Travel – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 THE GIRL IN THE POLKA DOT DRESS by Beryl Bainbridge /2011/the-girl-in-the-polka-dot-dress-by-beryl-bainbridge/ Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:22:41 +0000 /?p=20537 Book Quote:

“When Rose, voice quivering, told Washington Harold what she’d seen, he said it didn’t do to focus on what might have happened, better to rejoice at a fortunate result. Most deaths, he opined, were accidental, even the vicious ones.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  AUG 31, 2011)

The late Beryl Bainbridge, who died in 2010, is better known in Britain than over here. The winner of the Whitbread Award, and five times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2000, joining AS Byatt and preceding Margaret Drabble. She published sixteen novels over the course of her life, and was working on her seventeenth, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress at the time of her death. Cast in a clear trajectory heading for an unmistakable conclusion, it does not feel unfinished, though the enigmatic compression which I gather is typical of all her books may perhaps be a little more enigmatic than usual.

This is a road trip novel, reflecting a journey across America that Bainbridge herself made in 1968, but this is a nightmare America where nothing comes quite into focus. A young Englishwoman named Rose, a dental receptionist, arrives from London with a few items in a suitcase and an absurdly small amount of money. Her ticket has been paid for by a man she knows as Washington Harold (though he actually lives in Baltimore), who obviously expects a gratifying holiday liaison. But Rose is not as he expected, either in appearance or behavior. She has come to America to reconnect with someone referred to only as Dr. Wheeler, who had somehow been very important to Rose during her adolescence. Harold, it appears, also wants to find Wheeler, though for very different motives which he keeps hidden at first. But Wheeler himself is elusive, both in character and location. At times he seems some kind of preacher or guru; at times a political operative; sometimes even a revolutionary. He never stays in one place for very long. Rose and Harold’s search takes them in a camper from Washington to upstate New York, then across the country to Malibu and finally Los Angeles.

The early summer of 1968 was a troubled time. The Vietnam War was at its height. Rose arrives in a Baltimore still seething from the race riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King; she will arrive in Los Angeles the day that Robert Kennedy is killed. In between, Rose and Harold will be exposed to several moments of random violence themselves, and news will come through of the attempted shooting of Andy Warhol in New York: “Rose, tone truculent, asked him why Yanks kept shooting each other; was it because they were all allowed to own guns? It was obvious she’d never heard of Warhol.” Indeed, she is neither well educated nor worldly wise. But we do find out a little more about her traumatic past and discover that, despite her flirtations with religion, she is not quite as innocent as she might appear. As Harold drops in on former friends, we find out a little more about his life also, with hints about why he is so determined to track down the mysterious Dr. Wheeler.

The novel comes to a poignant focus at the end, but few of the mysteries are completely cleared up; I suspect they were never meant to be. Despite much detail about driving, diners, campsites, and roadside restrooms (and extended play on the different American and British expectations for personal hygiene), there is a slight layer of unreality to the whole story; this is America as viewed through a B-movie lens. But in some respects America IS a B movie, and 1968 was a nightmare from which the country has never fully woken. I wish I could be sure that this is Bainbridge’s point.

When I look back and see that none of her American characters (Wheeler, Harold, and all his friends) can be placed unambiguously as to socio-economic status, I wish I could be sure that this was deliberate obfuscation rather than ignorance. I admit to having been thrown for a loop early on, when very little of Rose’s journey seemed to fit. How could she work four hours in the dentist’s office before taking the bus to Heathrow for her transatlantic flight? At what airport would she walk through the rain straight from the plane to the arrivals lounge? I live in Baltimore, and know that no sensible route from there to Washington would take three hours and approach the capital from the West. Were these errors, or deliberate choices to knock the reader off balance? Eventually, I gave in to them and spent the rest of the book in the waking dream that Bainbridge presumably intended. But the fact that this is a posthumous novel — perhaps unfinished, perhaps inadequately edited — raises unfortunate doubts in addition to those so magnificently planted by the author.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page Beryl Bainbridge
EXTRAS: Man Booker Bridesmaid
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More stories of America from foreign travelers:

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]]> FRENCH FEAST: A TRAVELER’S LITERARY COMPANION edited by William Rodarmor /2011/french-feast-edited-by-william-rodarmor/ Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:50:09 +0000 /?p=20066 Book Quote:

“The wine comes in 250-ml bottles, or by the carafe, your choice. You take a sealed bottle. Vin du pays from Hérault, 11.5 percent alcohol, with a picture of grapes on the label. Screw top. There’s also a liter bottle for drunks. The wine has the power to humiliate you. Like truth serum, it scours, strips, reveals. It flows into you like a kind of blood, spreading pain. The soul plunges into it. You grimace as the first swallow announces the metamorphosis. The wine is like a developer solution specially formulated for the wretched misery we stew in. The photograph that emerges isn’t a pretty one: a guy sitting in front of his cafeteria tray, head down, grinning at his neighbors’ tired jokes, his heart in his mouth. (from “Cafeteria Wine” by Laurent Graff)”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd AUG 13, 2011)

According to Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, when Homo erectus, already master over fire, threw some tubers on a spit, freeing up nutrients and easing digestion, teeth, jaws and intestines shrunk, paving the way for the evolution of larger brains, and us, Homo sapiens. In the wilds of the prehistoric world, it’s likely our human ancestors gathered around a single fire for safety, and a communal feast, suggesting that our need to sit and break bread with each other – rather than scarfing down food, alone, in a moving car –is an ancient memory buried deep in our brains. And so, it’s little wonder that meals, and the rituals surrounding them, are of unmatched importance in human society; can you think of a holiday that isn’t centered around food, if not in the form of a celebratory feast than in a ritualized period of denial? If food – it’s acquisition and preparation – is arguably the foundation of human evolution, it’s also the cornerstone of our culture, and there is no better way to familiarize oneself with a foreign country than through the idiosyncrasies of its cuisine.

