Well-read Weekend #10

Most travel books adress the big W travel questions like Where? When? What? I doubt that the well-fed tourist cruise ship passenger or the stag-party attendee in Prague stops to ask Why?

It's a question worth asking I think. Why are there folks like Nomadic Matt that travel for years on end or endless websites detailing how to live life on the road? Why do we spend hundreds on luggage and havea whole genre of 'travel lit'?

I feel there's a whole load of tourists who fit into one of two categories: the travel to 'get away from it all' and the travel 'to see it all.' Neither strikes me as particularly good. If I wanted to get away from it all, all I'd need do is yank my internet cord out of the wall, turn off the cell phone and go lay in the park. Same rest, lots less money. Seeing it all means that you pack so much into your days, that yes, you might have seen the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa and a can-can show, but what do you know of Paris?

Rick Steves aims to make folks' travel political. Alain de Botton takes a look at why travel is good for the soul in The Art of Travel.

Mr. de Botton is a philosopher at heart. His other books: Status Anxiety, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Arcitecture of Happiness. The Art of Travel is a delicate weaving of philosophy, yes, but also personal narrative, history and art.

His essays take delve into all the feelings we go through when we travel, from the anticipation of departure to the sublime views of nature's grandeur. He looks at topics through a few lenses--first his own travels, then of great travelers throughout history, through art or poetry and then brings things back to apply to our own lives.

For anyone who is more interested in the experience in traveling and less in the checklist of sights or the amount of sun one can absorb, this book is for you.

Well-read Weekend #9

A thouroughly useless, yet entertaining travel read, How to Make Friends and Oppress People. Has a sensible title, much like the Museum of Jurassic Technology. It sounds logical at first and then -- what technology during the Jurassic period? or wait, one should not oppress people!

It probably goes without saying that How to Make Friends and Oppress People: Classic Travel Advice for the Gentleman Adventurer by Vic Darkwood was written with a sense of irony.

Some favorite travel advice gems from the author:

On the best mode of travel:

"Women are hormonally prgrammed to be impressed by males who show a certain amount of dash, and in the modern world this commodity is usually made manifest by an impressively bushy moustache, a shiny red sports car or a large private income Right at the top of the dash stakes, however, is being the owner of a hot air balloon."

On improving your peripherial vision for driving:

"One of the best ways I have found of tgraining the eyes is to site for hours in a cinema with one's head turned sideways to the screen. . . Another good technique is to get a friend to drive a golf ball at you side on and attempt to dodge it."

But some of the fun is taken out when you know this advice is tounge-in-cheek. So perhaps the best advice comes from the many citations of actual travel books from the turn of the century.

"When talking to your Chinese boy you use Pdigin English. Here are a few words and their meanings; chop, chop, quickly; all same this, like this; man man, stop; no can cuttee, cheaper; no b'long plopper, that won't do . . . though round about, this baby mode of talk is tolerably successful."

"Should you be attacked by a mob in the East, hurt one of the crowd and hurt him quickly. The others will gather round the injured man and you will be able to slip away."

--The Happy Traveler, Rev'd Frank Tatchell 1923

"Every lady should, to my mind, know how to use a revolver. She may at any time be in China or some other country where there are savage natives . . . A lady can carry a revolver hidden for self-defence in many more ways than a man, owing to her draperis affording more places for concealment. Inside the muff is about one of the best places."

--Hints on Revolver Shooting, Walter Winans, 1904

Prepare to be amused and perhaps learn a thing or two about how to treat the natives.

Well Read (and Drank) Weekend #8

This week's book has served me well so far: The Good Beer Guide to New England.

How is screwing in a canoe like American beer?  It's fucking close to water. 

But not the craft beer of New England!  These past two weeks I've dove into the New England beer culture head first.  The Good Beer Guide to New England is a great beer-tasting companion.  

First on my beer tour is Brookline--no breweries here, but 2 beer tastings which I happily, and a tad tipsily biked in between.  Last weekend was a perfect day for biking and beer.  My favorie find?  A chipotle beer from Cisco Brewers on Nantucket and a mango-tinted IPA from Mayflower Brewing Company.  The Wine Gallery provided a great location for the local beer and cheese tasting.  The venue has a built in tasting room and a "wine jukebox" where you can spin a crazy looking contraption and make your own tasting any day.

 My own neighborhood of Boston is home to the Sam Adams brewery, but I haven't been there yet, so I'll leave a review of Sam until another day.

