Globe Corner Blogs

My little sister just informed me that she plans to spend three weeks in Istanbul this summer. It’s not that I resent the well-deserved vacation she’s taking from teaching art to Kindergarten through 6th graders, but I AM  jealous. I’ve  added her trip to the growing list of the many coveted, vicarious journeys I will be making through my friends this summer. Sometimes it can feel like everyone is leaving the country except me. Whenever I start to feel like this–just a little too home-bound–I know it’s time to turn to the next best thing: the bookshelf.

To my sister I recommended Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul. To the rest of you, I’m going to recommend armchair reading from our destination of the month shelf. And this month, we’re featuring Spain. I happen to have two friends there right now. While they’re traveling through Barcelona, I can read Carlos Luis Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind, a mystery set in post-war Barcelona. Zafon’s most recent work, Prisoner of Heaven, also set in Barcelona, was just released in paperback. Or I could pick up George Orwell’s classic Homage to Catalonia, or Colm Toibin’s Homage to Barcelona, which happens to be available for a limited time as a sale book on our remainder tables at Booksmith!

Aside from novels set in the country we’ve got books that will help you delve into the Spain’s culture, past and present, books like Elizabeth Nash’s Madrid: A Cultural History and Giles Tremlett’s Ghosts of Spain. As Madrid correspondents for The Independent and The Guardian, respectively, Nash and Tremlett share their extensive knowledge of the country, taking their readers deep into the roots of the culture, arts, and politics of Spain. Tremlett in particular explores some of the country’s scars, opening up a conversation about Spain’s unexplored past.

Speaking of the ghosts of Spain, to see a few for yourself, swing by San Jose Cathedral in Madrid, a favorite spot for ghost hunters in the city, according  legend and to our Secret Madrid guide. While we’ve got dozens of guidebooks to Spain on our shelves, the most unique are Secret Madrid and Secret Barcelona. These guides invite you explore the cities’ off-the-track sites, such as the Spy Shop in Barcelona or the unsavory specimens on display at the Museum of Forensic Anthropology in Madrid.

And finally, when you do get to travel to Spain, don’t leave without stuffing our Crumpled City Barcelona map into your back pocket. Check out our new display of these fun, lightweight maps to cities around the world, in our travel aisle at Booksmith!

Has anyone made it to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see the new exhibition of Japanese armor? The MFA has been marketing the exhibit simply as “Samurai!” which I find very effective. This month, in conjunction with the museum’s show and with spring’s cherry blossoms, we’re promoting Japan as our Destination of the Month. And I’ve decided to call our display shelf filled with Japanese literature, guides, maps and cookbooks: “SAMURAI!!!”

Before you make your way to the MFA–or to Japan, for that matter, swing by Booksmith and get the literature you need to guide you through the sites. If you want to read about a real life Samurai hero of feudal Japan, we’ve got The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi. Mushashi was a revered samurai warrior who believed mastery of the mind was as important as technique in martial arts, a teaching that he expounded in his Book of Five Rings. His influence can still be seen in books and films today and is beautifully evoked in this biography by William Scott Wilson.

We’ve got plenty of guides to introduce you to Japan, as well as some fun literature to guide you through some of the more nuanced aspects of Japanese culture, including To Japan with Love, a graceful guide that can help you order anything from a bento box to the kaiseki served in elegant Kyoto teahouses. With this book in your pack you can attend a sumo match, sing karoke, spin some pottery, or go on a spiritual pilgrimage to a sacred site. And you’ll even know when to take off your shoes.

Whether you are a lover of manga, anime, or zen, fans of Japanese culture can feed their obsession with Hector Garcia’s A Geek in Japan. This cultural guide can show you the historical roots of all things Japanese. Filled with loud graphics and images of Japanese pop culture, A Geek in Japan is perfect for both children and adults who want to better acquaint themselves with a fascinating foreign culture.

Speaking of graphics, check out the graphic novel Tokyo on Foot. Rather than exploring Tokyo through a traditional guide, Florent Chavouet presents this city through beautiful sketches and hand drawn maps. The life of Tokyo leaps of the page in colorful, idiosyncratic images of its landscape and people.

If you want to have a companion for your initial explorations in Japanese culture, Karen Pond is the perfect friend to take along. Pond’s memoir Getting Genki in Japan is an illustrated narrative of an American family’s misadventures as they create a life for themselves in Tokyo. She’ll even help you figure out how to flush a Japanese toilet.

And finally: SAMURAI!!! We’ve got temporary tattoos. Don’t go to Japan without one.