No other country has mastered this relationship between ritual and sustenance, nutrition and indulgence, quite like the French, and, for better or worse, French cuisine is inextricably linked to our concept of French culture. The caricatured Frenchman, sporting a mustache, sailor-stripes and a beret, brandishes a wine glass and a baguette. In much the same way that, from Bogota to Beijing, the Golden Arches signals a (perhaps comfortingly familiar) McDonalds, rattan-backed chairs, red banquettes, polished wood and brass rails characterize reproductions of the French brasserie all over the world. But without resorting to these cultural clichés, French Feast: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, a collection of short stories translated from French, provides a window into French culture through its relationship to food.

William Rodarmor, the editor of this collection, notes just a few of the French words that have entered our culinary lexicon: entrée, quiche, escargot, crepe, hors d’oeuvre, petits-fours, Bearnaise, baguette, croque-monsieur, vinaigrette, pate, maitre’d, sous-chef, “and even the word cuisine itself!” To Mr. Rodarmor’s list, I would add: à la carte, à la mode, au gratin, soup du jour, nouvelle cuisine; and I’m sure you’ll be able to add your own too—there’s just so many of them. My pocket copy of Gastronomic Dictionary French-English was indispensable for dining in France; from cuts of meat to sauces and preparation techniques, the French language is far more nuanced when it comes to food. So needless to say, it should be no surprise that there are enough (good!) French stories to compile a collection thematically centered on food.

The collection is broken into sections, each its own component of a long French meal: Appetizers; Entrees; Main Courses; Libations; and Desserts; the stories of each section linked by a single theme; memory, manners and society, family, fantasy, and love and sex, respectively.

In “The Taste of New Wine” (Mariette Condroyer), a dying man longingly eavesdrops on his doctor’s lively household through the door connecting the doctor’s examination room to the kitchen. The aroma of the doctor’s wife’s cooking both fortifies and weakens the old man, filled with longing for a life he knows he’s soon to leave. In “Pfefferling” (François Vallejo), a young man remembers a summer spent at a hotel in Switzerland, quite close to the sanatorium featured in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, a book the boy has just finished and loved. When an elderly German countess offers to walk with him to the sanatorium, the boy agrees, but when they reach the buildings, the boy doesn’t want to go inside, “afraid that like Hans Castorp, [he] would never come out again.” Instead, the countess offers to show him the cemetery out back, where they harvest the chanterelles that grow in abundance on the graves for an omelet back at the hotel. The boy has difficulty swallowing “these chanterelles of death, these fleshy mushrooms swollen with wet and earth and mixed with the rotting flesh of old Davos and Magic Mountain TB lungers.” But, all too often in life, it’s through the memories of those meals we never wanted, or of things too mundane to notice– the smell of onions frying in a young wife’s kitchen – that we come to appreciate the miracle of our lives.

To judge by two of the best stories in the next section, one would think that politesse had had the sole purpose of keeping gourmands from their food. “The Plate Raider” (Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut) is the hilarious account of Ernest Pardieu whose “either stingy or unskilled” mother subjected him to a childhood of watery puree and leathery steak, so that poor little Ernest had little choice by to make sure he never missed dinnertime at the houses of friends with “cordon bleu mothers.” From there, it was just a few years and a few crashed parties until he perfected his “art of infiltration,” setting him on his way to a career as a “professional plate raider.” But who can really blame him, faced with such mouth-watering fare as “ miniature vol-au-vent garnished with bits of scallop and seasoned with a drop of apple pommeau,” “smoked salmon with guacamole and green tea mousses,” “four-spiced foie-gras with crushed pear drizzled with honey,” and “frogs’ legs fricassee in a hazelnut croute.” A real gourmand, the only thing Eric can’t stomach are peanuts, which of course he mistakenly eats, at a funeral, in what can only be described as just desserts.

A chapter from “Belle De Seigneur “(Albert Cohen) works as a wonderful set-piece, the excerpted section a brilliant comedy of manners; Adrien, a clerk at the League of Nations, awaits his boss’ arrival, with his socially ambitious mother, Madame Deume and his long-suffering (and hungry) father, Monsieur Deume . One can’t help but feel for the poor Monsieur Deume who, after an interminable afternoon of fussy preparations, is told he won’t get to eat any of the sumptuous feast laid out for their guest but rather will have to eat “bread and cheese and the three ham sandwiches left over from lunch” standing at the sideboard. And as Madame Deume informs her husband that their feast will be wrapped up and put in the fridge to entertain whichever illustrious guest she can persuade to join them for dinner the following evening, you know he wishes he had the chutzpah to raid the fridge after his wife has gone to bed.

Those closest to us are often the ones responsible for much of our pain – aren’t most murders committed by loved ones? – and two stories in the next section highlight the dark undercurrents that course through our most intimate relationships. In “Tears of Laughter ” (Nadine Ribault), a Sunday lunch reveals complicated alliances and hidden resentments of an extended family. In “Brasserie” (Marie Rouanet), a woman settles in to enjoy a solitary meal, with a glass of wine and good book, only to be distracted by a family with a horribly abusive patriarch.

The Libations section centers on fantastical tales, tales like “The Legend of Bread” (Michel Tournier), an origin myth for those wonderfully crusty-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside baguettes and pains aux chocolats; or “Oysters” (Fabrice Pataut) told from the point of view of – wait for it – an oyster! Perhaps most charming story in this section, “Eating” (Cyrille Fleishman), imagines a Yiddish poet who manages to pack his readings to the rafters (a standing-room only poetry reading? – fantasy, indeed!). Of course, most poets aren’t handing out delectable pastrami sandwiches .

No meal is truly complete without dessert, and like a warm moelleux au chocolat or a silken crème brûlée, “Come and Get It” (Tiffany Tavernier), a steamy account of a couple’s last meal together, satisfies just as naughtily. “Porcupine Stew” (Calixthe Beyala) is more refreshing fare –ginger-lime sorbet perhaps – that delights as it piques the palate for the novel its excerpted from, How To Cook Your Husband The African Way, detailing the sexually charged tension between a woman in love and her lover’s lonely mother.

