Globe Corner Blogs

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao --by Junot Diaz

I have ticked off another box on my Writering Life List (…like birding, but with authors).

Junot Diaz was sitting across from me on the subway the other morning. I was on my way to work, so it was early; I feared my senses were still blurry from having just woken. But there was really no mistaking it. Having seen his picture everywhere when our friends at Harvard Book Store hosted a reading with him, I was familiar with that stubble, that hairline (or lack thereof), those glasses, and that peculiarly frowning mouth. It was him.

Did I go up him and tell him how much I loved Oscar Wao? Of course not! Would you casually saunter up to a pileated woodpecker if you spotted one and tell him how brilliantly red his crest was? Of course not! Most writers are known to be solitary creatures, skittish at the sight of fans clutching books to their chests, grinning shyly, practicing softly under their breath how to say, “I’ve been the biggest fan for…” without sounding like that guy.

So no, I did not bother him. Besides, he was reading.

Continue Reading »

The Last Polar Bear --by Steven Kazlowski

Last week Steven Kazlowski, author of The Last Polar Bear, visited our store and gave a slide presentation about his latest photographic journey into the Alaskan arctic. Some images left the audience cooing (myself most definitely included) at adorable polar bear cubs playfully tugging at the ear of their mother. But, Kazlowski also showed startling maps demonstrating the growing presence of human industry in the region and the diminishing range of sea ice, which is essential to how polar bears and other animals hunt and survive the extreme environment. Kazlowski’s intimate photographs of the harsh yet stunning arctic habitat elicit an emotional response that will easily prompt viewers to think and to read about the more serious subject behind his images: the warming of the arctic that threatens the delicate ecological balance that allows the polar bears (not to mention the Inupiat people, beluga whales, walruses, and arctic foxes) to thrive.
Continue Reading »

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star --by Paul Theroux

Everyone who was working last night was very excited when Paul Theroux stopped by the store to autograph copies of his latest book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. I rarely get star struck, but this is the man that started my obsession with travel writing, beginning when I read The Great Railway Bazaar.

I am not sure if it was nerves or sleep deprivation, but I do remember babbling to him about taking The Pillars of Hercules to Croatia with me. He must have thought I was a bit crazy as I could only muster fragments of sentences, but later we kind of chatted pleasantly about traveling. I can’t believe that I was comparing flight prices with Paul Theroux.

We now have lots of signed copies of the author’s books, including The Great Railway Bazaar (Asia), Riding the Iron Rooster (China), The Pillars of Hercules (The Mediterranean), The Mosquito Coast (Honduras), The Happy Isles of Oceania (Pacific Islands), The Elephanta Suite (India), Dark Star Safari (Africa) and The Kingdom by the Sea (Great Britain) and the newest edition to my reading list…Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.

The Geography of Bliss --by Eric Weiner

I should confess that this was the first book ever that made me feel something unusual towards the author. This time after finishing the last page I felt incredibly…grateful. The most unexpected feeling after putting down your read. The truth is I almost never take a book from a shelf just because I like the cover. This time the light-hearted picture of a paper plane made me open a copy; I immediately changed my mind about what I thought of the content a second before.

Measuring happiness, grasping the true meaning of it is definitely a tricky business. For example, we can’t even be sure that the word happiness means the same feeling, the same state of mind, in various cultures. We may think that there’s got to be a universal recipe for feeling good, but as it turns out every country has a slightly different approach toward defining bliss. I am very grateful for “the grump” who consulted the world’s happiness experts and then took the trouble to search for the happiest place, spinning out a whole new story of finding yourself. The discoveries along the way turned out to be quite unexpected, but invariably moving, funny, bizarre: they constantly made you reconsider your personal attitude toward happiness. This is a truly meaningful book.

State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America

I have never known the correct word for someone who lives in Massachusetts and I have never really bothered to find the official name. Is it Massachusian… Massachusettite? The only thing I have ever heard was not very flattering and is something usually yelled at people driving on the Mass Pike.  When asked, I usually start to trip over the word and then just say, “I live in Boston, but I will always be a Washingtonian at heart.”

Yesterday, I was checking out a book new to our shelves: State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. It is a compilation of 50 writers writing about 50 states with the lofty goal of “explaining America to Americans.” Inspired by the WPA American Guide series of the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, the editors of this project commissioned 50 writers, cartoonists, a cook, and a musician to write an essay about their home or adopted home state. (Washington DC is covered in the afterword.) The list of contributers is impressive and includes Dave Eggers (Illinois), Ha  Jin (Georgia), Susan Orlean (Ohio), Anthony Bourdain (New Jersey), and Carrie Brownstein (Washington State).

Each essay is preceeded by some general information about the state (which is great for trivia nights at the pub), such as the state’s capital, nickname, official flower, geographic center, and what to call the residents. That is where I discovered the answer to my question, and now I can say with some confidence that “I am a Bay Stater!”.

As They Say in Zanzibar -- by David Crystal

Even after a mere weekend away from the store, I nearly always return to find several new and exciting titles awaiting my perusal. Today, I was immediately drawn to David Crystal’s newly released collection of proverbs titled As They Say in Zanzibar: Proverbial Wisdom from Around the World. This six-hundred plus page compilation is subdivided into 468 “thematic classifications,” ranging from expected categories such as family, health, and happiness to more atypical groupings such as semi-liquids, semi-solids, animal noises, and inland water. Crystal also conveniently indexes all proverbs by theme, to Roget Thesaurus’ semantic categories, to lexeme or key word, and even to country of origin.

There are some particularly relevant to the savvy traveler, such as “those who wait long at the ferry will get across sometime” (Scotland) and “money is a good passport” (France). Some that left us scratching our heads: “One should not board a ship without an onion” (The Netherlands) and “A dog may look at a bishop” (France). Others seem comically obvious, like “No melon-seller cries: bitter melons!” (China) and still others are comically bizarre, “The quiet duck puts his foot on the unobservant worm” (China). Continue Reading »

Dan's Map Tattoo, Part I--photo by Llalan

I am a Legend!! The Map of Maps is here to stay forever!

My map tattoo has begun.  It started as an uncharted adventure with possible potential or disaster. The artist had never done a map tattoo before, and neither had his colleagues. He told me that it is easy to map out a tattoo on a person’s body, but this is tattooing a map. Furthermore, it is a map of maps: it’s not a map of a real place but of geographic forms and names. (It was inspired by a map in The Agile Rabbit Book, one of my favorites.) It was a challenge, with no one to go to for advice.

Needless to say, when I went for my first session he told me that he had practiced…by putting the stencil on his girlfriend for many hours the night before.  Apparently he couldn’t get it right.  We took the plunge anyway and on the first try he had the stencil on my arm correctly. I was happy, he was happy (and relieved), and we got started. Two and a half hours later I walked out with an outline of what was to come and a smile. Hooray!!

I recently have gone to my second session of the map tattoo (see next photo). Continue Reading »

Project: Iceland: Music, Art, Fashion

I really need to unsubscribe from Icelandair’s email list. Their emails always appear in my inbox to taunt me just when I am having severe wanderlust attacks — and their deals are just too tempting. Even though I just got back from a two day layover in Reykjavik on my way back from Europe, I want to go back for one of best music festivals in the world: Iceland Airwaves. I have gone before and always returned back to work the next day exhausted, giddy, and carrying an armload of new CDs. But because I went broke in the Balkans this summer, I had resigned all aspirations of attending Iceland Airwaves in October and had even kind of forgot about it.

Then we received a new book yesterday. As I picked it up to put it on the shelf, all I could think was “OH NO, this is not fair!” Its title is Project: Iceland: Music, Art, Fashion and it is a book of photos and interviews of Iceland’s art community. Continue Reading »

A New England Autumn by Ferenc Mate

Today, it is fall in Boston. Perhaps not on the calendar, but certainly in the air. The crickets of late-summer have stopped their song. The sky is low and gray. The local Farmer’s Market was full of crisp apples and fat heirloom tomatoes. Chrysanthemums are blooming and the leaves on the trees have turned dull in preparation for their brilliant costume change.

Autumn is a dressy affair in New England. When the trees finally do put on their finest, people migrate north en mass to drive the Kancamagus Highway or even hike the Long Trail in Vermont. I myself am looking forward to fresh apple cider, apple pie, apple cobbler, and those sugary maple candies they make in cute shapes.

Until then, I watch the skies darken further and hope the rain doesn’t pull down the leaves prematurely. And I rejoice in the excuse to wear sweatshirts and curl up inside reading all day.

Unmapped Boston

A wall map of Boston titled “Unmapped Boston,” which delineates every neighborhood, subway line, and major thoroughfare in the city, has been getting a lot of attention lately. …And we’ve got them!

In a Boston Globe article from July, the map is featured with a few other artistic interpretations of Boston in map form. Soon thereafter we had hordes of customers coming into the store, clutching crinkled clips of newspaper, putting in order after order for the map. Since it seemed so popular, we thought we ought to tell everybody why it was special.

Why then, you ask? For one, it’s the only wall map-like map of Boston we have or even know of. Secondly, it’s great for getting an idea of where the neighborhoods actually lay in relation to the transit systems and to each other. Lastly, it’s just cool looking; it is, after all, a work of art.

So, if you want something informative, stylish, and Boston-y for your wall that’s not about the Red Sox, come on in and take a closer look or visit the artist’s website.