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Books to read.
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Vietnam, Fall 2023 ~ Read
Ahead of our trip to Vietnam I wanted to read stories beyond the Vietnam War. Because I know so little about the region, and Vietnam specifically, I ended up reading three books, and was very happy with every one of my choices. To start in historically chronological order, I picked Bronze Drum: A Novel of Sisters and War by Phong Nguyen. Taking place in medieval Viet Nam, the book is very patriotic yet romantic, dark, yet informative. I loved getting a sense of ancient traditions and customs, and understanding Viet Nam’s millennia old bad blood with China. My next choice was actually set during the Vietnam War, but it was…
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Cambodia, Fall 2023 ~ Read
The Foreigner’s Confession by Lya Badgley was a perfect book to read ahead of our trip to Cambodia. I also suggested it to my book club, and we had the pleasure of meeting the book’s author via Zoom for a discussion, since she lives in WA as well, and is a friend of a coworker of mine. It was a treat, through and through! The book is focused on healing story of an American expat living in Phnom Penh and volunteering for an amputee organization. She encounters a variety of other expats as well as Cambodians. While the storyline is mostly focused on the protagonist’s experience in Phnom Penh, the…
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Portugal, Summer 2023 ~ Read
I am still in search of a great book set in Portugal. For now, I am substituting Journey to Portugal by Jose Saramago as a stand-in. It is a personal travelogue written by a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature that goes into a significant level of detail about every last little village and bend in a road and gurgling creek under a country bridge across the country. Saramago incorporates historical background, entertaining personal anecdotes, sometimes strange, sometimes enlightening encounters with locals, as he explores Portugal from north to south. I admit, I didn’t have the time or patience for this level of detail for every Portuguese hamlet, so…
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Mexico City, Winter 2023 ~ Read
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver is the perfect book to read ahead of a visit to CDMX, especially if one is a fan of Frida Kahlo. The book describes Frida’s and Diego Riviera’s house in Coyoacan neighborhood in great detail. Many other sites throughout Mexico City show up in the story as well, such as Riviera’s famous murals in the municipal and state buildings, and a unique outdoor floating garden Xochimilco, where Frida flirts with Trotsky among colorful boats and food vendors. On my short trip to CDMX I was only able to visit Frida’s museum, but it was perfect. Both the indoor spaces and the ambiance of the neighborhood…
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Nice, Spring 2022 ~ Read
Book review to come.
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Ireland, Spring 2022 ~ Read
What a journey of a book! The story of womanhood and motherhood that carries across two centuries and two life stories of female poets in Ireland. It is raw and obsessive, literary and personal, and most of all is an intimate look at a much celebrated and much misunderstood event in Gaelic literature, the 18th-century Irish poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, written by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, a woman mourning her husband and raging at his murder. A Ghost in the Throat examines the author’s first-person visceral experience of this work, the process of the poem’s new translation, and many vivid pictures of life in Ireland both now and then.…
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Dublin, Spring 2022 ~ Read
I mean, could this blog even be considered legitimate if I traveled to Dublin and did not read James Joyce for my prep? While I didn’t have spare time to conquer Ulysses (but probably will try now that I have visited Dublin), the fifteen short stories in this book present a fascinating cast of characters from a hundred years ago who the reader-traveler would get to consider against the backdrop of this moody city. Many of the stories provide wonderful environmental settings throughout Dublin, street names and buildings are named explicitly, and as one visits some of the historical landmarks like the port, cathedrals, River Liffey embankments, the characters’ faces…
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Venice, Summer 2021 ~ Read
It started, as always, with a book read ahead of travel. It ended with a fascinating experience, involving a real Cinderella’s glass slipper and a glimpse into the life of one of Venice’s and the world’s most celebrated glass artists of the 20th century. John Berendt’s City of Falling Angels is a non-fiction account of the author’s investigation of the infamous 1996 fire of La Fenice, Venice’s storied opera house. Berendt happened to be on the ground, or, rather, on the water, in Venice in the immediate aftermath of the fire, and his book is an amazing portrait of the city, its politics, inhabitants, benefactors and detractors. The book reads…
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Galveston, Summer 2021 ~ Read
Galveston’s name immediately evokes memories of several news-making Gulf Coast hurricanes and tropical storms, most recently Hurricane Harvey that dumped over 50 inches of rain on the Houston area in 2017, flooding over 300,000 structures, turning highways into rivers and causing over $120 billion worth of damage. What is it like to be on the front line of the coastal community, facing the landfall of the storm? How does it shape your everyday life, both in terms of physical attributes and mental attitude, especially when you know that these weather onslaughts have been a part of your reality since the beginning of times, and will continue and increase due to…
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SE Utah, Spring 2021 ~ Read
Edward Abbey’s non-fiction book describes his thoughts and experiences while serving as a park ranger at Arches National Park for two summers in the early 60s. Abbey’s book was viewed as both a revolutionary, angry, mocking account of car-bound civilization and industry, and a loving, poetic, personal record of a man’s conversation with the desert. I read the book while traveling through Moab, Arches, Monument Valley and Canyonlands. Some of the book’s chapters matched quite well with our itinerary, which brought Abbey’s work even closer to my heart and mind. I got a better understanding and appreciation of this land’s geology and uniqueness, and reflected quite a bit on human…
