Reading (+crowdfunding) a global walk & road memoirs: Nepal, Europe/US, Worldtrip

Reading: trail notes from one of the longest walks through the world, and road memoirs:

Since last year, I am reading the trek notes of a global walk: Paul Salopek, a journalist who won the Pulitzer, is walking the world, following the trail of humans from the origins in Africa along the directions they walked to migrate and spread. The name of his project is “Out of Eden Walk”, it’s partly supported by National Geographic.

The walk will be 7 years long, leading through 4 continents. Salopek started walking 2 years ago, in Ethopia. From there, his journey took him to Djibuti, and to Saudi Arabei. His journey notes are collected in an online archive: Out of Eden Walk - Notes. 

To finance his walk, Salop does a yearly Kickstarter campaign. I joined in backing his previous one, and now his new one is coming to closure: 4 days left, and 43.598 of 45.000$ funded. I just backed it, too. Here's the Kickstarter link: Out of Eden Walk.

Here's a summary of the walk so far, from the Kickstarter page: 

"In January 2013, Paul walked out of Ethiopia. He’s since traversed Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Cyprus, Turkey, and crossed the Caucasus Mountains into the Republic of Georgia. Pausing only when seasonal or geopolitical factors demand, Paul won’t break from the Out of Eden Walk trail until he reaches the tip of South America, where our ancestors also ran out of new horizons.
 The physical rigors of the journey, though obvious, are far from the point. The Out of Eden Walk is primarily a storytelling quest into the lives of the people and the human landscapes that Paul encounters on the trail. Moving at the slow beat of his footsteps, Paul is revealing the inner worlds of people he encounters: the nomads, villagers, traders, farmers, and fishermen who don't ordinarily make the news. The Walk is a way of being; a commitment to humanity."

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Global walks - that could also be the titel theme for some of the books I read recently:





"Even Everest Shook: Caught in the Nepal Earthquake 2015"
by  Tony Hill
This is a touching read, starting light-hearted and adventurous, and then turning a book about witnessing the devastating earthquake on a personal level, as part of a trekking group:
"After visiting the ancient temples and squares of Kathmandu, Tony Hill and a group of fellow travellers from around the world set off up the Himalayan valleys Everest bound. Only 3 days into the trek they were in a mountain village when the devastating Nepal Earthquake struck. Lucky to escape uninjured, they find themselves stranded. Journey with Tony Hill, before, during and in the aftermath of the earthquake, experience breathtaking beauty, the bonding and humour of a diverse set of characters, then overwhelming tragedy, and the fragility, resilience and spirituality of the human condition."

"2 years 4 months 2 hours : From Italy to the world - A memoir of love and travel"
by Chiara Townley
A personal and emotional memoir of Chiara, written in diary notes and mails, about the difficult journey of 2 people from different continents from the first meeting to the final reunion: "Chiara meets Tyler in London while she's working in a hotel. For her it's love at first sight. She is from Italy and he is American. There is no time for dating because he's leaving for a trip to South America then back to the US. What happens next is the journey of a woman that follows her heart against all odds."

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"Journeyman" by Fabian Körner
This is a German book: the memoir of trying to travel all continents in a year and work in each for a while - interesting read, especially with the focus on the working, which gives the journey a different spin and focus and differnet destinations, away from the usual tourist trails.


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Reading Links:

For more reading notes, click here: life as a journey with books 

A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

7 continents reading journey, part 2: Himalaya (+ Mallorca & Burma)

Reading this week: the next books for the "7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books Challenge", and stories of long hauls:

For the start of the 7 continents reading challenge, I visited one of the countries with most population on earth: China. From there, the reading journey now leads to a place that is more about solitude: to the highest places on earth. Which are located in: Nepal, China, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. After checking the map, it's easy to see that all of those countries belong to the Himalaya region:




What I didn't expect, though, is to find 3 countries in this "highest" category also belong to the"most populated" category of the first stop: China, India and Pakistan. Especially as high regions aren't synonym for comfortable living: the higher the region, the more difficult to live there.

This time, instead of looking for a book from a specific country, I looked for a book about the Himalaya. And arrived high in the past, in the pages of a book that is now 90 years old:

"The Assault on Mount Everest" by Charles G. Bruce
The Assault on Mount Everest is a chronicle of the first climbing attempt upon Mount Everest, written by the expedition leader, Brig. Gen. Charles G. Bruce. This expedition in 1922 followed the reconaissance expedition of 1921 to find a route on to the mountains, and was man's first attempt to climb the highest mountain in the world. The book has since been reprinted many times, and is available both as paperback or e-book.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but the book is both interesting and surprising, telling about the beauty of the landscape, the details of logistics of such an expedition, and the task of reaching Everest and setting up camps while dealing with the unstable weather. And it starts with a rather philosophical reflection:

"What is the good of it all? Who will benefit if the climbers eventually get to the top?"- "The wrestling with the the mountain makes us love the mountain. For the moment we are utterly exhausted and only too thankful to be able to hurry back to more congenial regions. Yet all the same, we shall eventually get to love the mountain for the very fact that she has forced the utmost out of us, lifted us just for one precious moment high above our ordinary life.."

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While reading the book, I visited the library and saw another Himalaya book, which tells the larger story of the Everest ascends:

"Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest"
A former mountaineering guide himself, Tenzing retells some of the most famous Everest climbs. He focuses on the life and career of his grandfather, Tenzing Norgay, "the most renowned of all Sherpas, Man of Everest, Tiger of the Snows," who made the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. Tenzing also explores and explains the Sherpa society and history.

Together, the two books made a good contrasting combination: the past and the now, the view from a British explorer and from someone who belongs to the culture there, the first steps into the unknown and the modern trend of climbing mountains, the economical and cultural impact those tours have.

For some impressions of the Himalaya, of Tashi Tenzing and of mountaineering, try this video (which includes 3 of the 7 highest countries :)
Trekking the Himalaya with Tashi Tenzing - Nepal, Tibet & Bhutan

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The week brought two other world reads, too, both from the library, and both about living abroad for a while:

"A Year in Mallorca" ("Ein Jahr in Mallorca”)...
...is the memoir of a journalist who went to live and work there, and tells of the non-touristy view of things, and the atmosphere in Mallorca beyond the tourist season. It also tells about the challenge to start anew in a new, foreign place. It was interesting, to see this other side of Mallorca, after having been to Mallorca myself.

"Burma Chronicles" ... 
is a graphic novel. It was one of the recommended reads on an internatioal book list, and made me remember the library system of  "Fernleihe" - “distant ordering”, which connects libraries in South Germany. The author is Guy Delisle, a French-speaking Canadian, who lived in Burma with his wife (who belongs to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Border) and their young son. The book is lovely, charming and personal: the impressions of living in another culture, and the encounters there. It’s not one long novel, but short moments and stories, between one and eight pages. Like a diary in comic style. One of the stories is included in this review, about living just a street from Aung San Suu Kyi (called "The Lady" in Burma): Sneak Peek / Burma Chronicles

I like the idea that this travel book also went on a trip after I ordered it. The tag in its back tells its origin: Karlsruhe ZKM - the library of the media museum in Karlsruhe, which I want to visit since a while.

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Global Reading Challenge 2015 + Currently Reading:

For 2015, I try to read books / authors from different countries, the idea is to visit all continents. If you want to, join the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - or just join the international facebook reading group.

In the previous book post, I put together some reading statistics and book memories of 2014 - so if you are into geeky reading statistics, try this link: A year in reading in geek statistics +  book memories

For more reading notes, click here: life as a journey with books. A reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

reading notes: "Swimming Upstream" & finding ones way: "Doves fly up" & "The girl that wasn't allowed to cry"

Catching up with reading notes - the three books are from the last weeks. All 3 books are about growing up and finding ones way, and none has an easy happy-end.  Some reading notes and summary quotes:

"Swimming Upstream" by Ruth Mancini
This book received several nominations: the 2014 Kindle Book Review Literary Fiction Semifinalist, 2014 Rone Award Nominee, and Literary Nominee for Indie Author Land’s 50 Books Worth Reading. It is a novel, but feels like it was written based on autobiographic experience. It's about a woman who walks away from a difficult relationship with a self-absorbed partner, and then lives with friends - one of them has a partner with a tendency to getting abusive, and the other friend is dealing with depression and swinging moods - all of them have no easy answers and solutions, and there is no prince charming who walks in and solves it all. It's a touching read about life and relationships. Here's the book summary:

"Swimming Upstream is a life-affirming and often humorous story about a young woman’s pursuit of happiness. It is also a story of female friendship, love, and divided loyalties – and the moral choices that we find ourselves making when the chips are down." (from goodreads)

"Tauben fliegen auf" ("Doves fly up") by Melinda Nadj Abonji
"Tauben fliegen auf" is the book that won the German Book Prize in 2010. It's a book that I found at the telephone-book-box, but gave up reading on first try - back then it probably was the wrong book, and felt like a slow and meandering read. Now I tried again, and was drawn to it, with the both personal and political dimensions it includes. Like "Swimming Upstream", and even more so, it reads like a memoir. The book isn't available in English, but there's a review in English in a blog with a summary:

"The novel tells the story of a family from the Hungarian minority who leave the Vojvodina (which belonged to Yugoslavia and now is part of Serbia) for a new life in Switzerland, and what faces them once they arrive and come to modest success, running a café. Contrasting scenes set in rural Yugoslavia and a wealthy Swiss village, Nadj Abonji narrates from the perspective of the older of the two daughters, Ildiko." (from: love german books)

"Das Mädchen, das nicht weinen durfte"("The girl that wasn't allowed to cry") by Khadra Sufi
The third book is a memoir, from the library. Like "Doves fly up", this book is about a daughter whose parents cross cultures when she is young, only that they don't find their settled new life in a better place. It's a reminder of all the refugee families and the troubles they have to face. Here's the summary, from the publisher:

"Khadra Sufi was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1980 and spent her childhood as the daughter of a diplomat in the former East Germany. She is eight years old when she first returns to her home country, Somalia. At the outbreak of the civil war, however, the diplomat and his family are stripped of all their privileges. In 1990, they manage to flee to Egypt via Kenya before ending up in a hostel for asylum seekers in Germany. Khadra’s parents are utterly demoralised by the loss of their social standing, the plunge into poverty and a life continually on the verge of deportation. Khadra herself becomes her father’s main support and acts as mother to her four siblings. When her parents move to London, Khadra decides to stay in Germany. One setback follows the next, but Khadra refuses to give up."

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Global Reading Challenge 2015 + Currently Reading:

For 2015, I try to read books / authors from different countries, the idea is to visit all continents. If you want to, join the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - or just join the international facebook reading group.

Right now, I am reading a book from China: "1000 years of good prayers" by Yiyun Li, and am putting together some reading statistics, comparing my reading year 2014 with the previous year.