The collection runs the stylistic gamut, from realism to fantastical, and most stories would be better described as vignettes than fully developed short stories, the kind of book that weathers being picked up (on a train, say) and put down again (because there’s no shortage of fascinating things to do in, say, Paris) only to be picked up again (one lazy Sunday afternoon at a café nursing an espresso) some time later. Whereabouts Press is a house devoted to published literary travel companions, and I couldn’t agree more with their claim that, “Good stories reveal as much, or more, about a locale as any map or guidebook.” As for this book, I can’t think of better companion for trip to France, armchair or otherwise.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 1 readers
PUBLISHER: Whereabouts Press (June 28, 2011)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Q& A with William Rodarmor on FaceBook
EXTRAS: Sample
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> THE TAO OF TRAVEL by Paul Theroux /2011/the-tao-of-travel-by-paul-theroux/ /2011/the-tao-of-travel-by-paul-theroux/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:56:49 +0000 /?p=20068 Book Quote:

“As a child, yearning to leave home and go far away, the image in my mind was of flight–my little self hurrying off alone. The word ‘travel’ did not occur to me, nor did the word ‘transformation,’ which was my unspoken but enduring wish. I wanted to find a new self in a distant place, and new things to care about. The importance of elsewhere was something I took on faith.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns  AUG 12, 2011)

How many travelers has Paul Theroux influenced, I wonder? If poets and composers and artists are prodded, pushed and inspired by predecessors and peers, why not travelers?

Many years ago, after reading The Happy Isles of Oceania, Mr. Theroux’s 1992 book about his exploits paddling around the South Seas in a kayak, I was infected with the Theroux travel bug. (I don’t know what else to call it.) My first adult foray abroad, after reading it, found me in Chilean Patagonia and there, surrounded by fellow travelers with rambling resumes of adventure as long as your arm, I realized that there are people who travel in a serious way in this world. Really seriously, with concentrated intent, focus and devotion. I subsequently devoured Theroux’s travel oeuvre, got my passport renewed, and set out for parts unknown. And then it happened. Fast forward. One night, while on a boat in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the Seychelles, I became seriously homesick. It was, I realized, the night of my daughter’s homecoming dance and my heart was breaking for home. Only then, I understood, that not everyone can be Paul Theroux. Because one likes to travel, one is no more a traveler á la Theroux, then a day hiker is Sir Edmond Hillary.

Like so much of Theroux’s work, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road, is deceivingly fun. That is to say, his writing is entertaining, his insights profound without being laborious and his style simple and breezy. But make no mistake, Mr. Theroux takes his travel and his travel writing, seriously.

The Tao of Travel is not a travel book, per se. It is a compendium of travel quotes, observations and insights accumulated by Mr. Theroux and collected into categories, framed by his editing and commentary. Here, for example, in a chapter called, “Travel as an Ordeal,” we find William Burroughs commenting, “The Upper Amazon jungle has fewer disagreeable features than the Mid-West stateside woods in summer.” Or in the chapter called “Travel Feats,” Mr. Theroux relates to story of Göran Kropp (1966-2002) who “biked seven thousand miles from Stock-holm to Nepal (via Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan) and then climbed Everest….Afterward Kropp biked back to Sweden, being assaulted on the way by xenophobes and stone-throwing people.” Other chapters include, “It is Solved by Walking,” “Traveler’s Bliss,” and “Perverse Pleasures of the Inhospitable.” There are twenty-seven chapters total and every one is a gem.

Mr. Theroux writes in the Preface, that the book is “intended as a guidebook, a how-to, a miscellany, a vade mecum, a reading list, a reminiscence. And because the notion of travel is often a metaphor for living a life, many travelers, expressing a simple notion of a trip, have written something accidentally philosophical, even metaphysical.” The writing might occasionally rise to the metaphysical, but The Tao of Travel, the very physical book, is a tangible marvel. The cover is soft pearled leather, with faux gold-leaf inlay. And, upon opening the book, one discovers in the leaf a replication of the 1626 “NEW AND ACCURAT [sic] MAP OF THE WORLD.” To finish the package off is an elastic, Moleskine-like, book clasp. The book is not only a delight to read, it is a pleasure to hold. As a gift, particularly for the young traveler, The Tao of Travel will provide a lifetime of pleasure. It belongs on the shelf of every reader interested in the world beyond his or her study, which is to say, everyone.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 37 readers
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (May 19, 2011)
REVIEWER: Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Paul Theroux
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> /2011/the-tao-of-travel-by-paul-theroux/feed/ 1 ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF by David Lipsky /2011/although-of-course-you-end-up-becoming-yourself-by-david-lipsky/ Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:13:29 +0000 /?p=19271 Book Quote:

“What I mean is that a lot of stuff that I thought were weaknesses of mine turned out to be strengths. And one of them is that I am not, I’m not a particularly exceptional person. I think I’m a really good reader, and I’ve got a good ear. And I’m willing to work really really hard. But I’m more or less a regular person. – David Foster Wallace”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns (JUL 20, 2011)

There is that question we asked one another in college: Who in history, if you could meet and talk to whomever you wished, would you select? Depending on orientation and background the answers are all over the place: Jesus is a regular; Buddha, and other spiritual luminaries frequently show up. Second tier options, Nietzsche, Thoreau (personal favorite), St. Francis. No surprises there. Aside from a small collection of history’s heavyweights, answers are typically–and sophomorically–idiosyncratic. (More recently, at a dinner party that included a bunch young adults, one answer was, oddly, Jeff Buckley.) I wouldn’t easily toss aside posterity’s world-making worthies, but if I were so inclined, I’d turn to the great creative artists. Shakespeare certainly would be a contender. Homer too. Rimbaud would be fun over a couple of beers. Joyce was a good singer, I understand. I’m sure he’d light up a room. Reading Lipsky’s book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, reads like a contemporary answer to the “who would you choose” hypothesis. Wallace is gone now, but what if you could just spend a few days with him, even a few hours? What was the man like, really? By his work, he will be remembered. But what of the man?

