Globe Corner Blogs

More Chinglish--by Oliver Lutz Radtke

Stop everything. This is important. Very important. In fact, you may want to be sitting down. I don’t want to exaggerate, but the word “life-changing” may very well apply. Deep breaths. Okay, ready?

A new edition of Chinglish – appropriately titled More Chinglish – has just arrived. I know. Now, you may be thinking, “Does this mean that the old one is not available anymore?” Good question. I can hear the panic in your voice, but, dear Reader, you don’t need to worry. Chinglish was the number one best-selling book of 2008 for our store; it’s not going anywhere. Oliver Lutz Radtke’s new book More Chinglish has a place on our display table next to the original, some might say classic, Chinglish. More Chinglish was in the store for mere minutes before it started eliciting giggles and guffaws from browsers. And the staff have already made a dent in our inventory numbers. Continue Reading »

Bus in Mysore decorated for Dasara - photo by Nicole

1. The elephants and cows have better jewelry than you do.

2. You are in line at the foreign money exchange and are approached by a septuagenarian, sari-clad Indian woman who, after introducing herself, whips out her cell phone and calls her son. “Here is my son. His name is Manjuth. He is a salsa dancer. You talk to him.” (This happened to a friend of mine while we were waiting for our rupees. The lady seemed determined to make this very pale, fair English girl her daughter-in-law and was only assuaged after being given a fake phone number so that Manjuth could call this lily-skinned girl for follow-up dates and, presumably, for blue-eyed grandchildren for his mother.)

3. Pizza masala. Not quite the same as back home.

4. You get on a sleeper bus for the next nine hours to get to a World Heritage site, full of

amazing ancient ruins, and realize that the bus has no front door. (The bus is also full of Sri Lankan basketball players who sing Hindi and Tamil pop songs until four am.)

5. The air in the morning smells like chai tea and jasmine flowers… with just the slightest hint of cow dung and urine.

Painted Bull in Bangalore - photo by Nicole

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.