monday june 02
Categories
Travel
,
I recently snagged Jim Malusa's travel and adventure book, Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents, published by Sierra Club Books. I found it to be an entertaining and quite amusing ride.
Malusa, a biologist and native of Tucson, Arizona, conceived of the idea of biking to the lowest places below sea level on each continent—he refers to these as "antisummits”—after he and his wife, Sonya, rode their bicycles through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, crossing over a 12, 400 foot high mountain pass to get to the Turpan Depression in the Takla Makan desert. It's the lowest point in western China, some 500 feet bellow sea level.
They are obviously a couple who enjoy cycling and have a taste for adventure.
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wednesday april 16
Categories
Travel
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Maybe it is those colorful little lines that wind all around, or maybe it is because we don't have a rapid transit system here in Cincinnati. Whatever the reason, I have always been intrigued by maps of subway systems. They look so orderly and functional and efficient, so unlike the reality of transportation above ground.
But, once upon a time, long before I-75 entered our nightmares, a subway system was actually being built in our fair city. Ironically, whenever one travels south on I-75, the remnants of the subway tunnel can easily be seen, below Central Parkway. The work was done during the 1920's, but then the funds ran out, and personal automobiles became more affordable, and America became addicted to oil, and you know the rest. For a history of the project, see The Cincinnati Subway by Allen J. Singer.
For those of us who have traveled on the Metro in Washington DC or the Underground in London, subway systems in other cities hold a certain allure. Other map geeks like myself might want to take a look at Transit Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden, a colorful guide to underground systems from Tokyo to Cairo. For anyone who might be planning a trip, Google Transit is a handy website that offers maps and directions for public transportation throughout the US and abroad.
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wednesday january 30
Categories
Travel
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I’m partly through this new book and I just noticed that it has two front covers, two editors, two tables of contents, two introductions, and two sub-subtitles. On one side, it’s called The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic: The Arctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert. On the other side it’s called The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic: The Antarctic, edited by Francis Spufford.
Okay, so the publishers will be disappointed that I missed the clever upside-down, half-and-half presentation, but they should be pleased how much I’m enjoying the first inside half.
I started with the Antarctic, since as you may remember I’m a big fan of Beryl Bainbridge’s The Birthday Boys.
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thursday january 10
Categories
Travel
,
Anthony Bourdain has published a fantastic memoir of his travels in No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach (2007). It is mostly a book of photographs taken by his small crew who travels with him on the production of his Travel Channel series, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. Anthony comments on all the pictures and muses about how each location affected him.
On TV it looks like such a wonderful vacation, traveling around and eating as a way of life. These photos and the accompanying insights, however, reveal the bitter truth: They really are having a ball. Although the locations are not always plush, and they have to deal with some pretty hard things, these folks are true ambassadors for peace. They respectfully share food and lifestyle with real people in real places all over the world. I feel lucky to vicariously go along.
wednesday october 17
Categories
Travel
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I haven’t read Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia, about the voyage of self-discovery she undertook after her marriage fell apart. (I’m in line behind many of you!)
But seeing her name in reviews brings back fond memories of her 2000 debut novel, Stern Men, a memorable coming of age story set in the islands off the coast of Maine.
Its heroine is young Ruth Thomas, born and bred on Fort Niles, one of two neighboring islands that survive on the lobster industry. (The island’s other main industry is suspicion of outsiders, including those from the other island.) Ruth is the daughter of a lobsterman and an outsider.
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monday october 08
Categories
Travel
,
I don't know why, but as far back as I can remember I've had a passion for scuba diving. There's something about entering a completely different environment surrounded by a strangely organic and colorful world that is just mind-bending. In Stephen Harrigan's book
Water and Light: A Diver's Journey To a Coral Reef, he asks the question about his own passion for diving and where it originates
. In an attempt to answer this question, he sets out to spend several months diving off
Grand Turk Island. He explores the quiet, exquisite, and powerful beauty of coral reefs along dozens of sites around the island.
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friday september 14
Categories
Travel
,
I learned just a few years ago that you can't drive your car all the way from Alaska to the bottom of South America, and I found this unsettling in the same way I found it unsettling as a child to learn that Baja, California, is actually a part of Mexico.