You know most of the staff at Booksmith are readers, but did you know we are walkers, too? With the weather finally warming up, with my bike in perpetual disrepair and the 66 bus perpetually 30 minutes away from where I need it to be, I’ve been taking to the streets, walking to work. And whenever I do decide to foot it, I usually find a co-worker heading my way who has also decided to take the longer way home.

Whether I am in conversation with others or simply letting my mind wander, I am almost always inspired by a walk. I am not the first to note the meditative and thought-provoking powers of the path. Our Destination Literature shelves are full of walkers’ testaments to the transformative nature of a good stroll.

The best of these wandering narratives that I’ve read in recent weeks is Olivia Laing’s travelogue To the River. Laing’s gorgeous prose floats the reader down England’s river Ouse as she walks from its source to the sea. Readers of W.G. Sebald will recognize his style in her textured meditations, at times melancholy and always beautiful. To the River is a survey not only of the river but of the entire landscape of English literature, from Kenneth Grahame and Iris Murdoch to Virginia Woolf, whose complicated relationship to the river in which she drowned is delicately excavated and explored.

England is turning out a lot of walkers these days. You can read about the poet Simon Armitage’s 256-mile walk along the “backbone of England,” the Pennine Way, in Walking Home. In The Old Ways, Robert Macfarlane, who you may know from his book The Wild Places, walks along England’s historical byways, dredging up tales of pilgrimage, territory disputes, and other lively anecdotes that spring up from the natural landscape he crosses.

The pleasures and perils of the road as well as the purging, penitential benefits of a good long walk are explored by David Downie (Paris, Paris) in his new travel book, Paris to the Pyrenees. Downie and his wife, photographer Alison Harris, decide to walk the French portion the famous pilgrimage route, the Way of Saint James, reflecting all the while on the nature of religious ritual, local cuisine, and, of course, walking.

For the urban traveler, there’s Michael Sorkin’s new 20 minutes in Manhattan. This book reminds me of a non-fiction version of Teju Cole’s recent novel Open City, in which the narrator meanders along the streets of New York City, musing as he goes. Sorkin’s thoughts focus on the architecture he observes along his walk from Greenwich Village to his office in Tribeca, but the tangential nature of a walk allows him to digress into urban planning and the history of the city.

And finally, to remind us of the history of our wandering ways, there’s Edmund White’s classic The Flaneur. I recently picked up a copy on our remainder table–there may even be a few sale copies left–so walk on in for more inspiration!

Last week, my brother-in-law, who moved to Boston last summer, asked me if McDonalds on the East Coast served up Shamrock shakes for Saint Patrick’s Day, like they did back in the Midwest. A Boston resident for over three years and a fan of–if not the fast food chain–that creamy mint green shake myself, I was ashamed to say I did not know. But I was able to tell him about Dunkin Donuts’ seasonal Irish Creme donut, a sugar coated bun filled with a creme not-quite-green but a shade less yellow than your traditional Boston creme. It’s nothing compared to their autumnal pumpkin donut, but as a novelty item, it’s not a bad way to get yourself primed for St. Patrick’s Day.

Of course, to get a true taste of Ireland, no one goes for the food. This month, we’ve got a range of Irish literature on display, writers who will give you a more accurate glimpse into Irish culture, landscape and cuisine–without the foul aftertaste of American fast food. We’ve got the classics: Yeats and Beckett and Joyce, and Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds. These guys are the Shamrock Shakes of Irish literature. You’ll want to pick them up again, year after year.

You’ve read Dubliners, but have you read Dublinesque, a new novel by Enrique Vila-Matas set in Dublin as the world of publishers, readers, and writers is losing its hold on Irish culture. The protagonist is a retired literary publisher, but the strong presence of Joyce and Beckett in this novel almost make them characters as well.

And if you’re looking for non-fiction set in Ireland, pick up Robert Kanigel’s On an Irish Island. Kanigel introduces the reader to the lost world of the Great Blasket, an island off the west coast of Ireland, renowned for its former communal life and preservation of the Irish language. Kanigel weaves together the island’s history with the colorful life of its local residents and visiting scholars.

Any of these books would go nicely with a pint of Guinness or, if you can find one out here, a Shamrock shake. Whether you’re looking for a guidebook, map, or simply some good armchair travel, we’ve got them, no artificial flavors added.

Today was the first day I ventured out to work after the blizzard. The first customer I found in the travel aisle was shivering in front of our wide selection of Caribbean guidebooks. I asked if she needed any help. She peered up at me from beneath a wooly hat and pleaded, “I want to go somewhere warm!”