In March 1996 David Lipsky was assigned to interview David Foster Wallace by Rolling Stone Magazine. Wallace was coming off a book tour, promoting his ground-breaking–and best-selling– tome, Infinite Jest. Wallace, uncharacteristically, agrees to the interview. It will span several days, with Lipsky riding along with Wallace to book readings, NPR interviews, coffee-shop breaks, pit-stops and dog walks. Lipsky writes of Wallace in the introduction, “David had a caffeine social gift: He was charmingly, vividly, overwhelmingly awake–he acted on other people like a slug of coffee–so they’re the five most sleepless days I ever spent with anyone.” The book reads accordingly. Wallace is a brilliant raconteur, breathlessly intelligent, informed, thoughtful and entertaining in that way we once thought we’d be, after we got out of college.

The premise is simple: Ride around with Wallace for five days, tape recorder running and ask him questions. This is the raw stuff of Lipsky’s journalism, though it a properly massaged transcription. For example, on smoking pot: “I stopped smoking pot–I think I stopped smoking pot right about the time I got out of grad school. You know, it wasn’t any kind of big decision. I just, it wasn’t shutting the system down anymore. It was just making the system, it was just making the system more unpleasant to be part of. My own system.” On watching T.V.: “I also, there’s the–like the thing that’s killed it recently for me, is the channel-surfing thing. Is because, I always have this terrible fear that there’s something even better on, somewhere else. And so I will spend all this time kind of skating up and down the channel system. And not be able to get all that immersed in any one thing.” The book is raw in that stream-of-consciousness way.

The project was shelved and Lipsky never wrote the article. Now, fast-forward a dozen years to the height of the David Foster Wallace posthumous creative industrial complex and someone thinks: Hey, what about those Lipsky’s tapes with Wallace? Surely there is a buck or two to be made there! That is the cynical dark-side opinion one might suspiciously hold of this endeavor. That is, here lies yet another exploitive American money-making scheme, cashing out on a brilliant dead writer’s extemporaneous ramblings. But there are two sides to this coin. The good news, setting aside this reader’s apprehension to slink through the graveyard, is that the rambling is brilliant, insightful, funny and, most of all, human. Magnificently human, that is, if one might be capable of being human on the scale of the magnificent. And as if the writer’s works themselves where not sufficient evidence, we now have Lipsky’s record. Let there be little doubt, David Foster Wallace had the capacity to be magnificently human. That is, I think, at the core of what draws so many legions of readers. His brilliance was tempered through the filter of his humanity. Here in Lipsky’s ride-along, we enjoy the genius–and the man.

For example, here Wallace, sipping on a Diet Pepsi, lays out his simple belief on art: “I have this–here’s this thing where it’s going to sound sappy to you. I have this unbelievably like a five-year-old’s belief that art is just absolutely magic….And that good art can do things that nothing else in the solar system can do. And that the good stuff will survive, and get read, and that in the great winnowing process, the shit will sink and the good stuff will rise.”

Or cultural survival: “At some point, at some point I think, this generation’s gonna reach a level of pain, or a level of exhaustion with the standard, you know….There’s the drug therapy, there’s the sex therapy, there’s the success therapy. You know, if I could just achieve X by age X, then something magically…Y’know? That we’re gonna find out, as all generations do, that it’s not like that.”

There is a terribly sad and poignant scene Lipsky shares in the afterword. Wallace’s condition has deteriorated. His depression medication has lost its punch and he is reeling. He calls his parents and they come to visit. The story, as a family member shared it with Lipsky, is that “one afternoon before they left, David was very upset. His mother sat on the floor beside him. ‘I just rubbed his arm. He said he was glad I was his mom. I told him it was an honor.’” It sounds blithely naive, but reading this book gave me a feeling of being honored as well, a sense that the man had carved out a bit of time for me. By the end of the book my cynicism had evaporated and I was grateful for this record and the insights it contains.

On a practical note, Becoming Yourself is a good David Foster Wallace reader companion. The copy I read was loaned to me by a friend who has never read his fiction, though she aspires to. Her copy was underlined and dog-eared. It will serve her well once she dives into the works. She will have a foundation of understanding the currents that carry his narrative. Conversely, I’ve read his fiction and coming to the book after that experience, I found it illuminating. It underscored what I found in the readings and nicely dove-tailed into the universes he had so carefully constructed. For the stand-alone experience, that is, the reader who has not read Wallace and has no intention of doing so, the book provides a worthwhile and insightful peek into the world of a modern creative genius.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 45 readers
PUBLISHER: Broadway; 1 edition (April 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on David Lipsky
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> THE SLY COMPANY OF PEOPLE WHO CARE by Rahul Bhattacharya /2011/the-sly-company-of-people-who-care-by-rahul-bhattacharya/ Sun, 22 May 2011 14:50:01 +0000 /?p=18142 Book Quote:

“Bai, in Guyana it have pandit and it have bandit and sometimes it hard to tell the two apart.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (MAY 22, 2011)

First, a quick background about Indian (specifically Bengali) cinema: The great Indian filmmaker, Satyajit Ray, was from the state of West Bengal and is one of Bengal’s most revered sons and cultural icons. It stands to reason that years after Ray’s death, the incredibly talented Rahul Bhattacharya (a fellow Bengali) would use Ray’s famous bildungsroman, Pather Panchali, as the inspiration for his debut novel.

At its most basic essence, Bhattacharya’s The Sly Company of People Who Care is also a bildungsroman—it traces the growth and coming of age of its protagonist in a country far away from home, Guyana. The protagonist in the novel seems to be modeled after Bhattacharya himself. Like Bhattacharya, the protagonist is a cricket reporter who decides to take an extended yearlong vacation in Guyana. Gooroo, as the protagonist is referred to by others, has “a one year visa—to reinvent one’s living, to escape the deadness of the life one was accustomed to…to be hungry for the world one saw.”

While in Guyana, the protagonist travels to many places and tries his hand at many jobs. One of these exotic jobs is that of a porknocker, prospecting for diamonds with a local bandit called Baby. Gooroo soon tires of this and moves on. He watches Pather Panchali at a local cultural center and remembers what one of the characters in the movie says: “If you stay too long in a place, you become petty. It has happened to me.”

