Globe Corner Blogs

Maps of the Imagination -by Peter Turchi

Maps of the Imagination has affirmed my long-held belief that every book should have pictures. With each turn of the page, new and fascinating maps, paintings, sketches, and diagrams are revealed. In some instances they directly support author Peter Turchi’s argument; in other cases, they’re shown just to captivate the reader (it usually works).

Peter Turchi has written a completely compelling discussion of how writers are in many ways the same as traditional geographic cartographers. When asked to name a cartographer, the names Blaeu, Mercator, Lewis, Clark, or Columbus might immediately come to mind. But what about Italo Calvino, Kate Chopin, Vladamir Nabokov, or James Joyce? According to Turchi, these writers are also cartographers – just as a geographic cartographer selects (and de-deselects) information to best achieve the purpose of the map, writers select only certain parts of reality to map a fictional, yet relatable, world.

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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 »

T-minus 16 days and counting! If you’re anything like me, you don’t remember this holiday until the Saturday before when your Mother asks what you’ve bought your father. Of course you don’t have anything, so you do what any good daughter would do and lie to Mom, hang up quickly, and run to the card store. The only thing left there are a few of those terrible cards that suggest Fathers are walking banks for their daughters. As for a gift, you can’t get him a tie, because even if dear old Dad did wear ties, that gift became a joke years ago. My perpetual fallback: a book. And what is the dad-est of Dad books? Books with maps. (Leave the not-asking-for-directions joke for your Mom.)

Here’s a few of my favorite books of or about maps:

Cartopraphia
Maps: Finding Our Place In The World
The Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps
Mapping Boston (also available in paperback)
Transit Maps of the World
Atlases of all kinds!
Psycho Geography
How To Lie With Maps
Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer

I have always been drawn to maps.  When my family would go on long trips I would be the one holding the map, whether I was helping or not, and studying it.  My roommates always come to me for directions or to use my map collection of Boston.  I even got a job at a map store.  Needless to say, I really like maps. 

There is one book that caught my eye one day in the store that all map lovers should see,  The Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps. This may be the coolest book in the whole wide world, containing maps of the weirdest things. Continue Reading »