Globe Corner Blogs

National Geographic map of Canada

I like to think that through our sale this month we are promoting tourism to Canada. More Americans should go there. A lot more. I, myself, am quite a fan. Almost every August of my life has been spent in part in Canada. Every time I tell someone where I am going I am met with: “Canada?!” Then they assume I must be going to Toronto, which many US citizens seem to consider an American city that simply wandered too far north in a moment of confusion. When I correct them and tell them the true location of my favorite place on earth, I am met with more bafflement, now mixed with mild disgust: “Lake Erie?!?” Yes. I stay on the Canadian coast of the Great Lake in a tiny fishing town — it’s almost directly across the water from Cleveland, but I usually leave this fact out to avoid further astonishment. Nonetheless, the whole matter befuddles many, so allow me to illustrate the reasons why I love our neighbor:
1. Loonies.
2. Ordering a “Blue” (Labatt’s) at the bar. Continue Reading »

Reykjavik Graffiti--photo by Nicole

Keflavik Airport. Reykjavik. Iceland. For an hour more, anyway. My trip here is coming to a rapid conclusion, and I am sitting at an internet station (free- thank the Norse gods!) in the slick, airy Scandinavian airport terminal. Sandwiched between a Kaffir coffee shop (the Icelandic Starbucks, according to Lonely Planet) and the ubiquitous Viking gift shop, I am trying to think of eventful travel exploits worthy of reportage. Continue Reading »

Explorer's Guide to Washington

Whenever I bring friends back to Seattle to visit my parents with me, they are subjected to my Dad’s special tour of the city. He loves to show off his native city and talk about his three favorite things: Boeing, University of Washington Huskies and the price of gas. First, we have to go on a driving tour so that he can point out all of the landmarks that we happen to pass while he is looking for free parking. He usually throws out fascinating tidbits of information such as how the best place to be in a earthquake is on top of the Space Needle since it is anchored down so deeply and how everything has an Elvis connection as The King filmed a movie at the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962.

Then off to a restaurant where we are force fed Olympia Oysters, whichever salmon he deems worthy, asparagus and Washington wine from the Walla Walla Valley. Next we drive to West Seattle, so we can get one of the best views of the Seattle Skyline, and he can point out more sights such as the the Space Needle, Pike Place Market and the new stadiums. Continue Reading »

Cooking with Shelburne Farms by Melissa Pasanen and Rick Gencarelli

Having spent the last four years attending college in rural Vermont and now finding myself back amist the horn-honking, always-in-traffic city life of Cambridge, I cannot help but feel nostalgic for the Green Mountain State. To alleviate my suffering, I picked up the Cooking with Shelburne Farms cookbook written by Melissa Pasanen and Rick Gencarelli. Shelburne Farms, located along Lake Champlain in Vermont, is not only a National Historic Landmark, but also a nonprofit environmental educational center that works to educate community members on the importance of local grown food and maintaining sustainable farmlands in Vermont. Continue Reading »

Pocket Naturalist guide to Cape May Birds

When you leave the city of Cape May on the southern tip of New Jersey and start north on the Garden State Highway, a large green sign greets you: “Welcome to New Jersey!” And that’s exactly how it feels. Cape May is its own entity. Rows of Victorian houses painted like Easter eggs, rambling old hotels wrapped in latticed porches that belong in New Orleans, those weird bike things that five people can pedal along on at once–everything you need for a lovely weekend away from the sweltering city. Everything including nature: I saw dolphins! Dozens of them arcing out of the ocean, blowing spray into the air, and causing general panic among the beach-goers who thought they had spotted a shark. And the birds! Cape May happens to be the home of the World Series of Birding. (Yes, there is such a thing.) Continue Reading »

Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

The store just got in a new paperback that I’m very excited about: Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski.   A brilliant and richly detailed chronicle of Kapuscinki’s half century as a foreign correspondent and author, this memoir shows his journey as a young man just out of university in post-war Poland across the ensuing decades and all of the inhabited continents.  As one of Poland’s state newspaper’s first post-war foreign correspondents, Kapuscinski expects to perhaps be sent across the border to Czechoslovakia, and instead gets India–the start of a career that will make him witness to wars fought over soccer games, the liberation of nations from colonial bondage, coronations and overthrows of kings, and get him sentenced to death in absentia by a number of different regimes for simply reporting what he saw as he saw it.  He has in other words one of the all-time most kick-ass c.v.’s of any author since Sir Richard Burton or T. E. Lawrence.

Lonely Planet New England

We’ve got a whole heap of brand new, fresh off the press, crisp-paged, squeaky clean Rough Guides and Lonely Planet guidebooks! One for every 24 corners of the world.

Our new Lonely Planet collection includes:

Rough Guide China

Austria (5th edition)
Bulgaria (3rd edition)
Egypt (9th edition)
Georgia, Armenia & Azerbaijan (3rd edition)
Mongolia (5th edition)
Munich, Bavaria & the Black Forest (3rd edition)
New England (5th edition)
Norway (4th edition)
Pakistan & the Karakoram Highway (7th edition)
Papua New Guinea & Solomon Islands (8th edition)
Poland (6th edition)
Sicily (4th edition)
Tanzania (4th edition)

Rough Guide Buenos Aires

As for new Rough Guides:
Buenos Aires (1st edition!)
Bulgaria (6th edition)
China (5th edition)
England (8th edition)
Greece (12th edition)
Ireland (9th edition)
Romania (5th edition)
Scotland (8th edition)
Yosemite (3rd edition)

Rough Guide Directions (city guides):
Bruges & Ghent (2nd edition)
Prague (7th edition)

It is really hot in Boston. It is even hotter in my apartment. One sure way to beat the heat is to go to an air-conditioned cinema, so off to see the new Indiana Jones movie I went. I can’t commit to whether I liked the movie or not. I thought that it was “ok.” But it did make me want to reread my most favorite book ever:The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey!

Candice Millard writes about the true story of Roosevelt’s expedition to descend an unmapped tributary of the Amazon. It reads like an action adventure movie and seems almost too perfectly scripted. They encounter deadly rapids, murder, Indian attacks, and just about everything else you could imagine. But it is a true story! It would make a great movie, but I don’t know who they should cast as Teddy. Any ideas?

I have been a Boston resident now for almost four years. I like to think that I know the city fairly well, and have seen a decent portion of what there is to see. This was true for the most part until the other night.

It was towards the end of the evening when I was working when I happened across a particular book in our Boston section. The Museums of Boston it is called, and boy did it throw me for a loop. I have been missing out completely! …Did you know that there is a Museum of Dirt, and a Museum of Bad Art? Continue Reading »

Haruki Murakami‘s After Dark is definitely one of the most curious novels I’ve read in a long time. His way of writing is effortless, and his topics could not be more appealing to the reader. He sums up the essence of many of his own previous works, revealing what it means to feel true affection, to fear loneliness and to be lost in a technologicaly overdeveloped world- the perfect representation of modern Tokyo. Continue Reading »