Reader's Place: August 1, 2023
TRAVEL: Why do humans choose to travel? Are we in search of something we can’t find at home? The featured authors ponder this and other questions.
The half known life: in search of paradise, by Pico Iyer, 2023. (Catalog)
How to reconcile our wishes and hopes with reality? Where does paradise really lie? What can a secular seeker learn from the world’s holiest places? In Iyer’s hands, the search for paradise, the way out of the ego, doubles as an internal journey.
Tomb of sand: A novel, by Geetanjali Shree; translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, 2023. (Catalog)
Eighty-year-old Ma slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband. Eventually, she gets out of bed and embarks on a series of adventures that baffle even her unconventional feminist daughter, Beti. She ditches her cumbersome saris, develops a close friendship with a hijra, and finally sets off on a fateful journey that will turn the family's understanding of themselves upside down.
America the beautiful? : One woman in a borrowed Prius on the road most traveled , by Blythe Roberson, 2023. (Catalog)
Roberson examines Americans' obsession with freedom, travel, and the open road. To fill her own sense of adventure, she quit her day job and set off on a Great American Road Trip to visit America's national parks. Along the way she met new friends on their own quests, learned to cope with abstinence while missing the comforts of home, and came to understand the limits-- and possibilities-- of going to nature to prove to yourself (and your Instagram followers) that you are, in fact, free.
Traveling Black: a story of race and resistance, by Mia Bay, 2021. (Catalog)
What was it like to travel while Black under Jim Crow? Mia Bay brings this dramatic history to life. With gripping stories and a close eye on the rail, bus, and airline operators who implemented segregation, she shows why access to unrestricted mobility has been central to the Black freedom struggle since Reconstruction and remains so today.
Gastro obscura: A food adventurer's guide, by Cecily Wong, 2021. Catalog
Far more than a menu of curious minds delicacies and unexpected dishes, Gastro Obscura reveals food's central place in our lives as well as our bellies, touching on history-trace the network of ancient Roman fish sauce factories. Picture four million women gathering to make rice pudding. Scale China's sacred Mount Hua to reach a tea house. Feed wild macaques pyramid of fruit at Thailand's Monkey Buffet Festival. And hidden gems that might be right around the corner, like the vending machine in Texas dispensing full sized pecan pies.
Ghost town: a novel in 45 chapters , by Kevin Chen; translated from the Mandarin (and the Taiwanese) by Darryl Sterk, 2022. ( Catalog)
Keith Chen, the second son of a traditional Taiwanese family of seven, runs away from the oppression of his village to Berlin in the hope of finding acceptance as a young gay man. The novel begins a decade later, when Chen has just been released from prison for killing his boyfriend. He is about to return to his family's village, a poor and desolate place. With his parents gone, his sisters married, mad, or dead, there is nothing left for him there. As the story unfurls, we learn what tore this family apart and, more importantly, the truth behind the murder of Chen's boyfriend.
The faraway world: stories, by Patricia Engel, 2023. (Catalog)
A collection of ten haunting short stories linked by themes of migration, sacrifice, and moral compromise bring to life the liminality of regret, the vibrancy of community, and the epic deeds and quiet moments of love, by a Colombian-American author.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau