Ian McEwan, in my opinion, makes superb airborne reading. Just the best. Jonathan Franzen, by contrast, reads better on trains. I have never found anyone who is fun to read on a bus. Certainly not Marcel Proust.
Joe Queenan / One for the Books
![Travel Posters for Loch Ness and Other Homes of Mythical Beasts
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Travel Posters for Loch Ness and Other Homes of Mythical Beasts
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![Exploring Greenwich Avenue in the West Village
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Exploring Greenwich Avenue in the West Village
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The “postcard” is here a literary genre that presupposes three things: the presence of its author in a particular place, brevity, and randomness of content.
A Postcard From Bali / Karaoke Culture / Dubravka Ugresic
Books I saw today
The Conde Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys, Volume II: Great Writers on Great Places
Edited by Klara Glowczewska
Another spellbinding trip around the globe with some of today’s most celebrated writers and journalists
Condé Nast Traveler is the preeminent travel magazine in the United States, boasting a readership of 3.5 million. This second collection of the award-winning magazine’s best travel writings, includes essays by luminaries such as, Robert Hughes, Russell Banks, E. L. Doctorow, André Aciman, Pico Iyer, and Edna O’Brien.
My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City as Remembered by Actors, Artists, Athletes, Chefs, Comedians, Filmmakers …
Edited by David Haskell and Adam Moss
“My First New York” features candid accounts of coming to New York by more than fifty of the most remarkable people who have called the city home. Here are true stories of long nights out and wild nights in, of first dates and lost loves, of memorable meals and miserable jobs, of slow walks up Broadway and fast subway rides downtown.
Tin House: Portland/Brooklyn
Edited by Tin House
For thirteen years Tin House has been publishing out of both Brooklyn and Portland, Oregon. We draw our strength and inspiration from these two vibrant cultural centers. For the Fall, 2012 issue, we dedicate the entire issue to Portland and Brooklyn writers, artists, and musicians. From fiction by beloved Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin to provocative pieces about unapologetic hipsters and Middle Eastern enclaves in Brooklyn, we’ve found work that goes beyond the clichéd images of single-speeds and sideburns. This issue brings its readers poetry, fiction, essays, art, and interviews that showcase the unique character of each place, and how these hothouses produce such unique characters and art. It also includes a download code for 16 tracks from Portland and Brooklyn musicians curated by Amy Kline (Titus Andronicus, Hilly Eye) and Liz Harris (Grouper).
This is my favorite book about Afghanistan ever. If you’re tired of war, this is a nice break from the current affairs books out today.
Forever Top 10: An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan by Jason Elliot
Long before I began working at Picador I fell in love with Jason Elliot’s travelogue An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan. I was working at Borders at the time and my manager recommended it. Her parents had met in Afghanistan in the ‘70s while volunteering for a humanitarian organization. Both considered it required reading.
There are many passages underlined in my well-worn copy and the margins are full of stars, exclamation points, and smiley faces. While many books on Afghanistan written today focus on the war presently taking place, Elliot’s book, published in 1999, stands outside of the current conflict and instead focuses on the people, landscape, and travel experience.
There are moments of meditative insight into being far from home:
And there it was again, that feeling that the journey was becoming more than the sum of its parts, more like a clandestine sculpting at work within me, which in the visible world I was merely acting out, to reveal—what? The shape of a character I knew only dimly from a life whose roots were growing more tenuous by the minute. How precious and remote the world of home now seemed! In ordinary life you know yourself from your surroundings, which become the measure and the mirror of your thoughts and actions. Remove the familiar and you are left with a stranger, the disembodied voice of one’s own self which, robbed of its usual habits, seems barely recognizable. It is all the stronger in an alien culture, and more so when the destination is uncertain.
At first this process brings with it a kind of exhilaration, a feeling of liberty at having broken from the enclosures of everyday constraints and conventions; this is the obvious, if unconscious lure of travel. But once it has run its early course a deeper feeling more like anguish begins to surface, until the foreignness of your surroundings becomes too much to bear. I had never felt so strongly before, and wondered: when does it start, this divorce from oneself, and what is its remedy?