Don’t we all? That’s why we’re celebrating the sunny Caribbean as our Destination of the Month of February. After puzzling over how to get to Cuba for awhile, my customer determined she would go swim with the migrating whales off the coast of Belize. If, like me, your February will be spent trudging between work and home through ice and snow and sludge, our destination shelf is brimming with titles ready to transport you to the blazing heat of a sun-baked beach.

Travel alongside the erudite classic travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, as he wanders among the old colonial capitals of several Caribbean Islands, including Guadeloupe, Martinique, Barbados, Trinidad, and Haiti. Fermor’s first published travel narrative, Traveller’s Tree, describes the culture and people inhabiting the paradisaical landscape, from steel drum bands to Voodoo practices.

Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean is an engaging history book to supplement your knowledge of the Caribbean Islands and the surrounding waters, which, just after the Spanish Inquisition, were often populated with Jewish Pirates. Edward Kritzler describes the adventures of such ships as the Prophet Samuel and Queen Esther and the prospects of their fascinating crews.

Tropic Death is a collection of short stories set in Barbados, Panama, and other Caribbean landscapes that filled the childhood memories of author Eric Walrond. Although fictional, these vivid depictions of life in the tropics transport the reader into the lives of island residents living in the aftermath of colonialism.  If the Dominican Republic is your destination, Junot Diaz’s short story collection, Drown, reveals the lives of residents of the villages and barrios of the DR. Both of these short story collections would make a great read for a flight to the Caribbean. And of course, for a sultry romp through Puerto Rico, all you have to do is pick up Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary and you’re off to 1950s San Juan.

If you are looking not only to escape the cold, but also the city, pick up Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, and let her take you to a ten-by-twelve mile island, her home of Anitgua. Watch the changes that came with colonialism and tourism, and learn about the lives lived out in this small place in the Caribbean.

I usually reserve light reading for the waiting room of my dentist’s office. Maybe that’s why I always get a bad taste in my mouth when flipping through a magazine. Or a headache from the perfume samples. I can never seem to focus on anything between the flimsy covers, registering only advertisements that make me feel bad about how I look. When I finally do get drawn into an article, just when it’s getting good, I turn the page and am lost in another sea of ads.

But a recent screening of our magazine selection at Booksmith has made me feel otherwise. I was curious about the new slew of travel magazines circulating, each with its own unique perspective on place. What I found, among many more commercial-oriented travel publications, were a few magazines that seemed to be skipping down new, unbeaten paths, whether they were honing in on little-known local places, or blowing my mind to new global proportions.

The photographs contained between the stylish covers of Trunk magazine did the latter. Photographer Jason Florio spent 15 years in Gambia to achieve a level of intimacy with the culture that shows in each stunning portrait. Faces look out from the page with an openness and authenticity that could only have been cultivated through trust built over time. Anders Overgaard has captured our destination of the month, Myanmar (Burma) in another series of stunning photographs. And Ayman Oghanna, an Iraqi-British journalist,  takes us directly into the action in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past few years.

In addition to these photographers, the most recent issue of Trunk contains fascinating interviews with artists who use maps as a medium and stories from correspondents from around the world: Athens, Chile, Swaziland, and even our own Massachusetts. By the time I reached the back cover (a rare thing in my magazine reading life) I was whole-heartedly agreeing with Trunk‘s byline: “the world is a fine place.” And that’s not always an easy thing to say.

From global I went local, with the inaugural issue of Local Magazine: A Quarterly of People and Places. If you want an excellent preview to this new project, watch their video that inspired their Kickstarter contributors to, well, kick-start this worthy cause. The magazine–the brainchild of editor-in-chief Daniel Webster Jr.–is based on the belief that, as he writes, “the whistle-stop or post-industrial city has microcosmic importance to the complicated tale of America.”

Webster and his group of entrepreneurial artists and writers select one small-town destination per issue and tell its story. This issue they traveled to Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania where they went to work for Reptileland to better understand local sources of entertainment, talked to the displaced residents of the Riverdale Mobile Home Park, and of course, reviewed the local tavern. Stop in and travel with them to more overlooked destinations, sampling the local color of small-town America.

And finally I turned to The Common, a recent literary journal out of Amherst College that seeks to deliver to the reader a “modern sense of place” through engaging essays, short stories, poetry, and photographs. In this issue, I dabbled in a collection of South African poetry, looked out of editor Jennifer Acker’s high-rise apartment onto Abu Dhabi, in “From the 17th Floor,” and drove to Vegas with Jennifer Haigh’s character, Sandy, and as “the Strip unrolled before them, a throbbing assault of shimmering, bubbling neon,” I saw it, too.

“We live in an increasingly digital world,” Acker, the journal’s founder, writes,  ”but place is not dead…Far from erasing the importance of our surroundings, our mobile modernity creates a hunger for place-based ruminations. Literature provides the vehicle for these travels.” Enjoy the ride.

I know where you’re going. Throughout these long winter months I’ve watched the travel shelves closely. It’s not hard to discern, from the ruffled maps of South America, from the gaping holes in the Cambodia and Costa Rica shelves, where you are. Not surprisingly, this winter everyone in Boston is heading for warmer climes. You’re going to the beach.

And some of you, like my parents, are headed for the quieter beaches of lesser known destinations. In their last report from the beaches of Burma, (or Myanmar–my choice in this case was purely alliterative), I received a photo of my nephew, who has spent two-thirds of his 9-month life in the country, proudly displaying his first sand castle on an almost-deserted beautiful beach. Looking at that photo, I don’t blame you for going. In fact, I envy you.

That’s why we’re celebrating Myanmar as January’s destination of the month. Of course, there are many other reasons to celebrate this country other than its beaches. To better understand the remarkable changes taking place in this developing nation, pick up some of the fascinating literature we have at Booksmith, books meant to guide you into a deeper engagement with your new surroundings.

The Lady and The Peacock, the latest biography on Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi may not be the best
beach read, but it is sure to prepare you for the people you meet and give you an appreciation for the country’s struggle toward democracy over the past decade. Explore deeper into the country’s past, into the age of British Imperialism, with Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Glass Palace and Burmese Days from George Orwell. Emma Larkin’s Finding George Orwell in Burma is a great companion to his novel, as Larkin follows in the footsteps of the writer, revealing the political situation of today.

Not going to the beach this winter? You, too, can travel to Myanmar through Naomi Duguid’s gorgeous cookbook Burma: Rivers of Flavor. This is much more than a cookbook. Duguid traveled extensively in Burma over the past decades, culling recipes, stories, and photographs that lead her readers into a direct engagement with this unique people and land. Interwoven with the recipes are tastefully told anecdotes of Burma’s history, culture, people, and, of course, food. Filled with gorgeous color photographs, this book allows you to immerse yourself in the warm sites, stories, and sensations of Burma without even leaving your kitchen.

In the winter, I read to escape. Whether it is from the stress of holiday retail to a silent, open landscape or to a sunny beach from the bleak cold of January, I rely on books to take me to better places, imagined places. This month, I’m reading Lonely Planet’s newly released anthology of travel writing, Better Than Fiction, and it really is as entertaining as a novel if simply for the fact that the inviting landscapes described are places I could actually travel to.

Except for one. In “The Way to Hav,” renowned travel writer Jan Morris introduced me to a city I had never heard of. Morris has written two books about the imagined metropolis of Hav, causing some confusion among her readers. In this brief essay, Morris describes the letters she received asking for directions to Hav, and does her best to explain the way. It is, of course, through the imagination, but Hav is not all fancy. Morris traces the very real roots of her city to events, experiences, and encounters with the cities of our world.

Reading about Hav immediately brought to mind Italo Calvino’s whimsically wrought Invisible Cities, which my co-worker Lydia recommended just before the holidays. A perfect gift for this season, especially for those of us low on funds for real travels. Calvino takes the reader to cities so intricately imagined, from topography to culture, that closing this book is like coming home after a long journey to distant lands.

In the spirit of Calvino and Borges comes Dung Kai-Cheung’s recent Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City. The novel is set in a fictional city, Victoria, which has parallels to the Hong Kong of our world. Archaeologists struggle to reconstruct the imagined history of Victoria through maps and historical artifacts, weaving together the narrative of a place through both real and imagined anecdotes.

Given the appeal of imagined lands, it is no surprise that someone should start mapping them. Over the holidays more
than one imagined map has shown up at Booksmith. You may have seen The Lands of Ice and Fire on our
gift table, a set of maps drawn by cartographer Jonathan Roberts, rendering the fantastical lands of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series as real as those around us. Even more recently, we’ve begun to carry The Infinite Map, inspired by David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Wallace spent three years writing his masterpiece which is set mainly in Boston and the Northeast. Major placed events in the book have been carefully mapped by William Beutler the team at Infinite Atlas, and, of course, the map is heavily footnoted. My favorite part is the Legend, which reads: Real, Fictional, Fictionalized, and Approxomite.

