LAST PLACES: A Journey in the North <i> by Lawrence Millman (Vintage: $10).</i>

“Resolutely barren islands made my soul sing; the more barren, the more rollicking the song,” declares Millman as he chronicles his gleeful treks through regions most travelers would dismiss as Godforsaken--the most remote islands in the Faeroes and the Orkneys, the barren interior of Iceland, the eastern coast of Greenland and the bleak bays of Labrador, which the explorer Jacques Cartier described as “the land God gave to Cain.” Millman views travel as a process, rather than as a means of getting from point A to point B: “One of the purposes of travel is to avoid your destination at all costs (once you’re there, you’re there, and you’ll never be permitted that long bated breath of anticipation again).” He describes attacks by territorial seagulls, the devastation alcoholism and government resettlement projects have wreacked on the Greenland Inuit and the volcanic wastes of Iceland (where American astronauts practiced for lunar landings) with an infectious enthusiasm. Readers who would never dream of camping in a windswept peat bog may find themselves savoring the experience vicariously through Millman’s vivid prose.