Towards the end of the book, the protagonist is mesmerized by a woman he meets, Jan (short for the Indian Jankee). He is so taken by her that he invites her to travel with him to destinations unknown—they eventually end up in Venezuela. This portion of the book, the interaction between Gooroo and Jan, is easily one of the most nuanced descriptions of a romantic relationship I have read in a long time. The slow tempo with which the relationship rises and eventually falls is just superb and in a sense, mirrors the languid surroundings that always haunt the book.

Gooroo eventually knows he has to stop wandering and find some ballast to his life: “One escapes one’s life seeking adventure, and with enough dheel and some luck, that happens. But the thread is anchored. You can only go so far. The impulse must change. Instead of adventure one seeks understanding,” Bhattacharya writes.

The author incorporates a lot of Guyanese history into the novel and this serves to explain just how and why such an ethnically diverse set of people are described within the pages of Sly. Guyana was once a Dutch colony and waves of indentured laborers, including Africans, Indians and even Chinese, helped settle this South American country. The title for the novel comes from a book Gooroo spots at a small local library. It was a book about the Dutch West India Company and someone had written a single word on one page, possibly in an attempt to describe the colonial power: Sly. In the margin, a sentence had been started: “They think like they care.”

If there’s a problem with this novel, it is that Bhattacharya’s spectator view of Guyana is too rosy, too often—a tourist’s adoring gaze, if you will. The book is also less of a novel and more of a travelogue, even if the overall arc of the story—that of the protagonist rediscovering himself—becomes clearer at the end.

Yet these are extremely minor drawbacks in a debut fiction work that will be long remembered for its voice and for its superb sense of place. Bhattacharya has said that voice is one of the most important elements in fiction and that he devoted a lot of care in making sure that the voice in Sly really came to life. This attention has paid off beautifully in his debut novel. Sly teems with rich voices everywhere and they together create a beautiful tapestry.

The country of Guyana comes alive in these pages (“Our days passed slow and voluptuous”). It wouldn’t be too much of an overstatement to say that you can almost feel the humid air and the mosquitoes swarming around, when you read this book. Between the voice and the passages describing the gorgeous countryside, the reader is completely transported. And isn’t that after all, the central thesis of fiction?

To think that the immensely talented Bhattacharya is only 31! Still plenty of time for the New Yorker to sit up and pay attention. It wouldn’t be too much of a wild call to predict that this immensely talented author will soon make the magazine’s prestigious “20 Under 40” list.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 6 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 26, 2011)
REVIEWER: Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Guardian article on Rahul Bhattacharya
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More fiction about travel:

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut

Away by Amy Bloom

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Nonfiction:

]]> IN A STRANGE ROOM by Damon Galgut /2011/in-a-strange-room-by-damon-galgut/ Sat, 01 Jan 2011 14:26:38 +0000 /?p=14854 Book Quote:

“He watches, but what he sees isn’t real to him. Too much traveling and placelessness have put him outside everything, so that history happens elsewhere, it has nothing to do with him. He is only passing through. Maybe horror is felt more easily from home. This is both a redemption and an affliction, he doesn’t carry any abstract moral burdens, but their absence is represented for him by the succession of flyblown and featureless rooms he sleeps in, night after night, always changing but somehow always the same room.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (JAN 1, 2011)

I’d heard a lot of buzz about In a Strange Room, one of the titles shortlisted for the 2010 Booker prize, but since I tend to react negatively to waves of publicity, as the uniform praise for this book climbed, my interest plummeted. I almost didn’t review South African author Damon Galgut’s book In a Strange Room, but I changed my mind, and as it turns out In a Strange Room is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

In a Strange Room isn’t an easy book to review. It’s divided into three distinct sections, and it’s possible, I think, to write the review in several different ways. After chewing over the plot now for several weeks, I’d argue that in this extraordinary novel, Galgut uses travel as a way of exploring two heavily nuanced relationships, and at the same time, parallels are drawn between journeys taken and relationships endured.

In the first section, The Follower, Damon, a solitary South African traveler treks across Greece. On his travels, he runs into a German named Reiner; the two hikers share a few words, and then later that night, the South African spends the night in a hostel. Reiner is already lodged in Damon’s room–waiting as it turns out for Damon to show up. Here’s Reiner’s lame excuse about taking up residence in Damon’s room, and Damon’s uncomfortable response:

“I missed the train tonight. There is another one in the morning. I decided to wait until then. I asked him to put me in your room.

I see that.

You don’t mind.

I’m just surprised. I wasn’t expecting, no, I don’t mind.

He doesn’t mind, but he is also uneasy. He knows that the other man has delayed his journey not because of the train but because of him, because of the conversation they had in the road.”

The tension between the two men is palatable. Damon’s vulnerability is accentuated by his uncertainty and the German’s easy confidence. It’s not clear what Reiner wants from Damon, or is Damon’s unease a projection of his unexpressed desire?

In The Follower, Reiner takes a casual relationship–meeting by chance on the road and then maneuvers it into an acquaintance. In the second part of the book, The Lover, Damon writes a letter to Reiner which includes a semi-wishful suggestion of a joint trek. Reiner takes him seriously and shows up in Damon’s South African home. The first signs of trouble appear when Reiner begins training for the marathon walk, and then the two men embark on a shared journey.

In the third and final section of the book, The Guardian, Damon finds himself on yet another journey. This journey is both literal (India) and figurative–the hardest journey of all for Damon, for this journey tests the boundaries of his moral actions.

Borders indicate social and political boundaries and are significant, unavoidable aspects of travel. Border crossings navigated by passports and visas introduce different laws and new rules. Foreign countries hint of the unknown: the exotic and even possible danger, and there’s the implicit idea that the traveler may be exempt, by virtue of his lack of involvement, from a country’s internal troubles, and yet at the same time a traveler may be vulnerable due to his unfamiliarity with local customs and politics. Using these ideas, the novel draws subtle similarities between the intricacies of travel and relationships, and the two elements converge through its characters. Galgut explores the boundaries that are significant, invisible markers in relationships. The distance between the individual and the  “other”must be negotiated in any relationship. Privacy and power–these things shift when the solitary man joins another. The traveler here, Damon, finds himself in three situations, and three relationships in which the boundaries are tested and then violated in certain ways.