The problem is the Darien Gap, an area of about 30,000 square acres of swampy, mountainous, and otherwise difficult geological features between Colombia and Panama, that has been breaking hearts and ruining lives for centuries, even before Colombian paramilitary groups got into the act. The Gap now refers to the uncompleted stretch of the Pan-American Highway. Centuries earlier, the Gap referred to a possible break in the mountains, sort of like the Cumberland Gap, that would allow the building of a canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. An Englishman named Dr. Edward Cullen claimed to have found just such a gap.
Well, we all know what happened with that idea.
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monday august 27
Categories
Travel
,
Paul Pennyfeather, an industrious third-year student at the College of Scone, Oxford, and the protagonist of Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, innocently crosses paths with members of the posh Bollinger Club. Naturally, the next thing that happens is that Oxford administrators unfairly "send him down" for "indecent behavior," and Paul is forced to take work as an instructor at a Welsh preparatory school. Since the novel is a dark comedy, Paul quiets his first class by offering a prize to the student who can write the longest essay, regardless of merit.
Interestingly, although Waugh certainly does not mean for us to respect Paul's teaching ability, this writing-instruction technique is quite popular among contemporary English composition instructors, including me.
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tuesday august 07
Categories
Travel
,
Several years ago, my friend and I went on a weekend bus trip to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee. On the way, I listened to Elvis: 30 #1 Hits and watched his movies Jailhouse Rock and King Creole. By the time we arrived on the front porch of Graceland, I was ready to meet the King.
Ever since that trip, I’ve enjoyed reading about his fascinating life. As the 30th anniversary of his death approaches on August 16th, I decided to read Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Considered the definitive biography of Elvis, Peter Guralnick recounts Presley’s early life and music before the rhinestone jumpsuits and peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
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thursday june 07
Categories
Travel
,
Last fall, when my husband went to Chicago on business, I came along and roamed the city on my own. Since I love architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, I made sure to visit his famous Robie House near the University of Chicago.
Later, we stopped in Oak Park, Illinois for a tour of Wright’s home and studio, where he lived with his family and designed his early work. My husband and I, guidebook and umbrella in hand, found some of his other houses that reside here and admired their simple elegance from the sidewalk.
What ties several of these houses together is his Prairie style of architecture. I recently discovered a book by Alan Hess called Frank Lloyd Wright: Prairie Houses, which beautifully showcases the exteriors and interiors of Wright's Prairie homes in Chicago, Oak Park, and elsewhere.
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wednesday june 06
Categories
Travel
,
If you’ve driven north of Cincinnati on I-75 all the way up to Monroe, you may have noticed a grain silo topped by a little red horse on the side of the highway. Written very plainly on the side of this silo is the Bible reference, “John 3:3.” A photograph of this simple expression of faith is one of many beautiful and thought-provoking photographs in the new book, Bible Road: Signs of Faith in the American Landscape.
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tuesday june 05
Categories
Travel
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The inaugural Discovering New Mysteries International Mystery Writers' Festival will be held in Owensboro, Kentucky, June 12 to June 17, 2007. Some of your favorite writers of mystery and suspense novels, and luminaries from the worlds of film and television, will be on hand. New mystery plays, screenplays, and teleplays will be judged in competition and presented in live performances.
Among the writers attending will be: Stuart Kaminsky, author of more that 60 mysteries, and currently Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America;
Louisville’s own Sue Grafton, author of the bestselling Kinsey Millhone mystery series;
Kentucky native James W. Hall, author of the long-running series of Thorn suspense novels set in Key West, Florida;
past Grand Master of Mystery and Edgar Award winner Ira Levin, best known, of course, for Rosemary’s Baby;
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wednesday may 16
Categories
Travel
,
My husband and I went camping this past weekend. Much to my dismay, the campground facilities were “primitive”--no electricity, flush toilets, or showers. And while this was not really “roughing it” by any stretch of the imagination (bug spray, grilling supplies, and cans of beef stew could easily be picked up at the corner campground store), it was nice to commune with nature if only for a few days.
The book I read around the campfire was a bit somber, so my thoughts turned instead to Bill Bryson’s hilarious misadventure, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. Bryson decides to tramp the “AT”—the 2,100-mile trail connecting Georgia to Maine--and brings along his notoriously out-of-shape, Little Debbie-eating, childhood sidekick Stephen Katz. What ensues is a hike to remember, not only for the beauty of their surroundings, but the people they encounter (an annoying hiker named Mary Ellen) and the things they hope not to encounter (bears).
