthy moments, moments of pure joy, moments of friendship around the world, and moments of sadness.
I enjoyed the description of the places that he visited, the scenery, the officials that he had to deal with, and the descriptions of bureaucracy.
I loved the parts of the book when his family and friends join him on the various legs of the journey.

A real feel-good book, a page-turner, a book that I couldn't put down.

To Shake the Sleeping Self

Not your ordinary travel blog. This book is most certainly not the travel agent spiel, boasting and bragging, trying to make you feel jealous and willing you to rush out and do the same journey. That is not to say however, that you don’t want to rush out and tackle something...
To Shake the Sleeping Self actually steals your mind and absorbs you into a diary, a personal insight. Jedidiah’s honest and open style means you feel the same emotions he was, or maybe you don’t, maybe you feel your own emotions – or at least the ones you think you would.
This is a fabulous travel book. There is delightful description of places you might have visited, or if you haven’t, you will almost certainly have dreamed of visiting. But it is more than that. Often I dislike travel books that take the focus away from the people and the places and authors who wrap themselves up in internal inspection but Jed does it in such a way that it weaves seamlessly into the passage of time and movement and is so engaging that I was hooked.
It isn’t an outpouring of positivity and banal superlatives that ‘life changing journeys’ often become. It is positive and negative, up and down. He visits subjects just as challenging as the areas he is cycling through, the harshness of the landscape reflects the toughness of the reflection on his soul, his faith, his sexuality. I cared about the questions he was asking and even asked some of them of myself as I was reading.
The book is full of delicious quotes that grabbed me, I actually wrote notes in the margin- the first time I’ve been moved to do that since studying literature at school! Everyone will have their own experience of this book and I strongly recommend that you do.