As well as humorous interactions with locals, often equally profound:
I studied my map to try to find a lake I had seen in the distance, but it was not marked. I asked Ali Khan what its name was. ‘Lake nothing,’ he said, ‘just lake.’After all these years, An Unexpected Light stays with me—both on my bookshelf as well as in my memories. It’s one of those books where you lose your surroundings and forget to breathe. Regardless of how many books I’ll read in my lifetime, Elliot’s book will remain forever in my top 10.
A day at Community Bookstore in Park Slope. More photos at Book Boroughing. Grab coffee from one of the many nearby cafes and head to their backyard for hours of quiet reading. Oh and, they have turtles in that pond.
Vintage posters of Superheroes in their hometowns
Heading over to Metropolis for a vacation to check out Superman’s stomping ground isn’t quite feasible yet, and the shuttle to Gotham City hasn’t yet commenced. But you can get these vintage travel posters for your wall. Dave Ault’s illustrations, covering Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and more DC Comics heroes, give you a minimalist mid-century travel feel.
Wow.
10 Beautiful Places In The World That Actually Exist
Giant trees surround this old train tunnel located in Kleven, Ukraine. The magical-looking place is nicknamed “The Tunnel Of Love” by locals because it is a popular spot for couples to visit.
NEW WORD ORDER
Translation is an art beset with linguistic pitfalls
Each language has its own tics. The French are so fond of long, rambling sentences that when you use a French keyboard, you have to press the shift key to get a full stop – yet the semi-colon is right there. French writers also love ellipses and exclamation marks to a degree that, were you to reproduce these punctuation elements faithfully in an English translation, it would risk looking like the work of a 14-year-old. The rhythms of other languages are also obviously, fundamentally different from English.
Read full article at the Financial Times
Last night at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Rosecrans Baldwin discussed his memoir, Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, the story of his time spent living in the French city. He spoke of the comparisons between the two peoples and what a place is like once you’ve settled in and gotten to know a few locals.
While in Paris, Rosecrans, a self-described Francophile, couldn’t get enough and proceeded to read a bunch of books about his new home. Here are four books Rosecrans recommends:
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
“It’s a wonderful, screwy take on 1950s Paris. The narrator’s voice just rampages.”
You can listen to Rosecrans talk about this novel on NPR.
The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
“A novel in which nothing happens, and what does happen takes place in a Parisian bathroom for the most part. And yet: gripping, revealing, entertaining, and all in very few pages.”The Friend of Madame Maigret by Georges Simenon
“It’s hard to pick one Simenon—I love so many. This one’s set in the Marais, where I used to live, so it’s a sentimental selection.”Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant
“These are set around Europe in addition to Paris, so it’s a continental treat. Gallant has won all sorts of awards and she’s still underrated, I think. Effortlessly moving.”You can listen to Rosecrans discuss Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down with WNYC’s Leonard Lopate as well as with Brad Listi on the Other People podcast. You might also want to read an excerpt at Salon. Rosecrans is also on Twitter at @rosecrans.
In keeping with this wanderlusting, here are our suggestions for books with a great sense of place:
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal
Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots—which are then sold, collected, and handed on—he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive.
And so begins this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz
Two centuries after James Cook’s epic voyages of discovery, Tony Horwitz takes readers on a wild ride across hemispheres and centuries to explore the Captain’s embattled legacy in today’s Pacific.
Recounting Cook’s voyages and exotic scenes — tropical orgies, taboo rituals, cannibal feasts, human sacrifice — Horwitz relives Cook’s adventures by following in the captain’s wake to places such as Tahiti, Savage Island, and the Great Barrier Reef to discover Cook’s embattled legacy in the present day.
Peter Robb’s A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions
Deliciously sensuous and fascinating, Robb renders in vivid detail the intoxicating pleasures of Brazil’s food, music, literature, and landscape as he travels not only cross country but also back in time—from the days of slavery to modern day political intrigue and murder.