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sunday may 13
Categories
Travel
,
Pleasant Hill Shaker Furniture by Kerry Pierce is a wonderful new book on the subject. Kenny Pierce is a professional furniture maker and an authority on Shaker woodworking and furniture. This attractive volume is filled with photographs of Shaker dwellings, workshops, tools, artifacts, and, of course, the furniture remarkable for its clean design and simple beauty. The Shakers worked wood as an expression of their devotion to God, and this is certainly evident in the objects they created.
Pierce selected 16 pieces from the Pleasant Hill collection for detailed analysis. A measured drawing of each is provided, with an accompanying discussion of material section, hardware, and construction techniques. So this book has practical value for the home woodworker.
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thursday may 10
Categories
Travel
,
Several years ago I read an amazing novel titled Water Music by T.C. Boyle. It's a rich, darkly comic story which focuses on a character named Mungo Park and his expedition of the Niger River during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries . The novel is full of energetic, hilarious, and often bawdy prose. I was about halfway through the book when I learned (somehow or another) that Mungo Park was an actual historical figure.
Since then, I've been interested in finding a more factual account of Mungo Park and his exploits in Africa. So, I was happy to find the book The Cruelest Journey: 600 miles to Timbuktu by Kira Salak. On this solo journey, the author traversed the Niger by kayak and modeled her course after Mungo Park's own journey there over 200 years ago.
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friday may 04
Categories
Travel
,
I visited my parents in South Carolina with the agenda that they might like to fund some of my son's college tuition. Instead, my mother let me ransack the abandoned WalMart that was being used to store books for her library's book sale. She said I could take whatever I wanted. These were reject books that had already been picked through during two used-book sales this year. Many, I noticed with annoyance, were my own books, which I'd left at my parents' house in the '70s. I ended up with about 6 boxes, including books and other interesting stuff I stole took from the pharmacy, which has also been abandoned since 1989.
When I got back to Cincinnati, I realized that no eBay person would ever buy about a third of the books I'd taken; another third, I kind of wanted to keep for myself. East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia by Benson Bobrick, published in 1992, falls into this category.
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wednesday april 25
Categories
Travel
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Every time I take a walk on my lunch hour, I pass by a florist’s shop. I try to peek inside the open door and catch a glimpse or a whiff of the beautiful roses, lilies, tulips, and gerbera daisies for sale. Sometimes I see a customer leave with a parcel of flowers or a bouquet in a vase and I happily imagine them sitting on my desk.
Author Amy Stewart loves flowers too. In her new book,
Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers, she travels around the world and behind the scenes to catch her own glimpse of the cut flower industry. And what an interesting glimpse it is!
Stewart visits California, Miami, Holland, and Latin America to see firsthand how flowers are bred, grown, shipped, and sold. Along the way, she tells intriguing stories, such as the quest for the elusive blue rose or the eccentric breeder of the popular 'Stargazer' lily.
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saturday april 21
Categories
Travel
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If you go to library school, you'll sooner or later have the conversation about "What if someone comes into the library and asks for a book on how to build a bomb?" As far as I can tell, the library has no how-to books on this subject, but if it did, the answer is that we would help the customer find it and not question his or her motivation.
In library school, this discussion will quickly deteriorate to questions like "What if a customer comes in and wants a book about how to make crystal meth?" The library has chosen not to buy books on this subject either, although there are certainly books about the problems associated with meth labs and addiction. The library's electronic collection, which you can access from home, however, has a government document called Clandestine Methamphetamine Labs. This 78-page PDF file includes photos, so you can recognize a meth lab if you see one, and compelling reasons why you shouldn't build your own.
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thursday april 19
Categories
Travel
,
When I was ten years old, our family visited Washington, DC. The thing I really remember about that trip is how on the last day, my brother wandered off on his own at the Smithsonian, and almost made us miss our flight home. Luckily for him, my parents’ relief at finding he was safe made them forget to worry about the possibility of being out the price of those plane tickets.
With Spring having arrived (finally!), now seems like a great time to see Washington once more. And while there are plenty of excellent, traditional travel guides to the city, there’s another option for people who enjoy a bit of satire mixed in with their sightseeing prospects.
Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital, by Christopher Buckley, fits the bill perfectly. Buckley’s book is a travel guide/ comic history lesson about the city on the Potomac.
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monday march 19
Categories
Travel
,
The 16th annual Cincinnati International Wine Festival will be held this coming weekend, with the Grand Tastings scheduled for March 22 and 23. These recently published books in the Library’s collection will advance your knowledge and enhance your appreciation of the vino aging in your cellar.
The Oxford Companion to Wine
Updated in 2006, this authoritative compendium contains almost 4000 entries on every conceivable aspect of wine and wine making.
Wine: the 8,000-Year-Old Story of the Wine Trade by Thomas Pellechi
Pellechi presents a fascinating overview of the commercial impact of the wine industry throughout history.
The Way to Make Wine: How to Craft Superb Table Wines at Home by Sheridan F. Warrick
Red and white varietals; pressing equipment; techniques of the craft: this is a complete guide for novices and experienced winemakers
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Categories
Travel
,
The Vernal Equinox comes every year in the Northern Hemisphere around March 20. Spring arrives! Day and night, for one 24-hour period, are equal.
I find that springtime light brings a lifting of moods and a deep contentment that never fails to brighten my spirits. I have dug up a variety of books from a variety of subject areas, all about spring:
Chasing Spring: an American Journey Through a Changing Season Bruce Stutz writes about following spring from the Gulf of Mexico to the Alaskan arctic, experiencing renewal and joy at the beauty of the awakening season.
Boys of Spring: Timeless Portraits from the Grapefruit League, 1947-2005 Ozzie Sweet is a renowned photographer, and this book of baseball photographs will get you in the mood for a game.
Everything for Spring: A Complete Activity Book for Teachers of Young Children: Activities for March, April, and May Spring fever is especially rampant in classrooms. These activities will help keep our youngest students busy.
The beautiful symphonic works of Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land cannot fail to move you; available on CD or cassette.
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tuesday december 12
Categories
Travel
,
I recently posted a Turning the Page entry about the Charles Dickens book A Christmas Carol. It was published in 1843, 163 years ago.
Looking at these dates gave me pause. My great-grandfather George Peet, who was my mother's father's father, was born in 1844, the year after A Christmas Carol was published.
This same great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, lost his leg at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, spent time in the dreaded Libby Prison, and came home to tell about it. Thank goodness, since consequently here I am. He was a member of the 5th Ohio Volunteers, based out of Camp Dennison, Ohio, which is just a little bit east of Cincinnati.
It's fascinating to me how literature can span time and unify us like it does. And it also shows yet again how there really is nothing new under the sun.
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friday november 10
Categories
Travel
,
I love lighthouses. This past weekend I stood in awe of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse at night, resplendent in the light of the full moon and sending out its reassuring beam across nearly 20 miles of ocean.
Dawson Carr's 2002 chronicle Cape Hatteras Lighthouse: Sentinel of the Shoals tells the history of the beautiful lighthouse, including the monumental 1999 3-week move of the structure to a safer spot further from the edge of the ocean. It was moved inland from the encroaching surf by lifting the entire building and hydraulically pushing it forward very slowly along a track to its new location 2900 feet away.
An interesting book about lighthouses that were not as lucky as Hatteras is Lost Lighthouses, full of true stories such as my favorite about Deer Island Lighthouse in the harbor near Boston, where one of the keepers had a cat who would dive from the platform, catch a fish, and climb back up the ladder with it.
For anyone who loves lighthouses and loves cats, it doesn't get any better than that!
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friday october 13
Categories
Travel
,
Wow--that was sudden! Just the other day I was looking out the window of the car and noticed the trees starting to change. Today there's a nip in the air and it really feels like fall. According to the National Forest Service, fall color will be at its best between now and the end of October. What better time to grap a map or a few guidebooks and take to the backroads for a day or a weekend?
We have a lot of travel books for the Midwest that could be useful for planning a little leaf-watching jaunt. The title Scenic driving: Kentucky might be just the thing if you want to head south. There's a very nice route from Frankfort to Florence which takes a detour through the picturesque town of Rabbit Hash. It's probably a good idea to see the town now, after the midwest premiere of the movie, who knows what'll happen?
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thursday september 14
Categories
Travel
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I'm still weirded out by finding an apparently homeless guy sleeping on my futon. Not so much that, but my reaction, which was, when he asked me for a drink, to say I had milk and grape juice and feel guilty that I didn't have more juice varieties. (His response was, "No, man, I mean something to drink.") Am I just a compassionate person, or foolish and insane?
Two of the books I read suggest the term "houselessness" rather than "homelessness" because of the connotations of "home." Under the Overpass, by college student Michael Yankoski, tells the story of the five months he and his friend Sam spent on the streets of five large cities, as a religiously inspired experiment. In format, the book is a lot like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. Michael and Sam sleep in shelters, eat in soup kitchens, and make small amounts of money playing "worship songs" on their guitars.