My first stop outside of Boston was the Beer Works while I had to kill some time out in Lowell.  I sampled a bit of quite a few brews, but settled on one (I was working, after all)--the Boston Garden Golden.    Lowell was a suprise.  Once the 3rd largest city in New England, Lowell's decaying factories and poverty problems are what it's known for these days.  Certainly, with with different weather, the city would have been more depressing, but as it was the river and falls I found gorgeous.  I spent a nice afternoon at the brewery where there was, thankfully, great internet connection.

Next stop: Cape Cod!

Well-Read Weekend #7

 

I think the sky in Boston knows when it's a weekend.  Every Friday afternoon rolls around and it decides to cut loose in celebration of the work week being over.  All winter this meant horrendously blustery snow storms every weekend.  The sky cloaked in grey, throwing gales of snow down like confetti.  Except for me this was no party.  People say they like the winter because they get to feel all 'cozy' when they go inside.  These people do not pay their own heating bill.  To get cozy I'd pile on two sweatshirts and wear my jacket while I ate dinner at home.

 

But now the sky is letting loose in a different way.  All week we had rainy weather, but on Friday--gorgeous.  It was as if the sky was obliged to do it's April shower thing all week and let loose as soon as the job was done. 

 

In honor of the beautiful sky, yesterday I spent the day exploring Brookline by going beer tasting to beer tasting by bike.  My guide along the way?  Not for Tourists. 

 

I highly recommend these books if they offer them for your city.   You'll know the ins and outs of each neighborhood better than a long-time local, be able to surprise your friends with the hippest bars in their neighborhood they didn't even know about and find where every swimming pool, skating rink and bowling alley is town.

 

This book was my bible in LA.   Well-worn and well-loved.  It lived in my bag or my car, depending on my mode on transportation and guided me straight to the best eats and bars in town (and around the confusing highway system). 

 

In Boston it's indispensible for biking around when streets double back on eachother (did you know Tremont intersects with Tremont?) and knowing the story behind the old amazing church you're staring at. 

 

Each guide really does a great job at being for the local.  All the guides show you where banks, book stores, bars, etc. are.  The LA guide also has a detailed one-pager on each mall and beach.  Boston has dots on each map to show you where donut shops and community gardens are.  (Interesting commentary on what's important for Angelenos v. Bostonians, no?)   LA's guide is large with a pull-out highway map.  That would never work in Boston, where you usually get around by foot or T, so it's guide is condensed and fits in a pocket.  

Right now you can great deal on the notfortourists website: buy a customized wall map of your neighborhood and get a free book!

Well-read Weekend #6

So far I've managed to keep myself apart from the Italy craze.  On my last Europe trip we skipped over the country entirely since it's in such an inconvenient place--jutting out into the water protected on to by the Alps.  (slight sarcasm there) I haven't read Under the Tuscan Sun or felt any deisre beyond 'graci' to learn the language.  Folks oooh and aaah over Italy and I'll counter with my love for the Eastern European capitals or Spain.  

But when a friend whose opinion you trust hands you a book and says you must read it, you read it.  This is what happened with Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr.

At the face of it, Four Season looks incredibly cliche--new parents with twins from Iowa move to Rome.  They live out the stresses of being parents in a foreign city.  What struck me at first from Anthony's stories is that I do not want to be a parent.  It seems like hell.  Wailing constantly, the toothing children sweating from the summer heat don't sleep through one night.  If and when I go to Rome I am definitely going childless.

But then as Anthony and his wife slowly get over what seems like the horror of child-rearing and get into the groove (and a babysitter), Anthony's recondite perceptions are fascinating.  He gleans the deepest truths from his everyday experiences with the city, his children and his stuggles writing.  He connects his life with those of thousands of years of Romans before him.   He draws strange parallels of his observations with those of Pliny the Elder's as he reads Natural History.

The city ceases to be a cliche of Romans and cathedrals and more of a year long meditation on the generations before and to come and what we think of the world.

Since reading this book I've rented A Roman Holiday and made pasta primavera, so I'm afraid I've fallen from my pedastool above fads.  Perhaps Rome is more than a fad, no?

Well-Read Weekend #5

I continued on my spanish kick this week, devouring yet another Gaudi book. Perhaps I do regeret leaving Spain so early. I also just got done with my second flamenco class. Flamenco, I've learned, is not just looking angry and stomping your feet--it is a complicated combination of head turns, skirt work, heel-tow, hand twisting, and body angling. I'll need to practice a bit.

What was easy however, was reading The Gaudi Key by Esteban Martin and Andreu Carranza.