I have only been to Paris in the summer. When the Champs Elysees is crowded with tourists looking for a bit of shade for relief from a relentless sun. When you decide to save yourself from the metro crowds by walking everywhere until your sandals smell so bad you throw them out rather than ruining everything in your suitcase. When you can spend long evenings watching the sky turn the stone white edifices rose from Montmartre Butte, the Sacre Couer at your back, a bottle of wine on hand, or dance the summer evenings away on the banks of the Seine.

I’ve never been to Paris in the winter, but I can imagine the lamp lit streets and bridges, the snowflakes melting softly into the Seine. And Paris is a city that is always in someways more imagined than experienced, half romance half real. This month, we’re celebrating the city of light with some lovely gift books–for the traveler who has been and wants to remember those fading summer nights, or for someone who is on their way to the sparkling snow-covered boulevards. And for the rest, there are narratives to help you imagine the trip you’ve never taken but someday will.

Flipping through Paris: An Inspiring Tour of the City’s Creative Heart is almost as good as a ticket there. Janelle McCullough takes the traveler through each arrondissement by way of gorgeous photographs and alluring prose. This book is coffee table and guide book in one. Looking for something more compact and practical? We have two shelves of guidebooks devoted to helping you navigate the city. Secret Paris, for example, can unlock the city and show you un-looked for corners.

Paris is a city full of stories, imagined and real. Paula Mclain has taken the well-known classic story, A Moveable Feast, and turned Hemingway’s memoir of 1920s Paris into a novel. This time, however, the women speak. The Paris Wife is told from the point of view of Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson. She narrates the well-known story: from falling in love, to meeting other members of the “Lost Generation” to the final heartbreaking betrayal.Hungry for more stories set in Paris? The NYRB has collected Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories into one brilliant edition. This would be the perfect read for your flight to France.

And finally, the slim The Night Before Christmas in Paris makes a sweet stocking stuffer for the francophile in your life. Santa Claus is frantic because Mrs. Claus has slipped off to see the sites of Paris. Santa’s sleigh visits the Montmartre, the Left Bank, the Notre Dame, the Ritz in search of his wife. In the end, “His memories were sweet of the City of Light,” as we hope everyone’s are this holiday season, and, of course, to all a good night!

I love walking through the travel aisle and finding a customer standing transfixed in front of our map browser, gazing at the brilliant colors of our Tyvek map, contemplating the World Upside Down, or pointing out a memory of a place on a map to a friend. Maps draw people in, ask for interaction, reflection, or simply admiration. While I walk by our browser fifty times a day, I gained a new appreciation for the art of cartography this past week at two different venues: the Boston Antiquarian Book Festival and the new map room at the Boston Public Library.

Walking through the rows upon rows of ancient and beautiful books, prints, and maps at the Antiquarian Book Festival at Hynes Convention Center, it was my turn to gawk. I squeezed between two tweed suits, through a cloud of must, and stood staring at the familiar shape of my home state. A German 1955 map of Iowa hung before me, surrounded by maps that showed our states divided into territories–a visual history lesson. I passed one map so old it depicted California as an island. I’d seen a similar map at the Boston Public the week before when I finally made it to the new Map Room there.

If you haven’t visited the Norman B. Leventhal Map Room, check it out on your next trip to the BPL. When I went, it was election week, and the walls were covered in red and blue U.S. maps, with plaques explaining the electoral college. I read the plaques; it still confuses me, but this was no fault of the exhibition. The current exhibit focuses on Boston’s public spaces. As you enter the map room there is a gorgeous mural of downtown Boston, overlooking the State House and Common. Inside, you can learn about the development of your favorite greens around town.

If you or someone you know is also an appreciator of the map as art, come check out the amazing travel-oriented gift books we have on display at Booksmith. From the Granger Collection we have a gorgeous book of Historic Maps and Views of Boston. After perusing these historic views of your favorite city, check out Mark Ovenden’s new Railway Maps of the World, which I happen to have on my coffee table at home. From Kim Je-hwan’s dizzying design of the Tokyo Metropolitan Railway System to a map of the United States covered with an intricate system hairline cracks that was the world’s largest railroad network at its peak in 1918, this book will stun, absorb, and amaze your guests.

And finally, when you’ve completely saturated yourself with these visual masterpieces,
pick up Robert D. Kaplan’s Revenge of Geography. Kaplan examines the history of the world through the lens of the map, exploring how climate changes, topography, and proximity all contributed to major events in the shaping of world history. All of these books make great holiday gifts, especially when paired with that tube-shaped package that can only be the wall map on their list.