In a Strange Room is an intense, brilliant and sparsely written book. Emotion is largely withheld until the novel’s final section, The Guardian. The author recruits the reader into the sensation of distancing–emotional and logistical in turn–the shifting of boundaries between reader, writer and character, by occasionally moving from third person narrator to first person.

The novel’s title, In a Strange Room gives the sense of confinement in close quarters, but there’s also a vague sense of menace in the unknown. For a large section of the novel, Damon appears to be more comfortable traveling, and yet somehow that sensation wears thin as the book continues. Is Damon’s restlessness and desire for travel a manifestation of his need to avoid relationships? Throughout the novel, the confinement of relationships is compared to the apparent freedom of travel, and yet as it turns out travel brings its own problems. As Damon notes at one point, “travel is a way of dissipating yourself,” a way of introducing structure and plans into a life which is spent largely in avoidance and disconnectedness.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 6 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (October 13, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Damon Galgut
EXTRAS: Excerpt

Europa Editions page on In A Strange Room
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of the 2010 Man Booker Winner:

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

And the shortlist:

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Room by Emma Donoghue

C by Tom McCarthy

Bibliography:

]]> TRAVELS IN SIBERIA by Ian Frazier /2010/travels-i-siberia-by-ian-frazier/ Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:31 +0000 /?p=13533 Book Quote:

“For most people, Siberia is not the place itself but a figure of speech. In fashionable restaurants in New York and Los Angeles, Siberia is the section of less-desirable tables given to customers whom the maitre d’ does not especially like.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (NOV 10, 2010)

Hints of travel writer Ian Frazier’s latest project showed up in a recent issue of the New Yorker magazine, when an excerpt from Travels in Siberia was published. Having evocatively captured the spirit of a Native American reservation and the American Great Plains in earlier work, Frazier set his sights on a much grander level—he decided to travel across Siberia. A self-confessed lover of all things Russian, Frazier travels across Siberia despite warnings to the contrary.

The writing that makes up Frazier’s new book, Travels in Siberia, is based not just on one trip but many. He details paying preliminary visits to figure out a plan and later after an exhausting road trip that interestingly enough, ends on Sept. 11, 2001, he returns to revisit more historically significant places.

The reader can tell that Frazier has done exhaustive research and knows a lot about the place. The book is packed with historical facts including those about the Decembrists and later, about Stalin’s gulag. Frazier’s descriptions of the gulag along the Topolinskaya highway are extremely unsettling because they are pitch perfect.

Despite the pith that many historical facts add to the volume as a whole, sometimes these additions feel like overkill—it’s almost as if Frazier is trying to cram a little too much information into the pages. There are also entire sections devoted to the beauty of Siberian women, the writings of Russian authors, the fierce mosquitoes in the Siberian swamp, and more. After a while it feels like the book could have used some more editing.

At the same time, Travels in Siberia is full of funny and unusual situations. His companions on the first road trip across, Sergei and Volodya, set up an unreliable van for the journey, which breaks down at the most inconvenient times. Frazier’s details about waiting hours on end for a train connection at the Chernyshevsk station, is priceless. So too are the descriptions of the city of Veliki Ustyug and the steppe of Novosibirsk. Frazier’s beautiful ink drawings complement his narrative well. The sparse drawings effectively emphasize the starkness of the Siberian landscape.

The most hilarious episode in the book is a steam bath (banya) that Frazier is subjected to. His companions first “loosen” Frazier up by striking him with cut birch branches. Then big handfuls of raw honey (complete with bee legs and pieces in it) are applied. “I sat, honeyed and steaming for some time,” Frazier recalls about the banya. Sergei and Volodya then make him dive into a pool of ice-cold water. Frazier remembers seeing a slick of honey on the surface.

Not all is fun and lightness though. For instance, there’s plenty of environmental degradation around, a case made especially strongly in the city of Achinsk—where a lot of cement is made. “The thick, dusty air of Achinsk coats grass blades to death and desertifies everything in a wide radius around the city,” Frazier writes.

At one point in the trip, Frazier meets a university professor of mathematics who promises that Frazier’s journey is only going to get worse as it progresses. “Conditions will get even more stochastic than you have encountered so far,” the professor forecasts. And they do. There is plenty of excitement everywhere including in the diet—Frazier and his companions consume plenty of tvorog (cottage cheese) drenched with smetana (sour cream).

However the excitement is tempered by more-of-the-same in this travelogue. During his first pass across Siberia, especially since Sergei is not particularly interested in revisiting history or checking out the cities, every day and night seem to pass like the one previous. The trio comes across yet another town, settles down on the outskirts to camp and moves on.

So sprinkled among the humorous accounts and storytelling is plenty of monotony as well. This could be attributed to the landscape too. In a recent interview, Frazier pointed out what an old writer once said: “Monotony is the divinity of Russia.” In other words, all that endless solitude in wide-open land leads to its own kind of spirituality. Point taken.

As Frazier’s new work points out, Siberia is a land of endless surprises. There can be monotonous more-of-the-same for mile after mile and yet suddenly you can have a herd of cows attack your tent and supplies (this actually happens). Siberia has plenty of “stochastic” variables to be worked around. That might explain why it has an organization called the Ministry of Extraordinary Situations.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 18 readers
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 12, 2010)
REVIEWER: Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Ian Frazier
EXTRAS: Excerpt

The New Yorker page on Ian Frazier’s writing
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Some fiction set in Siberia:

Sashenka by Simon Montefiore

Petropolis by Anya Ulinich

Far North by Marcel Theroux

Bibliography:

]]> ZEN AND NOW by Mark Richardson /2010/zen-and-now-by-mark-richardson/ Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:47:08 +0000 /?p=10209 Book Quote:

“It’s the same thing in life, says Pirsig. Take the time to decide what you want; then take the extra time to make it happen according to your own terms. Slow down. Always remember that the real motorcycle that you’re actually working on is the cycle called Yourself.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns (JUN 19, 2010)

Equal parts road trip, biography, philosophy and travelogue, Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an entertaining, educational and illuminating look at an American literary phenomenon and its creator.