For more reading notes in this blog, click here: life as a journey with books - and a reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - Reading Challenge 2015

    

The idea of this reading challenge is to explore the world by books from different continents and countries, and by visiting various world lists while planning the reads, to encounter the one or other unknown angle and fact about our world.

7 Continents Reading Challenge 2015
To join the challenge, select and read seven books, each belonging to one of the following categories - or, if this works better for you, simply pick one book from each continent:

A book from....
- the 7 countries with the most population

- the 7 highest countries in the world

- the 7 oldest countries of the world

- one of the 7 megacities of the world

- the 7 countries with the most immigrants

- a continent not visited yet

- and a book with a journey from one continent to another

There's more information about the categories included below, with links to country lists.

Why 7 Books? 
To keep it simple and playful, and leave space for extra reads that might be inspired by the lists. Also, with 7 continents, and the world population reaching 7 billions, the 7 seems to be the best number for this kind of challenge.

Challenge Guidelines: 

• This challenge will run from Jan 1, 2015 – Dec 31, 2015
• Books can be any format (novel, non-fiction, poetry or story collection, anthology, as well as any phyisal format: print, ebook, audio)
• The idea of the challenge is to read books from different cultures and continents - so if ithis works better for you, you can alternatively simply pick one book from each continent
• You are welcome to count these books towards any other challenges as well
• You can start wherever you want. 
• When picking a country, the idea is to also pick an author from that country. If that turns out to be difficult, try to find an expat author who lived in the country for a while.

Resources, lists, links: 
Here is more about the 7 country categories, with links to the global lists, and with the top 7 countries listed already. The lists mostly are wiki-lists, as those often offer addditional search options.

1) The starting point: 
A book from one of the 7 countries with the most population

• Link: List of countries by population
• Top 7: China, India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria 

2) From most populated to the mountains:
A book from one of the 7 highest countries in the world

• Link: List of countries by highest point
• Top 7: Nepal, China, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan

3) From high to old:
A book from one of the 7 oldest countries of the world

• It's an own challenge to create a definite ranking of the oldest countries of the world, some references: About/Geography and here: Wiki-answers.
• Some of the oldest countries: Japan, China, San Marino, Egypt + Iraq, Iran, Greece

4) From old to new:
 A book from one of the megacities of the world 

• Link: About Megacities + List of megacities 
• Top 7: Tokyo (Japan), Delhi (India), Seoul (South Korea), Shanghai (China), Mumbai (India), Mexico City, Sao Paulo (Brazil)

5) From megacity to migration:
 A book from one of the 7 countries with the most immigrants 

• Link: List of countries by foreign-born population
• Top 7: USA, Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, UK, France

6) From migration to continents
 A book from a continent you havn't visited yet in this challenge  

• The 7 continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Australia/Ozeania, North Pole 
• The listing is sorted by population, more about the 7 continents: Wiki/Continent

7) From continents to journey

• A book that includes a journey from one continent to another.  

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How to find books by country

How to find books set in particular countries? And preferably books that are written by an author who is coming from the country, or who has lived in it for a while? Here are also some lists that focus on the country: 

• Wikipedia: literature by country (overview)
• Goodreads: Cultural Books (with many subpages + lists)
• Guardian "best books from".. series
• Goodreads/Places (based on book description)
• Nobel Prize in Literature
• Three Percent: a resource for international literature 
• Around the world in 80 books (Goodreads group with lists) 
• And a blog post with more links and information:
  Finding books by country: helpful links + resources 

Searching for a place in an e-reader
If you have an e-reader, it might be interesting to run a search there: e-book readers can look for a word in all e-books they have in their files, and create a neat sorted list with bookmarks.

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To join the reading challenge 

To join the challenge, just leave a comment with the link to your blog.

There also is a 7 continents / 7 books facebook group, to post review links, or just the cover or title of a book you enjoyed, or other related news and links - it's open to everyone who is interested in global reads. 

Looking forward to this different kind of journey around the world! And don't worry that some already started – it's never to late to start!

a new place, you-are-there-reading, mermaids & "to simply live those moments"

A new place 
Since Monday, we are staying in a different corner of Lanzarote: in Playa Blanca, the southern tip of the island. It's the first time we are here, and it feels like a lucky move  - the weather is sunnier since we are here (and supposedly, this is the "sunny corner" of the island, even when clouds are lingering further up the coast. And the the place itself is lovely, it's not a hotel, but it's holiday bungalows. The description of the place sounded good, but then you never really know until you are there if it's only the description that sounds fine (just like with books and their promising blurbs)

A nice thing is that the bungalows here don’t have simple numbers, but names. Ours is called “Christian Andersen”, relating to the fairy tale author from Denmark. Next to us is Pablo Picasso and Leonardo di Vinci. There also is Agatha Christie, John Lennon and Fred Astaire, and various other.

In the photo above, you can see Playa Blanca from the southern end of the settlement. Our bungalow belongs to the first patch of houses you see, with the palm trees in front. It's indeed "at the end of the island". Beyond it, there is just the walkway that leads to the lighthouse at the southern tip, see photo below - that's taken from the same walkway, just some minutes further towards the opposite  direction.