I remember longingly picking up the book at FNAC, a giant department store in Barcelona that was a fun way to kill time without spending any money. (It also has an interesting Socialist history if you read the wiki article.) I say longingly not because I couldn't afford the book, but rather it was only out in Catalan, and later Spanish. I had already started on my Gaudi obsession trying to visit every building he had created in the city.

Finally the book has come out in English, and armed with my library card, I had it delivered within a week to my branch.

The Gaudi key has some serious flaws. It reads much like a mystery novel and lays the religion on pretty thick. I'll blame the lack of poetry on the translators. (How many Catalan to English translators exist anyway?) I'll blame the religion on Gaudi's nature. In any case, it was not too hard to swallow all the God talk when it came alongside the fantastical secret tunnels and objects hidden in Gaudi's works. I lump it all in to fantasy.

The book might be a bit hard to follow for one not familiar with Gaudi's works. But for one who is, it was really exciting to follow along the couple's mission as they raced through the streets of Barcelona to each of Gaudi's buildings decoding the mystery of the knights. Toward the end I pulled out my picture books of Gaudi's architecture and a google map of barcelona and tried myself to decode the symbolism and riddles.

I'd recommend for other lovers of Gaudi, otherwise the book is just a confusing Catalan copy of the DaVinci Code.

Well-Read Weekend #4

Well this weekend I'm in New York, and doing more social things like hanging out at a friend's house and making mac and cheese for them and playing Wii instead of reading.  I love traveling, but I've been on the road for a week now and sometimes, even when in an exciting place like NYC, you just want to turn on the television and east some mac and cheese.  I once spent an entire weekend in Paris and the only museum I went to was the Catacombs.  My friend and I spent the day cooking a big dinner for her 6 room mates and then played Risk in French.

And it was great.  Today I'm resolving to get out of the house and with my current budget I'm going to be limited to doing  as much free stuff as possible.  I'll make an exception for Veselka, my old Ukranian diner I used to wait the graveyard shift at freshman year.  Then I'm off to dance in Grand Central Station.  But there's one thing you definitely need to catch when in NYC: art.  Here's a new edition of a book I loved back when I lived in NYC, was poor and looking for culture:

Public Art New York by Jenifer Phifer

Some of the best art in New York is not hanging on the walls in the Met--it's in the streets (and bars and lobbies) of New York.  I picked up an older version of this book in the library and spent a week wandering through the nooks and crannies of NYC to find great art.  

Bank and hotel owners were once great patrons of the art.  Architects of apartment buildings were fans of surrealism.  This book is a great way to find about 2 centuries of art that are mosaics laid into the hotel lobbies and paintings hanging in bars.  It also has some great background and history on how the art got there.   You'll feel a little funny staring up at an Alexander Calder mobile in the Chase Bank as business people rush around you, but you'll also feel a little like you know a secret they don't know.  

Some of my favorites:

A Picasso sculpture in an apartment complex in NoHo

A Maxfield Parish in the St. Regis Hotel Bar

  Framing Union Station in the 14th St. Subway

All absolutely free!  Enjoy!

Well-read Weekend #3

Another Saturday, another trip to the library. This week, my stack of checked out books has gotten quite large. It's the trap of the 'hold this item for me' button. You see, the Jamaica Plain library branch is quite small. It's a place that exudes literary magic--old, old fiction paperbacks and dated non-fiction. A sizable travel book collection and a curious shelf on JP history. It's all housed in a building that I'm sure was once some one's home with dark wooden paneling and high ceilings. It invites you to pull up a chair.

But then there's the other several dozen branches out there. All connected online, you can surf them all at once, create a saved wish-list and with one click the book you desire is whisked right to your branch. You get a call when it arrives. I recommend seeing if your library does this.

It's dangerous to have so many books at one's fingertips. I get greedy, and then stressed as the due-date approaches and they are yet to be read.

Here's one such stress-inducer that isn't quite done yet:

Gaudí: A Biography by Gijs Van Hensbergen

What is Barcelona without Gaudi? Just another Valencia with second-rate paella. Gaudi not only puts the facade on Barcelona, but infuses it with soul too. His ideas of Catalan nationalism and his helping birth the modernista movement is what creates the Barcelona of today.

To think that his architecture was laughed at back in his day: "I don't know whether we are graduating a genius or a fool," declared his patron upon graduating him from architecture school. Famous Barcelonian resident, George Orwell despised his buildings. Today he is revered. There's even an effort to have him sainted.

Though little records remain of his life, author Hensbergen does an amazing job at piecing together the information we have left, weaving it in with the politics and cultural revitalization of turn of the century Catalunya. The result is a deep delving into the brain of one of the greatest architects of all time and a picture of the shaping of the pride of a nationless state. There's a lot of guessing of the part of the author as to what made Gaudi such a devout Christian, vegetarian and celibate, but he walks us through all his reasoning and evidence of his answers.