In 1974 Robert Pirsig published Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book was Pirsig’s attempt to articulate his “philosophy of Quality.” He posited that the inherent tension of modern life was a result of conflict created between different ways of looking at the world. There is the romantic approach, that is the “being in the moment” approach; and there is the classic approach, that of rational analysis. Pirsig’s narrator, fashioned after the author, suggests that in classic philosophy a division was made between these two ways of looking at the world. In antiquity, it was necessary, but for moderns it causes frustration and tension. He builds a philosophy around the pursuit of “Quality” to address this using a cross country motorcycle trip with his son and friends as framework. It is not necessary to be familiar with Zen and the Art to appreciate Richardson’s book. It is highly entertaining in it’s own right. But certainly it would be lacking if the reader has no inkling of the references.

Of equal import is a passing familiarity with Pirsig the man. Pirsig and his 170 I.Q. permeate both books like a heavy fog. He was a troubled yet brilliant man and eventually was institutionalized and subjected, forcibly, to electroshock treatment. The treatment erased a personality Pirsig dubbed Phaedrus, after a character in a Plato dialogue. Zen and the Art is also Pirsig’s attempt to come to grips with the shadow soul Phaedrus. Phaedrus comes and goes in Pirsig’s book, but is always lurking. Sadly, it was Phaedrus to whom Pirsig’s youngest son Chris clung as father, not Robert. As a result, Chris, who rode with his father throughout the trip captured in Zen and the Art, struggles with the loss of a father he loved, while wrestling with his own tenuous grasp on reality. Tragically, Chris was murdered outside the San Francisco Zen center two years later.

This is the world Richardson sets out, on the cusp of his 42nd birthday, to trace. Richardson is not a philosopher or academic. He is a journalist, specifically he writes about cars and motorcycles for The Toronto Star. Nor is his idea–to follow Pirsig’s route on a motorcycle–all that unique. We learn in Zen and Now of a generation of “Pirsig’s pilgrims” seeking enlightenment, or something akin it, on their cycles with the open road before them. Richardson is everyman to Pirsig’s singularity. He seems affable and accessible while Pirsig is distant and sullen. In common they share a love of the open road on a motorcycle and a modern, suburban angst. Both books continue a long tradition of truth seeking on the long stretch of highway.

Feeling lonesome–Richardson has two young boys and wife–and dreading the route through the mountains, Richardson wonders, “Why am I doing this, again? Not so sure now. To discover something? To relate more directly to the book that inspired me? To see some of the sights that Pirsig so eloquently described in his spare narrative? To get away from the wife and kids?” His questions are rhetorical, but hint at his reservations, nonetheless. He does not come across as a hard-core “seeker,” a true Pirsig pilgrim. That is refreshing, frankly. Again, his approach to the project stands in stark juxtaposition to Pirsig’s hellbent determination. A hundred pages or so later, Richardson comes back to the question. “I’ve just wanted the opportunity for so long now to devote time and effort to something without the phone ringing or rushing to get the boys to soccer practice. To do something for the pleasure of it without having to justify it first to my equally stressed-out wife. To sit and think….” Haven’t we all checked this box on occasion?

So sit and think he does. Though less thinking, it seems, than sitting. Outfitted on a 1985 Suzuki DR600, complete with GPS device (programed with Pirsig road-side highlights) and “Butt Buffer” gel seat pad upon with to do his sitting, Richardson sets out along Pirsig’s route from Minnesota to San Francisco, where he plans to celebrate his 42nd birthday. Richardson is a gear guy. He likes talking about bikes, about tires and breaks and clutches. And he seems a born curious traveler, which is the perfect companion for the armchair traveler. (I was reminded on more than one occasion of Paul Theroux, and his wonderful idiosyncratic travel books.) Along the way he stops at Pirsig stops, meets locals, as well as a few remaining original Pirsig characters. When he fills his gas tank, he goes to pains to try to find the same station Pirsig used. It’s fun to follow along. Richardson is affable and engaging, the physical ground he is covering is beautiful and dramatic, and the personal ground–middle-aged guy on a motorcycle roadtrip–is enlightening and thought provoking. Woven throughout is a pedestrian look at Pirsig’s philosophy. “A big part of the message of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance can be boiled down to a truism: if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Pirsig would spend hours considering a problem and its solution–how to fix a motorcycle, how to build a workbench drawer–and I so wish I had the time in my own life to devote to such satisfying pursuits. But I don’t.”

Don’t expect great insights here. Early on, Richardson tells us there are ample sources to turn to if you are feeling scholarly. Yet, his writing about Zen and the Art is refreshingly simple and accessible. We are fortunate that he found the time to carve out this adventure.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 14 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage (September 8, 2009)
REVIEWER: Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Mark Richardson
EXTRAS: Excerpt

Wikipedia page on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

How to Live, Or a Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell

Bibliography:

By Robert Pirsig:

]]> THE SELECTED WORKS OF T. S. SPIVET by Reif Larson /2009/the-selected-works-of-t-s-spivet-by-reif-larson/ Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:57:06 +0000 /?p=2581 Book Quote:

“I had learned that the representation was not the real thing, but in a way this dissonance was what made it so good: the distance between the map and the territory allowed us breathing room to figure out where we stood.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Poornima Apte (JUL 05, 2009)

Twelve-year-old Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet—T.S. for short—is as quirky as his name suggests. Extraordinarily gifted, his one way of making sense of the world around him, is to map it all out. So it is that Reif Larsen’s debut, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, has many of these maps and diagrams on the margins—a glimpse into the workings of a gifted mind. Worth mentioning are maps describing the locations of McDonalds in a Midwestern town, the many physical forces acting on a rodeo cowboy and the long list of random names picked by an IBM 1401 for the soda, Tab.

As the story opens, T.S. lives in a ranch house located just north of Divide, Montana with his farmer father and his scientist mother. The boy has a mentor in Dr. Terrence Yorn, a professor of entomology at Montana State, who encourages Spivet and even submits his work to the Smithsonian for a special award. Not knowing that all the insightful work has been produced by a 12-year-old, the Smithsonian grants Spivet the award and invites him to D.C. to deliver the attendant keynote lecture.