Ocean Read 
To stay in a bungalow named by a writer reminded me of a this essay on books I read a while ago, about "You Are There - Reading" - the special joy and passion to read a book in a place that appears in the book. I looked it up, here's the quote from it: "The practice of reading books in the places they describe" - like reading Homer's Odyssey in Greece, Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" in Walden, James Joyce's "Dubliners" or "Ulysses" in Dublin. (from Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman)



Hans-Christian Andersen is from Denmark, though, but when I looked up his biography, I remembered that he is the author of the “Little Mermaid”. There is an online-version of the tale in the web, and it was a joy to read it, with the view to the blue ocean, which connected perfectly with the starting lines:

"Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass. But it is very deep too. It goes down deeper than any anchor rope will go, and many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.."

Here’s the link: Hans-Christian Andersen: Little Mermaid

A Portuguese Nobel Lanzarote writer:  Jose Saramago 

Following the idea of you-are-there-reading, I browsed a bit to see if I can find an author from Lanzarote. There probably are Spanish authors, so looking in English wasn't too helpful at first, but I learned that a rather prominent author lived here for years: the Portuguese author Jose Saramagao, who received the Nobel Prize for literature. There's an interview with Saramago in the Paris Review, which took place on a sunny afternoon in March of 1997, at his home in Lanzarote, just some miles from here. Here's a bit from it:

Interviewer: "When you moved to Lanzarote, away from the surroundings in which you had lived and written for so many years, did you accustom yourself immediately to this space, or did you miss your previous work space?"Saramago: "I adapted easily. I believe myself to be the type of person who does not complicate his life. I have always lived my life without dramatizing things, whether the good things that have happened to me or the bad. I simply live those moments."

(and here is the second photo, with the counterpart view)

Carmen LaForet + The Week in Culture
Another writer who is related to Lanzarote is Carmen LaForet, who wrote a book with the tales from the Canary Islands, combined with a travel guide. Her most known work is a novel, though: "Nada" / "Nothing". I hadn't known her, she wais " a Spanish author who wrote in the period after the Spanish Civil War. An important European writer, her works contributed to the school of Existentialist Literature". When I looked for an interview with her, I arrived at the Paris Review again - but then first thought: wrong link, as the page that popped up wasn't an interview, but a blog-style culture article with various themes.  Turned out, this is a series, and the one that popped up was again a you-are-there-read: A week in culture - writer Carlene Bauer, who recently has been to Spain, and writes about learning Spanish, reading LaForet, and various culture encounters, like this one with a note on the spell of reading books:

"Appointment in the city with an editor. After Spain, I have been wanting to read more Spanish-language fiction. Recently read Carmen Laforet’s Nada, which is a dark haunted attic of a novel set in post–Civil War Barcelona, and then, finally, after meaning to do so forever, have just started Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives. It is my subway companion, and the thunderous hurtling of the train is the perfect accompaniment to the book’s hectic, shuttling sentences. I am having the terrible and embarrassing problem of instantly realizing a book’s genius, but also failing to find instant purchase in the narrative. I’m trusting that I will soon come to love this, though. Editor I meet with sees that I am carrying book, says 2666 had her under a spell that made her prefer its company to that of humans."

Here's the whole series: Paris Review / Week in Culture

Now, for an island walk, to enjoy the ocean moments, and to take some photos. (which now are included above. i also learned a word: "lighthouse" in Spanish is: "faro".)

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Related links:

• Lanzarote blog entries (this year and previous visits)
• reading notes + overview: bookshelf 2014

reading: 3 memoirs / personal journeys: "I am Malala" + "An Inconvenient Year" (about cancer) + a literary stay in Rome

(this is a reading note from mid-October, now finally put together and posted)



Reading these days: Memoirs. The memoir of Malala, Peace nobel prize winner. A cancer memoir. And a book that leads from Germany to Rome, from Goethe to the now. 

"I am Malala"
This week, I stopped at the library. They had some new books, one of them was the memoir of Malala, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace just some days ago. The Prize, it was a good surprise. The Nobel committee is having such a difficult job, I thought, in so many areas. And they do it well. Also, an article pointed out that the peace price now also connects India and Pakistan with a sign of peace, and both nominees said they want to bring their head of states along to the ceremony. The book itself, I started to read it – I don’t think I will read all of it, but it’s inspiring to read Malala's words and feel the energy she has, to stand up for education, for herself and for others. Here's a quote from it:

"“I don't want to be thought of as the "girl who was shot by the Taliban" but the "girl who fought for education." This is the cause to which I want to devote my life.” ― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (more quotes)

"An Inconvenient Year"
This is a personal book, in two ways: it's the memoir of Yvonne Joye, an account of her time of dealing with breast cancer. It is written in blog-style book, with notes from the start. And it really was helpful to read this when I found myself in the same situation: finding a knot in ones breast and then wondering: what now? Here’s the book link, it’s a free e-book (Thanks Yvonne, for sharing your story with others!): "An Inconvenient Year"
update: more about my own journey, here in this blog: c is for cancer & for courage, too 

And I read 2 German memoirs of writers who have dealt with cancer:

Sigrid Damm: "Wohin mit mir" 
Another one of the lucky telephone box reads - a book I hadn't known before, but enjoyed a lot. And nice timing: I read a part of it at the Day of the German Reunion, which connects to the book: Sigrid Damm is a German author who grew up in East Germany, and focused on the classice authors that are connected to Leipzig, especially on Goethe. She was invited to a writing stay in Rome, and later wrote about her time there, too. So it’s a book that connects East and West Germany, present and past, and also includes Italy, now and to Goethe's time (who travelled through Italy, too).
To get an impression of Damm's work, try this link: Damm's books on Goethe + Schiller + memoirs

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Currently Reading + More Reads:

For 2014, i didn't join a specific reading challenge, but i try to read books / authors from different countries and continents, and also follow the “readwomen2014” initiative. Here’s more about it: 2014 - year of reading women

For more reading notes in this blog, click here: life as a journey with books- and a reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

On the left is a photo of the book phone box, it feels a bit like a magic shelf. So far, I always found books there that I didn't even know about, and that I really enjoyed.

More book blogs: What are you reading - link list

Frankfurt International Bookfair: Printed, Digital, We are Here - Snaphots & Links

Book Fair 2014 "We are Here"

This week, I visited the Frankfurt International Bookfair.

The slogan of the fair in 2014 is "Wir sind hier" - "We are here"

This is Frankfurt city centre and the fair area, seen from the Autobahn. 

And this right inside the fair, the first hall i visited, with a focus on Comics

Suprise: one of the largest booths in the hall belonged to Samsung. They were official partner of the book fair.

From Comics to the North: The guest of honor this year was Finland, and in the midst of all the buzz, they managed to create this special hall of space and calm, and of words spoken in Finnish – there was an author interview on, and just listening to the tune of Finnish was fascinating. It’s not an roman-based language, like most european languages, but runs on a different concept.

From the North, I moved to ... the digital future. The Fair had a special hot spot for digital themes and trends: Forum Zukunft. It was a bit hidden, though.... and turned out to be on the analog side of things. Well. This is "Forum Future" (no kidding.):

And next to the future, a panel for self-publishers. Which is a new thing for the fair:

The star of the day wasn't a book, or an established or upcoming author, but “Cro” – a german rap musician who is panda-masked, and who now wrote a book and gave a miniconcert on the open stage in the middle of the bookfair plaza. Spot the panda in the middle of the scene? That's him. 

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Of course, there was much more - German books, international books, authors, interviews, and all the sights of walking through a place where so many different readers and books and authors meet. 

Here's a snapshot with a double-meaning quote I liked: "Die Welt gehört denen, die auch im Netz gegen den Strom schwimmen" - "The world belongs to those who swim against the tide in the net, too." 

And a different kind of collage: the things I picked up along the way:

Some Links to Articles: 

• Frankfurt Book Fair 2014: Betting Big on Publishing’s Future
• Frankfurt: The next “big thing” is digital maturity
• At Frankfurt Book Fair: Between creativity and commerce
• E-books on the up in Germany - E-books are a major trend at the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair.
• FutureBook Innovation Awards shortlists unveiled
• taz.de: Digitales auf der Buchmesse - Das Buchregal als Touchscreen
• Wiso: E-Books: Flatrate Angebote im Vergleich 

reading notes: snapshots across the globe + longreads + polar reading

Upcoming next week: International Frankfurt Bookfair! I am excited about going there again. The guestland this year is Finland. The Nothern regions of the world were also the destination of 2 of my current reads, and I found a great world anthology. Here's an overview:  



The Places We’ve Been: Snapshots Across the Globe

This is a collection of 48 vivid and transportive, personal and original nonfiction pieces that portray contemporary snapshots across the globe. It offers a great mix of forms and perspectives, from diary-like pieces to notes to reflections. The motto: "The challenge of today is not just "where do I fit in one small place," but identity and interaction throughout the world - Within the book's wide roster, you'll hear from such a range of storytellers, the likes of: a sailor and glaciologist from Scotland, Brooklyn musician, Tanzanian television host, Dubai-based journalist, and a Montreal aerospace medicine enthusiast, plus rural school teachers, a fearless rock climber, five-country midwife, and so many more."
It's available as neat and low-prized e-book. And as I just discovered, there also is a project homepage that might be interesting to browse:  ThePlaces35.com

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The next two pieces are online longreads - since August, i visit the hashtag #longreads on twitter, and got lucky with my finds several times. So many good reads out there, and this hashtag helps to find them in unknown places: 

Longread: I Had a Stroke at 33

How does it feel to have a stroke? This essay, based on diary notes, gives an idea of our mind, how it works, and how different life is without short term memory. It's a moving longread, about a woman who had a stroke at age 33, and kept a diary of this time, to remember all the things that she kept forgetting:

“Awake I had a 15-minute short-term memory, like Dory the fish in Finding Nemo. My doctors instructed me to log happenings with timestamps in my Moleskine journal. That, they said, would be my working short-term memory.
For a month, every moment of the day was like the moment upon wakening before you figure out where you are, what time it is. I was not completely aware of what had happened to me. I was not completely aware of my deficits, in an ignorance-is-bliss sort of way. I was unable to fret about the past, or the uncertainty of the future. The sun is bright. The leaves rustle. This is the wind on my face. I am alive. This is the thing: People pay a lot of money to live like that. To live in the present tense.”

Here’s the whole read: I Had a Stroke at 33 + author blog

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And the second longread could be a piece of the Field Reports: a trip norhwards. It's also an especially well done multimedia piece:

Multimedia Longread: A Journey in Which I Travel Northwards 

This journey is to Scandinavia, but not to Finland - to Norway. Reif Larsen is following the roots of his grandfather, and finds a country that is both old and new, slow and fast:

"My grandfather’s birthplace was the emblematic launching pad for my current mission. I was to start in Trondheim and take the famous Hurtigruten ferry, all the way up the Norwegian coast, past the Arctic Circle, to Kirkenes, the land of the midnight sun. It was a voyage my grandfather had taken with my own father 50 years ago."

And such a surprise to find German words in the story: "Occasionally, the tour manager would announce that there would be “eine kleine, kleine informationsveranstalting” — “a very short informational meeting” (apparently there is a whole classification of informational meetings in German) about excursion 4A to the Svartisen Glacier, for instance."

Here's the story link: Norway the Slow Way

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Polar Reading: Yuri Sergeyevich Rytkheu 

Reading the Scandinavian travelogue made me remember a Northern book I have in my shelf since a long while, written by   Yuri Sergeyevich Rytkheu - or: "Juri Rytcheu", in German, a Chukchi writer, who wrote in both his native Chukchi and in Russian and who is considered to be the father of Chukchi literature. Only a few of his works have been translated into English, including his "A Dream in Polar Fog" - which is exactly the one i read, "Traum im Polarnebel".

Here's the description: "A Dream in Polar Fog is at once a cross-cultural journey, an ethnographic chronicle of the people of Chukotka, and a politically and emotionally charged adventure story. It is the story of John MacLennan, a Canadian sailor who is left behind by his ship, stranded on the northeastern tip of Siberia and the story of the Chukchi community that adopts this wounded stranger. Rytkheu’s empathy, humor, and provocative voice guide us across the magnificent landscape of the North."

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Current reads, non-fiction and book fair
The polar book, it's a bit of a tale-like read, and looking at the book photo, and other recent books I read, it seems I am currently more drawn to non-fiction with all its different voices, formats and styles. And now soon to come: Bookfair. Will blog about it when i am back.

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Links + More

For 2014, i didn't join a specific reading challenge, but i try to read books / authors from different countries and continents. Here’s more about it: Reading the world 

• Previous reading post: Tempo + Coelho + Miss Gone-OverSeas
• The world in 7 books (or: mapping our world by continents)
• More reading notes in this blog: life as a journey with books
• more book blog: What are you reading - link list

World Reads, continued: short stories from the Caribbean + from Exile

The stories I read this week... were from many different place. Here's a photo that gives an idea, reaching from the Carribean to the Middle East and further, and including places that were "firsts" on my reading map. Like: Tobago. Or: Jamaica.

Pepperpot:  short stories from the Caribbean
So: Jamaica. And: Bahamas. First thing that comes to mind with those names is: long white beaches, ocean breeze, Sun. Reggae music. No real idea about the places themselves, though. It's great that the 2 publishers Akashic books and Peepal Tree Press teamed up and made this collection possible. It includes stories from:

• Trinidad & Tobago
• Jamaica 
• Belize 
• Barbados
• Antigua & Barbuda 
• Bahamas 

No easy island reads, but some rather tough topics included. I guess to every place, there is an outside / touristic view, and the view of the people who actually live and work there. This collection takes you there, to this other side.

Here's more about the collection: Publisher's page: Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean

Story  links
The opening story is also online at Granta, and gives an idea of the different view the collection offers:

The Whale House by Sharon Millar, Trinidad and Tobago
"These offshore islands rise out of the water, rugged and black with deep crevices and craggy promontories. Her father used to tell the story of building the house. Dynamite under the water to blow a hole in the hill, a false plateau appearing like a shelf, the hill buckled up behind it."

And a second story link, from an online magazine that focuses on the Carribean, too,with a focus on poetry, but they also published some stories: Tongues of the ocean – stories

Here is one of them, one that stayed with me:

"Saving Rupa" by Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming, Trinidad
"Yesterday I decide I not running no more. I can’t manage with coming last again. Ever since that time when the boy hold down Rupa, it look like I use up all the speed Maha Devi give me for this life..."

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Writing Exile
Last week, the new issue of Words Without Borders went live. And it was such a good suprise. The theme of it is: "Writing Exile".Which connects almost perfectly with my recent reads and the blog post about them: "Reading from Chile to Paris to Romania with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera & Herta Müller, or: home, exile, and fiction (blog post link)"

Here are some lines from the introduction to the Exile issue:

This month we present writing about and from exile. Although not all exiles flee political persecution or war, they have in common an involuntary departure forced by adverse circumstances. In fiction, poetry, and autobiography, writers explore the notions of departure and absence, memory and loss.

Reading it, it made me think that violence is a theme that runs through these days, too - and that exile often is a form of violence: being forced to leave your homeland.

Story links
The issue includes authors from Syria, Cuba, Uzbekistan and other places, here are some direct links:

• Fragile States: Artwork from freeDimensional: the issue also includes a virtual exhibition with artists from Iran, Burma, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Syria, and Malaysia: "Fragile States explores the physical and psychological experiences of persecution and forced displacement."
• Exiled in Europe: an interview with 3 women writers from the Middle East who currently live in Europe, with some surprise views of exile: "The Iraq that we see on TV today is not the one I was raised in and lived in. It’s like Noah’s Ark. The millions who left, not only for political reasons but in order to have freedom, took a little bit of Iraq with them and preserved it.”
• Bag of the Nation: magic realism short fiction by Osama Alomar, Syria: "I took the big bag that I had inherited from my grandfather down from the attic. It was brightly colored like a storm of rainbows. I hoisted it onto my back and went out into the street. I closed my eyes and began to choose samples at random from everything that was inside: humans and stones and dust and flowers and wind and the past and the present and the future..."

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Links + More

Reading the world:  the collected list of stories is online here: global reading, and a note on the reading journey can be found here:  reading the (missing parts of) the world 

• Previous short story post: Reading Lolita in Tehran & In Her Place
• The world in 7 books (or: mapping our world by continents)
• More reading notes in this blog: life as a journey with books
• Other book blogs: It's Monday! What are you reading? 

reading from Chile to Paris to Romania with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera & Herta Müller, or: home, exile, and fiction

The books I read this week... were chance reads, brought by the phone book box again. After the luck I had there with books the previous times (finding "The Lake" by Banana Yoshimoto, and an old diary, here's more), I stopped there again - and again was lucky. This time, Gabriela Garcia Marquez and Milan Kundera waited there:

 

Gabriel García Márquez -  Colombia / Chile
In the past, I tried to read Gabriel García Márquez's novel "100 Years of Solitude" several times, but unfortunately never got into it. The book that I brought from the box, about Chile, is a modern reportage: Littin is a film-maker, and exiled from Chile, but returned there illegally to create a film. In a different kind of "making of" story, Marquez spent several days, talking with Littín to "hear the story of his escapade, with all its scary, comic, and not-a-little surreal ups and downs. Then, applying the same unequaled gifts that had already gained him a Nobel Prize, García Márquez wrote it down. "Clandestine in Chile" is a true-life adventure story and a classic of modern reportage."

It's both a sad and powerful read, and the fact that there are too many totaliarian countries in this world, with citizens who live in fear of their own government makes it a painfully global read. There's more about the book here at goodreads.

Marquez himself is from Colombia, and while reading the book, looking for a more typical writing from him, I arrived at this magical reality short story: “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” 

Parallel to those reads, I also read an interview with Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the Paris Review, which was a perfect combination to read. So glad I picked up the Chile book, and finally arrived at Marquez and his work. He is a wonderful, thoughtful and surprising writer. Here's a bit from the interview, on the theme of fiction and journalism:

Interviewer: "Since we’ve started talking about journalism, how does it feel being a journalist again, after having written novels for so long? .... Do you think the novel can do certain things that journalism can’t?"
Marquez: "Nothing. I don’t think there is any difference. The sources are the same, the material is the same, the resources and the language are the same." ... "What I would really like to do is a piece of journalism which is completely true and real, but which sounds as fantastic as One Hundred Years of Solitude. The more I live and remember things from the past, the more I think that literature and journalism are closely related."

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Milan Kundera: Czechoslovakia / Paris 
From exile story to exile story: after reading the Chile book, I tried Kundera and the "Abschiedswalzer", hoping that it would be a bit like the book he is most known for, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", and after some pages, realized I looked for that Lightness... and so went and browsed my bookshelf. Couldn't find it, so I looked for an interview: A Talk with Milan Kundera. Like Littin, the film-maker from Chile, Kundera choose to go to France when he had to leave his home country. And in one of those good twists, the interview starts with an intro that mentions, of all authors, Garcia Marquez:

In the 1980's, Milan Kundera has done for his native Czechoslovakia what Gabriel Garcia Marquez did for Latin America in the 1960's and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did for Russia in the 1970's. He has brought Eastern Europe to the attention of the Western reading public, and he has done so with insights that are universal in their appeal. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Kundera lost his position as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Prague, and his books were banned. Little by little, life was made unbearable for him, and he was hounded out of his native country. His call for truth and the inner freedom without which truth cannot be recognized, his realization that in seeking truth we must be prepared to come to terms with death - these are the themes that have earned him critical acclaim. 

So I guess, it would be a good follow-up to this story chain to now go and look for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at some point. Or maybe he will pop up in the phone box?

And following the theme of exile, while looking for online reads from Kundera, I arrived at this story excerpt from another of his novels, "Ignorance", which focuses on leaving and the longing for places left:

Ignorance By Milan Kundera / From Chapter 2:The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize a word derived from the Greek (nostalgia, nostalgie) as well as other words with roots in their national languages: añoranza, say the Spaniards; saudade, say the Portuguese. In each language these words have a different semantic nuance. Often they mean only the sadness caused by the impossibility of returning to one's country: a longing for country, for home. What in English is called "homesickness." Or in German: Heimweh. In Dutch: heimwee.

The German "Heimweh", literally translated, it means "Home-ache". The counterpart of it is: "Fernweh" - "far-ache", or "distance-ache".

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While browsing my bookshelf, I had a long look at his old map - in it, Yugoslavia is still one country, just like Czechoslovakia and Russia, while Germany was two countries....

 

... and I arrived at 2 other books that also connect to theme exil and home, and to this series of world reads:

Canetti: Marocco / Switzerland / England
"Marocco" by Elias Canettti is a book I read several years ago. Back then, I also read about Canetti's biography: Elias Canetti was born in Bulgaria, in his childhood the family moved to Austria. In 1938, Canetti and his wife migrated to England as a reaction to the nationalist turn of Germany and Austria.


Fiction 18: Contemporary Romanian Prose

This is an anthology from the book fair, from the Romanian booth, it features 18 contemporary Romanian authors and their new works, with excerpts from each included. The first story, by Daniel Banulescu, needs just 3 lines to take the reader right back into totalitarian Romania: "In 1981, Nicolae Ceausescu built himself a holiday palace on Lake Snagov. Shortly after the President began spending his Saturdays, Sundays and some weekday afternoons in his palace at Snagov, the lidos along the entire shoreline of the lake thinned out and then disappeared. The restaurants in the vicinity of the palace were closed down..." (story link)

So good to see that the Romanian authors are now free to write and express their stories and experiences. And I just saw that there is a website with the authors and excerpts: Romania Writers

Reading in the book made me also think of Herta Müller, who grew up in Romania and wrote despite her fear of the government, and the consequences their words could have for her - more about that in the previous blog posts about her: Herta Müller - and here are some quotes from her, on the theme of oppresssion and home country:

“I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.” 

“If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.”  

“They have good streets here, but everything's so spread out. I am not used to asphalt, it makes my feet hurt, and my brain. I get as tired here in a day as I do back home in a year. That's not home, other people live there now, I wrote to Mother. Home is where you are now... And Mother wrote back to me: How would you know where home is? The place where Toni the clockmaker tends the graves, that's home.”  (link)

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Currently Reading + More Reads:

For 2014, i didn't join a specific reading challenge, but i try to read books / authors from different countries and continents, and this summer I am focusing on short stories.
Here’s more about it: Reading the world

On the left is a photo of the book phone box, it feels a bit like a magic shelf. So far, I always found books there that I didn't even know about, and that I really enjoyed.

For more reading notes in this blog, click here: life as a journey with books- and a reading list by regions is online at: World Reads by country

Other book blogs: It's Monday! What are you reading? 

Reading the World: from New York to Berlin, with stopovers in Antigua, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka...

This summer, I am taking a trip around the world in short stories (more here: reading the missing parts of the world). The current destinations are: the Granta "Travel" issue, the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, and a Berlin collection.

Granta Travel
Published in summer 2013, the Granta travel collection is refreshing and different, offering unusual places, and an unusual stories. Here's the official note:

"From the Amazon to rural China, west Texas to the caves that lurk beneath the Peak District, this issue of Granta takes you out of your chair and out into the world. Haruki Murakami goes home to Kobe, Teju Cole meditates on danger in Lagos and Lina Wolff imagines a woman adrift in Madrid. Here are eighteen collisions between people and the places that have made them, shaped them and terrified them."

And here's the online page with excerpts of several of the stories and additional texts: Granta Travel

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The New Yorker Fiction Podcast
It was during one of my online searches for international short stories that I arrived at the New Yorker Fiction Podcast page. I almost klicked away, then tried one of the podcasts - and then returned there several times. Such a great format and series. The podcast include both the stories and a talk about them. Here are some of the international talks / stories, with extra links:

New Zealand
Miranda July reads Janet Frame's short story “Prizes”
"Life is hell but at least there are prizes. Or so one thought..." (Janet Frame Blog)

Antigua
Edwidge Danticat  reads 2 stories by Jamaica Kincaid: "Girl” and “Wingless”
"Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun;..." (story + interview with J. Kincaid)

Chile
Francisco Goldman reads Roberto Bolaño’s short story “Clara"
"Sometimes, when I’m alone and can’t get to sleep but don’t feel up to switching on the light, I think of Clara, who came in second in that beauty contest..." (& a user's guide to Bolano)

Argentine 
Hisham Matar reads “Shakespeare’s Memory” by Jorge Luis Borges
"This story, which is one of the last that Borges wrote, is a meditation on the mind, understanding, and inspiration—and it draws on the author’s deep erudition..."

Israel 
Jonathan Safran Foer reads Amos Oz’s “The King of Norway”
"Zvi Provizor loved to convey bad news: earthquakes, plane crashes, buildings collapsing on their occupants, fires, and floods. He read the papers and listened to all the news broadcasts very early in the morning... (story link)

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Berlin Metropole 
Parallel to the Granta Travel collection, i am reading a Berlin collection - this is another of the surprise treats telephone book box. The collection was published in 1999, and features stories and essays from the re-united and new / old capital Berlin, and was very timely back then with stories on Berlin turning to a huge building site, and the shift of the capital from Bonn back to Berlin, covering moments and views from the German reunification in 1990 to the capital shift that happened in 1999.

Unfortunately, there is no online page for the book, and no english versions of the stories. So no direct links to share from it, but it made me go and revisit my own memories of being in Berlin: "Four Berlins, or: I am (t)here"

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The New Yorker Fiction Archive
And more reads, leading from Berlin back to New York and onwards: listening to the New Yorker Podcast and following the links included, I arrived in Haiti and Sri Lanka, in Ethiopia and Norway:

Haiti
Edwidge Danticat: "Ghosts"
"Pascal Dorien was living in Bel Air—the Baghdad of Haiti, some people called it, but that would be Cité Pendue, an even more destitute and brutal neighborhood, where hundreds of middle-school children entering a national art contest drew M-16s and beheaded corpses. Bel Air was actually a mid-level slum.."

Sri Lanka
Romesh Gunesekra: "Roadkill"
"The first night I stayed in Kilinochchi I was a little apprehensive. Most of us living in the south of Sri Lanka had come to think of this town as the nerve center of terror..."

Ethiopia
Dinaw Mengestu: "The Paper Revolution"
"When Isaac and I first met, at the university, we both pretended that the campus and the streets of the capital were as familiar to us as the dirt paths of the rural villages where we had grown up and lived until only a few months earlier..."

Norway
Karl Ove Knausgaard: "Come Together"
"I was almost twelve years old, going into the fifth year of barneskole..."

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Links + More

Reading the world:  the collected list of stories is online here: global reading, and a note on the reading journey can be found here:  reading the (missing parts of) the world 

• Previous short story post: Reading Lolita in Tehran & In Her Place
• The world in 7 books (or: mapping our world by continents)
• More reading notes in this blog: life as a journey with books
• Other book blogs: It's Monday! What are you reading?