Now in paperback for the first time at the end of this month, Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown by Michael Cunningham
“Cunningham rambles through Provincetown, gracefully exploring the unusual geography, contrasting seasons, long history, and rich stew of gay and straight, Yankee and Portuguese, old-timer and ‘washashore’ that flavors Cape Cod’s outermost town… . Chock-full of luminous descriptions … . He’s hip to its studied theatricality, ever-encroaching gentrification and physical fragility, and he can joke about its foibles and mourn its losses with equal aplomb.” —Chicago Tribune
Reading in Translation with Three Percent: An Interview
To celebrate World in Translation Month, Picador got in touch with the co-hosts behind the Three Percent Podcast, a weekly show devoted to conversations about new books, literary events, and the publishing scene in all its variations.
Tom Roberge, Publicity and Marketing Director at New Directions, and Chad W. Post, Director of Open Letter Books and Managing Editor of Three Percent, a website that promotes literature in translation, bring a unique voice to the literary podcast community with their knowledge of world literature.
Recently, Tom and Chad hosted the Best Translated Book Award ceremony at McNally Jackson in New York City. You can read about the winners here as well as watch the video of the announcement.
Here’s what they have to say about translations.
PICADOR: When did you first become aware of translated literature?
Chad: Julio Cortazar. I read “Continuity of Parks” in Spanish class and was pretty blown away, but also fairly certain that my Spanish was so faulty that I just wasn’t getting it. So I bought Blow Up & Other Stories in English translation and promptly fell in love with all things Cortazar.
Tom: I suppose this happened at some point in college, sometime after all of my Shakespeare and Chaucer classes and before we got to WB Yeats and modernist poetry. Actually, it was probably specifically the Marquis de Sade’s The Misfortunes of Virtue (published as a longer novel called Justine, not the Durrell book). It was the only translated book in a course on 18th Century novels or some such thing, and the last on the syllabus so that it could be left off of the exam since the professor told us it was optional owing to its, well, vulgar content. I of course was very intrigued. My first reaction to Sade was the admiration for his rhetoric, and I suppose my love of distasteful characters began there. But the fact that it was a translation was secondary; it was simply a really good book…
What do you look for when deciding what translated work to read next?
Chad: There are so many things that go into a decision like this. Sometimes it’s the buzz around a book, sometimes it’s the author (I’m currently on a Clarice Lispector kick), sometimes the translator (Bill Johnston is a translation jesus!), and sometimes it’s something totally other (Satantango has a gorgeous cover, The Safety Net is about terrorism).
Tom: I don’t necessarily look to specifically read a translation or a non-translation. I look for good books. When I do find myself choosing from among the vast array of choices, I usually gravitate to plot first, style second. Country and translator are important eventually, but first, for me at least, it has to be something I’ll enjoy reading. There was a time when I read the “difficult” books for my own edification, but I’ve since realized that there are things to be learned about human nature in a wide array of books, not just difficult ones that academics deem worthy.
Do you find that you gravitate towards a certain country because of your interest in the culture?
Chad: I read a lot of Mexican and South American books because I particularly like the aesthetic sensibility prevalent in a lot of works from down there. The aforementioned Cortazar and Lispector, but also Borges, Bioy Casares, Chejfec, Zambra, Saer, Sada, etc., etc.
Tom: In the end, I read a lot of French translations. I like their philosophers and their novelists’ tendency to draw on those philosophies. And I’m a huge French film fan, so the overall outlook on art I’m very familiar with and love. But I also read a lot of stuff from Spain and Latin America — they too seem to zero in on themes I’m drawn to.
15 Spectacular Libraries in Europe
The Library of El Escorial, Spain
This library is located in Royal Seat of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the historical residence of the king of Spain. Phillip II was responsible for adding the library and most of the books originally held within. The vaulted ceilings were painted with gorgeous frescoes, each representing one of the seven liberal arts: rhetoric, dialectic, music, grammar, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. These days, the library is a World Heritage Site, and it holds more than 40,000 volumes.
I love this idea
TOUR SKETCHBOOK
by Austin Kleon
I’ve spent the past three weeks on the Steal Across America tour — other than my iPhone, my sketchbook is the most important thing I carry. I use a large Moleskine sketchbook because it has heavy bristol-like pages that don’t tear, it’s big enough to stick a boarding pass in the pages, and it has an envelope flap in the back for travel receipts.