If going to Barcelona, it is best to know a bit about the man at the forefront of the Catalan spirit and so many spots on your tourist map. I highly recommend as a read for those on their way to this modernista beacon.

Haven't been to Barcelona and want to know what all the fuss is about for Gaudi's architecture? A simple google image search of 'Gaudi' will give you the answer.

Well-read Weekend #2

It's another well-read weekend.  Of course there's something special about curling up in a blanket next to a fire when it's snowy outside, sipping a hot-chocolate and reading a good book.  There's something even better, though, about sunbathing on your private deck, the long-awaited spring sun warming you, reading a good book.  

So that is what I did today.  Now that the sun is once again out, the snow, come on Monday, was gone by Sunday, ao I had another chance to enjoy being outside.  I hopped the bus to "Rahsi," what the locals apparently call my new favorite hood, Roslindale.  I've become a regular at the cheese shop.  I did my grocery shopping at the Village Market and picked up a fresh loaf of bread at the bakery.  While I waited for the bus I finished my latest travel read:

A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveler by Frances Mayer. (go ahead, pick it up on Amazon used for $.01)

Frances is the author of several books about travel, including Under the Tuscan Sun, which catapulted herself, and the rustic region in Italy to fame.  It must be strange to have a movie made of your memoir, with the leading character using the same name.  The fame has gone a bit to her head.

The book is a straightforward, poetic account of a year of her travels through Europe, Morocco and Turkey.  Her rich, vivid descriptions of the luxurious meals tantalize my tastebuds and her dramatic rendering of the landscapes and water surrounding far-away lands take my soul's eye there.  I skip her just as lengthy descriptions of English gardens, one of which is enough to give me a picture of what the dozen or so flowerbeds she visits might look like.

I sympathize with her drive to find the local, the authentic, the back-door experiences, that any traveler seeks out, but her fame and wealth taint the authenticity of the experiences.  How many of us can stay at a different British country-side cottage every other night, taxi around Greek Islands, go shopping for 3 Turkish rugs to ship home, or get comped into a Mediterranean cruise to lecture on travel?

It's not so much that it's wishful thinking, but rather, I'd rather skip the lofty tourist experiences.  Mayes looses most likability when, during her most stressful part of her journey, she misses all the taxis back to her cruise ship, being forced to walk 3 miles and take a bus back to the ship. 

Her passion wins you back over when she recalls lines from Greek Poet, Alexander Matsas as she stares out over the sea on the island of Crete or richly-details the cooking of food in Lisbon.

All in all, an enjoyable read for foodies, history and poetry enthusiasts, and gardeners.  Skip it if you're looking for adventure.

Well-read Weekends

Weekends are not typically the day you start resolutions. Mondays are more apt for those kind of things, but who's got time to blog on Mondays, but professionals. As we know, I'm not quite there yet (or rather a continent or two away), so I'll start on Sunday. Introducing . . .

I've been through many literature phases from historical to sci-fi, to even dabbling in a bit of biography. My recent love are travel books. Let's hope this one isn't just a phase. Every weekend I'll review a recent book I've read; it could be travel literature, a guide book, or even a book that's so much about a place that the setting is almost it's own character. I've amassed a decent collection of books of this type so far, but the Boston library is my new literary playground, so I'll be sure to include some new gems from there too.

This week's pick:

My French Whore by Gene Wilder

I picked this up in a small book store in Aspen. Reading a book by Gene Wilder was intriguing and the small size was perfect for packing in my already over-stuffed suitcase.

The story goes like this: Paul Peachy's work and one-sided marriage in Minnesota leave him empty, so when the chance to enlist in World War I comes, he does. He's shipped off to France and ends up impersonating a famous German spy. He eventually fulfills the exciting life and love he's always wanted--something he never would have found if he had stayed at home in Minnesota.

The hilarity and heart-felt feelings that come from Paul Peachy's tale, you would recognize from Wilder's acting. You can imagine a young Gene Wilder playing the character of Paul Peachy the whole story, which makes reading The French Whore almost like watching a film.

But I digress, this is a travel book review. The book does a fantastic jobs of caricaturing the characters of different countries--Germany, France, US--in a way that doesn't make them just stereotypes. And who can't relate the confusion of a traveler getting way in over his head on his first trip to Europe--and falling in love with a foreigner.

A short read, but a sweet one that I whole-heartedly recommend you pick up to carry around in your over-stuffed bag on your next trip. It'll be worth the space.