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saturday september 09
Categories
Travel
,
I've never really bothered about locking my door, because if anyone wanted to get in, it wouldn't be that difficult to break a window, and then I'd just have to have it fixed. Before you look up my address, though, note that I've kind of rearranged my position on the lock issue since this morning, when I went downstairs and found an apparently homeless guy sleeping on the futon in my living room. He'd eaten some soup and drunk a full bottle of vermouth. He stole $40 from my purse and made me drive him to Price Hill, so that's why I was late.
I think a lot of people would have been more upset than I about this--actually, I felt ashamed about how long my grass was and was glad I'd stayed up late steamvaccing the rug. Probably I would have been more upset if I hadn't already started my Travels With Lizbeth blog.
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tuesday august 22
Categories
Travel
,
I didn't set out to write about plane disasters involving athletes, but I just sort of happened upon two new books on the subject this week.
The first is Nando Parrado's Miracle in the Andes. Nando Parrado, of course, is the hero of Piers Paul Read's 1974 Alive! which you've certainly read or heard about unless you are too young. Parrado was one of two Uruguayan rugby players who crossed some of the highest peaks of the Andes, 62 days after the team's small plane crashed. They hoped to reach rescuers in Chile, which they believed to be much closer to the crash site than it was. Of the 45 passengers and crew members, 15 survived.
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friday july 28
Categories
Travel
,
It's the end of July, and it seems like all the folks from the office have headed off on vacation, or are planning one. Trips to Florida, the Smoky Mountains, and all the old favorites...do they make you yawn? Looking for something different? Something to spice up the water-cooler confab? Something to make your co-workers stand up and say "huh?" Look no farther than America Bizarro: A guide to freaky festivals, groovy gatherings, kooky contests, and other strange happenings across the U.S.A.
Even if you're not ready to hop in the car in search of strange American folk culture, America Bizarro is a great read. Catch an entry here or there while you're waiting for the bus, or for an appointment and imagine a mini-vacation to International Tuba Day, the National Hobo Convention, or the World Championship Punkin' Chunkin Contest.
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thursday july 27
Categories
Travel
,
Not only is North Korea lobbing missiles in its direction, but also what's going to happen when the billions of American anime and manga fans complete their East Asian Studies degrees and move there. Can the small rather racially homogenous island nation assimilate these new potential citizens?
I am an expert because I spent ten hours with my daughter last week at Ikasucon and also because I read Wrong About Japan, by novelist Peter Carey. Like my daughter, Peter Carey's 12-year-old son Charley is Otaku and plans eventually to move to Japan, but Carey has Japanese connections that help him meet and interview publishers of manga and other involved people on their Tokyo trip. Carey never really gets it.
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friday july 07
Categories
Travel
,
I have just traveled to India between the covers of this stunning book: India, by Oliver Follmi (2005). The photography in this book is amazing, displaying the beauty and diversity of this enormous country.
I love cities, and The Cities Book: A Journey Through the Best Cities in the World (2006) published by Lonely Planet takes us to 200+ cities of all sizes around the world. This is a follow-up book to The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World (2005) that covers 230 different countries.
Closer to home, enjoy the view in Panoramic Parks: An Appreciation of Cincinnati's Parks (2005), by Thomas R. Schiff, or go to each of Ohio's 88 counties to see Ohio's Bicentennial Barns (Beth Gorczyca, 2003).
You could go out west and explore with Bart Smith Along the Pacific Crest Trail (1998), or take off on a train trip in Great American Rail Journeys (2000).
Travel in library books: it's free, there are no timetables, and you don't need to worry about learning how to get by in another language. Have a great trip!
saturday june 24
Categories
Travel
,
You don't have to care about Agatha Christie to love The 8:55 to Baghdad: from London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie, which I read about three times in three days before returning to the shelves. Andrew Eames's goal is to follow the path of Agatha Christie as she traveled from an upscale suburb of London to Iraq, following a depressing divorce. She had been planning a Caribbean cruise but changed her mind after hearing recent returnees enthuse about the country. She took the Orient Express (later of course celebrated in Murder on the Orient Express), which now ends in Venice.
Vacationing in Iraq in 1928 wasn't as weird an idea for Agatha Christie as it is for Andrew Eames. After leaving Venice, his path continues--on increasingly neglected rolling stock--through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, and finally into Iraq. He meets a lot of people (the drunken British beach bums in Bulgaria are particularly amusing) and reports some fascinating dialogue.
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