 

After much back and forth, Spivet decides he will bite and take the bait. He will travel to D.C. especially because lately, he believes he doesn’t really belong in small-town Montana. So T.S. travels hobo style, hitching rides on freight cars and somehow managing to make it all the way to the nation’s capital.

 

T.S. is a kid plagued by many worries. For someone who is used to mapping out the world in definite, objective terms, many things don’t make sense—his parents’ marriage, for example, is one that he can’t quite figure out. “These were two creatures cut from entirely different cloths…How could these two be drawn to each other?” Larsen writes. Even as Spivet articulates these questions, he desperately wants the marriage to be alive and well.

 

T.S. also worries about his mother, whom he refers to as Dr. Clair. He is afraid that in her blind search for the tiger monk beetle, she has let her career slip by. In other words she has become a “stenpock.” Spivet coins this word—fashioned after one of his school teachers—for “any adult who insists on staying within the confines of his or her job title and harbors no passion for the offbeat or the incredible.”

 

Finally there is the one that nags at him the most—T.S. Believes that he is somehow responsible for the accidental death of his brother, Layton, in a shooting accident on the ranch. The weight of all these comes out quite often as in here: “I wanted to hold her (his mother’s) hand and apologize for taking this book, for leaving without asking her permission, for not saving Layton, for not being a better brother, or ranch hand, or scientist’s assistant. For not being a better son.”

 

These worries slowly play themselves out during the course of the book as T.S. finds some answers in a diary he steals from his mother’s desk just as he leaves.

 

Once T.S. reaches D.C. the initial thrall is soon gone when he realizes he is sought after only as a publicity machine for the advancement of the Smithsonian’s cause. “You may be the ideal instrument to draw us plenty of attention and get people all jazzed up about the Smithy again,” an official there tells him. Spivet, as it turns out, has the perfect “trident : Grief. Youth. Science.”

 

Author Reif Larsen has created an engaging personality in T.S. and his debut effort is very commendable. The novel is not without its faults though. For one thing, the turning points in the story depend almost on only one action—the fact that T.S. brings his mother’s diary along for the ride. There are a couple more storyline pivots that seem too forced and therefore undercut the narrative. Then there’s the slight problem that the story itself is not that complex. That Spivet would have had to travel all the way to D.C. just to realize that all that glitters is not gold, seems a bit of a drag. Even the book’s novel concept (with its many sidebars and diagrams) seems to fade after a while. Because of the sidebars, the book is also physically wider than most hardcovers so it is a little physically unwieldy.

 

All in all though, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is a promising debut. There is no doubt that Reif Larsen is exceptionally talented—he is surely not a “stenpock.” With a touch more work on narrative, Larsen could come out with an even stronger read the next time around. And I’ll be there when he does.

 

The book’s major triumph is T.S. Spivet. Larsen gives his protagonist an endearing and original voice and portrays him with all his adolescent vulnerabilities. It is really hard not to fall in love with this bright and engaging companion. In the end, T.S. Spivet makes the long ride from Montana to Washington D.C. well worth the price of admission.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 31 readers
PUBLISHER: Penguin Press HC, The (May 5, 2009)
REVIEWER: Poornima Apte
AMAZON PAGE: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (fun site!)
EXTRAS: Excerpt     

Also, open above link for Amazon and scroll down for sample artwork.
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: This reminds me of:     

Wolf Boy by Evan Kuhlman

Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlman

Bibliography:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

]]> STAYCATION: BOOK IDEAS /2009/staycation-book-ideas/ /2009/staycation-book-ideas/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:28:34 +0000 /?p=2382 Stuck staying home this year?  Poornima tells us about some of  her ideas for “STAYCATION” books… share your ideas!


Blog Post by Poornima Apte 6-23-09


Last year, I visited the Taj Mahal with my family. This year we are planning something less glamorous – a few weekend trips but most of the summer is going to be a “staycation” for us.

I figured I’d need a few good books to “transport” me some place fun. I read a few really good ones recently and there are a couple of exciting ones in my book pile that I thought I’d share

Coming into the Country is by one of my favorite non-fiction authors, John McPhee. It is one of the best books about Alaska I have read. McPhee describes not just the gorgeous setting but also details the lives of the people who have moved to this last frontier and made the state their own. The first edition was written in the late ‘70s (long before Gov. Sarah Palin became a household name) but it reads fresh and relevant today. McPhee peppers the narrative with interesting characters, lively anecdotes and beautiful descriptions. The book is one wild adventure—as close to the real thing as the written word can allow.

A few weeks ago I heard Mark Kurlansky on NPR and talk focused on his new book The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food–Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation’s Food Was Seasonal, writings from the Depression era about American food traditions. As intensely fascinating as it sounded, I decided to skip this one and try instead a slightly older book  America Eats!: On the Road with the WPA – the Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define. What author Pat Willard has done here, is reproduced writing from the WPA project where out-of-work writers during the Depression Era were commissioned to write about local foods and then compared these to how things are today. I loved the contrasts between current and old traditions and it is heartening to note that in an era of McDonald’s and Chilis and Taco Bells, food is still being made with a sense of community as before. Yes, traditions are still waning but not all is lost. I was especially delighted when I saw  this article in the New York Times recently, which reminded me what a great read America Eats! was. There is one amazingly telling picture of a feast in the Carolinas: a long table and a wall separating the whites from the “coloreds.” The  paperback version of America Eats! releases in early July. It’s worth picking up. The book is a dash of history seasoned with good food. You’ll love the ride!

Smitten with the travel bug, I decided to take a look at
Route 66: A Photographic Essay by Susan Croce Kelly and Quinta Scott. We traveled along Route 66 many years ago and I am definitely looking forward to visiting again. The book is full of fascinating images and some great peeks into history. I can’t wait to really get into it.

Finally, I am currently on a wild ride all the way from Divide, Montana to Washington D.C. I have the 12 year-old genius,  The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet with me for company. I am really enjoying his quirky personality and the story. Stay tuned for my review.

These great reads truly fulfill one of books’ many functions—they transport you. If you have any good ideas for staycation reads (or even ones to take to the beach), why not share it in the comments section? Happy reading! Have a great summer!

Poornima

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